AT&T to post $1 billion loss in Q4 on pension, retirement plans rejig

(Reuters) - AT&T Inc, the largest U.S. pay TV operator, said on Friday it would record a pre-tax loss of about $1 billion in the fourth quarter, related to an annual remeasurement of pension and post-employment benefit plans.

AT&T, the No.2 U.S. wireless carrier, also estimated reporting net subscriber additions for the quarter ended Dec. 31, mainly driven by the addition of more than 900,000 domestic wireless subscribers. http://bit.ly/2jGHZbV

The company did not quantify the net subscriber additions.

AT&T also estimated there were more than 200,000 net additions of paying customers for its video service in the quarter, entirely driven by DirecTV Now.

DirectTV Now is a streaming television service AT&T launched to help drive sales in a saturated cell phone market.

AT&T said it decreased its assumed discount rates used to measure pension obligations to 4.4 percent from 4.6 percent and the discount rate to measure post-retirement obligation to 4.3 percent from 4.5 percent.

That, AT&T estimated, resulted in a loss of about $3 billion, which was substantially offset by better-than-assumed claims, slightly higher-than-expected asset returns and demographic changes.

AT&T said the loss would not affect the operating results in its various divisions and would be included as an adjustment in its fourth-quarter report.

The company is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results on Jan. 25. Its stock was up 0.37 percent at $41.15 in premarket trading on Friday.

(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)