AT&T reported a drop in second-quarter earnings, to $3.5 billion or 68 cents a share, from $3.8 billion or 71 cents a share a year earlier, Telecompaper.com reported on July 24, 2014. Excluding a profit of $0.08 per share on the sale of its stake in Latin America’s America Movil and $0.02 per share in costs for integrating Leap Wireless, EPS fell to $0.62 from $0.67 a year ago. Revenues were up just 1.6 percent to $32.6 billion, and a rise in operating costs led to a drop in the operating margin to 17.2 percent from 19.1 a year earlier.

AT&T still maintained its outlook for 5 percent revenue growth over the full year, as well as stable margins and low mid-single digit growth in EPS. It expects improved results later from mobile customer growth on its AT&T Next and Mobile Share plans. The shift to phone sales on installment and shared usage bundles has put pressure on ARPU in the near term, but AT&T expects these delayed revenues will come out in results in the coming quarters.