Verizon Profit Rises 40% as Wireless Gains Verizon Communications reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter results on Thursday, driven by wireless growth. Its profit rose 40 percent. While wireless customer growth was slightly below Wall Street estimates, the company's Verizon Wireless venture with the Vodafone Group still showed solid profit and increasing revenue as customers spent more on data services. Verizon has agreed to buy out Vodafone's 45 percent share of the venture for $130 billion. The subscriber shortfall raised some concern that the company, the first American telephone operator to report this quarter, was losing market share to rivals like T-Mobile US. Jonathan Chaplin, an analyst at New Street Research, said that while Verizon's financials were "outstanding," "there were clear signs that a resurgent TMUS is impacting even Verizon." Verizon's chief financial officer, Francis J. Shammo, attributed the subscriber shortfall to a shortage of Apple's new iPhone 5S. About one-half of the Verizon Wireless smartphone activations were iPhones, representing roughly 3.9 million iPhone activations. "The shortage on the 5S was a significant issue for the quarter," Mr. Shammo told Reuters. Verizon Wireless added 927,000 net retail subscribers in the quarter, compared with Wall Street expectations of about one million customers. Verizon reported a third-quarter profit of $2.23 billion, or 78 cents a share, compared with $1.59 billion, or 56 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding unusual items, Verizon earned 77 cents a share in the quarter, compared with Wall Street expectations of 74 cents, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 4.4 percent to $30.28 billion in the third quarter, from $29.01 billion a year earlier. Wall Street expected revenue of $30.16 billion. Strong growth in wireless service revenue was offset by a decline of 3 percent in its global enterprise business and a slower 4.3 percent rise in its consumer business, which includes its FiOS television service.