Verizon is shaking up its consumer wireless business with the departure of its CEO Manon Brouillette, who joined the company in June 2021 and was promoted to CEO in January of this year.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg will take over Brouillette’s duties. Vestberg talked briefly about Brouillette’s departure during the UBS Global TMT investor conference and said that the change was necessary to “increase the pace of execution.”
Brouillette’s departure isn’t particularly surprising. Verizon’s consumer division has had three dismal quarters. In Q1 the company reported a loss of 36,000 postpaid phone subs and in Q2, it reported postpaid phone net losses of 215,000. Last quarter Verizon reported it lost 189,000 postpaid phone customers.
At the same time, Verizon’s competitors AT&T and T-Mobile have reported strong quarterly results with T-Mobile adding 854,000 postpaid phone customers in Q3 and AT&T adding 708,000 postpaid phone customers in the quarter.
Vestberg cautioned investors to “not read into this” leadership change and assured them that the company is seeing good traction in its retail stores and experienced a strong Black Friday sales event.
Brouillette joined Verizon in June 2021 after a stint as president and CEO of Vidéotron in Canada. Initially, she was named COO and Deputy CEO of Verizon’s Consumer Group working with CEO Ronan Dunne. She was promoted to CEO in January after Dunne’s departure.
In January 2019 Verizon implemented an organization change and divided its business into two groups —the Consumer Group and the Business Group.