Verizon SWOT Analysis Verizon Communications
Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) is one of the world's leading providers of wireless and wireline-based communication services including broadband, data, network access and global internet protocol (IP) Services. In their latest full fiscal year the company reported revenues of $110, 875 million with an operating profit of $12,880 million during FY2011 (Verizon Investor Relations, 2012). At present the company has 192,000 employees and operates in 150 nations both in a franchised and direct selling model (Verizon Investor Relations, 2012). The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of Verizon are the basis of this analysis.
Strengths
Verizon continues to have a commanding market presence globally with one of the most profitable brands in the telecommunications industry (Brown, 2010). The strength of their brand has given the company the ability to manage customer churn more effectively than competitors, reducing the relative churn rate of customers by 56% over the last three years while competitors have seen churn rates increase by over 67% (Verizon Investor Relations, 2012). The combination of the Verizon brand stability and customer loyalty has given the company a unique level of stability in a very turbulent global telecommunications market (Zoakos, 2002).
Another significant strength of Verizon is their ability to orchestrate and complete alliances, mergers and questions quickly. They have also been one of the few telecommunications companies to pioneer the development of effective shared-risk mergers that drastically reduce the downside risk of being an industry consolidator, a role they continue to take on globally (Peaks, Arbogast, O'Keefe, 2009). The well orchestrated acquisition of Alltel by AT&T that Verizon played a central role in is a case in point (Seidenberg, 2002).
Verizon also is moving aggressively into new markets including cloud computing using their core strengths in mergers and acquisitions. An example of this strength is the company's recent $1.4B acquisition of Terremark (Ya, 2011). Verizon continues to aggressively and successfully pursue an inorganic growth strategy by concentrating on mergers and acquisitions to bring greater cloud-based innovations to their customers (Gorski, 2005). Verizon continues to also seek out opportunities to define advanced e-commerce encryption standards globally, looking to become the global e-commerce platform at the infrastructure level for enterprises (Everett, 2012).
Verizon Communications Fiscal Year 2010 Financial Analysis
Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE – "VZ") has two business segments Domestic Wireless (operated as Verizon Wireless) and Wireline. These business segments are operated and managed as strategic business units and organized by products and services. The company uses the so-called "Anglo-American model" or "the unitary system" (Mallin, 2011) which employs a single-tiered Board of Directors which is comprised of a mixture of executives from the company and non-executive directors, who are all elected by shareholders (Bowen, 2008). Verizon has fourteen board members, including the current CEO. Each business segment is operated separately, but the cash flow and dividend information that is described in the 2010 annual report is not split out by business unit. Thus the results presented below are for the Verizon Wireless and Wireline segments.
Verizon Strike on August 7, 2011 45
In this paper, we are going to be looking at the Verizon strike of 2011. During this process there will be a focus on: prior work stoppages, events leading up to the strike, the position of the company, the views of the union, what lead to a breakdown in negotiations, the resolution of the conflict, any lingering issues and winners / losers. Once this takes place, is when this will show how these issues are leading to changes in workplace rules.