TMUS

T-Mobile's FY2025 looks strong on the surface: revenue grew 8.5% to $88.3B, accelerating out of the flat $78–81B range it ran from 2021–2024, helped by the August 1, 2025 acquisition of the UScellular Wireless Business (~$4.4B in cash and assumed debt) that adds scale and, per the MD&A, 'enhance[s] our rural 5G coverage.' The real story is cash: operating cash flow jumped 25.4% to $27.9B, and after $9.96B of capex that implies roughly $17.9B of free cash flow — about a 9% FCF yield on the $200B market cap. Returns on capital are healthy (ROE 18.6%, operating margin 20.7%, net margin 12.4%), and management returned ~$14B to holders via $9.97B of buybacks and $4.12B of dividends.

The catch is that reported profitability is not actually growing. Net income slipped 3.1% to $11.0B and diluted EPS rose just 0.6% to $9.72 — the per-share line is being manufactured by buybacks that shrank the count 3.5%, not by earnings. Revenue growth is also partly inorganic (UScellular) and carried $263M of merger costs management strips out of adjusted EBITDA. Meanwhile leverage is creeping up: long-term debt rose 9.4% to $81.1B and current debt jumped 26.2% to $5.13B, against just $5.60B of cash and equity that fell 4.1% to $59.2B as buybacks erode the base. (Note: the provided total-liabilities line is tagged FY2012 at $6.83B and the resulting 0.12x liabilities/equity ratio is clearly a data error, so I anchor the leverage read on the debt lines, not that ratio.)