Verizon's Turnaround: 13,000 Job Cuts and a 406,000-Line Rebound

Verizon added a net 406,000 postpaid phone lines in the third quarter of 2026, up from 44,000 a year earlier — the clearest early evidence that Dan Schulman's turnaround is gaining traction. The company cut more than 13,000 jobs in November 2025, the largest layoff round in its history, just weeks after the reluctant CEO left a Montana ranch to take the job.

Schulman told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on the Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast that he initially resisted the role several times. "I came in with a little bit of a bad attitude," he said. A year in, he describes himself as "absolutely loving it and pretty hopeful about our future."

Why did a retired CEO come back?

Schulman stepped down from PayPal in 2023 after nearly a decade running the payments company. He was living on a Montana ranch with his wife, Summerly, and roughly 900 head of cattle. "I really didn't want to come back into the CEO job," he said. "These jobs are all-consuming. You're putting in 10 to 14 hours a day."

Verizon kept calling. Schulman had sat on its board since 2018 and served as lead independent director (the non-executive who chairs sessions without management present) since December 2024. "I was the hit-by-the-bus scenario," he said — the designated interim successor had anything happened to then-CEO Hans Vestberg.

The company had been losing market share for roughly five years. Once first in its industry by market capitalization, it had fallen to last, and its reputation for network quality no longer retained customers. "We had the lowest P/E, which is what the Street thinks of our future growth potential," Schulman said, referring to the price-to-earnings ratio investors use to price expected growth.

The board had a restructuring plan, but it failed. "We had a plan. It didn't work out, so we had to go to Plan B, which was me, not Plan A," he said, adding his father's line: "People plan, God laughs." He accepted in October 2025, convinced Verizon's assets — including an estimated 150 million customer lines — could support a recovery, and persuaded by his wife's reminder that he could still make a difference. "I felt an obligation," he said.

What did he change first?

At his first all-employee meeting, without notes or slides, he called Verizon a "big, lumbering giant that had fallen behind," citing hierarchical culture, slow decisions, and processes requiring roughly 35 signatures to advance. The November 2025 layoffs followed, against a backdrop of routine annual cuts of 2,000 to 3,000 people through voluntary buyouts.

"I needed to show this was different, that I was very serious about the change that was going to happen," Schulman said. "Playing to win is not just a slogan for me or a nice marketing thing."

The strategy replaces risk aversion with experimentation, faster decisions, and customer primacy over internal process. The network remains "foundational to everything we do," he said, but "it can't be about the network. It has to be about the customer." That included ending the industry habit of buying growth with free phones: "A free line is not really a net add from my perspective."

What do the numbers show now?

Beyond the postpaid rebound, promotional acquisition costs fell 41%, and free cash flow rose 12% to $7.8 billion in the quarter. Verizon, which posted $138 billion in revenue last year, has extended Schulman's contract through December 2028 to complete the three-year plan.

He will judge his tenure first on customer trust, then on pride inside a company many had written off as too big and too bureaucratic to change. "We're surprising a lot of people right now," he said, "and it feels good when that happens." The ranch will have to wait.