Verizon CEO Dan Schulman remains committed to righting the carrier’s operations, telling investors this week that company investments will be highly scrutinized, a move that comes as the carrier works through the last of its large job cuts.

“We're not going to invest in places where we're losing money right now,” Schulman said during Verizon’s recent first-quarter earnings call. “As I mentioned I think last quarter, we have a number of places where you add it all up, and we're losing $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year in margin. Like we are either going to sunset those, retire those, or divest those things, and there's no need for us to continually invest in places where we're just going to lose money forever on that.”

Schulman had previously stated that, “we have parts of our business that are costing us billions of dollars of margin and I think we can think much more clearly about how do we invest in growth areas and divest or exit those that are not that for us and are actually hemorrhaging margins for us,” before adding ominously, “you can probably imagine what we're thinking about and talking about on that.”

And if you can’t “imagine,” Verizon CFO Tony Skiadas provided more clarity.

“Noncore areas that are not aligned to growth, including legacy areas, are being significantly reduced and/or eliminated, and that includes areas such as business wireline, nondirectional products, technology as well, wholesale, legacy copper, and voice platforms, and even projects with too long of a payback,” Skiadas explained.

Verizon’s management noted that it will instead invest in its mobile and broadband offerings.

Job cuts continue

Verizon is also continuing to work through its extensive job cuts, which will quickly see the carrier slash 13,000 total jobs in short order.

Skiadas noted that Verizon slashed just over 10,000 jobs by the end of 2025, which pushed the carrier’s total employee base down to just under 90,000 total employees. Verizon plans to finish the latest culling by the end of March.

Those cuts were made official in November, with Verizon noting in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it would take a severance charge of up to $1.8 billion during the current fourth quarter tied to the cuts. Verizon’s filing also noted that the carrier “expects that its cost reduction efforts will include a significant reduction in outsourced, contracted, and other outside labor expense.”

The job cuts were initiated by Schulman shortly after he assumed leadership last October.

As part of that ascension, Schulman noted that Verizon was “at a critical juncture,” but that it had a “clear opportunity to redefine our trajectory, by growing our market share across all segments of the market, while delivering meaningful growth in our key financial metrics. We are going to maximize our value propositions, reduce our cost to serve, and optimize our capital allocation to delight our customers, and deliver sustainable long-term growth for our shareholders."

Schulman later provided a few clues to those plans as he presided over his first earnings call as CEO.

“We are going to take bold and fiscally responsible action to redefine Verizon’s trajectory at this critical inflection point for our company,” Schulman noted in a statement tied to the earnings release. “We will rapidly shift to a customer-first culture, one that thrives on delighting our customers. These will not be incremental changes. We will aggressively transform our culture, our cost structure, and the financial profile of Verizon in order to put our customers first, compete effectively, and deliver sustainable returns for our shareholders.”

Schulman added that this included a bigger focus on using AI to power his plans in overhauling Verizon’s operations.

“We have barely scratched the surface of how AI powered innovation can transform our customer experience,” Schulman said during his prepared remarks. “I intend to use AI as a key tool simplify offers, improve the customer experience, and reduce churn through smart, consistent, and more personalized marketing and offers, and we will leverage AI throughout the company to make it easier for our employees to delight our customers and to dramatically improve service while reducing costs.”