Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) inches up 0.71% in pre trading session on Thursday as the firm has deviated from the trend of three quarters of customer reductions in a significant area of its business.

At a Citi investor conference on Wednesday, Chief Executive Hans Vestberg avoided giving too much of a preview of Verizon’s (VZ) fourth quarter, although he did mention that Verizon achieved its aim of recording positive net additions in its consumer business.

Although the promotional atmosphere is often somewhat enhanced over the holiday season, Verizon didn’t see “unusually greater” levels of discounting this year, according to Vestberg.

Vestberg responded that Verizon was “still going to preserve our premium” and that it would be “irresponsible” to implement blanket price reductions across the board after an audience poll on whether Verizon should reduce its wireless postpaid service pricing to boost volume growth at the expense of average revenue per user.

A transcript of the conversation given by Sentieo/AlphaSense shows that he also agreed that “there are places we need to do better for sure.”

Verizon shares stumbled toward their worst annual performance since 2015 last year, falling 24.2% over the course of 2022 and meaningfully underperforming peer stocks AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) surged +2.13% and T-Mobile US Inc. (TMUS) rose +0.66% while surged 1.46% in after hours.

However, Verizon’s stock is off to a better start in 2023 as it is up 2.4% on Wednesday after increasing 1.8% on Tuesday.

At the conference, Verizon executives also spoke about their approach to capital expenditure, with Vestberg stating that the firm anticipates a “pretty big drop” in CapEx.

It’s not because we aren’t accomplishing all we want to, he insisted; rather, Verizon has invested in areas like edge computing and is now able to benefit from those efforts.