Not weighing in on whether the 1B in profit is "a lot" but a financial analyst would also want to look at return on equity, because a business like VZ likely "s

Not weighing in on whether the 1B in profit is "a lot" but a financial analyst would also want to look at return on equity, because a business like VZ likely "should" be highly leveraged (financing its long lived assets not with equity but with cheap long term debt). It is common that small absolute earnings as a percent of revenue look much more attractive when considered as against how much it yields the owners (equity). Also, a business like that is going to have a metric crap-ton of noncash items, plus interest and taxes. So looking at free cash flow or ebitda are pretty enlightening in such cases. Finally, there are comps so looking at this in isolation tells us nothing about idiosyncratic (management) performance rather than industry conditions. My point is that a drive-by financial analysis of the net income margin of VZ is not at all instructive, and can't be used one way or another to justify/attack the propriety of labor grievances.