Before the open this morning, Verizon Communications (VZ: sentiment, chart, options) announced first-quarter earnings of $1.64 billion, or 57 cents per share, while revenue increased 5.5% to $23.8 billion. Excluding items, earnings were 61 cents per share, matching the consensus estimate. Analysts had expected revenue of $23.86 billion.

In other news, Verizon Wireless added 1.5 million subscribers, beating its rival AT&T (T: sentiment, chart, options) , which added 1.3 million in the quarter. However, its growth rate was down from 1.7 million in the same quarter last year. Verizon Wireless has roughly 67.2 million total subscribers. Verizon lost 8.2% of its land lines from last year, ending with 40.5 million. Broadband connections were up 14.9% to 8.5 million, but total operating revenue in the segment, which includes business services, declined 1.4% to $12.3 billion.

Shares of VZ are up more than 1% this morning, but the stock is currently struggling with resistance in the 38-39 region. This area has kept the security capped on a daily basis since late January. The equity was also stopped by resistance at its declining 20-week trendline this morning, which resides in the 38 area.

Sentiment toward the shares is pessimistic. The Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio for VZ comes in at 1.47, as put open interest outnumbers calls open interest. This reading is higher than 90% of all those taken during the past year. In other words, options players have been more pessimistically aligned just 10% of the time during the past 52 weeks.