While posting a 7.7% jump in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011, Verizon reported a loss in earnings per share (EPS) for the three months.

The company reported an EPS loss of $0.71 on $28.4bn in revenue for the quarter. While revenue was up year over year, EPS dropped from a positive of $0.93 Verizon reported in Q4 2010.

It attributed the loss to a pension expense, and CEO Lowell McAdam said the company was well-positioned for growth in 2012.

“Verizon finished 2011 very strong, both in terms of revenue growth and by delivering an 18.2% total return to our shareholders for the full year, and the company has great momentum for 2012,” he said.

McAdam added that Verizon was expecting to see benefits of its strategic moves during 2011, which included home entertainment and communications packages called FiOS, development of the 4G LTE mobile network and expansion in the Cloud space.

The last investment on that list –acquisition of data center and Cloud services company Terremark – has so far had little impact on the company’s total revenue since the company closed the $1.4bn deal.

Its revenue was $26.99bn in the year’s first quarter. The following quarter – the quarter Verizon completed the Terremark acquisition – brought revenue of about $27.5bn. For the third quarter, Verizon reported revenue of about $27.9bn.

Revenue from the company’s global-enterprise business, which includes services added as a result of the Terremark acquisition, totaled US$3.9bn during the fourth quarter – up 1.3% from last year. Within this category, revenue from strategic services – such as Terremark’s cloud, security and IT solutions – increased 14.7% year over year during the fourth quarter.

Verizon’s full-year 2011 revenue was $110.9bn – up 4% from 2010. The company reported full-year EPS of $0.85 – down from $0.90 in the preceding year.