AT&T Inc.’s profits for the next two years will take a hit as it subsidizes the new low price of the latest iPhones, the company said Monday.

The news sent the carrier’s stock down 65 cents, or 1.7 percent, to close at $37.56.

AT&T, which is the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. carrier, put the cost at 10 cents to 12 cents per share for this year and next, or roughly $600 million per year.

Carrier subsidies for expensive phones are usually around $200 each. The expected cost figure points to AT&T expecting to sell about 3 million of the new iPhones per year, but AT&T executives did not reveal specifics of the subsidy.

The cheapest model of the new iPhone, announced by Apple Inc. on Monday, will cost $199 when it goes on sale July 11. A model with twice the memory — 16 gigabytes — will cost $299. The cheapest model of the first-generation iPhone sold most recently for $399.

AT&T expects the new iPhone to add to its earnings in 2010 when it will no longer be required to share monthly subscriber revenue with Apple. Analysts had estimated these monthly payments at $10 to $15.

The revenue-sharing deal was an experiment, one of many things about the iPhone that turned industry practices on their head. Now, Apple and AT&T are adopting the standard model for the phone business: The carrier pays the handset maker for the phones, then subsidizes the phones to consumers in exchange for a two-year contract.

“We have changed the nature of the agreement to a more traditional wireless model,” said Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T Mobility.

Consumers will be the winners in the short term, as the price of the feature-rich iPhone is cut in half. But AT&T is raising the prices for service plans to start at $39.99 per month,…