By Mike Dano; Light Reading ~  Sep 15, 2022

AT&T announced it will build a fiber network in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, Arizona, a move that competes with cable company Cox Communications and fiber operator Lumen Technologies. The effort represents a test by AT&T to see whether it should expand its fiber network beyond the boundaries of its existing copper footprint.

“We announced Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. We did that for a reason. That’s a test case for us to understand, are there attractive markets for us to build as the first fiber provider into a particular area that might make sense for our business?” AT&T CEO John Stankey said at a recent investor conference, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “And we’ll look at the data, and we’ll look at the results, and we’re going to look at our performance. And if we see the same kind of returns we’re seeing than what we’ve been building over the last couple of years, that’s a possibility that I’d come back and say, there’s another approach to this [fiber buildout] that makes sense for our business.”

According to BroadbandNow, Cox and Lumen, op

The company has divested all of its media businesses and is now focused on telecommunication

By Tom Kerr, CFA; GuruFocus ~ Sep 14, 2022

Summary

• AT&T is one of the world’s largest telecom companies and is focused on wireless and fiber wireline businesses.
• The company carries a large debt load, but generates large amounts of operating cash flow.
• AT&T is selling at low valuation levels compared to its peers.

By Caitlin Oprysko; Politico ~ Sep 13, 2022

FERGUSON HEADS TO AT&T: Former Rep. Mike Ferguson is joining AT&T as an executive vice president to lead the company’s federal legislative relations team. The New Jersey Republican has spent the past six years leading the federal policy team as a senior adviser at BakerHostetler and before that served as chief executive at Ferguson Strategies. He also co-chairs a bipartisan U.S. Chamber of Commerce commission on artificial intelligence. Ferguson spent nearly a decade in the House and was on the powerful House Energy & Commerce Committee.

— Ferguson will replace Tim McKone, who retired earlier this year. McKone since launched his own consulting and lobbying firm, McK Strategies, and announced today that he is joining Roberti Global as a senior adviser.

— AT&T also promoted Rhonda Johnson, who oversees state and local government affairs and social engagement initiatives in California, to lead federal regulatory relations. Johnson succeeds Joan Marsh, who retired earlier this year as well.

By Mike Dano; Light Reading ~  Jun 23, 2022

AT&T’s new chief operating officer, Jeff McElfresh, said the operator has the tools in place to weather a recession.

“We’ll act accordingly,” McElfresh said during a recent investor event when he was asked how AT&T will handle an economic recession in the US. McElfresh was recently named COO in a major shakeup at the company.

“The team is well equipped with the toolkit and customer lens to address that for our owners,” he added.

AT&T has often been a bellwether for how the US telecom industry might react to macroeconomic trends. CEO John Stankey suggested in early April that the operator might raise service prices due to inflation, and AT&T did just that several weeks later. Verizon and T-Mobile followed with their own increases to fees and service pricing.

By Mike Dano; Light Reading ~  Jun 21, 2022

Dish Network on Tuesday announced a new $3.3 billion agreement with T-Mobile that lowers the prices Dish must pay to put its customers onto T-Mobile’s 5G network.

The financial analysts at New Street Research speculated that the agreement represents a “modest negative” for AT&T, which inked its own $5 billion network-access deal with Dish last year. According to the analysts, Dish now has less incentive to move its Boost Mobile customer traffic onto AT&T’s network.

“It is a modest negative for the wireless carriers in general in that improved terms will allow Dish to be more aggressive,” added the New Street analysts.

Dish and T-Mobile had announced a new agreement in February 2022, but in an SEC filing Tuesday, Dish said its latest agreement with T-Mobile is different from that deal.

“Dish will pay lower rates to T-Mobile, with these reduced rates applied retroactively to periods beginning January 22, 2022,” Dish noted. The company added that it agreed to a minimum purchase commitment with T-Mobile of $3.3 billion over the next five years.

By Chris Mills Rodrigo; The Hill ~ Jun 17, 2022

AT&T and Verizon have agreed to delay the deployment of some of their 5G services until July 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Friday.

The delay in C-Band 5G usage will give air carriers more time to update their planes to guarantee there will be no interference.

The two carriers had previously agreed to delay switching on some wireless towers near airports until July 5 of this year.

“We believe we have identified a path that will continue to enable aviation and 5G C-band wireless to safely co-exist,” Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen said in a statement Friday.

“We appreciate the willingness of Verizon and AT&T to continue this important and productive collaboration with the aviation industry,” he added.

Telecom giant AT&T did not disclose the latest compensation details for WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar and other top WarnerMedia execs in an SEC filing.

By Georg Szalai, Etan Vlessing; The Hollywood Reporter ~ Mar 22, 2022

AT&T CEO John Stankey made $24.8 million in 2021, compared with $21 million in 2020 and $22.5 million in 2019, according to the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled on Tuesday.

Stankey received a base salary of $2.4 million last year, compared to $2.05 million in 2020. His stock awards in 2021 were virtually unchanged at $13.42 million. And he received a rise in his non-equity incentive plan compensation to $6.88 million last year, compared to $3.25 million received in the same category in 2020.

The telecom giant did not disclose the 2021 overall pay package for WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, who earned $52.2 million in 2020, the year he was appointed to the role. In 2020, Kilar’s compensation included $49.2 million in stock awards.

The AT&T compensation disclosures come ahead of the planned merger of AT&T’s entertainment arm WarnerMedia and Discovery, which is expected to close during the second quarter. The mega-deal will create the merged Warner Bros. Discovery, which will be led by Discovery CEO David Zaslav as CEO and his finance chief Gunnar Wiedenfels as CFO.

Via ”Business Wire”; Financial Post ~ Mar 14, 2022

DALLAS — Pascal Desroches, chief financial officer of AT&T Inc.* ( NYSE:T), spoke today at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference where he provided an update to shareholders.

Desroches reiterated AT&T’s growth strategy — introduced at the company’s Analyst & Investor Day on March 11 — for the standalone company following the pending close of the WarnerMedia transaction. AT&T intends to become America’s best broadband provider, underpinned by a best-in-class network with fiber at its foundation and integrated with wireless.

AT&T has announced that it expects to:

• Drive additional wireless subscriber growth by maintaining its consistent go-to-market strategy, increasing penetration in underserved customer segments and cross-selling wireless services into its expanding fiber footprint.

• Continue to optimize its cost structure via ongoing transformation initiatives, with opportunities to drive an additional $2.5 billion in cumulative cost savings over the next 2 years to reach its previously announced goal of $6 billion in run-rate cost savings by the end of 2023.

• Maintain a total-return oriented capital allocation strategy with a focus on investing for growth — with capital investment in the $24 billion range for 2022 and 2023 — and strengthening its balance sheet. 1 At the same time, AT&T will deliver returns to shareholders via an attractive dividend near the top of the Fortune 500.

By Jeff Baumgartner; Light Reading ~  Mar 14, 2022

AT&T might want to reconsider a plan to decommission about half of its legacy copper network by 2025, as its wireline network still carries strategic value against AT&T’s mobile rivals, an industry analyst suggests.

AT&T believes the copper assets tagged for retirement carry a cost of $6 billion annually, but “[w]e wonder whether retiring copper assets could be a mistake,” New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin explained in a research note. “The single biggest advantage they have over the national wireless carriers is their large fixed footprint.”

At its analyst and investor day held last week, AT&T execs suggested that DSL subscribers tied into those legacy copper networks could be moved to other products, including fixed wireless. However, New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin suggests that AT&T could instead ramp up fiber buildouts and upgrades to 45 million locations nationwide, and possibly back that strategy with the billions of dollars flowing out of government subsidy programs.

“An integrated fiber and wireless network would go a long way to curing their spectrum shortfall and improving their offering, in markets with fiber,” Chaplin added. “Cable has a place in the endgame by virtue of a nationwide terrestrial network today (far easier to attach spectrum to fiber than build a fiber network under spectrum). AT&T is the next best positioned because they have the largest terrestrial footprint that they can upgrade.”

By Sara Winegardner; Cablefaxnknown ~ Mar 11, 2022

AT&T is working to complete its transformation back into a pure connectivity company, laying out the first part of a two-act plan at its investor day Friday that it hopes will set it apart from the competition.

Discovery shareholders voted to approve the company’s merger with WarnerMedia to create Warner Bros. Discovery, keeping it on track to close in 2Q22. AT&T CEO John Stankey admitted that after reducing the company’s investment in entertainment, more work has to be done to differentiate AT&T as a connectivity provider. Taking a jab at previous management teams, he clarified that transformative M&A is not a core part of that equation. Instead, the focus is on developing software and additional capabilities that can lay on top of the network and provide more value to customers.

“When our first act is done, we’ll be a more focused, agile and capable domestic network leader. We’ll be a company with a smaller product portfolio built on the back of fiber in the core metropolitan and suburban areas combined with a highly capable nationwide wireless network able to extend even greater capabilities and utility than ever before beyond our core,” Stankey said in an opening statement.

Company leadership maintained its previously-stated guidance of 30 million fiber locations by 2025, breaking it down further to 3.5-4 million new fiber locations per year. That estimate is on the conservative side and could increase as AT&T continues its buildouts. The provider currently counts 16 million fiber locations and is looking to retire approximately half of its copper assets as it pushes more of its footprint onto fiber. Of the locations within its footprint that are left, 75% will be covered with fiber. New Street Research said in a note reacting to the presentation that it isn’t sure that retiring those copper assets is the right decision.