AT&T And Verizon: No More New Highs

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

AT&T (T) is very near its 52-week high of just over $40. That puts it up 50% over the last 12 months. Verizon (VZ) is right there as well, just below its 52-week high of $40. Same high, but that may be the end of it. Verizon’s shares are up 20% over the last year.

But, as Barron’s points out:

Craig Moffett, an analyst with Bernstein Research, says the company’s unit growth numbers were "spectacular," especially high-speed data and VoIP. He noted that weakness at the topline reflect a whiff on advertising – ad revenues were 24% below his forecast. The same thing happened to Comcast (CMCSA).

Moffett notes that net additions of broadband customers were up 18% for Time Warner; Comcast had reported 10% growth. But he notes that DSL providers are not doing well: net addition growth in the quarter was down 23% at Verizon (VZ), 12% at at AT&T (T) and 16% at Qwest (Q). Says Moffett: "Cable is, to be blunt, winning the broadband wars."

Fiber-to-the-home is being built by AT&T and Verizon, but a large deployment is at least two years off.

And, that will be too late. Cable stocks may hit new highs, but the run is ending for big telecoms.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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