24/7 Wall St.

Until recently, very recently, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) was considered down and out. There was just no catalyst at all. Now the company is nearer to closing in on its DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) acquisition. All of a sudden, analysts see massive upside for AT&T, compared to its views in the gutter just a few months ago. Investors are paying attention.

24/7 Wall St. has looked at multiple analyst upgrades in recent days and weeks. There is also an important tie in here with Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), as well as how T-Mobile US Inc. (NYSE: TMUS) and Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) fit into the price wars.

The price war is catching up to the number-three and number-four carriers. Sprint was just started as Neutral with a $5.00 price target on Wednesday at Buckingham Research. Amazingly, that still implied just over 10% upside. T-Mobile was started as Buy at Buckingham, and the $50 price target implied upside of nearly 30%.

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Sprint recently removed its video throttling limits, but something strange happened. Sprint’s new CEO Marcelo Claure went after T-Mobile’s John Legere on Twitter calling “BS” on the uncarrier plan about being worse than the other two carriers combined (that is Verizon and AT&T). Claure called Legere’s cheap misleading lease imitation a joke and a fake show. And Legere had tweeted that Sprint’s All-In plan was a swing of the bat that missed.

Meanwhile, Verizon was just recently started as Neutral at Buckingham, with a $51 price target implying upside of less than 10% from the prior $47.00 close. AT&T was assigned a new Buy rating by Buckingham, and the price target of $41.00 implied upside of 15% — with both upsides of course not including those super-high dividends.

Still, what stands out is that AT&T has been upgraded or given positive research reports left and right. When we ran our own bull and bear analysis on AT&T at the start of the year, the consensus price target was listed as $34.90 at that time and the highest analyst target was $40.00. We noted:

With a dividend-adjusted performance of 0.66% in 2014, versus an expected 5.5% gain a year ago, AT&T’s total upside with the dividend included is expected to be 9.5%. And for a what-if scenario: AT&T’s highest analyst price target is up at $40. If that were to come about, AT&T could rise 20% from the end of 2014 — plus there is the super-high dividend to add in to the mix.

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Now, what about all the other recent analyst calls? AT&T has been upgraded and given higher targets across the board. Even that old $40 street high from earlier this year has been raised higher. Other key analyst calls on AT&T have been provided below.

AT&T was raised to Outperform with a $40 price target (versus a $35.57 close) at Cowen.

Oppenheimer reiterated an Outperform rating and raised its price target to $40 from $36. For 2016, the firm raised its revenue and synergies forecast for the AT&T/DirecTV pro forma and raised its EPS by four cents to $2.59.

Credit Suisse continues to believe AT&T has catalysts that could drive appreciation in 2015. The catalysts at AT&T involve its transaction with DirecTV and increased guidance for synergies. In addition to this, the future for Mexico looks bright but may take some time to ramp up. AT&T was rated Outperform with a price target of $38 at Credit Suisse.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch raised its rating to Buy from Neutral late in June as well. The firm raised its price objective to $40 from $35 in its call. Merrill Lynch thinks AT&T will generate improved financial performance via a relatively more stable wireless competitive climate and from benefits in its DirecTV buyout that are higher than what the company has officially targeted.

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Jefferies believes the DirecTV deal closing will remove a lot of overhang. The firm sees it helping the dividend coverage question and also believes that the synergies created by the deal are being underestimated by Wall Street. Jefferies even sees upside to wireless margins and potential earnings multiple expansion. Jefferies lifted its target recently to $40 from $39.

UBS recently raised AT&T to Buy from Neutral and the price target was raised to $42.00 from $34.00.

Barclays recently raised its rating to Overweight, and the price target was raised to $39.00 from $34.00.

Also, JPMorgan upgraded the company to an Overweight rating from Neutral, and it raised the price target to $40 from $35 in its call in June.

So, all in all, it is strange to see such a massive upgrade cycle. It is even stranger that it happened after AT&T was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average to make room for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Here is how AT&T sits now: After raising its dividend last year, the company is on the verge of finally closing the DirecTV merger. AT&T shares are now up 9.4%, if you include dividend performance on a year-to-date basis. That would make it the sixth best-performing Dow stock, had it not been removed from the index.

AT&T shares keep ticking up as well, with this last week being the exception. It closed at $35.73 on Thursday, versus $36.12 at the end of the previous week. Still, its consensus analyst price target has crept up to $36.54 (from $35.78 just a few days earlier). The highest analyst price target is now $42.00, and AT&T has a 52-week trading range of $32.07 to $37.48.

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Again, it is highly unusual to see this many upgrades on such a well-known stock in such a short period. That being said, a lot of this is hinging on the DirecTV acquisition getting final regulatory approval from the U.S. Department of Justice. If that is somehow blocked, when all reports have pointed to approval, then a lot of that bullishness likely would fade.

AT&T’s 5.2% dividend yield is not exactly hurting investors’ feelings either.