Interesting piece from the Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-at-t-a-train-wreck-11618955633
9 replies (most recent on top)
Workers paid. Investors paid. Pretty good train wreck.
It's not that we want it to do badly. The illusion of high performance as a company has come at a high cost to our employee and customer satisfaction. We want AT&T to be better at taking care of employees and providing high quality products and service to our customers. The company has lost that vision as it focuses on operating via dashboards and spreadsheets.
I don't understand why people are so negative. It seems that some want att to do badly, like disgruntled employees. I was impacted by the layoffs last year but still want the company I invested decades in to do well. I'm happy for the earnings that just came out.
5g is nothing but snake oil and att can stick it where the sun doesn't shine. but like microsoft does with windows it will be shoved down the consumers throats.
can't wait until I retire and I can get rid of my mobile phone – only reason I have it is because of work and on call. people can live without their mobile phone but I will always keep my cabled internet but that won't be coming from att either.
The dividend will eventually get cut, and T will likely spin off more media assets as it makes sense.. T is going to do well with 5G , mostly because cable is going to lose swaths of their broadband customers to 5g, of course TMO can do the same thing, but these are new subscribers that never existed before.. Also throw in all the IoT and automotive subscriptions that will be part of future automobiles..
Of course there's a huge debt load, but it will be whittled down. T is in one of those business that is self–sustaining.. Its not going anywhere.
T went ALL in on HBOmax!
I guess they thought HBO ‘subscribers’ would save them from themselves?
Problem is, they’ve ruined their reputation in Hollywood with the people who create the streaming content...oops! I know Kilar thinks TikTocker’s will pick up the slack where Brad Pitt left off?!? Anyway, So go ahead and pay the worst CEO ever chosen to run a media company, his $52 million you owe him, since the T BOD was too foolish to base his salary on performance, and just signed him to a flat salary/stock contract for 4 years and send him on his way.The reality is, Kilar could care less what happens to Att/Warner/HBO/CNN as he and his Harvard buddies, walk away with their crazy money, and T is left looking like complete id--ts holding the bag!
Maybe then, T can go back, beg/rehire all the stalwarts in Hollywood media Kilar fired during lockdowns from Cvd?! If there’s anything left of course!
So, the WSJ article basically lays out what everyone at T already knows: that dividend is way too high and is unsustainable, and T 'leadership' (so–called) doesn't know what they are doing.
It basically says that T is under–investing in 5G relative to the competition, and paying out too much cash to shareholders instead of reinvesting. All this puts T at risk of being left behind when (if?) 5G starts to grow faster, and puts the dividend under pressure.
Requires Membership; can someone post the text of the article?