Under Stankey’s watch, AT&T lit tens of billions of dollars on fire. DirecTV was acquired for roughly $49B and later dumped at a fraction of that value. Time Warner was bought for about $85B, then spun off just a few years later after massive write downs, leaving shareholders with years of dead money and zero strategic payoff. Even the failed T-Mobile saga cost AT&T billions in breakup fees and spectrum giveaways.
Fast forward to today.
$20B in stock buybacks executed while the stock falls and analysts downgrade it to sell.
Operating costs rising due to five day RTO.
Bonuses at risk.
And now a brand new office campus being built from the ground up for no measurable business benefit.
This is a pattern, not bad luck. Buy high. Sell low. Spend big. Then double down instead of course correcting.
Employees see it. Wall Street sees it. The market has priced it in. Continuing to trust the same leadership to make yet another massive capital decision is reckless.
How many more billions need to be burned before accountability finally shows up?