The RTO and coming layoffs have everything to do about FCF which was down significantly in the previous earnings announcement. This year's exercise of RTO and layoffs will only prop up the books until Q1 or Q2 of next year.
My guess is Stankey will keep up the artificial gains until mid 2024 then announce his retirement. The next 12 months will be about him inflating that golden parachute.
Guess who leads the worst CEO list?
Stankey has failed at managing the stock price and is diverting attention away from it. This RTO is chaotic and poorly thought out just as the acquisitions of DTV and TWX and the failure to buy T-Mobile. Stankey needs to be removed from the office instead of removing employees who are productive where they are
They already have the work space being paid for and figured they would use it. This is just a distraction to take the attention away from the obvious problems with the company.
Next, there will be another financial miss and they can now blame the expenses incurred to get people back in the offices as the excuse even though the office space was already being paid for.
He took some very softball questions from Philip Cusick yesterday about the free cash flow debacle. Despite the reassurances citing improving trends on specific data, the market has responded with a 2% drop in stock price.
They don't believe you, Mr. Stankey.
The financial arguments are much like their case for RTO: better whiteboard meetings, getting the young ones to experience office culture so that Office Space and Michael Scott will still be funny 30 years from now, all while completely ignoring the neutrals (collaboration is a function of attitude and the right tools, be it a dry-erase whiteboard or a remote screen share) and the positives (lower cost for both employer and employee) of remote work. Such a shame for a great company to end up like this.
Wall Street knew ATT and Stankey are a mess but the horrible cash flow miss just meant it is far worse than they could imagine and thus the stock was crushed. You miss guidance that big on such a key figure it means you don't know what your company is doing in the least bit. ATT is spiraling out of control and it is only going g to get worse.