Greetings from Cedar Rapids, Kansas City, Jefferson City (MO), and Williard (MO). The opening picture was taken close to sunrise on Friday at the farm in Willard. Very soon, this farm will have fiber thanks to the arduous work of Travis Allen at Total Highspeed. Until then, it’s a one-to-two bar signal from T-Mobile (and before that, HughesNet).
This week’s Brief is short in text, but long in form. Three hour-long interviews for you to digest over the Holiday period from John Stankey (AT&T), John Malone (Liberty Global), and Jensen Huang (Nvidia). We will include a brief summary of each but leave the rest to you.
I am also pleased to announce that CellSite Solutions has launched their upgraded website (here). Welcome your feedback and comments – this is version 1.0 but seeking feedback on how to improve its efficacy. Also, if you woudn’t mind following CellSite Solutions on LinkedIn (click here – one step), we would really appreciate your support.
The Fortnight That Was
The Fab Five finished November on a very strong note (+$360 billion). Amazon and Apple led the way with $100+ billion gains. To some extent, one driver (consumer spending) is driving both stocks higher as the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) readings showed last week (CNBC summary here). Incomes are growing faster than current expenditures and inflation, while higher than 2019, is stabalizing.
The Telco Top Five also had a strong week as a group (despite continued handwringing around Comcast’s cable channel spinoff), up $15 billion each week for the last two weeks. T-Mobile accounted for two thirds of last week’s group gain. Our view is that most of this appreciation is driven by share buybacks, but the company continues to be well positioned.
The major news of the week was the Federal Trade Commission’s new investigation against Microsoft (New York Times article here and Bloomberg article here). On one hand, it’s not too surprising to see Microsoft added to the “under investigation” group as their other Fab Five peers, but the detailed request for information to cloud (a highly competitive market) and AI (a very highly competitve and nascent market) and cybersecurity (another very highly competitive market) is interesting. Our relatively bold prediction is that the new Trump administration will likely continue this process.
Three Long-Form Interviews
For the Thanksgving Holiday, we are including interviews with two telecom and one tech titan. First, this interview with John Malone (about 10 months old) courtesy of the Singleton Foundation chronicles his business experience and insights. You can also find out his greatest regret in his decades-long career.
Second, this Boston College CEO Club intervew with AT&T CEO John Stankey from late 2023 goes beyond a discussion of the current quarter (we should have a update from the company at their Analyst Day this coming Tuesday). John’s admission that he was on the outside, then quickly moved to the CEO role, is particularly insighful. As we have mentioned in many previous Briefs, AT&T is really on a roll in 2024 and could possibly end the year with higher market capitalization than Comcast and Verizon by the end of this month.
Finally, Jensen Huang is everywhere – 60 Minutes, nearly every CNBC show, and Fox News. But this interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business has interesting insights on AI as well as a history of Nvidia. His leadership insights are also spot on (if you need an AI-focused interview, Jensen’s excellent discussion at the New York Times DealBook Summit is here).
Hope you enjoy these. The full file normally included in each Interim Brief is also below. On December 15, we will begin one of two signficant deep dives into foundational topics. On the 15th, we will look at the impact of low latency applications on server proliferation. We will announce the topic for the 29th in the next full Brief.
Have a great week and last month of the year!
