Like the Midwest weather and stock market returns, it seems like waiting is the best strategy, particularly for the Fab Five. In two short weeks, this group has roared back with $1.85 trilion in gains. For the first time since January, the total Fab Five market cap is up for the year (+$118 billion).
The Telco Top Five are also up for the year, with four of the five stocks contributing to its $43 billion total gain. This week we will see if there is reason to celebrate as AT&T (Wed), Comcast (Thurs) and Charter (Fri) each announce Q1 earnings.
The biggest news story impacting these ten stocks was the announcement of Amazon’s purchase of satellite provider Globalstar for a little over $11 billion or $90 per share. The full announcement is here. As we noted in a LinkedIn post, this draws Amazon and Apple a little closer together, which we view positively. Kudos to Sunday Brief regulars Kyle Pickens and Keith Cowan for their efforts to bring this transaction to fruiton.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the annual growth figures for states and selected metropolitan areas last week (here). As we have noted in previous Briefs, here is the list of the fastest growing metropolitan areas with the dominant cable provider and telco provider(s):
To no one’s amazement, the cable provider list is split 50/50 between Charter+Cox and Comcast. We found it surprising, however, that were it not for Verizon’s purchase of Frontier, they would not have a single metropolitan area in the top 20 (sorted by 10-year growth rate). We also note that AT&T’s acquisition of Lumen’s fiber assets has not only helped them acquire a large fiber base (which they will grow with converged seervices) in fast growing areas such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Denver. And it’s another reason why AT&T should be growing materially faster than their fiber peers (we do not think the bar has been set high enough for Ma Bell – the table above bolsters that argument).
More after earnings calls this week. File is below (which includes the table shown above in a separate tab).
