February ended, and, for Fab Five investors, it could not come soon enough. In two months, the group has lost $410 billion in market capitalization (around 3%). Only Meta (+14%) is unscathed. Reasons for the pullback vary, although it does appear that those stocks that have made the highest capital commitments seem to be down the most.
The opposite effect has occurred with the Telco Top Five (+$99 billion so far in 2025). Comcast is down, but the other four in the group are up, with T-Mobile (+$56 billion or 22%) and AT&T (+$33 billion or 20%) appreciating the most. AT&T is now the 2nd largest of the five, knocking on the door of a $200 billion market cap, something not seen for nearly a decade.
There wasn’t a lot of specific company news this week. Apple (re?) announced that they will be spending $500 billion over the next four years, creating more than 20,000 new jobs (announcement here). The major announcement was a 250,000 square foot server manufacturing facility in Houston expected to open in 2026. Whether this is enough to exempt iPhones from 10% tariffs remains to be seen (see this New York Times article for additional analysis).
While small, it’s worth noting that AT&T’s Board unanimously elected current CEO John Stankey to also be the company’s Board Chairman. Bill Kennard, the current chair, will remain the lead independent director. In a post Sarbanes-Oxley world where CEO and Board Chair were increasingly separated, this is a pretty big change. More in this news release.
Lastly, there will be a lot to analyze after each of the Telco Top Five present at Morgan Stanley’s annual Telecom conference this week. However, Joe Russo, Verizon’s network head, talked this past week at the Barclay’s Communications and Content Symposium (link to transcript and webcast here). There wasn’t a lot of new news, but Joe did seem particularly enthused about Verizon’s millimeter-wave solution for MDUs (more on that in next week’s Brief).
File is below. Full Brief next week which focuses on capital spending priorities for 2025.
