Happy New Year! Rather than lead with our traditional Fab Five vs. Telco Top Five chart, we are showing our 10-year returns (including reinvested dividends) calculated through two different websites (DQY and the Dividend Channel). We show a difference between returns with additional notes showing where equities have not been public for the entire 10-year period. This table is included as a tab in the attached files below (note – one tab is for the returns through 2023 and the other through 2024. Full methodologies are on the respective websites).
Not surprisingly, Amazon is the leader (30% annual returns) with Microsoft and Apple taking the 2nd and 3rd spots (both at 26% annual returns). $10,000 invested in Amazon on 1/1/2015 was worth over $140,000 at the end of 2024 – an outstanding return considering Amazon does not pay a dividend.
T-Mobile placed fourth, with 23.5% annual returns. Interestingly, in last year’s 10-year metric, T-Mobile’s CAGR was only 17.1%. Buybacks and scale economies have helped T-Mobile gain additional momentum. Interesting cocktail conversation: T-Mobile achieved better 10-year returns than Meta/ Facebook or Google over the last ten years. See picture above.
The last comment on this chart is that Verizon, even with a healthy dividend, has the lowest 10-year return of the Telco Top Five thanks to AT&T’s remarkable performance in 2024 (+36%).
In telecom-related news, Title II, the basis for enforcing Net Neutrality, was overturned in the courts last week (New York Times summary here). As the folks at Moffett Nathanson commented in their research note on the topic, “We won’t be sorry to never have to write about this subject again.” We couldn’t agree more.
End of year and end of week files are below. We will turn the clock and accurately reflect 2025 returns starting in next week’s full Brief. Have a terrific 2025!
