Considering all of the news events of the week, the Fab Five was remarkably resilient (+$350 billion 1-week gains, +$296 billion 2-week gains). These five stocks are on track to create another $3.5 trillion in market capitalization in 2026. Even if the rest of the year is flat, the Fab Five will create 2x more value this year than the entire telecommunications industry has created in its history. We are beginning to wonder if any comparisons are even relevant (the Fab Five is nearly 25x larger by market cap than the Telco Top Five – in June 2016, that figure was less than 2x).
The Telco Top Five are quickly breaking into a wireless trio (AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile) with a broadband pair (Comcast and Charter). The market capitalization difference between #1 and #3 is now $31 billion. The market is one set of earnings surprises away (one positive, one negative) from crowning a new champion.
Despite a very positive report on broadband speeds and reliability from Opensignal (here), Comcast and Charter continue to languish with investors. Here is a 10-year chart for Comcast (CMCSA) courtesy fo Yahoo! Finance:
Here’s how Comcast stacks up in the latest Opensignal report (link above):
There is clearly a mismatch between Comcast’s broadband and stock performances. If the Opensignal report can be supported with corroborating studies (and marketing), Comcast’s DOCSIS 4.0 future should be brighter.
While we try to keep these interim Brief posts under 500 words, we missed highlighting Sundar Pichai’s New York Times interview in last week’s Brief that is definitely worth adding to the summer list. Below is the YouTube embed to watch it, or, if you would prefer a transcript, that is here.
There are many more stories to discuss (including Claude’s recent series H raise at a $900 billion pre-money valuation) that will need to wait for the full Brief. File is below.
