This week featured a robust Fab Five comeback (+$537 billion for the week). The Telco Top Five also had a remarkably strong week (+$32 billion). Google and Amazon traded places for #3 and #4 of the Fab Five, as did AT&T and Comcast (AT&T had a higher market cap for most of the week). As we noted in last week’s full Brief, AT&T is up 29% and paying a 5% dividend – big change from previous years, and they have the largest footprint to convert to copper.
Speaking of AT&T, their CEO, John Stankey, was a keynote interview at this year’s Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference (transcript available here). It’s a great interview that only someone with John’s experience and tenure can give. We found his response about competing with cable to be the most insightful:
“Look, we’re playing in a segment of the market that I think prefers quality that views these as being worthy investments because of how they either run their work life or their personal life at home. We see a lot of consolidation when we have the 40% of the base that have both. These are high-value accounts. These are multi handset accounts. That’s different than selling one or two lines to the value segment. And so, I think we’re well aligned to be able to work the top part of the market and make sure that we can get those high-value customers on a consolidated basis, and they’re incredibly attractive. And those customers are relatively savvy. And what I’ve noticed when we get density in a market, they just understand that the product we’re selling is a better product than the other one. And when — if you go back, I’ve shared this before, Jim, when you go back and look at our initial business case and what we expected in rate of penetration and ultimate terminal penetration, we’re beating those numbers. And we’re beating it because the product is better. And when you start to get scale and people talk about it, then it’s not just about what we’re doing. It’s just kind of what people begin to accept as the norm.”
There’s a lot more of the interview to cover, but thought that his was the best of the conference. Separately, don’t forget that this coming Wednesday is T-Mobile’s Capital Markets Day. Link to the livestream is here. We will use that as our main focus in next Sunday’s Brief as well as take a look at initial Apple iPhone 16 backlogs and shortages (which we expect for the higher-end models).
File is below. Go Chiefs!
