Why Am I Long Verizon? Why Am I Long AT&T? Here s Why AT&T s earnings showed some good, some bad and some ugly. Stocks quotes in this article: T, VZ, TMUS
AT&T (T) put the firm s fourth quarter performance to the tape on Wednesday morning. There was enough to like. There was also enough to dislike. Then there was the stuff that makes one stop and say whoa . For the reporting period, AT&T reported adjusted EPS of $0.75, which beat the street by two cents, which is badly misleading. Using generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the firm posted EPS of $-1.95, and that number missed the street s expectations by more than $2.40. I will explain this gap between what one sees in the mirror and one s actual appearance in a minute. Revenue generation landed at $45.7 billion for the quarter. This number did beat consensus view, but also amounts to year over year sales growth of -2.4%, the firm s sixth conse