Why AT&T Inc. Stock Looks Good At These Depressed Levels

Advertisement

T stock - Why AT&T Inc. Stock Looks Good At These Depressed Levels

All of a sudden, AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) investors are in panic mode. Bad quarterly earnings, which underscore further cord-cutting, plus potential litigation with the U.S. Justice Department, have investors spooked. T stock is now trading at a 2-year low. If T stock fell much further, it’d be around its lowest levels since 2011.

To put that in perspective, the S&P 500 has more than doubled since the beginning of 2011.

But T now offers a whopping 6% dividend yield. That is a 5-year high.

T stock also offers an attractive 8% free-cash-flow yield. That matches a 3-year high.

Indeed, the last time T stock had just under a 6% dividend yield with a near 8% free-cash-flow yield was in November 2015. T stock price was $34 then.

By July 2016, T stock was trading around $43. That is a huge 25%-plus rally in less than a year.

Will history repeat itself? I think so.

AT&T Is a Stable Business

Despite recent stock price action, AT&T isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

This is a huge-moat business with a huge subscriber base, wide reach, a bunch of money, and big revenue streams. Yes, cord-cutting trends will continue into the foreseeable future and eat away at the company’s pay-TV business. Legacy wire-line solutions are also in freefall as mobile use grows. But even with all those headwinds in full-force, revenues still only declined 3% last quarter. They are down just 2.5% so far in 2017.

The tepid revenue decline, despite the headline risks, is because traditional TV and wire-line offerings are just a fraction of the whole AT&T growth story.

Video entertainment revenues increased about 2% last quarter, thanks to AT&T’s over-the-top offerings, including Directv Now, which help offset linear video subscriber losses. In other words, AT&T is successfully hedging against traditional TV losses by pushing into the over-the-top space. This is a strategic move which should help ease the pain of cord-cutting.

Meanwhile, high-speed internet revenues also increased last quarter. This is the whole fiber build-out narrative. As consumers become more and more reliant on their computers and connectivity, demand for faster Internet will increase. AT&T has the largest fiber footprint in the country and is ahead of schedule to reach 12.5 million new fiber customer locations by mid-2019. That is a bullish set-up for AT&T to satisfy this increasing demand.

The international growth narrative is also still intact. Operating revenues rose 12% last quarter in this segment. The big growth was driven by a 27% increase in wireless revenues in Mexico. Clearly, the mobile growth story is just starting to permeate in developing markets. The explosion of mobile in developing markets ensures that T has a long growth runway in its international business.

Overall, it’s not all red ink for AT&T. In fact, the business is quite stable and diverse. This stability and diversity is currently being undervalued by the market.

Bottom Line on T Stock

The only reason you don’t buy T stock here is because you think the business will look fundamentally and dramatically worse in 5 years than it does today.

If you don’t think that, then there is no reason not to buy T stock here. It has a 6% dividend yield, a 8% free-cash-flow yield, and trades at its lowest valuation in recent memory.

I don’t think that T’s business will be that different in 5 years. AT&T is a stable business that will look very similar in 5, 10, even 15 years to what it looks like today. Over time, there will simply be a heavier mix of OTT subs, a lighter mix of traditional pay-TV subs, a lower mix of domestic revenue, and a higher mix of international revenue.

Consequently, I am a buyer of T stock at these depressed levels. I think it’s a buy-and-hold here.

As of this writing, Luke Lango was long T. 


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2017/11/att-inc-stock-looks-good-depressed-levels/.

©2024 InvestorPlace Media, LLC