AT&T provides telecommunications services to consumers in the U.S. and Latin America and to businesses worldwide. SBC Communications Inc. acquired the old AT&T Corp. in November 2005 and took the AT&T name shortly thereafter. The company is the second largest holder of spectrum licenses. It currently has less high-speed coverage than some peers but has a larger and wider 4G presence, including rural areas and along interstate travel routes. At the end of 1Q26, the company had 37 million fiber locations and over 74 million postpaid phone subscribers. Total revenues in 2025 were almost $126 billion, of which about 80% was for wireless service. The company's operations in Latin America have been solid. AT&T first moved into the Latin American market in 2013 and acquired two Mexican wireless carriers by 2015. The shares are a component of the S&P 500. The market cap is $177.8 billion.

The stock market is headed into earnings season on a sugar high, so corporate America better deliver the goods or else. Generally, a flat-to-weak market going into earnings season is preferable to a market with rip-roaring stock prices. Does the market know something the rest of us do not? The quarter, as well as the rest of the year, is already expected to be very good -- and maybe it's just the stock market's way of catching up. Widening the screen, another perspective is that the major stock indices have done very little on a net basis for most of the last six months. So there has been no pullback of any substance yet, as the S&P 500 rose 1% on Wednesday, the Nasdaq popped 1.6%, and the Nasdaq 100 ripped 1.7%. All of the indices closed at all-time highs (ATHs). The S&P 100, Invesco S&P 500 Top 50 ETF (XLG), the Technology Sector SPDR (XLK), and the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) also reached ATHs. Other tech industries hitting ATHs and remaining on a tear since March 30 include electrical components & equipment and computer hardware. Crypto, which we have talked about recently, had a good day, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETC) both jumping almost 3%. From a price perspective, BTC is still behaving better, as it broke above the key bear-market trendline off the peaks since October. BTC also recaptured its 100-day average, and at its intraday high, it retraced 50% of its last leg lower from mid-January until February. ETH has not broken its bear-market trendline that sits just above current prices and has retraced only 38.2% of its last leg down.

The wireless business contributes nearly 70% of AT&T’s revenue. The company is the third-largest US wireless carrier, connecting 74 million postpaid and 17 million prepaid phone customers. Fixed-line enterprise services, which account for about 14% of revenue, include internet access, private networking, security, voice, and wholesale network capacity. Residential services, about 11% of revenue, primarily consist of in-home broadband internet access, serving 15 million customers. AT&T also has a sizable presence in Mexico, with 25 million wireless customers, but this business only accounts for 3% of revenue. The company recently sold its 70% equity stake in satellite television provider DirecTV to its partner, private equity firm TPG.

Vickers Stock Research, a subsidiary of Argus Research Group, tracks and analyzes insider trading and institutional stock ownership trends. Form 13-Fs, which institutions must file to report their holdings, are due 45 days after the end of calendar quarters, and have now come in from 4Q25. We like to review the 13Fs of the major activist investors -- including Carl Icahn, Trian Fund Management, Jana Partners, Starboard Value and ValueAct Holdings, among others -- in order to determine their core holdings and new purchases. Activist investing has evolved in recent years and is now less about generating a short-term return on an underpriced stock and more about achieving long-term returns through an active management/investor partnership. Activists have made progress in the past year, with high-profile investments into blue-chip companies such as Fedex and Union Pacific. As reported by Vickers, here are some recent new purchases and key holdings of activist investors, as well as other high-profile money managers such as Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway (his last as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway).