VZ - Verizon Communications Inc.
56.27 0.00 (0.00%)
After hours: 6:29PM EDT
| Previous close | 57.00 |
| Open | 56.90 |
| Bid | 56.17 x 2900 |
| Ask | 56.33 x 1400 |
| Day's range | 56.24 - 57.00 |
| 52-week range | 52.28 - 61.58 |
| Volume | 8,219,633 |
| Avg. volume | 13,365,818 |
| Market cap | 232.719B |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 0.51 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 14.70 |
| EPS (TTM) | 3.83 |
| Earnings date | 21 Oct. 2019 - 25 Oct. 2019 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 2.41 (4.23%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-07-09 |
| 1y target est | 60.09 |
- Zacks
Telecom Carriers Deploy Divergent Local TV Service Strategies
While Verizon (VZ) is drawing curtains to its local news channel Fios1 News, AT&T (T) is launching a new television service with AT&T TV.
- Motley Fool
Sick of the Big 4 Wireless Carriers? There Are Alternatives
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint are not the only choices when picking a wireless plan. Is making the switch to prepaid the right option for you?
- Bloomberg
Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. wireless carriers have long said they may slow video traffic on their networks to avoid congestion and bottlenecks. But new research shows the throttling happens pretty much everywhere all the time.Researchers from Northeastern University and University of Massachusetts Amherst conducted more than 650,000 tests in the U.S. and found that from early 2018 to early 2019, AT&T Inc. throttled Netflix Inc. 70% of the time and Google’s YouTube service 74% of the time. But AT&T didn’t slow down Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video at all.T-Mobile US Inc. throttled Amazon Prime Video in about 51% of the tests, but didn’t throttle Skype and barely touched Vimeo, the researchers say in a paper to be presented at an industry conference this week."They are doing it all the time, 24/7, and it’s not based on networks being overloaded," said David Choffnes, associate professor at Northeastern University and one of the study’s authors.To deliver videos people want to watch on their phones, sacrifices in speed are required, Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T and T-Mobile have said in the past."We don’t throttle, discriminate, or degrade network performance based on content. We offer customers choice, including speeds and features to manage their data," AT&T spokesman Jim Greer said in a statement. "This app fails to account for a user’s choice of settings or plan that may affect speeds. We’ve previously been in contact with the app developers to discuss how they can improve their app’s performance."While it’s true that slowing speeds can reduce congestion, the carriers’ behavior raises questions about whether all internet traffic is treated equally, a prime tenet of net neutrality. The principle states that carriers should not discriminate by user, app or content. The Federal Communications Commission enshrined net-neutrality rules in 2015, but after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a Republican-led FCC scrapped the regulations.Following the release of Choffnes’ prior findings, several politicians raised concerns over net neutrality on U.S. networks. In February, three senators asked the FCC to investigate whether U.S. wireless carriers are throttling popular apps without telling consumers."It’s important to keep publishing the work," Choffnes said. "It would be nice if this is not completely forgotten. At least when there’s an appetite for legislation on this topic, we’ll have the data."The discrepancies in throttling different video services could be due to errors, as some carriers haven’t been able to detect and limit some video apps after they made technical tweaks."They may try to throttle all video to make things fair, but the internet providers can’t dictate how the content providers deliver their video," Choffnes said. "Then you have certain content providers that get throttled and some that don’t."The researchers enlisted more than 126,000 smartphone users globally, who downloaded an app called Wehe to test internet connections. Information from those tests was aggregated and analyzed to check if data speeds are being slowed, or throttled, for specific mobile services.Choffnes’ work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Google parent Alphabet Inc. and ARCEP, the French telecom regulator. Amazon has provided some free services for the effort, too. He’s even had a deal with Verizon to measure throttling at U.S. carriers. Choffnes says Verizon can’t restrict his ability to publish research and the companies that support him don’t influence his work.(Updates with statement from AT&T in sixth paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Olga Kharif in Portland at okharif@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Robin AjelloFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Financial Times
Tumblr: blogging’s on the wall
Once a fast-growing microblogging site full of special interest groups and in-jokes worthy of a $1.1bn bet from Yahoo. Tumblr has been shunted from owner to owner like an unwanted pet. When Yahoo bought the site in 2013 it was supposed to be part of a rehabilitation master plan.
- Motley Fool
3 Dividend Stocks That Should Pay You the Rest of Your Life
Looking for payers you can count on? Then this trio should be right up your alley.
- Motley Fool
Verizon Sells Tumblr for a Bag of Nickels
At least the acquiring company has a shot of doing something valuable with it this time.
- Yahoo Finance
These are the largest companies in each U.S. state
Do you know what the largest company is in your state?
- Yahoo Finance
Qualcomm CEO: Your access to unlimited data plans will 'grow dramatically' under 5G
Qualcomm is committed to building a sustainable fifth-generation cellular network (5G), which CEO Steve Mollenkopf says will have a big impact on the American consumer.
- Yahoo Finance
Yahoo Finance conference to feature Larry Hogan, Eric Trump, and Hans Vestberg
One of President Donald Trump’s most prominent Republican critics and one of his most reliable defenders will both appear.
- Zacks
Telecom Stock Roundup: Verizon Sells Tumblr, CenturyLink's Q2 Earnings & More
Verizon (VZ) is divesting the social media blogging site Tumblr for an undisclosed amount, while CenturyLink (CTL) beats on second-quarter 2019 earnings despite lower revenues year over year.
- Zacks
CenturyLink Reaches Settlement With FCC Enforcement Bureau
CenturyLink (CTL) agrees to pay $550,000 to the U.S. Treasury and has committed to a compliance plan designed to protect consumers and prevent future cramming.
- TechCrunch
Axios' Dan Primack on 'the most polarizing startup that exists'
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focusedpodcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines
- TechCrunch
Daily Crunch: Verizon is selling Tumblr
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch's roundup of our biggest and most important stories. It's been six years since Yahoo acquired the popular blogging platform for more than $1 billion. Despite previous reports indicating the on-demand delivery company is seeking an M&A exit, sources close to the matter say Postmates is on track to complete an initial public offering this year.
- Financial Times
The Tumblr tumble
Remember Tumblr? The microblogging site which, for a brief period earlier this decade, seemed like a potential challenger to the established social media platforms. It was so popular, in fact, that even ...
- Zacks
Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Focus on Premium Original Content
Verizon (VZ) is increasingly focusing on video streaming content and put Tumblr on the chopping block as it lost its relevance among netizens, leading to mass exodus of users.
- Investing.com
Stocks - JD.com, Verizon Rise Premarket; Exxon Mobil Falls
Investing.com - Stocks in focus in premarket trading on Tuesday:
- TechCrunch
Automattic's bargain-bin Tumblr deal plugs right into the Wordpress business model
Tumblr has been an millstone around the neck of its owners, first Yahoo andlater Oath and Verizon Media, pretty much since it was acquired in 2013
- Motley Fool
After Hours: Yum! Brands Gets a New CEO, Verizon Sells Tumblr
The restaurant chain operator will start 2020 with a new leader, while Verizon unloads one of its well-known internet assets.
- TechCrunch
Verizon is selling Tumblr to WordPress.com parent, Automattic
Six years after Yahoo purchased Tumblr for north of $1 billion, its parentcorporation is selling the once-dominant blogging platform
- Zacks
Ubiquiti (UBNT) Q4 Earnings Miss Estimates, Revenues Up Y/Y
Top-line growth on a year-over-year basis, backed by higher sales at Enterprise Technology business, supports Ubiquiti's (UBNT) fiscal fourth-quarter earnings.
- Bloomberg
Power-Hungry Phone Companies Dial Into Surging Green Bond Market
(Bloomberg) -- Phone carriers are huge energy users, and need to cut emissions. They also face massive bills to build out the next generation of wireless networks. Green bonds promise to help them with both.A steady flow of issuance could be building: Orange SA and BT Group Plc are poised to follow Telefonica SA and Verizon Communications Inc. in selling securities designed to fund environmentally friendly projects. The industry has already completed at least $3 billion of sales since January, its first steps into a sustainable debt market that Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates could exceed $370 billion this year.The proceeds can help telecom companies replace power-hungry copper wires with fiber-optic cables, or build the 5G networks that promise to make cities, homes and factories more efficient. There’s plenty of investor appetite for this new take on sustainable investing, but there’s a catch: any hint that a bond doesn’t genuinely help the planet can cause some buyers to flee.“Telecoms have to invest a lot. In the long run, having green bonds in place is going to be very important,’’ said Juuso Rantala, who holds Telefonica’s green bond in the 400 million-euro ($449 million) fund he manages at Aktia Asset Management Ltd. in Finland. “If I find out that I cannot trust the company in the case of green bonds, I cannot trust them in many other ways too. If I cannot trust them, I don’t invest.’’The securities show how green debt is expanding beyond its original universe of the clean energy industry. Beef supplier Marfrig Global Foods SA and Australian retailer Woolworths Group Ltd. have tapped this market to help their operations become more environmentally friendly.For carriers, the task is urgent. The communications industry accounts for about 10% of global electricity demand, and that could exceed 20% by 2030 as demand for data balloons, according to Huawei Technologies Co.Telecom companies have ways to clean up their act. For example, replacing copper with glass wires would use 85% less energy, according to Telefonica. And 5G can enable a range of environmental benefits by allowing smart buildings to monitor heating, connected warehouses to optimize their logistics and power grids to better allocate electricity.But these companies are already staggering under a mountain of debt from, among other things, buying 5G licenses. They’ll need to make sure they can keep their borrowing costs low and tap investors when needed.That’s where green bonds can help: the interest costs are about the same as on these companies’ conventional securities, but they offer the opportunity to access a wider pool of investors.The share of funds focused on socially responsible investing, which includes environmental projects, has risen 34% over the last two years, and now accounts for $30.7 trillion of assets globally, according to the investor group Global Sustainable Investment Alliance.“Many more green telco bonds are likely,” Morgan Stanley analysts led by Emmet Kelly wrote in June. “Demand from funds that have incorporated sustainability into their investment framework has been key.’’Telefonica, based in Madrid, is a good example. Demand for the issue, which priced in January, was significant: the company received five times the orders than what was available for sale, and obtained a spread more than the mid-swap rate that was about 25 basis points lower than initial indications.The yield on the 1 billion-euro 5-year security is in line with the rest of its curve, Bloomberg data show, indicating it didn’t have to pay a premium to tap demand for sustainable credit. It’s a similar story for Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc.Orange and BT Group are paying attention -- they have inserted clauses into their Eurobond prospectuses which would let them issue green bonds in the near future. And Deutsche Telekom AG is monitoring the surging market closely, said a spokesman.For investors, the risks go beyond what’s expected for any fixed-income asset. Buyers also have consider just how green these bonds are.“The question is whether or not a bond offers a real energy efficiency gain or overall gain for the environment,’’ said Arnaud-Guilhem Lamy, who holds telecom securities in his 340 million-euro ($381 million) green bond fund at BNP Paribas Asset Management in Paris. “If we think it’s insufficient, we would sell.’’For a start, there’s always the possibility that this new breed of green-bond borrowers divert proceeds to inappropriate purposes, including pooling them into general funds. Though monitoring groups such as credit rating firms can discourage such behavior, it’s something investors need to watch.But 5G presents a particular environmental paradox.Internet-of-things technologies will connect billions more devices and require many more antennas, so 5G will initially use more power than 4G, according to Sustainalytics, an independent corporate sustainability research firm. This complicates the idea that 5G can be a green investment.However, Sustainalytics estimates the energy savings from 5G outweigh the extra emissions to deploy the new tech by a ratio of 5 to 1. The firm’s analysis of the Verizon bond issue, which included 5G deployment among the potential use of proceeds, found that it was a credible candidate for green financing.It’s a good thing, because Verizon plans on returning to this corner of the bond market. It looks like it will be welcome, too – its $1 billion issue of 10-year green debt was eight times oversubscribed within six hours of being offered for sale, said Jim Gowen, head of supply chain and sustainability for the U.S. carrier.“It was far beyond our wildest expectations,” Gowen said. “We are very interested in doing another one.’’\--With assistance from Paul Cohen and Lyubov Pronina.To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Seal in London at tseal@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Jennifer RyanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Telecom ETFs in Focus on Mixed Q2 Earnings Results
With 5G technology opening up opportunities in the telecom sector, we study the impact of a few big earnings releases on ETFs with decent exposure.
- Zacks
CenturyLink (CTL) Q2 Earnings Beat, Revenues Decline Y/Y
Despite lower operating revenues on a year-over-year basis, CenturyLink (CTL) surpasses second-quarter earnings estimates on the back of its cost-transformation and de-leveraging efforts.
