Key Stats for AT&T Stock
- Current Price: $25.38
- Target Price (Mid): ~$41
- Street Target: ~$29
- Potential Total Return: ~61%
- Annualized IRR: ~12% / year
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What Happened?
Economists at Bank of America, Barclays, and Pantheon Macroeconomics flagged plan changes at AT&T (T) and T-Mobile (TMUS) as likely culprits. The Bureau of Labor Statistics declined to say how those changes affected the number. On September 16, the Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time since 2023. AT&T reports third-quarter results before the market opens on October 21, and its investor relations materials will carry the numbers.
A Phone-Bill Spike, a Rate Hike, and a SpaceX Filing
AT&T raised prices on retired unlimited plans by $10 a month for a single line and $20 for multiple lines. The increase first hit bills in April and reached a newer group of plans in August. Separately, T-Mobile retired more than 1,000 older plans. Per Bloomberg, the wireless jump added about a tenth of a percentage point to August core inflation, which rose 0.3% against a 0.2% forecast. The hike also followed oil’s return above $100 and a hotter-than-expected producer-price report.
Carriers fell together between the September 11 and September 18 closes. T-Mobile dropped 7.8%, Verizon (VZ) 5.0%, and AT&T 2.5%. Rates were one driver. On September 17, SpaceX won FCC authority to carry Starlink Mobile traffic internationally, and T-Mobile had guided to softer Q3 account additions.
Higher rates land on $148,186 million of LTM net debt at 2.91x EBITDA. Analysts project around $7.3 billion of 2026 interest expense, per TIKR. The stock still closed at $25.38 on September 25, 22.6% above its $20.70 close on June 30.
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AT&T’s Pricing Playbook, in Its Executives’ Words
Jenifer Robertson is AT&T’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Mass Markets. At a Bank of America conference on September 10, the day before the CPI release, she said AT&T’s “business cases for these pricing actions tend to be much more conservative with the churn we would expect.” She added that “we tend to come in lower than our expectation on churn.” Q2, which included the April wave of increases, fit that pattern. AT&T posted 432,000 postpaid phone net adds and 0.86% postpaid phone churn, plus its strongest consumer postpaid wireless account growth in more than three years.
CFO Pascal Desroches, who retires December 31, said, “I think we have shown a history of being effective at pricing up the back book for both wireless and fiber.” Pricing up the back book means raising prices on existing customers, and he called it “something that we do periodically.” On phones, he held the line: “Just because the manufacturer has decided to increase prices for a variety of reasons, it doesn’t mean that, that changes our subsidy budget.”
Fiber runs the other way. Robertson said AT&T’s economics let it “take a little bit of fiber ARPU dilution,” meaning lower average revenue per user, to grow household value. Management expects Q3 fiber ARPU to show that impact.
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TIKR Advanced Model Analysis
- Current Price: $25.38
- Target Price (Mid): ~$41
- Potential Total Return: ~61%
- Annualized IRR: ~12% / year
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The mid-case inputs are around 3% annual revenue growth and a net margin of around 13%. The ~61% is price change alone, so AT&T’s 4.4% LTM dividend yield comes on top. The target sits above the Street’s highest target of $36, partly because Street targets look 12 months out. As of September 25, the ~$29 mean reflects 24 price targets. Ratings stand at 12 Buy, 4 Outperform, 9 Hold, 1 No Opinion, and 1 Sell.
The main risk is that periodic price increases lift churn while higher rates raise interest costs. SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile plans are a longer-dated threat. Upside: churn stays low as prices rise. Downside: churn climbs, and the P/E ratio compresses from around 11x NTM earnings. The model output is a scenario.
Conclusion
A clean quarter shows postpaid phone churn near Q2’s 0.86% after the August wave. It also shows free cash flow near Q3 2025’s $4.865 billion, the midpoint TIKR shows for management’s Q3 guidance. Churn well above 1% alongside softer fiber ARPU would mean the increases cost AT&T more in customers than they added in revenue.
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Should You Invest in AT&T?
The only way to really know is to look at the numbers yourself. TIKR gives you free access to the same institutional-quality financial data that professional analysts use to answer exactly that question.
Pull up AT&T, and you’ll see years of historical financials, what Wall Street analysts expect for revenue and earnings in the quarters ahead, how valuation multiples have moved over time, and whether price targets are trending up or down.
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
