Randall Stephenson-led company would rather “maintain flexibility” at a time like this
Randall Stephenson on June 24, 2014 in Washington, DC.
AT&T has decided to forgo its $4 billion accelerated share repurchase plan, with CFO John Stephens calling the ongoing coronavirus pandemic a time to “maintain flexibility and focus on continued investment in serving our customers, taking care of our employees and enhancing our network, including nationwide 5G.”
The company shared the decision on Friday in a filing with the SEC. Below is the relevant verbiage from that filing, which was signed by Stephens.
AT&T Inc. (“AT&T” or the “Company”) is filing this Current Report on Form 8-K to provide an update regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Company previously announced it had entered into an accelerated share repurchase agreement (“ASR Agreement”) with Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC to repurchase $4.0 billion of the Company’s common stock during the second quarter. While our business continues to operate effectively during the COVID-19 global pandemic, we have decided at this time to cancel this ASR agreement and any other repurchases to maintain flexibility and focus on continued investment in serving our customers, taking care of our employees and enhancing our network, including nationwide 5G. These continued investments will help ensure the Company is well positioned when the pandemic passes and economies begin to recover.
The COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue affecting economies and businesses around the world. The impacts of the pandemic could be material, but due to the evolving nature of this situation, we are not able at this time to estimate the impact on our financial or operational results. Among the factors that could impact our results are: effectiveness of COVID-19 mitigation measures, global economic conditions, consumer spending, work from home trends, supply chain sustainability and other factors. These factors could result in increased or decreased demand for our products and services and impact our ability to serve customers.
When the U.S. stock markets opened at 9:30 a.m. ET on Friday, AT&T stock (T) sunk 9% in roughly 15 minutes.
Here’s a snapshot of what that looks like:
Yahoo Finance
AT&T purchased Time Warner (and thus Warner Bros. and HBO, Turner etc.) for $85 billion back in 2018, creating WarnerMedia. The company is run by Randall Stephenson (pictured above).
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