AT&T Accelerates Buybacks to $10 Billion as Earnings Beat
I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.AT&T reported Q2 adjusted earnings of $0.65 per share, beating expectations, while revenue slightly missed forecasts. The company announced an acceleration of share buybacks to approximately $10 billion in 2026 and reaffirmed its full-year guidance. Growth was driven by connectivity services, adding over 1 million new customers, particularly in fiber and fixed wireless. Conversely, legacy copper business revenue declined significantly as the company continues network decommissioning.
AT&T rose 2.09% premarket after reporting second-quarter adjusted earnings of $0.65 a share, ahead of the $0.59 Wall Street expected, though revenue of $31.6 billion came in just short of the $31.80 billion forecast. The company said it will accelerate planned share repurchases to roughly $10 billion in 2026 and reiterated all consolidated full-year and multi-year guidance.
Growth came from the connectivity side. AT&T added more than 1 million Advanced Connectivity customers, including 367,000 fiber and 279,000 fixed wireless net adds and 432,000 postpaid phone additions, with postpaid phone churn at 0.86%. Advanced Connectivity service revenue rose 5.1% to $23.5 billion and segment operating income climbed 20.3% to $7.3 billion. The legacy copper business moved the other way, with revenue down 25.9% as AT&T decommissions the network it plans to largely power down by the end of 2029.
Free cash flow reached $4.7 billion against $4.4 billion a year ago, even as capital investment rose to $6.1 billion from $5.1 billion. AT&T returned $4.1 billion to shareholders in the quarter, including about $2.2 billion of buybacks, and reached 38.6 million total fiber locations against a target of more than 40 million by year-end.