AT&T CEO talks Lumen deal, competition, tariffs

Yahoo

22-05-2025

AT&T (T) is buying Lumen's (LUMN) mass markets fiber assets for $5.75 billion in a deal that is expected to close in the first half of 2026. AT&T CEO John Stankey spoke with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi about the acquisition and what lies ahead for the telecom giant.
Watch what Lumen's CEO said about the deal.
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Yahoo! Finance paying close attention to shares of AT&T. The company purchasing all of Lumen's mass market fiber business for 5.7 million, 5.75 billion dollars, I should say, will help the company offer more fiber uh options across the United States. Let's bring in uh AT&T Chairman and CEO John Stankey. John, always nice to get some time with you. So, $5.75 billion for uh a brand or or an asset that has a million customers, that's a big price. Why did you feel you had to pay that amount?
Hi Brian, it's good to be back with you and I I think it's just a continuation of what you and I have been talking about, which is a company we believe very strongly that ultimately consumers want to buy their internet service from one place, whether they're on the go and using a mobile phone or at home, entertaining themselves or doing important business. And what we're picking up is a little over 4 million past households. Um, you're correct, there's only a million customers, but that's part of the attractiveness of this. We believe we can actually penetrate that base quite a bit more effectively, especially when we invest more heavily to grow the footprint and get the scale that's necessary to compete in fiber. So when you think about where we stand today, by the time we reach 2030, we'll have doubled our fiber footprint from about 30 million passings to 60 million. And we'll pick up probably a little over 10 million from this particular footprint that we're picking up from Lumen as we develop and build it out. So we're really excited about that opportunity, not only because of broadband, but these happen to be in markets where we're a bit under positioned in share in our wireless business. So to the extent that we can do better on fiber broadband, we think in Seattle and Phoenix, in Denver, we can actually lift our share of wireless as a result of this, and that's kind of a two for if we uh, we pull that off the right way.
Is that the, I guess, the not so secret play here, John, that you sell, and you've called it converge in the past, but let's say bundles, where if you're a fiber customer, now you're going to belong to ATT wireless and ultimately, you will pay a higher price for all this stuff.
Well, you're buying two services and you're certainly getting better uh better functionality as a result of putting them together. And yeah, you're going to end up paying for each of the services, but you're going to be getting a value that's better than if you were out splitting them between two other companies. And as the forward uh momentum of our product development increases, you're going to get other features and benefits of having the two together. So for example, in the unusual that your fiber goes out, the gateway will automatically back up to your wireless service. So until we can get out there to repair it, you'll have that kind of backup capability. And those types of things are really important to our customers who expect high value services.
Why is the competition so fierce right now for these fiber assets? I see what Verizon just acquired officially a couple weeks ago with uh Frontier. You have T-Mobile tying up in a joint venture with Lumo. Take me inside the state of play of the state of play in the industry of it.
Well, because fiber is the best technology and it's going to be the best technology for the future, and they're all trying to catch us. So they're all flailing around, trying to make sure that they can try to collect some footprint and I think we just made a big move here that's going to not only increase our lead, but extend it further.
The cable companies must really hate what you guys are doing.
I can't speak to how cable's reacting. I can tell you that customers seem to be voting with their feet.
You mentioned that the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026. How confident that you can get this deal passed inside of administration that coming into the year, many uh CEOs thought it was going to be a friendly administration to do deals. Not necessarily has that been the case.
Yeah, I think there's everything going for this deal when you think about it. First of all, we're investing in great infrastructure that makes the US economy more competitive. We're going into footprints and markets where the previous owner didn't have the wherewithal and capability to do that. So we're going to step up investment of this world class infrastructure that I I think is right on policy for US competitiveness. When we do that and we start building and investing, we hire people that have to trench and work in local communities to get that done. When customers buy the service, we hire people that shows up at somebody's home to actually install it, put it in and service it. And when you think about the dynamic of somebody investing in that infrastructure, it creates a more competitive market, which ultimately is great for the consumer as well. So it's really hard to see where a company like ours that has a bunch of good, solid, middle class, union represented jobs working in these communities isn't going to look at, somebody's going to look at this and say, we not only want this, we want this fast.
No, makes a lot of sense, John, but you know, going back to what Verizon and T-Mobile have gone through to get their deals passed. Verizon had to roll back certain DEI initiatives to get a sign off from FCC chair Brandon Carr. Same deal with T-Mobile. Are you prepared to make that same call that if the administration says, John, we want to see you roll back DEI, uh if you want to get this deal done, we're going to do it.
We we don't have to roll back anything, Brian. Our policies and our approach around AT&T have always been that we progress people on merit. Any employee that comes to work here should have an opportunity to grow their career, work on building their skills, have an opportunity to succeed and earn a living, and we want to help them do that. We want to help all of our employees do that. That's always been our policy and it will be our policy going forward. And our goal is to make sure that every employee that walks through the door of AT&T feels like they belong here and it's a good place for them to work, and I'm pretty confident that anybody who examines our practices and how we run the business is going to come to that same conclusion.
So it sounds like you you may take a a different approach than your competitors and trying to get this deal closed?
Well, I don't want to prognosticate on the future when I have no idea what's going to occur, but as I said, there's an awful lot of good things with this deal where it makes perfect sense. And I feel like we run the business in a really responsible manner. We're right in line with the kind of things that this administration would like to see moving forward. So I can't wait to tell the story, to be honest with you.
John, before I let you go, I recently talked to um, one of your, the CEO of one of your biggest competitors, T-Mobile, and it was on the topic of tariffs. Now he told me his company will not eat tariffs. These prices, if smartphones go up, he will pass them on to consumers. Is that the same vibe over at AT&T?
Well, first of all, I don't know what's going to happen to smartphone pricing yet, as you know, we're we're sitting in the middle of kind of a transitionary period where the administration is trying to decide on what its final position is. And ultimately, it is the device manufacturer like an Apple or a Samsung that will set the price that they'll they'll turn back to us. So not knowing that they've changed anything, if they should increase the prices because of tariff driven costs, um like in the past, I would expect that probably that flows through to the consumer. Now, handset prices have been going up with or without tariffs over the last decade, and we've done a lot of things and how we've brought those products to market to try to help the consumer get through the fact that that device is getting a little bit more expensive. Sometimes we extend the amount of time that the individual pays for it or we do different things on return pricing to help offset uh the actual first cost purchase. We'll continue to work with consumers to find a way to try to make sure that they've got a good solid device to be able to use our network and carry forward, but I do ultimately expect if the device gets more expensive that the consumer will probably over time have to bear that price, or they'll make some decisions such as hanging on to a device a little bit longer.
I know, John, you and I have talked in the past. You are an avid economic data watcher. It's just what you do. Um, to that end, have you seen any signs of stress in your customer base as these tariffs start to hit the economy? Of course, we saw first quarter GDP decline, consumers sentiment has now started to weaken for five straight months. Any signs of concern in your business?
You know, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, maybe, at AT&T, we're really not a leading indicator. I think that um, you tend to find other parts of the retail segment that maybe have better indicators if you're at the early stages of an economic decline. Our products and services are so central to people's everyday lives, it tends to be something they hold on to for a very long period of time before they start making any decision of either not spending or spending down. I've not seen that in our business, Brian. Our business still is very strong, customers continue to buy the services, and they continue to pay us for them, and we feel really good about where we stand right now.
Uh good luck on getting this deal uh across the finish line. Again, AT&T looking to purchase all of Lumen's mass market fiber business for 5.75 billion dollars. AT&T Chairman CEO John Stankey, always good to see you.
Good to be with you, Brian. Thanks for your time.