NEW YORK, June 28, 2026, 13:22 EDT
- AT&T Inc. NYSE:T ended Friday at $22.72, up 3.2% from June 18 before the holiday. Trading volume hit 199% of the stock’s 65-day average.
- AT&T came in with a $120.77 million bill from the AWS-3 auction, which is a fraction of Verizon Communications Inc. NYSE:VZ at $3.16 billion. T-Mobile US Inc. NASDAQ:TMUS ended up at $277.78 million.
- Markets are closed July 3 for the U.S. holiday next week. AT&T has a dividend record date on July 10 and reports Q2 results July 22.
U.S. exchanges stayed closed Sunday. NYSE and Nasdaq will run four sessions this week, both shut Friday, July 3, for the Independence Day holiday.
AT&T comes in with a cash angle that hasn’t gotten much notice. Shares finished Friday at $22.72, gaining 1.34% for the session and are up 3.2% since June 18, which was the last close ahead of the Juneteenth holiday. Last week, the S&P 500 dropped 2.05% and the Nasdaq fell 4.7%.
The main news wasn’t the dividend. It was the FCC’s AWS-3 spectrum auction result released Friday. Auction 113 wrapped June 23, bringing in $3.57 billion in net bids as seven bidders picked up 200 licenses.
Verizon came out on top, picking up 82 licenses and paying $3.16 billion. “Those licenses add a meaningful amount of capacity,” Craig Moffett at MoffettNathanson told Light Reading. T-Mobile got 102 licenses for $277.78 million. AT&T picked up 10 licenses, spending $120.77 million, with Recon Analytics founder Roger Entner describing AT&T as “very selective and judicious.” Light Reading
AT&T holders are watching this because the bill comes to about 0.7% of AT&T’s free-cash-flow floor for 2026, and about 1.5% of the company’s planned 2026 buybacks, using the auction numbers and what the company has guided. AT&T is still looking for free cash flow over $18 billion this year, paying out an annual dividend of $1.11 a share, with about $8 billion set for buybacks.
The table below looks at June 18 and June 26 closing prices. Dividend yield and P/E for the three carriers are quoted from Friday’s quote pages.
| Security | Closed Friday | Difference versus June 18 close | Quoted yield | Price/Earnings ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AT&T Inc. NYSE:T | $22.72 | up 3.2% | 4.89% | 7.62 |
| Verizon Communications NYSE:VZ | $46.54 | up 2.6% | 6.08% | 11.34 |
| T-Mobile US Inc. NASDAQ:TMUS | $182.68 | up 0.6% | 2.23% | Shares at 19.43 |
| SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust NYSEARCA:SPY | $728.99 | down 2.4% | — | — |
| Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLU) | $46.20 | up 3.2% | — | — |
AT&T’s (T) volume jumped Friday, hitting 85.15 million shares, roughly double its 65-day average. It finished at the high for the day but remains far from its 52-week high of $29.79.
AT&T’s board on June 24 set its quarterly common dividend at 27.75 cents per share. Investors on record as of the close July 10 will get paid on August 3.
AT&T’s next check on cash hits before earnings. The company kept its second-quarter free cash flow outlook unchanged at $4.0 billion to $4.5 billion this month, and expects stronger wireless service revenue growth year over year than in Q1, plus more net adds on advanced home internet. The Q2 call is on July 22 at 8:30 a.m. ET.
AT&T CEO John Stankey told investors in April the company posted its “best first quarter ever for Advanced Connectivity internet customer net additions.” For the quarter, AT&T reported 584,000 advanced connectivity internet net adds and 294,000 net adds for postpaid phones. AT&T Newsroom
Oppenheimer warned this month that the risk is still there. The firm said SpaceX NASDAQ:SPCX and its Starlink satellite network could shake up the $1.6 trillion U.S. communications sector as satellite broadband grows, and pointed to big broadband names like AT&T as most exposed.
Focus shifted to cash and lower spectrum spend on a mixed tape. The S&P 500 finished Friday flat, though down 2.05% this week after chip stocks fell again. “The questions around profitability and the capex story are certainly not going away,” said David Stubbs, chief investment strategist at AlphaCore Wealth Advisory. Reuters
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