NEW YORK, December 31, 2025, 15:31 ET — Regular session
- Verizon shares were up about 0.5% in afternoon trade on the final U.S. session of 2025.
- The carrier has set January 30 for its fourth-quarter results and webcast.
- Investors are watching dividends and interest-rate signals as year-end rebalancing wraps up.
Verizon Communications Inc shares rose 0.5% to $40.90 in afternoon trading on Wednesday, after moving between $40.62 and $40.96 earlier in the session. About 9.6 million shares had changed hands.
The modest move still drew attention because it came during thin, year-end trading, when portfolio rebalancing can push steady, high-dividend names away from the market’s broader drift.
It also puts focus on the next scheduled catalyst: Verizon said it will report fourth-quarter 2025 earnings on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, and host a webcast beginning at 8:00 a.m. ET. The company said it will post materials, including its press release and financial tables, at 6:30 a.m. ET on its investor relations website.
Verizon’s move roughly tracked AT&T, which was up about 0.5%, while T-Mobile US was down about 0.1% in afternoon trade. The trio often trades as a group when investors focus on pricing competition and subscriber trends in U.S. wireless.
The broader backdrop was subdued. Wall Street’s major indexes were slightly lower in the final trading session of 2025, with volumes thin in the holiday-shortened week and markets closed on Thursday for New Year’s Day, Reuters reported.
Strategists have described the late-December churn as routine rather than directional. “It’s just a healthy rebalancing of allocations,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, as investors look ahead to the Federal Reserve’s Jan. 27–28 meeting, where markets expect policymakers to leave rates unchanged. Reuters
For Verizon, the dividend remains central to the stock’s appeal. The company’s board declared a quarterly dividend of 69 cents per share in early December, payable Feb. 2 to shareholders of record as of Jan. 12.
With shares around $41, that payout implies an annualized dividend yield of about 6.8%. Dividend yield is the annual cash dividend divided by the stock price, and it tends to matter more when investors are comparing income stocks to bond returns.
When Verizon reports next month, investors will look for management’s read on wireless pricing and postpaid phone net additions. Postpaid customers pay after using service and are typically viewed as a stickier base than prepaid users.
Free cash flow will be another key watchpoint because it underwrites the dividend and supports debt reduction. Any changes to capital spending plans for 5G and fiber can move that number quickly.
Investors will also be listening for updates on strategy under Chief Executive Dan Schulman, who took over in October, and on the company’s planned acquisition of Frontier Communications, which Verizon has said is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026.
Until earnings, Verizon is likely to trade like a bond proxy — meaning its price can swing with interest-rate expectations because a large portion of its return comes from cash payouts rather than rapid growth.
The next major checkpoint for traders is Jan. 30, when Verizon updates investors on results, cash generation and competitive conditions heading into 2026.
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