AT&T stock today is trading in the mid-$24 range, holding steady more than a week after the telecom carrier posted second-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s estimates and triggered a wave of price-target changes from analysts covering the stock.
Shares closed the prior session at $24.13, with the stock moving between $24.03 and $24.52 during the day, according to Morningstar data. The company’s market capitalization stands near $167.3 billion.
What Happened: AT&T’s Q2 2026 Earnings Beat
AT&T reported second-quarter results on July 22 that topped analyst expectations on both earnings and subscriber growth. The company earned an adjusted $0.65 per diluted share, clearing the $0.59 consensus estimate, while revenue rose 2.3% year-over-year to $31.6 billion, according to a Quartz report citing Wall Street Journal estimates.
Subscriber growth was the standout number. AT&T added 432,000 postpaid phone net subscribers, well above the roughly 338,500 analysts had forecast. Internet subscriber additions totaled 646,000 across fiber and fixed wireless connections — a record for the two categories combined, the company said in its official earnings release.
Chairman and CEO John Stankey framed the quarter as validation of the company’s strategy. “The accelerated growth we delivered this quarter shows our structural advantages to lead the next era of connectivity,” Stankey said in the earnings release.
On the earnings call, Stankey went further, telling analysts that convergence — customers who bundle fiber and wireless service — drives measurably better retention. “When customers consolidate their internet access with us, we see lower churn, outstanding brand affinity, higher lifetime values,” Stankey told analysts on the call, according to Tech Times.
AT&T Raises Buyback, Reaffirms Guidance
Alongside the earnings beat, AT&T said it’s accelerating capital returns. The company raised its planned 2026 share buyback to approximately $10 billion, up from an earlier $8 billion target, and now expects total shareholder returns — including dividends — of about $18 billion for the year, per the company’s official earnings release filed with investors.
Management reiterated full-year 2026 guidance of $2.25 to $2.35 in adjusted EPS and free cash flow of $18 billion or more, according to a summary of the results. The company’s fiber build-out remains central to that outlook — AT&T now reaches 38.6 million locations with fiber and is on pace to top 40 million by year-end, which it’s calling its largest fiber expansion year yet.
Analysts Split on Price Targets After Earnings
The results triggered a flurry of analyst notes in the days that followed, with price targets moving in both directions even as most firms kept their ratings intact.
| Firm | Rating | New Price Target | Prior Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| TD Cowen | Hold | $33 | $32 |
| Argus | Buy | $30 | $33 |
| Citi | Buy | $28 | $31.50 |
| Morgan Stanley | Overweight | $27 | $25 |
| Wells Fargo | Underweight | $20 | $18 |
TD Cowen raised its target to $33 while keeping a Hold rating, citing strong subscriber additions, though the firm flagged ongoing concerns about average revenue per user and wireless margins amid what it called an aggressive competitive push from Verizon, according to Investing.com’s coverage of the note.
Not every firm moved in the same direction. Argus trimmed its target to $30 from $33 while maintaining a Buy rating, according to MoneyCheck’s roundup of analyst reactions. Wolfe Research upgraded the stock to Outperform following the results, per CNN’s markets tracker.
Taken together, the Street consensus rating on AT&T is a Buy, with an average 12-month price target of $28.71 — implying roughly 19% upside from current levels, according to StockAnalysis.com, which tracks coverage from 26 analysts.
Why It Matters
The mixed price-target moves reflect a genuine debate among analysts: is AT&T’s subscriber growth strong enough to offset pressure on pricing and margins as fiber expansion continues and Verizon competes aggressively for the same customers? Bulls point to the convergence strategy — bundling fiber and wireless — as a durable retention advantage. By the end of the second quarter, 42.5% of AT&T’s advanced home internet customers also held a postpaid wireless line with the company, a figure that rose to 45% excluding the recently acquired Lumen customer base, based on remarks Stankey made on the Q2 earnings call transcript published by Benzinga.
Skeptics, meanwhile, note that revenue growth of 2.3% remains modest for a company investing heavily in fiber buildout and the integration of its Lumen acquisition, and that fiber pricing could face pressure as the customer base scales.
