Stock market picks: AT&T earnings rise on strong wireless demand

AT&T, symbol T on New York, was the exclusive U.S. carrier for the Apple iPhone, until Verizon started selling it in February. However, AT&T is rapidly upgrading its wireless networks, which should help it hang on to its current iPhone customers. Despite iPhone competition from Verizon, AT&T still activated nearly 3.6 million iPhones in the first quarter, with 23% of those being new customers for AT&T. In all, it sold 5.5 million smartphones in the quarter. Besides the iPhone, AT&T is benefiting from rising use of other wireless devices, such as the iPad and electronic-book readers. The company added 2 million wireless customers in the quarter, and now has 97.5 million. In the three months ending March 31, 2011, the stock market pick’s earnings rose 38.9%, to $3.4 billion, or $0.57 a share. It earned $2.5 billion, or $0.41 a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 2.3%, to $31.2 billion from $30.5 billion. Wireless revenue rose 10.2%; AT&T gets about half of its revenue by providing wireless services. Wireline (traditional phone services) revenue fell 3.2%. AT&T is just one of the blue chip U.S. stock market picks we analyze in our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter. You can get the latest issue absolutely FREE when you subscribe now. Click here to learn how.

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Jim Bates

Jim is an associate editor at TSI Network. He is the lead reporter and analyst for The Successful Investor and Wall Street Stock Forecaster and a member of the Investment Planning Committee. Jim has held the Chartered Financial Analyst designation since 1992 and spent more than a decade at the Financial Post DataGroup before joining TSI Network. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto.

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Blue Chip Stocks

Blue chip stocks are big, well-established, dividend-paying corporations with strong business prospects. These are companies that also have sound management that should be able to make the right moves to keep competing successfully in a changing marketplace.

Dividend Stocks

Dividend stocks make cash payouts that serve as a way for companies to share the wealth they’ve accumulated. These payouts are drawn from earnings and cash flow and paid to the shareholders of the company. Typically, these dividends are paid quarterly, although they may be paid annually or even monthly as well.

Value Stocks

What are value stocks?

One of the sweetest and most profitable pleasures of successful investing is to buy high-quality “value stocks” (or stocks that are reasonably priced, if not cheap, in relation to its sales, earnings or assets), then hold on to them as mainstream investors recognize the value and push up the share price.

Growth Stocks

Growth stocks are companies that are likely to have sales and earnings growth well above market average. Frequently they pay few, if any, dividends. Instead they typically reinvest any extra cash flow to promote further growth. Chosen wisely—according to Pat McKeough’s advice—high-quality growth-oriented stocks can be worthwhile additions to most well-diversified portfolios.

ETFs

What are ETFs?

ETF is an acronym for exchange traded fund.. These exchange traded funds are used to track indexes as closely as possible, since investors cannot actually buy an index outright.

How To Invest

Pat McKeough has been making investing for beginners simple—and profitable—by helping investors make big gains for more than 25 years. His advice to beginning investors is the same as it is for all investors: buy high-quality, mostly dividend paying stocks (or ETFs that hold these stocks) and evenly spread your investments over the five main economic sectors (Resources, Manufacturing, Finance, Utilities and Consumer). Pat also believes investors should avoid stocks in the broker/media limelight and focus on those with hidden or little-noticed assets.

Wealth Management

Wealth management is the practice of putting your savings to work so that it continues to grow over your lifetime and will also benefit your heirs. Wealth management encompasses many different areas of investing like long term investment planning and retirement planning.

AI Investing

Artificial intelligence (AI) is essentially the merging of today’s big computing with big data. This has resulted in breakthroughs in everything from creating machines to recognize faces with more accuracy than a human, to the development of chatbots able to collect, organize and simplify all the Internet has to say on any topic.

Spinoffs

One of the ways a company can try to unlock its own hidden value is by creating a separate company out of a corporate subsidiary. The parent company can either sell stock in the new company to the public, or spin it off—hand the stock out to its own investors.

Penny Stocks

A penny stock in general trades for under five dollars a share, and as the name implies, sometimes for pennies. Most of the time they’re young companies, or start-ups in speculative markets like mining or technology.

Mining Stocks

Mining stocks are investments in companies that produce or explore for minerals. Some of these minerals include uranium, coal, molybdenum (which is used in steelmaking), copper, silver and gold. They are affected by fluctuating commodity prices in addition to their own business and operating risks.

Energy Stocks

What are energy stocks?

Businesses that work in the extraction, refining and delivery of energy sources such as natural gas, oil, uranium and coal, are considered energy stocks.