Updating your Income-Growth Payers: AT&T Inc.

Article Excerpt

AT&T INC. $25 remains a buy. The company (New York symbol T; Income-Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 7.2 billion; Market cap: $180.0 billion; Dividend yield: 8.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.att.com) is the largest wireless carrier in the U.S. It also offers traditional phone services. As part of that strategy, it recently agreed to merge its media operations (Warner Bros. studios, HBO, CNN and other cable channels) with Discovery Inc. (Nasdaq symbol DISCA). AT&T will then hand out shares in this new, publicly traded media firm (called Warner Bros. Discovery) to its own investors as a tax-free distribution. As a group, they will own 71% while Discovery investors will hold the remaining 29%. The two firms expect to complete the transaction in mid-2022. Right Now, AT&T pays investors a quarterly dividend of $0.52 a share; the annual rate of $2.08 yields a very high 8.3%. After the spinoff, the annual dividend will fall to roughly $1.16 a share, which would still yield a high 4.6%. Meantime, AT&T added 928,000…