Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, June 22, 2018

Article Excerpt

AT&T INC., $31.69, New York symbol T, last raised its quarterly dividend with the February 2018 payment. Investors now receive $0.50 a share, up 2.0% from $0.49. The new annual rate of $2.00 yields a high 6.3%. The company has now completed its acquisition of media company Time Warner Inc. (New York symbol TWX) after a court rejected the U.S. government’s attempt to block the deal. In October 2016, the company agreed to buy Time Warner for $81.0 billion in cash (52%) and shares (48%). If you include Time Warner’s debt, the total value of the takeover is roughly $103 billion. To put that amount in context, AT&T’s current market cap (the total value of all outstanding shares) is $232.2 billion. AT&T plans to use Time Warner content to attract more users to its wireless and TV services. However, the U.S. government felt the deal would let AT&T (which also owns the DirecTV satellite TV system) unfairly increase the prices that rival TV…