AT&T Looks Better, Except for Its Stock Price
A company that once aspired to be a successful conglomerate is finding it makes more sense to run a “simple” 5G and internet business.
Now it’s simple.
Photographer: Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty ImagesGeneral Electric Co. and Johnson & Johnson spent generations building two of the world’s most recognizable conglomerates, until a stock market disenchanted with complex companies helped send them on a plodding path toward epochal breakups, announced within days of each other in November. Indeed, 2021 has been the year for giant companies to burst into fragments — a trend kicked off by AT&T Inc., a company known for its historic cycles of getting bigger and smaller.
Compared with GE and J&J, though, AT&T’s latest building and undoing was so staggeringly swift and extreme, it took investors’ breath away. This time, they hope, will be the last.