AT&T Inc.

Total revenue in Q2 was up 2.3% year over year, driven by service revenue growth of 2.7%. Adjusted EBITDA rose 5.2% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA margin up 110 basis points to 39.1%. Adjusted EPS was $0.65 versus $0.54 a year ago. Advanced Connectivity service revenue grew 5.1% and EBITDA grew 8%; wireless service revenue grew 3.3%; advanced home internet service revenue grew by more than 27%; business Advanced Connectivity service revenue grew 1.8%; legacy service revenue fell 26% and legacy EBITDA fell about 46%. Capital investment was $6.1 billion versus $5.1 billion a year ago, and free cash flow was $4.7 billion, up roughly $300 million year over year and above the high end of guidance. Full-year guidance was reiterated for low-single-digit consolidated service revenue growth, 3%-4% consolidated adjusted EBITDA growth, adjusted EPS of $2.25-$2.35, free cash flow of $18 billion+, and capital investment of $23 billion-$24 billion. Advanced Connectivity full-year service revenue growth was guided to 5%+ and EBITDA growth to 6%+.

John Stankey framed the quarter as proof that AT&T’s strategy is working, highlighting more than 1 million added Advanced Connectivity subscribers, record fiber performance, and higher convergence among home internet and wireless customers. He emphasized that AT&T is deliberately targeting both value and performance customers on fiber and wireless, because the company wants to maximize total service revenue and customer lifetime value rather than optimize any single product’s ARPU. His tone was confident and strategic, with heavy focus on fiber scale, AI-ready network architecture, copper retirement, and the idea that AT&T can own most of a converged customer’s traffic while solving the remaining edge cases through satellite or partnerships.

Pascal Desroches led with the hard numbers: revenue up 2.3%, service revenue up 2.7%, adjusted EBITDA up 5.2%, margin at 39.1%, and adjusted EPS at $0.65. He said free cash flow of $4.7 billion beat the high end of guidance, and reiterated full-year expectations for $18 billion+ of free cash flow, $23 billion-$24 billion of capex, and $2.25-$2.35 of adjusted EPS. He also noted AT&T returned $4.1 billion to shareholders in the quarter, including about $2.2 billion of buybacks, is on pace to repurchase nearly $1 billion of stock in July, and now expects about $10 billion of repurchases in 2026; net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 2.68x at quarter-end and is expected to rise to the 3.2x range after the EchoStar deal before returning to the low-2.5x area within about three years.

Analysts pressed on fiber pricing versus volume, the pace of fiber growth in the Lumen footprint, churn trends, device replacement behavior, and whether AT&T might partner with satellite providers or pursue M&A to solve the remaining coverage gap. Management said the Lumen footprint is seeing better convergence and that the company is still ramping the build-out, while stressing that it is focused on total service revenue and converged relationships rather than maximizing fiber ARPU alone. On satellite and spectrum, Stankey said the goal is to cover the last roughly 2% of traffic a converged customer may leave AT&T’s network for, not to buy a wholesale solution for a problem AT&T does not have; he also said the EchoStar spectrum deal and dense fiber assets should leave AT&T well positioned even as the C-band timeline stretches out.