Company profile
- Industry
- Telecommunications
- Headquarters
- Dallas, United States
- Ownership
- Publicly traded
Profiles are auto-generated and infrequently updated.
Decisions on record
2 verified Decision Records on AT&T, and the casebook each one belongs to.
| Fork date | Decision type | The story | Casebook |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Adjacency Expansion | Read the story → | Adjacency Expansion Casebook → |
| 2016 | The Reversal | Read the story → | The Reversal Casebook → |
Run one of these yourself
The decisions AT&T faced, as kits you can run.
Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.
Growth & PortfolioThe Adjacency ExpansionWhen does the business next door belong to you?See the pack →Decision ForksThe ReversalsWhen do you reverse a position, and what does a year of waiting cost?See the pack →Decision ForksThe ResidualHow much of your decline can the agreed explanation actually account for?See the pack →
The analyses
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
AT&T Spent $100 Billion to Become a Media Company. It Lasted Four Years.
AT&T paid a court-documented $100.3 billion for Time Warner, held it for under four years, and got $40.4 billion in cash at the exit. The losing trade wasn't content versus distribution. It was buying two cyclical peaks with debt that left no margin for being wrong.
8 min
The Reversal · Decision Forks
AT&T Bought DirecTV and Time Warner, Unwound Both, and Kept $156 Billion in Net Debt
AT&T spent $67.1 billion on DirecTV and $108.7 billion on Time Warner, then unwound both within a decade. The 'pivot back to connectivity' is the flattering version. The honest one: it bought its way to $156 billion in net debt and called the surrender a strategy.
8 min
The Fall · Crisis & Reinvention
AT&T Spent ~$167 Billion to Become a Media Company. It Exited for a Fraction and Called It a Pivot.
AT&T paid ~$106 billion for Time Warner and ~$67 billion for DirecTV, then exited both for a fraction—a $15.5B video write-down in 2020, ~$43B for WarnerMedia in 2022, and debt peaking at ~$177B. This wasn't a pivot. It was arithmetic.
8 min