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Posted
Oct 09 2009, 10:40 AM
by
Jim Jubak
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Why? That's always the first question to ask when you see a common stock like Verizon (VZ) trading with a dividend yield of 6.52%.
That's so much higher than the yield on the Standard & Poor's 500 index (2.1% as of last week) that any reasonable investor wants to know what the market thinks is wrong with this company.
In this case, I think it's easy to figure out why enough investors hate this stock to drive the yield up so far -- and to conclude that the market is wrong in the degree of its worry.
That makes Verizon a buy for the investor in search of reasonably safe but high yields.
Bing: Compare Verizon with Sprint and AT&T
Here's what's wrong with Verizon:
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Posted
Sep 23 2009, 04:06 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon (AMZN), is known for being eccentric, but his new handset offer may be taking that act a bit too far. Cell phones using the AT&T (T) wireless network were selling on Amazon yesterday for one penny each. If the program is a success it is likely to come back.
The only product not available at the remarkable price is the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.
The purchase of the phone must be made with a two-year AT&T wireless subscription. The phones also come with free two-day shipping.
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Posted
Sep 15 2009, 01:47 PM
by
InvestorPlace
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from InvestorPlace.com.
The run-up in Sprint (S) shares on news that German phone giant Deutsche Telekom (DT) might buy the No. 3 American cellular carrier is over. After a day that saw Sprint's share move from $3.77 on Friday to $4.33 yesterday, the stock has already begun to trade back down. Bing: Telecom Stocks
The DT buyout of Sprint makes a great deal of sense, so shareholders should be enthusiastic. The German company’s U.S. operation, T-Mobile, has 33 million subscribers, which means it has only a little over 10% of the American wireless market. Taking business from AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ), with their vast 3 networks and huge marketing budgets, will be nearly impossible. AT&T and Verizon can also bundle cellular service with their broadband and land line products. That adds to T-Mobile’s disadvantage
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Posted
Aug 31 2009, 04:04 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 There are two ways to look at the economic relationship between Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T), and both may be accurate. AT&T says it has signed up 10 million iPhone owners for its long-term calling and data plans. Many of those customers have come from other cellular providers. AT&T is thus adding new, and perhaps profitable, business.
On the other hand, AT&T pays Apple an estimated $400 a phone. AT&T probably has to hold onto its iPhone customers for the full two years of their subscription plan to make a lot of money.
The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out that AT&T has other smartphones that it does not have to pay handset companies like Samsung and Nokia (NOK) as much as $400 to acquire.
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Posted
Jul 30 2009, 01:21 PM
by
Tobin Smith
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Certainly a lot of Sprint executives and shareholders hoped the launch of the new Palm (PALM) Pre smartphone in June would give Sprint (S) a revenue boost. As the exclusive wireless carrier for the Pre, Sprint was poised to reap big rewards if the Pre took off big.
Sprint still claims the Pre launch was succesful, but when the company released its earnings for the second quarter yesterday, it was clear the Pre wasn't successful enough to give Sprint the boost it so desperately needs.
Sprint reported a loss of $384 million, or 13 cents per share in the three months ending June 30. That was an even bigger loss than the $344 million it lost in the same quarter of 2008.
A big culprit was a drop in wireless revenues of 9%. Sprint saw 991,000 annual contract-signing customers disappear. In the same quarter, Verizon (VZ) added 1.1 million subscribers and AT&T (T) added 1.4 million
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Posted
Jul 21 2009, 03:52 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Wall Street analysts expect Apple’s earnings to do better than estimates. This is not surprising. Apple (AAPL) has a history of setting low expectations about its figures and then beating them handily. It has become a game of chess between the company and experts who follow it.
Some analysts tracking the company go so far as to send people to Apple stores and other retailers to count how products are selling. Others check with companies that supply components to Apple for its products like the iPhone and Mac to gauge demand.
Apple’s results should be pulled down by the same gravity that has hurt the consumer electronics and PC markets. The relentless slowing of the economy has made both individual and business purchasers of computers slow to upgrade their hardware. The Apple iPhone is more expensive than most other handsets. A recession is hardly a good time to overpay for a phone.
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Posted
Jun 29 2009, 11:05 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The S&P 500 has gained about 2% this year, but a handful of winners have more than doubled in value.
The downside: Some of the stocks were beaten down and benefited from a dead cat bounce, while six of the 10 winners recently traded at less than $10 a share -- often the cutoff for long-term investors. Others benefited from rising commodity prices -- perhaps an indication that the recession is easing.
Success in the current market may be written in water, but these stocks have recently made waves:
1, 2. The "Ugh” Factor
Sprint Nextel (S) and Tenet Healthcare (THC) recently fetched less than $5 a share, so they doubled off a narrow base. This doesn’t inspire confidence or suggest a strong run ahead. Still, it would be unkind to call their recent move higher a statistical quirk: Tenet is up about 151% this year; Sprint is up about 173%.
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Posted
Jun 25 2009, 10:13 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Largely thanks to its much-anticipated Pre smartphone (pictured), Palm's (PALM) stock has been on fire this year, and shares of the Pre's exclusive carrier, Sprint (S), have also shot through the roof. For the year, Palm is up about 350%, with Sprint up about 150%.
But while Sprint brass described initial Pre sales as excellent, they've come nowhere near the sales figures for Apple's (AAPL) newly released iPhone 3GS. Reviews of the two devices are mixed, and the "which is better" question may well come down to personal taste and preference.
For investors, however, the key question isn't how you feel personally about the iPhone or the Pre, or what the stocks of the companies involved have already done; rather, it is which companies have the better balance sheets and the more attractive stocks moving forward -- Sprint and Palm, or Apple and its exclusive iPhone carrier, AT&T (T)? That's a question I asked of my Validea.com Guru Strategy computer models recently, and they gave me a pretty overwhelming verdict.
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Posted
Apr 06 2009, 10:00 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Sprint's (S) chief financial officer likes to joke about bringing free hotel pens back to the company to help save money, Michelle Leder writes for The New York Times.
What a cost-conscious guy. But what's this? His personal flight bill cost the company more than $600,000 last year? Yep, Robert Brust's employment contract says he can get up to 35 round-trip personal flights on company planes or charter planes.
Apparently, Sprint wanted Brust as its CFO so badly that it was willing to fly him back and forth between his home and company headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. Brust previously worked at Eastman Kodak, and had "a very specific skill set" that Sprint wanted, the company said.
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Posted
Apr 03 2009, 11:04 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Sprint Nextel (S) shares took a hit Friday after Standard & Poor's cut its outlook on the stock to negative from stable. Sprint customers are fleeing to the warm embrace of AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ), analysts said.
Even smaller guys like Leap Wireless (LEAP) and MetroPCS (PCS) are picking up subscribers, possibly from Sprint as well. And Sprint has higher customer turnover than many of its rivals. Can't say I'm surprised. I was on the phone with Sprint for a long time this week after getting a $160 bill in the mail. That new plan Sprint said was supposed to take $10 off my monthly bill? It ended up adding $70 instead.
Disney (DIS) also got hit with a downgrade, this one from JPMorgan. Analysts there downgraded the stock to neutral from outperform, Barron's writes. It's the fifth time in six months that an analyst has downgraded Disney on worries that
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