Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

"Globalization is working fine. Don't let mass hysteria suddenly make you stoopid."

This must be a joke right? Globalization is why we don't make anything anymore in this country. You know inconsequential things like medical supplies and equipment. Globalization is why our care call capacity is decimated due to a lockdown in the Philippines, a country where the infrastructure and the poverty of our call centers doesn't support working from home. Our IT is in India, under lockdown also. Probably not a lot work from home capacity there either.

Better to have India worker in Bangalore all get corona and spread

Better to have USA worker with bad attitude reading from the script. Or worst, giving the wrong advice.

Experienced and dedicated - aka constantly complaining about underpaid and how others don't know what they are doing.

AT&T has permanently lost an irreplaceable amount of knowledge laying off highly experienced employees and replacing them with cheap third world labor. The C-Suite thought they could dumb down and micromanage our jobs to the point where even an illiterate idi@t could do them.

That may work if your running a production line or a hamburger shop, but in a highly competitive complex fast changing technological environment it is a recipe for disaster.

Our competition employs intelligent, creative minds and gives them the freedom to excel at their jobs. Meanwhile we have 'Bowb' from India reading from a script as a customer calls in with a problem.

Debt Load as bad as it gets,
The company does have a tremendous amount of debt as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2019 at almost $161 billion. Surprisingly, debt represents a high level of the company's total market cap, which is $206 billion. Additionally, the company paid out interest expenses of $8.4 billion in 2019.

More alarming is that the company paid out total dividends in 2019 of roughly $14.9 billion on net income of just $13.9 billion. It gives the stock a dividend payout ratio that is above 100%, and that could indicate dividend payments do not rise in the future, or even worse, perhaps fall.

With these high levels of debt and significant interest expenses, the dividend payout ratio could be the primary driver for that high dividend yield. Also, the fear of maintaining that dividend is helping to push that yield to historic highs.

Options Betting Shares Fall
Options traders are currently betting that the recent declines only grow worse. The $31 puts for expiration on June 19 saw their open interest levels rise by around 29,200 open contracts, and the data shows that these contracts traded on the Ask for about $4.50 per contract. For the buyer of these puts to earn a profit, the stock would need to fall to around $26.50, a decline of about 5.7% from its price of approximately $28.10 on March 25.

Meanwhile, the $29 puts for expiration on May 15 saw their open interest levels rise by around 16,000 contracts on March 25. These puts also traded mostly on the ASK and again suggests that they were bought for about $3.20. In this case, the stock would need to fall to around $25.80 by the expiration date to earn a profit. That is a drop of about 8.5% from its current stock price.

Technical Take
The technical chart shows that the stock has been struggling to get above a level of resistance at $29 and above support at $27.35. However, should the stock fall below that support level, it could result in the stock falling even further towards its next level of support at $23.85. But if the stock price should rise above resistance, it could result in the stock price rising to around $31.20.

Risks Are High
The risk during this period is incredibly high, given the heightened levels of volatility, making it very hard to determine what the true motivation of a put buyer is in this case. It could be a trader or investor merely buying puts to protect a long position in the stock or making a real bet that the stock will fall.

For the time being, it is worth noting that AT&T's dividend yield is attractive, but it may also be suggesting an increased risk of the path forward of that dividend. Something worth thinking about for sure.

Post ID: @cya+14bhaUDM, cause and effect, AT&T is spiraling out of cintrol thanks to the leadership decisions, the damage canit be undone, But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction, and he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

AT&T does something for consumers and yet some people still complain. They sure know how to bring others down.

offshoring is all bad as AT&T continues expanding their conglomerate. Initially, these were related businesses, but soon the conglomerates began buying companies with no relationship to their business. The desire to be the biggest and most profitable became sufficient justification....Sounds familiar?

Ultimately, the conglomerates began to collapse under the weight of the acquired companies. Profits started falling, and companies began to retract to their "core" businesses. Next, they discovered that they could shed even core functions by hiring them out to companies that could do them more efficiently and, thus, less expensively. Payroll processing was subcontracted; IT, DEVOPS, was farmed out; so was CALL CENTERS, as companies were hired for collections,to offshored customer call centers, not required to speak English in many cases.

Unfortunately, like the building of conglomerates before it, outsourcing got carried to extremes. With the new Re-badging concept, AT&T began outsourcing work to the lowest bidder, transferring vested employees to others payrolls, and lost sight of the effect it had on the company in every area.
he "more sophisticated jobs" that U.S. workers are supposed to take on do not exist, and it is an affront to the U.S. worker trained for the "jobs of the future" to have their job outsourced by their American employer.
Work is often outsourced to countries where laws are not as protective of workers and the environment as in the U.S. We ultimately pay for those oversights in human rights abuses and further damage to the planet.
A Complicated Picture
Offshoring is perceived as yet another way for the super-rich corporate executives to get richer at the expense of individual workers, but offshoring is neither a cure-all for business nor an economy-destroying monster. The financial advantages for businesses are often smaller than first anticipated due to hidden costs. And in the long term, there is a danger that consumers will stop buying from companies engaged in offshoring or that neither the Americans unemployed due to offshoring nor the low-paid workers overseas will be able to purchase the company's products.

How i didn't think about this first.. ATT wireless executives Should be asking themselves.....Earlier this week, T-Mobile launched its Connect plan earlier than expected giving subscribers access to 2GB of mobile data for $15 per month. But now, copycat AT&T and Cricket are going with their own $15-a-month phone plans along with a few other efforts while struggling due to their balance sheets, add move since AT&T is not in the business of saving anyone's money, I am sure the .com master is going after bailout money.

Globalization is working fine. Don't let mass hysteria suddenly make you stoopid.

US corporations have to rethink this globalization model Now. Are we a first world country? Can't even buy toilet paper

Similar to the need to bring the production of our medications back from China and other countries (because they've already threatened to withhold them from the US) , AT&T and many other "outsourcing happy" US companies need to 'In-Source' with American employees again. Let's start bringing this up at our "leadership" meetings and at future CEO, COO town hall meetings.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/17/china-threatens-restrict-critical-d–g-exports-us/

yep a vp prove that IT could run things cheaper than outsourcing but stankey outsourced anyway. randy and stank are the lowest of the low and a prime example of everything that is wrong with this world.

very accurate, you missed the Six Sigma Poster Child. Spent millions on clueless consultants instead of pursuing common sense solutions and listening to your own employees.