AT&T (short for American Telephone and Telegraph) is a telecommunications company, one of the market leaders in the United States. AT&T provides access to local and long distance communications throughout the United States. In addition, AT&T is one of the largest wireless carriers in the US market. The total number of AT&T subscribers exceeds 150 million people. For a long time, AT&T was a monopoly in the local and long-distance communications market in the United States, but in 1983-1984 the company was split. The spin-off company SBC eventually absorbed AT&T itself. The new company was renamed AT&T.

History of AT&T

American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T Corporation) is one of the oldest companies in the New World. The history of AT&T goes back about 125 years. Since its founding in 1885, AT&T has dominated the long-distance and local communications market in the United States of America. The turning point for the corporation was the period from 1983 to 1984, when the management of the largest was forced to separate the business segment of local telephony and concentrate on long-distance communication services. The company responsible for corporate clients was named Southwestern Bell Corporation, in 1995 it was renamed SBC Communications, which eventually absorbed its "big brother". When SBC Communications became the leader in the US telecommunications market in 2005, it bought AT&T itself for $16 billion. As for the AT&T brand, it was taken over by the merged holding.

A year later, in March 2006, an agreement was reached to take over BellSouth, AT&T's archrival. The deal amounted to 67 billion dollars. As a result of this merger, AT&T became the undisputed leader among US telephone operators, overtaking another longtime competitor, Verizon. 2011 was marked by another M&A epic. An agreement to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion was reached with the owner Deutsche Telekom. The merger would have increased AT&T's total subscriber base to 129 million (vs. Verizon's 102 million). However, the plans of the largest mobile operator were thwarted by the actions of regulators.

In 2011, Forbes ranked AT&T the 14th largest company in the world by market value and the 9th largest non-mining company by value. It is the 20th largest mobile operator in the world with over 100 million users.

Even with such titles, the company has repeatedly been subjected to harsh criticism. Mostly for their wireless services. At the end of 2010 Consumer Reports named the operator the worst wireless provider in the country. In 2011, the company was ranked as the worst provider for the second year in a row.

In addition, AT&T was sued in 2012 for enforcing data restriction policies for unlimited data plan customers. According to this lawsuit, one of the users managed to sue the mobile giant for $850.

AT&T actively supports the American Enterprise Institute, and since 2012 has funded Red Bull Racing.

AT&T Services

1. Telephony;
2. Long distance communication;
3. Access to the Internet;
4. Cable TV.

AT&T financials for 2011:

Revenue $126.723 billion

Operating income $16.309 billion

Net income $ 3.944 billion

Assets $270.344 billion

Capital $105.797 billion

In 1876 invented phone. This event formed the basis of the company, which later became known as AT&T is a brand that has become synonymous with the best and most reliable telephony in the world. Company American Telephone and Telegraph(AT&T Corp.) was founded in 1885, for quite a long time it was a monopolist in the American market for local and long-distance communications.

In 1984 AT&T and the US Department of Justice signed an agreement under which AT&T spun off a company providing local telephone services - SBC Communications Inc.(Southwestern Bell Corp.), but retained long-distance services, R&D, and manufacturing.

In 1996, the market situation changed significantly. SBC Communications Inc. strengthened its positions and became global communications provider after being acquired by Pacific Telesis Group in 1997, Southern New England Telecommunications in 1998 and Ameritech Corp. in 1999. In 2005 SBC Communications Inc. redeemed herself AT&T, from which she had previously spun off. Name AT&T retained by the new, merged company.

After in 2006 AT&T acquired BellSouth for $67 billion and consolidated the assets of Cingular Wireless and yellowpages.com, AT&T regained a leading position in the US telecommunications market.

As of the end of 2008, the number of clients AT&T exceeds 74.9 million people. The company provides services in 22 US states (Alabama, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, California, Kentucky, Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, South Carolina).

Stages of development.

1876-1956: rise of the empire

1876: Invention phone Alexander Bell

1877: Company founded Bell Telephone Company

1878: Opened in New Haven, Connecticut the first telephone node; within three years, similar nodes appeared in all major US cities, giving rise to the company Bell System

1885: March 3rd founded American Telephone and Telegraph Company(AT&T)

1892: open toll line between New York and Chicago

1899: As a result of the restructuring AT&T acquires the assets of the parent company, American Bell Telephone Company, and becomes the owner of the Bell System

1913: Litigation with federal authorities settled; AT&T gets status "officially sanctioned monopoly"

1915: First opened in the US transcontinental telephone line; three minutes between New York and San Francisco costs $20.70.

1925: Company founded Bell Telephone Laboratories

1927: Put into operation transatlantic telephone radio service; the cost of three minutes of conversation is $75.

1934: open transpacific telephone radio service; Three minutes of a call between America and Japan costs $39.

1937: Clinton Davisson first employee AT&T wins the Nobel Prize

1947: invention of the transistor Bill Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories

1956: Completion of another litigation between AT&T and federal authorities; AT&T saves status national telephone operator

1956-1984: on the way to partition

1956: put into action TAT-1, first transatlantic cable telephone channel

1958: AT&T represents the first ever commercial modem

1962: launched communication satellite Telstar I, with the help of which the first ever live television broadcast across the Atlantic was carried out

1964: Underwater telephone cable laid TPC-1, connecting Japan and the Hawaiian Islands by wire

1965: IN AT&T installed for the first time in the world electronic telephone exchange

1968: Put into operation service 911

1971: IN Bell Telephone Laboratories developed Unix OS

1974: The US Department of Justice initiates another antitrust case against AT&T

1977: In Chicago AT&T the first communications company to use fiber optic cable in commercial communication systems

1982: As part of a lawsuit settlement AT&T agree to section Bell System

1983: The first in the USA was opened in Chicago commercial cellular network

1984: The first of January Bell System ceases to exist

After 1984: to be continued

1984: Decrease in prices for long-distance and international calls by 6.4% AT&T launches a six-year campaign to tariff reduction for your services

1988: Commissioned TAT-8, the first transatlantic submarine fiber-optic communication channel

1991: AT&T acquires NCR

1993: AT&T acquires McCaw Cellular Communications; one of the results of this transaction would later be the formation of a division AT&T Wireless

1995: Announced separation from the composition AT&T NCR and the firm subsequently named Lucent Technologies

1999: AT&T acquires TCI, which will be renamed to AT&T Broadband

2001: In accordance with the plan for the next restructuring, announced in 2000, the division AT&T Wireless becomes an independent company

2002: Assets AT&T Broadband corporations are moving Comcast

What is AT&T today?

• Turnover at the end of 2002 - 37.82 billion dollars.
• Losses attributable to common stock - $13.08 billion (In 2001, total profit attributable to common stock was $9.15 billion)
• 72 thousand employees (including over 5 thousand outside the USA, in 60 countries of the world).
• 3 million registered shareholders.
• 50 million service subscribers.
• 4 million business customers.
• Through the network AT&T Network about 2,500 trillion are transmitted daily. bytes of data, which corresponds to the transfer of the entire contents of the Library of Congress every 11.5 minutes.
• Online AT&T Network about 300 million voice calls are processed every day of the working week.
• AT&T Network is a provider of dial-up session access to the Internet in 850 cities located in 59 countries of the world.
• Annually AT&T allocates over $60 million for charitable purposes

Denis S. writes to us.

In anticipation of the release of the new iPhone, I would like to talk about a company that is directly related to Apple and is not the last place in the distribution of its products in America. My short story, touching only on the main aspects of the development of the corporation, will be about AT&T, the largest provider of mobile communications in America.

AT&T in outline/Home

Bell Telephone Company

The company dates back to 1875, when its founder Alexander Graham Bell (born in Edinburgh, Scotland) enters into an agreement with G. Hubbard and T. Sanderson, who agreed to finance his work on the creation of the telephone. Bell himself was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a professor, engaged in rhetoric, it was he who instilled in Alec (as Bell was called in the family) a love for learning the language and how it was transmitted via telegraph. In 1876 and 1877, Bell received all the necessary patents for the so-called talking telegraph, after which Bell Telephone was formed. Within just a few years, telephone exchanges began to appear in most major US cities. In 1882, the company acquires a controlling stake in the Western Electric Company, thanks to which it begins to produce its own equipment not only for the domestic market, but also for companies around the world. From that moment on, the company became known as Bell Systems.

AT&T was incorporated on March 3, 1885, as a subsidiary of the American Bell Corporation, with the goal of providing telephone service over long distances. At the beginning, AT&T developed within the US and for the US, but in 1913, the company's developments made transcontinental communications possible.

The evolution of the company logo

But there is no joy without grief. In 1894, Bell's second patent ended and other companies gained access to it, as a result of which in 10 years the number of devices increased from 285,000 to 3,317,000, but due to the large number of service providers, a new big problem appeared - the impossibility of telephone connection between representatives of different companies, it is as if today we could not call from Megafon to Beeline, and from Beeline to MTS. This problem was solved only in 1913.

For most of history, AT&T and Bell Systems operated as a regulated monopoly, with the rationale that telephone systems would operate most efficiently within a monopoly. In 1913, an agreement was made under which the US government accepts state regulation of a monopoly if the company undertakes to be "independent, intelligent, considerate, thorough and just", and under this agreement AT&T connected all non-competing and independent telephone companies to its network.

Antitrust lawsuit and split

Changes in telecommunications led to a US government antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. The process began in 1974 and ended in January 1982. On January 1, 1984, Bell Systems died and was replaced by AT&T and 7 other Bell regional operating companies. The consequences of this were that only 34 out of 149 billion remained, 370 thousand of more than a million employees remained, the logo was also changed, which became the prototype of what we are used to seeing now - the globe with the company's monogram.

As long as the company was a monopoly, it was naturally protected from the attacks of competitors, but as soon as this shield collapsed, AT&T had to undergo one of the most significant changes in its history. Other companies stepped on the heels, new technologies appeared, pressure from the outside. In 1984, the company made about 37 million calls a day, in 1989 the figure rose to 105 million, ten years later AT&T began to provide up to 270 million calls a day. All this was due to the implementation of the movement to the international market, and this is more than 200 countries, the acquisition of the computer manufacturer NCR, the deal with McCaw Cellular, through which the company became a leading force in the rapidly growing wireless industry.

The New AT&T/New AT&T

On September 20, 1995, the company announces a restructuring and split into three separate public companies: Lucent Technologies, NCR, and AT&T. It was the largest voluntary business separation in US history.

Over the next four years, the company takes steps to modernize, investing $35 billion in Internet technology, acquiring IBM Global Network, a leading provider of global data networks, merging with TCI and MediaOne, and becoming the largest cable company in the United States. In 2000, the volume of Internet traffic exceeds the volume of voice traffic for the first time.

In 2005 SBC and AT&T merge, in 2006 the same happens with BellSouth, all services provided by the companies are now offered under the single AT&T brand. What follows is a series of deals and acquisitions between AT&T and Сentennial, Cellular One, WayPort, an attempted acquisition of T-Mobile.

• Third largest company in the state of Texas;
• The fourteenth company in the world in terms of market value;
• Ninth non-oil company;
• The 20th largest mobile operator in the world;
• 100,700,000 clients;
• 252,000 employees;

(data are presented for 2010-2012)

AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph) is one of the largest providers of wireless and telephone communications in the United States today. The total number of its subscribers exceeds 150 million people, and the name itself has long become synonymous with quality.

The history of AT&T began in the 1870s. It was then that inventor Alexander Graham Bell created the world's first telephone. In 1875, he found a sponsor who agreed to finance his work, and already in 1877 received all the necessary patents. Literally a few years after that, telephone exchanges were opened in almost all major cities in the United States, Alexander Bell founded the Bell Telephone Company. The production of telephones has taken on a massive hue. It is noteworthy that the inventor did not sell the first telephone sets, but rented them out.

AT&T itself came into existence as a division of the Bell Telephone Company on March 3, 1885. At that time, its main task was to develop telephone communications over long distances. So, the first achievements of the company were telephone lines that connected New York with Philadelphia, as well as New York with Chicago. It took just a couple of years for AT&T to grow, absorb the parent Bell Telephone Company, and make Alexander Bell incredibly rich. For years to come, AT&T controlled virtually the entire American telephone network.

For almost a century, the company was a regulated monopoly. Explaining this by saying that this is the only way telephone systems can operate most efficiently, AT&T only connected telephone companies to its network that could not compete with it. This situation lasted until 1974, when the US government filed an antitrust suit against AT&T. A painful lawsuit began, which lasted ten years and led to the division of the company.

In 1984, AT&T lost ground and became incredibly vulnerable. Competitors came too close to it, the further development of the company was in jeopardy. The only chance for the former monopolist to survive in the new conditions was to enter the international market. AT&T got its bearings quite quickly and threw all its efforts into the development of wireless communications, which at that time was just gaining popularity.

1995 was the year of voluntary restructuring, when two companies spun off from AT&T, Lucent Technologies and NCR. The years that followed were years of modernization. The former monopoly invested heavily in the development of Internet technologies, bought out the leading provider of global data networks, IBM Global Network, a division of IBM. And as a result of the transaction, it became the largest among American cable companies.

In 2006, AT&T acquired its longtime competitor, BellSouth. This deal cost $67 billion. In 2011, the owners of AT&T managed to reach an agreement with the Deutsche Telekom holding. Under this agreement, they bought the T-Mobile mobile communications group for $39 billion. The result of this transaction was a dramatic increase in the number of subscribers of the company, as their total number amounted to 129 million.

It cannot be said that the development of the company was completely cloudless. For example, its wireless services have been repeatedly criticized, and in 2010 AT&T was named the worst wireless provider in the US. However, her successes are much more impressive. So, today the company is the 14th in the world in terms of market value and the 9th in the list of large companies whose activities are not related to the extraction of certain resources. In addition, AT&T is the 20th largest cellular operator in the world. And these facts speak volumes.

We continue the series of publications about foreign companies. In the first review of this issuer, we will try to provide detailed information about the company's profile, as well as an analysis of production and financial results for several years and for the last reporting period.

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications company, ranked first in the industry in terms of capitalization and revenue. The history of the company dates back to the 19th century: in 1876, Alexander Bell registered a patent for the telephone he invented, and a year later founded the Bell Telephone Company. In 1885, a subsidiary of the Bell Telephone Company, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was established in New York, whose task was to lay long-distance telephone lines. In 1899, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company formally took over the Bell Telephone Company, as New York state laws were more suitable than those of Massachusetts.

For almost the entire 20th century, the corporation functioned as a monopoly on the provision of telephone services, which continued until 1982, when the US Department of Justice decided to split the corporation into AT & T Communications (later - AT & T Corp.), providing long-distance communication services, and seven and regional companies. One such company was the Southwestern Bell Corporation, which boomed and pursued a policy of aggressive mergers and acquisitions, which ultimately led to the fact that it was acquired by AT&T Corp. The combined company received its current name - AT&T Inc. - and continued to make major purchases: in 2015, satellite TV provider DirecTV was acquired for $48.5 billion, and in October 2016, the company announced its intention to acquire Time Warner.

• Services for business - fixed and wireless communications for legal entities, government organizations around the world.
• Entertainment and Internet services - Internet access, paid satellite TV for private clients.
• Mobile communications - mobile communications services in the United States.
• International services - entertainment services in Latin America and mobile communications in Mexico.

Let us turn to the analysis of the dynamics of financial results by segments over the past 3 years and 9 months.

1. Services for business.

The business services segment makes the main contribution to the company's financial result at the operational level. In the observed interval, the total revenue in this area was very stable, however, according to the results of 9 months of 2017, there is a decrease of almost 4%. At the same time, the most significant area of ​​revenue - wireless communication services - showed modest growth against the background of a decrease in average revenue per subscriber and outstripping growth of users. The decrease in the segment's revenue for 9 months was due to a drop in revenues from traditional fixed-line services ($10.6 billion, -16%) and from sales of wireless equipment ($4.9 billion, -10%).

2. Entertainment and Internet services

This segment demonstrated in 2015-2016. a significant increase in financial and operating performance - the acquisition of DirecTV affected, which allowed a 5-fold increase in video subscribers. At the moment, their number is demonstrating a slow decline. The number of subscribers-users of broadband access in the observed period was stable. The company is losing about 10% of its traditional fixed-line subscriber base. For 9 months, the average revenue per subscriber for video and Internet showed growth, for fixed communications - decreased. Consolidated revenue of the segment for 9M 2017 showed dynamics close to zero against the backdrop of falling income from fixed communications. The company manages to progressively increase its operating profit and its profitability.

3. Mobile communication.

In the observed period, the revenue of the mobile communications direction showed an accelerating decline against the backdrop of a decrease in the subscriber base and revenue per subscriber. However, cost control allows the company to progressively increase operating income, increasing its profitability.

4.International services.

The International Services segment was formed in 2015 following the acquisition of DirecTV. For 9 months of 2017, the company managed to increase revenue in all areas - video, voice services and equipment sales, but it has not yet been possible to bring the operating result into a positive zone.

Analyzing the data, the relative volatility of operating income is striking, which was $30.5 billion in 2013 and then only $11.7 billion in 2014. Such volatility in operating results is associated with income ($7.6 billion in 2013) and expenses ($7.9 billion) on pension obligations. In 2015 and 2016 the influence of this factor was not so significant, however, after the acquisition of DirecTV, the company recorded amortization of intangible assets in 2015 by $2.7 billion and by $5.2 billion in 2016.

The table demonstrates the company's willingness to share profits with shareholders - in recent years, the company has allocated at least 80% of net profit to dividends and buybacks, while maintaining a fairly comfortable debt-to-equity ratio.

Below are our forecasts for the company's key financials, adjusted downward after the release of 9M 2017 financials in terms of an increase in general corporate expenses.

One of the drivers of growth in the company's financial results in the future should be the acquisition of Time Warner, the parties to the transaction are awaiting the approval of the latest approval from the supervisory authorities - the Department of Justice, expecting to close the transaction before the end of 2017. We estimate that the combined company will be able to earn net income in the range of $19bn to $23bn over the medium term. AT&T shares currently trade with a P/BV of around 1.7.

___________________________________________