Is AT&T Stock Stronger Than It Looks?
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AT&T (T) is selling fiber internet and wireless plans to the same households. Those combined accounts may be what the stock’s buyers are betting on. You probably still think of AT&T as a slow phone company with heavy debt. The share price appears to agree. The stock lost 7.7% over the past twelve months, dividends included, while the S&P 500 gained 13.7%. For AT&T to be stronger than it looks, it has to keep adding those households and turn the profit into less debt. So, how fast is AT&T adding those households?
AT&T Is Adding Combined Accounts Faster
On the October 21, 2026 call, management said AT&T added about 350,000 combined accounts in the September quarter, a faster pace than in the June quarter. By the end of September, nearly 43% of the households on its newer home internet services also had a postpaid wireless account with AT&T.
The home internet side is where the growth shows. Service revenue from those internet services grew more than 23% from a year earlier in the third quarter. That comparison includes fiber customers in territories AT&T bought from Lumen, a deal it closed in early February. AT&T signed up 416,000 net new AT&T Fiber customers in that quarter, and another 280,000 for Internet Air.
Management says those gains are behind the company’s service revenue growth of 3.8%, its best in more than four years. That growth also compares against a year-earlier quarter from before AT&T closed the Lumen deal.
Is AT&T Cutting Debt As It Grows?
Not yet. At the end of September, AT&T’s net debt rose to 3.13 times its adjusted EBITDA, a measure of earnings that management uses, up from 2.68 times in June. The jump followed AT&T’s $23 billion purchase of spectrum licenses from EchoStar at the end of July.
Debt is the worry that comes with AT&T, and it is large. Total debt equals 119.6% of the company’s market value, against 19.4% for the S&P 500.
Management expects net debt to return to about 2.5 times adjusted EBITDA during 2029. AT&T plans to get there through growth in adjusted EBITDA and by repaying debt with spare cash, plus proceeds in 2027 from closing its fiber joint venture and from the planned sale of its AT&T Mexico wireless business. Management also links the company’s improving profitability to its growing base of combined customers, so those households are part of how AT&T plans to bring the debt down.
What AT&T’s Customer Gains Leave Out
AT&T is winning some of its new households with a lower price. Fiber revenue per customer fell 4% from a year earlier in the third quarter, which management put down to introductory pricing, discounts on combined accounts and lower-priced fiber customers on the Quantum brand in territories bought from Lumen. Management expects a similar decline in the fourth quarter.
Management’s answer is that account growth matters more, and that AT&T has a history of managing its prices, including a rise across much of its fiber base last December, before the third-quarter decline. Still, if households take the discounted fiber but stop adding wireless, AT&T ends up with the lower fiber price and no wireless bill to go with it, leaving less earnings growth to pay down debt.
AT&T added combined accounts faster in the September quarter than in the June quarter. Its debt against earnings went up over the same months, however, so the debt is the weaker side today. AT&T’s net debt against its adjusted earnings is the number to watch in its fourth-quarter report, expected in January 2027.
Does This Mean You Should Act On T?
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