Analyst George Notter says that AT&T slowed its capital spending this spring.

Dan O'Shea, Analyst, Heavyreading.com

June 2, 2014

2 Min Read
What's With AT&T's Capex Dip?

Is AT&T slowing down its capital spending, or is it just "truing up"?

In a research note issued this morning, George Notter, managing director of communications infrastructure equity research at Jefferies & Company Inc. , wrote that AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) was observed by some vendors to have slowed down its capital spending in early or mid-April. "This commentary has been quite uniform among our industry contacts that do business on the Wireline side of AT&T's capital budget," the note said. "Now, our contacts -- broadly -- are experiencing shipment/revenue declines on the order of 50-65% relative to the month of March."

If that's the case, a number of vendors -- Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN), Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR), Adtran Inc. (Nasdaq: ADTN), Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR), JDSU (Nasdaq: JDSU; Toronto: JDU), andAlcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) among them -- could be affected. Ciena is due to report quarterly earnings this Thursday, so its call with analysts that day will bear close listening for any related commentary.

However, there are other possible explanations for the apparent decline. Notter wrote that a couple of his contacts have heard information suggesting that AT&T's spending could pick up again by next month, in which case the company simply might be "truing up" its spending in accordance with its full-year capex plan.

There also has been a perception that changes in AT&T's spending patterns could have something to do with its Supplier Domain 2.0 program. The carrier recently added more vendors to that program, and though its didn't change capex guidance, AT&T has suggested the cloud-related program "could reflect a downward bias" toward capex in the years to come. (See AT&T Adds Amdocs, Juniper to Cloud Roster.)

Notter's finding contrasts with the observation this year by the Raymond James Financial Inc. (NYSE: RJF) research team that AT&T might be spending its capital budget this year in a more linear, less seasonal fashion than it traditionally has. The team found that AT&T spent 27% of its full-year capex budget during the first quarter, counter to the traditional average of about 21%. (See Capex Trend Points to Less Seasonality – Analysts.)

AT&T knows which explanation is the right one, but it isn't saying. The telco has been strangely quiet with the vendor community about the recent spending dip.

— Dan O'Shea, Managing Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Dan O'Shea

Analyst, Heavyreading.com

You want Dans? We got 'em! This one, "Fancy" Dan O'Shea, has been covering the telecom industry for 20 years, writing about virtually every technology segment and winning several ASBPE awards in the process. He previously served as editor-in-chief of Telephony magazine, and was the founding editor of FierceTelecom. Grrrr! Most recently, this sleep-deprived father of two young children has been a Chicago-based freelance writer, and continues to pontificate on non-telecom topics such as fantasy sports, craft beer, baseball and other subjects that pay very little but go down well at parties. In his spare time he claims to be reading Ulysses (yeah, right), owns fantasy sports teams that almost never win, and indulges in some fieldwork with those craft beers. So basically, it's time to boost those bar budgets, folks!

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