AT&T shares were sinking Thursday despite an earnings beat in a quarter with a lot of moving parts due to recent business divestments. While the company raised its annual forecast for mobility service revenue in light of stronger-than-expected customer additions, it also pulled down its free-cash-flow outlook to account for factors such as higher investment spending linked to customer growth and revised expectations around the timing of customer payments.
AT&T’s stock
T,
-7.57%
was oscillating between being on pace for its worst single-day percentage decline in two years and its worst such drop in more than two decades. Shares were down as much as 10.9% earlier in Thursday’s session, which would have been larger than the 10.2% drop sustained July 22, 2002 and second only to the 12.7% drop experienced Dec. 19, 2000. The stock has bounced slightly from its intraday low and was recently off 8.9% in midday trading, putting it on track for its worst single-day fall since March 12, 2020, when it lost 9.2%. AT&T said it saw the best second quarter for postpaid phone net additions in more than a decade as it delivered 813,000 adds during the latest period. Postpaid phone churn was 0.75%. The company sees the subscriber momentum as indicative of efforts over the l …