After failing to close in positive territory for a 10th session in a row Tuesday, AT&T Inc. shares were tracking toward a sizable gain in Wednesday’s trading activity. The telecommunications stock was up 8.4% in morning trades as recent company commentary suggested to some analysts that AT&T’s
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+7.47%
exposure to lead-clad cables may not be as significant as feared. The company estimates that lead-clad cables represent less than 10% of its copper-cable footprint and that “a very small portion” of those run underwater.
See more: AT&T to pause prior plans to remove lead cables under Lake Tahoe as it works with regulators AT&T shares have taken a beating lately after reporting from the Wall Street Journal keyed in on lead-sheathed cables used historically by the telecommunications industry, which the story said posed health risks. The stock had gone 10 full trading sessions in a row prior to Wednesday without notching a gain, factoring in one session of flat performance. It fell 16.6% over that 10-session stretch, AT&T’s longest without a daily increase since one of equal length that ended Oct. 21, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data. AT&T shares were on track to log their largest single-day percentage gain since March 13, 2020, when they rose 10%, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Read also: Verizon’s lead ‘overhang’ may limit dividend increases, analyst says in downgrade The company late Tuesday held a call with analysts and released a legal filing that left Oppenheimer’s Timothy Horan with the sense that the company’s exposure to lead cable was less than Wall Street initially expected, meaning potential removal costs could be lower than he had anticipated. “We think [AT&T] is being conservative, but less than 10% of its footprint [or about 200,000 miles] are lead-sheathed, three-fourths of which are conduits buried underground that should likely just remain in place,” Horan wrote. “Even cables …
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