By Angela Palumbo
Forget Verizon or T-Mobile. AT&T now has to worry about competition from satellite operators like SpaceX and Amazon.com.
Such concerns led Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan to downgrade shares of AT&T to Perform from Outperform on Wednesday and removed his previous price target of $32.
Rising competition from providers of satellite broadband, like Amazon's Leo and SpaceX's Starlink, could take market share from AT&T's internet business. SpaceX is expected to go public next week, and Horan says the IPO will highlight the risks satellite poses to AT&T.
"We think longer-term broadband subscriber growth and eventually mobile is at risk from rising threat of satellite LEO [Low Earth Orbit] constellations," Horan wrote in a research note.
AT&T didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shares of AT&T slid 4.4% to $23.56 on Wednesday and were on pace for their largest one-day percentage decrease since Oct. 6, 2025, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The stock has now fallen 5.2% this year.
AT&T, however, has been taking steps to remain a competitive internet provider. Most notably, it has been expanding its fiber network, which is used for high speed connectivity. On March 10, the company announced that it planned to spend $250 billion over the next five years as it accelerates the deployment of ber, 5G, and wireless across the country.
CEO John Stankey also said on the company's first-quarter earnings call in April that "today, we reach over 37 million customer locations with fiber, and we're on track to reach 60 million-plus locations by the end of the decade."
Worries about satellite competition are nothing new. Stankey was asked about it during the company's annual shareholder meeting on May 14, and acknowledged that satellite has an important role in connecting customers better in hard to reach areas.
But "I don't think satellite is a substitute for the speed, reliability and capability of our assets that we've been investing in for decades," he said.
Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 03, 2026 12:49 ET (16:49 GMT)
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