AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have big plans. Only one is a real growth stock.

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Investors were able to spend eight hours listening to telecoms executives last week, with back-to-back Investor Days

Verizon Communications,

T-Mobile United States,

and

AT&T

from Wednesday to Friday. Management teams presented their plans for the newly acquired wireless spectrum licenses and put forward their strategies for the 5G era.

AT & T’s depressed stock (ticker: T) was the biggest winner on its investor day, but for reasons beyond its core wireless business.

Verizon

(VZ) and

T Mobile

(TMUS), meanwhile, have both adhered to their proven messages: “Network, network, network” for Verizon and “Leave the competition in the dust” for T-Mobile.

Verizon was the largest investor in the recently completed C-band auction, having incurred $ 53 billion for spectrum licenses and associated clearing costs. Management made it the centerpiece of their pitch on Wednesday evening. It plans to invest $ 10 billion to upgrade its network equipment to handle this spectrum, in addition to an existing annual investment budget of around $ 18 billion.

Verizon sees its 5G investments pay off in a few years. He said he plans to increase his service revenue by at least 2% in 2021, at least 3% in 2022 and 2023 and at least 4% in 2024 and beyond.

It’s not a lot, but it’s a decent clip for Verizon. In a saturated US wireless market, management is focused on moving customers to more expensive premium unlimited plans. He also highlighted new 5G monetization opportunities like mobile edge computing for businesses and a home wireless broadband product, which he sees reaching 50 million homes by 2025. The Verizon share fell 2.8% after its event.

The highlight of AT&T’s presentation on Friday morning was unrelated to telecommunications. The company unveiled a significantly higher subscriber target for HBO Max and HBO, and detailed management plans for ad-supported tier and international launches. Other guidance and comments largely reiterated previous remarks.

This focus on streaming seemed sufficient, and AT & T’s stock rose 0.9% on Friday. The company now expects to have up to 150 million streaming subscribers by 2025, against its previous forecast – from the end of 2019 – of 90 million.

Recently, the market valued streaming services purely based on revenue multiples and subscriber growth, unlike AT&T’s slow-growing, capital-intensive telecommunications companies.

Netflix

stock (NFLX) has long traded primarily on its subscriber numbers, while lofty goals of

ViacomCBS

(VIAC) and

Discovery

(DISCA) have recently caused these stocks to skyrocket. But AT&T might not get as much credit given its conglomerate structure.

AT&T and Verizon continue to attract value investors – Warren Buffett’s

Berkshire Hathaway

(BRK.B) recently took a stake in the latter – and neither of the two management teams has done much to change that. Trading for around nine and 11 times forward earnings, respectively, and with high annual dividend yields of 7% and 4.4%, they certainly look attractive relative to the market. But there is a lot more growth elsewhere.

Coming about a year after its acquisition of Sprint, T-Mobile’s Thursday afternoon event focused on the company’s progress in integrating its former rival. T-Mobile management has not shied away from its ambitions to gain market share in the rural and suburban areas of the United States and with commercial customers – where it is currently behind AT&T and Verizon – and suggesting that the merger will bring even greater benefits than when it was first proposed in 2018. Wall Street expected a revision of synergy and free cash flow targets.

T-Mobile has kept its promises, raising its annual estimate of merger-related cost savings from 25% to $ 7.5 billion, and saying its integration was a year ahead of schedule. The company now sees around $ 65 billion in cumulative free cash flow through 2025, about 20% more than before, which opens the door to a potential share buyback of $ 60 billion from 2023 to 2025. T-Mobile’s current market value is approximately $ 157 billion.

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But estimates in this direction were already in the consensus figures of Wall Street. T-Mobile stock went from a 1.9% rise Thursday afternoon to a 1.1% close as the event continued.

Management’s execution over the next several years will be critical, with the stock price valued at around 48 times earnings over time. Nonetheless, T-Mobile remains the most compelling growth story in the US wireless industry.

Write to Nicholas Jasinski at [email protected]