24/7 Wall St. 2007 Price Targets: Verizon, $32

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Aug 18, 10:15AM EDT · Published Jan 9, 5:14AM EST

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Over the next week 24/7 Wall St. will set mid-year price targets (June, 30, 2007) for the sixty most widely traded stocks. These targets will be based on past price performance, industry activity, forward projections of financial performance, outside analyst opinions, and research conducted for doing past articles on these firms. The price targets assume flat markets over the next six months. In other words, if the Nasdaq moved up 25% between now and mid-year, the target share price targets would probably be too low. If the market moved down by 20%, they would probably be too high

Verizon. (VZ). Some assumptions about Verizon are safely set in stone. Its Verizon Wireless business (a joint venture) will continue to do well. Along with Cingular it dominates the cell market in the US. Fixed line telephone service will become a smaller part of revenue as customers move to voice over IP.

But, the largest assumption about Verizon has to do with its $18 billion fiber-to-the-home initiative. Will high speed service that can deliver a bounty of high-definition channels take any meaningful business away from cable and satellite TV companies?

Recent signals about the fiber systems, dubbed FIOS, have not been good. Over the next week 24/7 Wall St. will set mid-year price targets (June, 30, 2007) for the sixty most widely traded stocks. These targets will be based on past price performance, industry activity, forward projections of financial performance, outside analyst opinions, and research conducted for doing past articles on these firms. The price targets assume flat markets over the next six months. In other words, if the Nasdaq moved up 25% between now and mid-year, the target share price targets would probably be too low. If the market moved down by 20%, they would probably be too high”>head of the project left Verizon. The pessimists went wild: "This is the beginning of the end for FiOS," says the Washington, D.C.-based telecom investment veteran, who has no position in Verizon. (from TheStreet.com) As TheStreet further points out: "Still, Verizon has been heavily criticized ever since it launched its fiber-to-the-home strategy as a way of battling cable companies with the triple play of TV, fast Internet and phone service. Taking on the staggering costs of rewiring houses amounted to a gamble that a big data pipe would open up new sources of revenue."

Comcast recently said that its will not lose many cable customers to Verizon and AT&T. They are probably right.

Factors that could push stock price above target: Any early indication that Verizon’s fiber TV is gaining subscribers quickly will help that shares.

Factors that coul move stock below forecast: Cost overruns or slow subscriber uptake for the fiber project could really damage the shares.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies the he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.