Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) last week saw its share price increase by $1.12 (nearly 2.5%), a nice gain, but not enough to relinquish its position as the worst-performing stock among the 30 equities included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. For the year to date, Verizon’s shares are down 13%. Chevron is closing in as oil prices drop and now it shows a loss for the year of 12.4%.
The Verizon stock price fell to a new 52-week low of $44.46 in the week ending May 19, but share have managed to add nearly 4.5% since then.
The telecom giant reportedly made an offer to acquire Charter Communications that would have cost the company more than $100 billion. Depending on how you look at it, that was either good news or bad news for shareholders.
The good news is that the Verizon also said that it would continue to pay its $0.58 per share quarterly dividend, something it would have had trouble doing if Charter was willing to be acquired.
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The bad news is that the rejection leaves Verizon behind rival AT&T in the race to acquire content, which has led, so far, to AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV and Verizon’s much smaller deals for AOL and Yahoo.
Verizon did lower the price of its prepaid phone plans last week, however. Under the new offers, subscribers can get 3 GB of data for $40 a month, 7 GB for $50 or 10 GB for $70. Unused data rolls over to the next month. The company’s $80 prepaid offer for unlimited data was retained.
Verizon stock closed at $46.44 per share on Friday, down about 0.1% for the day. The stock’s 52-week range is $44.46 to $56.95, and the 12-month consensus price target is $49.88, according to MarketWatch. The company’s dividend yield ended the week down slightly at 4.97%.
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