Monday's declines extend losses in the sector from last week. Since the WSJ investigation began to publish, AT&T, Verizon, Lumen and Frontier had shed a collective $18 billion in market cap before Monday's losses, MoffettNathanson analysts Craig Moffett and Nick Del Deo said earlier Monday. Analysts at TD Cowen said it is too early to size up the potential financial fallout of the issues stemming from the WSJ investigation. AT&T and USTelecom, an industry group, have created webpages disputing the environmental and public health impacts of the lead cables. They also declined to provide a full accounting of the number of lead cables in their networks to the Journal.

Source: Wall Street Journal July 17, 2023 14:38 UTC