Buy this telecommunications giant after a sell-off on weak quarterly earnings, HSBC says

Published Fri, Apr 21 20236:09 AM EDT

HSBC recommends buying shares in telecommunications giant AT & T after Wall Street's overreaction to quarterly results. The firm upgraded AT & T stock to a buy rating on Thursday, albeit with an unchanged price target of $21.That represents 19% upside against the stocks last closing price of $17.75 per share. Shares rose nearly 1.4% in pre-market trading Friday after a steep selloff a day earlier that saw the stock drop more than 10%. AT & T's latest quarterly earnings report spooked investors despite beating on adjusted earnings. The company came shy of Wall Street's consensus of $30.27 billion in revenue, posting $30.14 billion. Perhaps the biggest driver behind the selloff was AT & T's 424,000 addition this quarter to postpaid phone plans, which essentially amounts to customers and businesses paying their bills each month, as a well as lower than expected free cash flow generation of $1 billion compared to an expected $2.6 billion. T YTD mountain Shares of AT & T are heading higher in pre-market trading after a steep selloff a day earlier. While in line with Wall Street projections, that's still less than 691,000 subscribers added in the year earlier period. HSBC telecoms analyst Adam Fox-Rumley thinks too much is being made of the metric, and the steep selloff Thursday is a buying opportunity for investors. "The market, in our view, has over-reacted to this release. We acknowledge that part of a stock-picker's job is to call the beauty contest, and plainly the market remains acutely focused on mobile KPIs in particular," Fox-Rumley said. "But a slowdown in market momentum has been widely flagged (by all operators) for months, and AT & T's absolute growth in mobile subs remained solid." And while Fox-Rumley says he remains "sympathetic" to investor concerns that AT & T struggled with cash generating cash in the first quarter of 2023, executives had already warned in January that the start to this year could be weaker than previously thought. "We plainly take a different view of the results than the market, and thus, we see an opportunity in the sell-off," he said. — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.