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AT&T stock owes its existence to the federal antitrust split of the Bell Telephone Company, a monopoly originally created in 1879 by telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell. (read more)

The collapse of the original AT&T—the American Telephone and Telegraph Company—in 1984 created the Southwestern Bell Corp. By 2005, SBC had purchased another remnant of the original conglomerate known as AT&T Corporation and renamed the new company AT&T Inc. we know today.

In 2005, when the merger was completed by government regulators, AT&T’s stock ticker officially changed to the traditional “T” on the New York Stock Exchange, and AT&T shares still trade under the same ticker to this day.

AT&T is unique in that it is known as one of the “dividend aristocrats,” meaning that it has not only paid but increased dividends for over 25 consecutive years. Make AT&T stock popular with all types of traders.

Since 1984 and the days of the SBC, AT&T stock has paid out a total of $10.2 billion in dividends, according to analysis by The Motley Fool. The current yield is just under 5%, and AT&T stock dividends have increased for 31 consecutive years, resulting in a 5-year CAGR of 2.2%.

AT&T’s share price has roughly followed the S&P 500’s trajectory for decades. The recession of the late 2000s hit the company and AT&T’s share price hard.

Despite a return to the uptrend, AT&T’s T stock price never rose as high as SBC’s in July 1999, when AT&T’s stock price reached $59.19.

This spike in AT&T stock prices in the late 90s was fueled by the $48 billion acquisition of the cable company TCI from John Malone in 1998, followed by the $5 billion acquisition of the IBM Global Network business the following year.

The “dot-com bubble” that hit the stock market in 2000 sent AT&T’s share price down to $21.62. AT&T stock rose over the next 7 years, reaching another peak of $42.53 shortly before the September 2007 crash. This growth was aided by the appointment of current CEO Randall Stevenson in May of that year.

AT&T’s stock price finally dropped in early 2009. The stock has risen almost constantly from that low of $23.77 to a high range of $30 as of August 2017.

In 2016, AT&T reported $163.8 billion in revenue, which translates into earnings per share of $2.10. As of August 2017, AT&T is awaiting US federal approval for a $108 billion merger with Time Warner. The move will merge all of AT&T’s telecommunications holdings with Warner Bros. Studios Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting, CNN HBO. The approval is likely to affect AT&T’s share price and has already been approved by European regulators.

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