AT&T 10-Q 2026-09-30

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-Q

For the quarterly period ended September 30, 2026

or

For the transition period from to

Commission File Number 001-08610

AT&T INC.

Incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware

I.R.S. Employer Identification Number 43-1301883

208 S. Akard St., Dallas, Texas 75202

Telephone Number: (210) 821-4105

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.

Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).

Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.

☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).

Yes ☐ No ☒

At October 15, 2026, there were 6,736,473,433 common shares outstanding.

PART I - FINANCIAL INFORMATION

See Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements.

Showing the first 8K of 129K characters. Open the full section

Dollars in millions except per share amounts

RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

AT&T Inc. is referred to as “we,” “AT&T” or the “Company” throughout this document. AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc., and the names of the particular subsidiaries and affiliates providing the services generally have been omitted. AT&T is a holding company whose subsidiaries and affiliates operate worldwide in the telecommunications and technology industries. You should read this discussion in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes (Notes). Percentage increases and decreases that are not considered meaningful are denoted with a dash.

On February 2, 2026, we closed our transaction with Lumen Technologies, Inc. (Lumen) and acquired substantially all of Lumen’s Mass Markets fiber business. The acquisition included customer relationships, which we include with our advanced home internet services and fiber network assets that were placed in a wholly owned subsidiary, Forged Fiber 37 Services, LLC (Forged Fiber). Upon acquisition, we sought an equity partner to co-invest in Forged Fiber and have since agreed to sell a controlling interest in the business. As such, Forged Fiber met the criteria of held-for-sale and accordingly is reflected as discontinued operations in the accompanying financial statements and are not included in our discussion of continuing operations. (See Notes 8 and 12)

Consolidated Results Our financial results from continuing operations are summarized in the discussions that follow. Additional analysis is discussed in our “Segment Results” section.

Operating revenues increased in the third quarter and for the first nine months of 2026, reflecting higher Advanced Connectivity wireless service, fiber and equipment revenues, with fiber revenues including the impact of acquiring Lumen’s mass markets fiber business. Operating revenues in Mexico were also higher due to growth in postpaid revenues and favorable foreign exchange impacts. Offsetting the increases were lower Legacy revenues as we continue to work towards the decommissioning of our copper-based legacy network.

Operations and support expenses increased in the third quarter and for the first nine months of 2026, primarily due to a noncash impairment charge associated with our held-for-sale Mexico wireless business, employee separation charges, higher wireless equipment sales which drove higher equipment and bad debt expenses, and incremental customer costs related to our acquired mass markets fiber business. These cost increases were partially offset by cost reductions from transformation initiatives and apportioned legal settlements in 2025. The increase for the first nine months also included an asset abandonment

AT&T INC.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2026

Item 2. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

Dollars in millions except per share amounts

charge associated with the reprioritization of our spectrum strategy in the second quarter of 2026, which was partially offset by lower content licensing fees and higher gains on tower transactions.

Depreciation and amortization expense decreased in the third quarter and for the first nine months of 2026, primarily due to lower depreciation from fully depreciated legacy assets, partially offset by ongoing capital spending for strategic initiatives such as fiber and network upgrades.

Operating income decreased in the third quarter and for the first nine months of 2026. Our operating income margin in the third quarter decreased from 19.9% in 2025 to 12.7% in 2026 and for the first nine months decreased from 19.9% in 2025 to 18.7% in 2026.

Interest expense increased in the third quarter and for the first nine months of 2026, primarily due to higher debt balances and interest rates on long-term borrowings. Interest expense is expected to remain elevated as a result of debt issued to fund our recent spectrum acquisition, partially offset by capitalized interest related to those spectrum assets not yet placed into service (see Note 8).

**Equity in net income (loss) of affil

Showing the first 8K of 63K characters. Open the full section

At September 30, 2026, we had no interest rate swaps.

We have fixed-to-fixed and floating-to-fixed cross-currency swaps on foreign currency-denominated debt instruments with a U.S. dollar notional value of $41,144 to hedge our exposure to changes in foreign currency exchange rates and interest rates. These derivatives have been designated as fair value or cash flow hedges with a net fair value of $(1,536) at September 30, 2026.

The registrant maintains disclosure controls and procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by the registrant is recorded, processed, summarized, accumulated and communicated to its management, including its principal executive and principal financial officers, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure, and reported within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms. The Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have performed an evaluation of the effectiveness of the design and operation of the registrant’s disclosure controls and procedures as of

AT&T INC.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2026

September 30, 2026. Based on that evaluation, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that the registrant’s disclosure controls and procedures were effective as of September 30, 2026.

There have not been any changes in our internal control over financial reporting during our most recent fiscal quarter that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

AT&T INC.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2026

CAUTIONARY LANGUAGE CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Information set forth in this report contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially. Many of these factors are discussed in more detail in the “Risk Factors” section herein and in our most recent Form 10-K. We claim the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

The following factors could cause our future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements:

• Adverse economic and political changes, public health emergencies and our ability to access financial markets on favorable terms.

• Increases in our benefit plans’ costs, including due to worse-than-assumed investment returns and discount rates, mortality assumptions, medical cost trends, or healthcare laws or regulations.

• The final outcome of FCC and other federal, state or foreign government agency proceedings (including judicial review of such proceedings) and legislative and regulatory efforts involving issues important to our business, including, without limitation, results of pending governmental investigations; the transition from legacy technologies to IP-based infrastructure, including the withdrawal of legacy TDM-based services; universal service; broadband deployment; wireless equipment siting regulations; E911 services; rules concerning digital discrimination; competition policy; privacy; net neutrality; copyright protection; availability of new spectrum on fair and reasonable terms; and wireless and satellite license awards and renewals, and our response to such legislative and regulatory efforts.

• Enactment of or changes to state, local, federal and/or foreign tax laws and regulations, and actions by tax agencies and judicial authorities, and the resolution of disputes with any taxing jurisdictions.

• U.S. and foreign laws and regulations regarding intellectual property rights protection and privacy, personal data protection and user consent.

• Our ability to compete in a competitive industry and against competitors that can offer product/service offerings at lower prices due to lower cost structures and regulatory and legislative actions adverse to us, including non-regulation of comparable alternative technologies and/or government-owned or subsidized networks, and our response to such competition and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.

• Disruptions in our supply chain that have a material impact on our ability to acquire needed goods and services.

• The development and delivery of attractive and profitable wireless and broadband offerings and devices, including our ability to match speeds and coverage areas offered by competitors; and the availability, cost and/or reliability of technologies required to provide such offerings.

• Our ability to adequately fund additional wireless spectrum and network development, deployment and maintenance; and regulations and conditions relating to spectrum use, licensing, obtaining additional spectrum, technical standards and deployment and usage, including network management rules.

• Our ability to manage growth in wireless data services, including network quality.

• The outcome of pending, threatened or potential litigation and arbitration.

• The impact from major equipment, software or other failures or errors that disrupt our networks or cyber incidents; the effect of security breaches related to the network or customer information; our inability to obtain handsets, equipment/software or have handsets, equipment/software serviced in a timely and cost-effective manner; severe weather conditions or other natural disasters including earthquakes and forest fires; public health emergencies; energy shortages; or wars or terrorist attacks.

• The issuance by the FASB or other accounting oversight bodies of new or revised accounting standards.

• The imposition of tariffs and their duration and uncertainty surrounding further tariffs and congressional action regarding spending and taxation, which may result in changes in government spending and affect business and consumer spending trends.

• Our ability to realize or sustain the expected benefits of our business transformation initiatives, which are designed to reduce costs, enable legacy rationalization, streamline distribution, remove redundancies and simplify and improve processes and support functions.

• Our ability to successfully complete acquisitions, divestitures and joint venture transactions, as well as achieve our expectations regarding the financial impact of completed and/or pending transactions.

Readers are cautioned that other factors discussed in this report and in our most recent Form 10-K, although not enumerated here, also could materially affect our future earnings.

AT&T INC.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2026

PART II – OTHER INFORMATION

Dollars in millions except per share amounts

We discuss in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 various risks that may materially affect our business. We use this section to update this discussion to reflect material developments. For the third quarter of 2026, there were no such material developments.

Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds

(c) A summary of our repurchases of common stock during the third quarter of 2026 is as follows:

(c) During the quarter ended September 30, 2026, no director or officer (as defined in Rule 16a-1(f)) of the Company adopted or terminated a contract, instruction or written plan for the purchase or sale of securities of the Company intended to satisfy the affirmative defense conditions of Rule 10b5-1(c) and/or a non-Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement.

AT&T INC.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2026

The following exhibits are filed or incorporated by reference as a part of this report:

SIGNATURE

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.