AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have big plans. Only one is a true growth stock.

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Investors have had to spend eight hours combined listening to telecommunications executives in the last week, with days from investors back to back from

Verizon Communications,

T-Mobile USA,

and

AT&T

Wednesday to Friday. The management teams presented their plans for the recently purchased wireless spectrum licenses and presented their strategies for the 5G era.

AT&T’s depressed shares (ticker: T) were the biggest winner on investor day, but for reasons unrelated to its core wireless business.

Verizon

(VZ) and

T-Mobile

Meanwhile, (TMUS), they both stuck to their tried and true messages: “Network, network, network” for Verizon and “Leaving competitors in the dust” for T-Mobile.

Verizon was the largest spender on the recently completed C-Band auction, after committing $ 53 billion for spectrum licensing and associated compensation costs. The management made it the centerpiece of his pitch Wednesday night. It expects to invest $ 10 billion to upgrade its network equipment to manage this spectrum – in addition to an annual capital expenditure of around $ 18 billion.

Verizon sees its 5G investments pay off in a few years. He said he expects to increase his revenue from services by at least 2% in 2021, at least 3% in 2022 and 2023 and at least 4% in 2024 and beyond.

It’s not much, but it’s a decent clip for Verizon. In a saturated US wireless market, management is focusing on moving customers to unlimited premium plans at higher prices. He also highlighted new 5G money-making opportunities, such as the enterprise mobile computer and a home broadband wireless product, which he sees covering 50 million homes by 2025. Verizon stock has dropped 2 , 8% after the event.

The highlight of AT & T’s presentation on Friday morning was not related to telecommunications. The company revealed a significantly higher subscriber target for HBO Max and HBO, and management has detailed plans for a level of publicity and international releases. Other guidelines and comments largely reiterated previous observations.

This concentration in cash seems to be enough, and AT&T shares rose 0.9% on Friday. The company now expects to have up to 150 million streaming subscribers by 2025, compared to its previous forecast – by the end of 2019 – of up to 90 million.

Lately, the market has appreciated streaming services in terms of revenue growth and subscriber growth – very little unlike the slow and capital-intensive telecommunications companies AT&T.

Netflix

(NFLX) has long traded predominantly on subscribers, while ambitious targets in the

ViacomCBS

(VIAC) and

Discovery

(DISCA) recently sent those stocks up. But AT&T may not get as much credit, given its conglomerate structure.

AT&T and Verizon remain attractive to valuable investors – Warren Buffett’s

Berkshire Hathaway

(BRK.B) recently took a stake in the latter – and none of the management teams did too much to change that. Trading for earnings nine times and 11 times, respectively, and with strong annual dividend yields of 7% and 4.4%, they certainly look attractive to the market. But there is a much higher growth elsewhere.

Coming about a year after the acquisition of Sprint, Thursday afternoon’s T-Mobile event focused on the company’s progress in integrating its former rival. T-Mobile’s management has not been shy about its ambitions to gain market share in rural and suburban US and with business customers – where today it lags behind AT&T and Verizon – and suggesting that the merger will result in higher than when it was first proposed in 2018. Wall Street expected a revised synergy and targets with free cash flows.

T-Mobile delivered, raising the annual estimate of merger-related cost savings by 25% to $ 7.5 billion, and said its integration was a year ahead of schedule. The company now sees about $ 65 billion in cumulative free cash flow through 2025, up about 20 percent more than before, opening the door to a potential $ 60 billion share buyback from 2023 to 2025. The current value of the T-Mobile market is about $ 157 billion.

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But estimates in this regard were already in the consensus numbers on Wall Street. T-Mobile shares rose from a 1.9% rise on Thursday afternoon to a 1.1% close as the event continued.

The execution of management in the coming years will be crucial, with the stock at successful prices about 48 times the subsequent gains. However, T-Mobile remains the most compelling growth story for the US wireless industry.

Write to Nicholas Jasinski at [email protected]