New York, Feb 13, 2026, 16:08 EST — Trading pushed into the after-hours.
- Verizon ended Friday’s regular session down 1.0% at $48.99, then barely budged in after-hours trading
- Thursday’s session saw the stock surge to a 52-week high, trading on unusually heavy volume.
- Focus now turns to execution: wireless subscriber growth, the Frontier integration, and the Feb. 24 CFO appearance all on the radar.
Verizon Communications Inc dropped 0.96% to close at $48.99 on Friday, then slipped a bit more after the bell to $48.96. That comes right after Thursday’s rally, which sent shares to $50.24 at their session peak. 1
The timing is key. Verizon’s shares have rebounded to a spot where every fresh detail on subscribers, costs, or pricing grabs extra attention—telecom rivals aren’t letting up on promotions, either.
Verizon climbed 1% to finish at $49.46, notching its fourth consecutive advance and setting a new 52-week closing high, according to MarketWatch data. Trading activity spiked, with volume reaching roughly 56 million shares, far outpacing the recent average reported by the publication. 2
Verizon trailed behind on Friday, with T-Mobile US gaining around 1.5%. AT&T dropped close to 0.6%, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF finished off about 0.1%.
Investors sifted through a late Friday Form 3 filing outlining equity awards for Alfonso Villanueva Rodriguez, identified as Verizon’s chief transformation officer and interim consumer group head. According to the document, restricted stock units are scheduled to vest in late 2026 and 2027. 3
But what really set things in motion came back in late January. Verizon rolled out a 2026 adjusted earnings outlook of $4.90 to $4.95 per share, plus pegged free cash flow at no less than $21.5 billion—cash after expenses and capex—and kicked off a $25 billion buyback. “Verizon will no longer be a hunting ground for our competitors,” Chief Executive Dan Schulman declared at the time. MoffettNathanson also pointed out the Frontier acquisition pushed Verizon’s fiber footprint up close to AT&T’s scale. 4
Verizon’s angle on the Frontier deal? Fiber. That’s the selling point. In a Jan. 20 note, Schulman put it bluntly: together, the two would cover roughly 30 million fiber “passings,” linking Frontier’s infrastructure with Verizon’s Fios label. 5
The balance-sheet load makes the Frontier deal significant. Verizon is set to shell out $9.6 billion in cash and absorb roughly $10 billion of Frontier’s debt, according to Reuters, after California signed off on the final regulatory requirement. 6
Rival carriers remain fixated on the lucrative postpaid wireless segment. T-Mobile reported it fell short of Wall Street’s projections for postpaid phone subscriber growth in the fourth quarter, though the company boosted its outlook for future periods, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Postpaid refers to customers billed monthly, a key U.S. wireless gauge.) 7
The risks aren’t hard to see: more aggressive price competition could pressure service revenue, and trying to fold in a big acquisition while slashing expenses only adds to execution headaches. On top of that, Verizon is under the microscope after its Jan. 14 outage—regulators are still digging in. The FCC has put out a call for public input on how the outage played out, an agency notice shows. 8
Feb. 24 lands as the next scheduled event: CFO Tony Skiadas is slated to speak at the Barclays Communications and Content Symposium, according to Verizon’s investor page. Shares flirted with $50 recently—now, investors will be tuned in for commentary on subscriber trends, updates on Frontier integration expenses, and any fresh signals about when buybacks might start hitting the tape. 9
