New York, February 17, 2026, 14:25 EST — Regular session
- T-Mobile shares traded higher in Tuesday’s session, holding up better than some tech-linked names.
- A regulatory filing pointed to a small planned sale of TMUS shares under SEC Rule 144.
- Investors’ next macro checkpoint later this week could reset rate expectations.
T-Mobile US, Inc. shares were up about 0.8% at $221.31 in afternoon trade on Tuesday, after earlier touching $224.27. Verizon was down slightly and AT&T edged higher.
The tape has been jumpy since the long weekend. Wall Street has stayed subdued as heavyweight tech stocks wavered after an AI-led selloff, and traders turned their eyes to inflation data and Federal Reserve speak, according to a Reuters market report. “It’s an indiscriminate selling in all things tech,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth. (Reuters)
For T-Mobile, the latest noise came from a Form 144 notice dated Tuesday, which showed a planned sale of 10,240 shares through Fidelity Brokerage Services, with an aggregate market value listed at $2.26 million. Form 144 is a notice tied to SEC Rule 144, which governs the resale of restricted or “control” shares. (SEC)
The filing is small against the roughly 1.1 billion shares outstanding listed in the notice, but it lands at a moment when investors are quick to read any hint of supply into price action. Telecom stocks can trade like defensives when markets get choppy, but they still react to the basic math of buybacks versus stock coming to market.
T-Mobile itself has been trying to keep the focus on cash and targets. In a Feb. 11 update, the company set 2027 service revenue guidance of $80.5 billion to $81.5 billion and adjusted free cash flow guidance of $19.5 billion to $20.5 billion, and said it now expects to roughly double first-quarter 2026 share repurchases to up to about $5.0 billion. (Adjusted free cash flow is a company-defined cash metric.) (T-Mobile)
The company also said it will stop reporting postpaid phone subscriber net additions — customers who pay monthly bills — starting this quarter, Reuters reported last week. “When it comes to disclosure, more is more,” Craig Moffett, a senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, told Reuters. (Reuters)
That disclosure change is part of what makes each new data point matter. Investors still want a clean read on churn, pricing power and whether premium plan momentum is real as growth slows across the U.S. wireless market.
But the stock’s support from repurchases is not a free pass. A tougher pricing environment — or a shift in competitive behavior from peers — can pressure service revenue, and higher costs could crimp the cash the company needs to fund buybacks at the pace it laid out.
The next market catalyst comes fast. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis is due to release the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index at 8:30 a.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 20 — a print investors often use to reset rate-cut expectations. (Bea)
