New York, Feb 13, 2026, 16:08 EST — After-hours.
- Verizon shares fell 1.0% to $48.99 in Friday’s regular session; little changed after the bell
- The stock hit a 52-week high on Thursday on heavy volume
- Focus shifts to execution: wireless adds, Frontier integration and the Feb. 24 CFO appearance
Verizon Communications Inc shares fell on Friday, ending the regular session down 0.96% at $48.99 and edging to $48.96 in after-hours trading. The pullback followed Thursday’s surge that pushed the stock to an intraday high of $50.24. (Investing)
The timing matters. Verizon has climbed back to levels that put any new datapoint on subscribers, pricing and costs under a brighter light, especially with telecom promotions still aggressive.
A day earlier, Verizon rose 1% to close at $49.46, its fourth straight gain and a fresh 52-week closing high, MarketWatch data showed. Volume jumped to about 56 million shares, well above the recent average cited by the publication. (MarketWatch)
Friday’s move left Verizon lagging some peers. T-Mobile US rose about 1.5% while AT&T slipped about 0.6%, and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF ended down roughly 0.1%.
Investors also parsed a Form 3 filing late Friday that listed equity awards for Alfonso Villanueva Rodriguez, described as Verizon’s chief transformation officer and interim head of its consumer group. The filing showed restricted stock units set to vest in late 2026 and 2027. (Streetinsider)
The bigger driver remains what happened in late January. Verizon forecast 2026 adjusted earnings of $4.90 to $4.95 per share and free cash flow of at least $21.5 billion — cash left after expenses and capital spending — and launched a $25 billion buyback plan. Chief Executive Dan Schulman told investors then, “Verizon will no longer be a hunting ground for our competitors,” while MoffettNathanson said the Frontier close had grown Verizon’s fiber footprint to nearly AT&T’s size. (Reuters)
Verizon has pitched the Frontier tie-up as the fiber piece of the plan. In a Jan. 20 note, Schulman said the combined footprint would reach about 30 million fiber “passings,” pairing Frontier’s network with Verizon’s Fios brand. (Verizon)
The Frontier deal also matters because it is balance-sheet heavy. Verizon agreed to pay $9.6 billion in cash and take on about $10 billion in Frontier debt, a Reuters report said when California cleared the last regulatory hurdle. (Reuters)
Rival updates have kept attention on the same pressure point: high-value wireless customers. T-Mobile said it added fewer postpaid phone subscribers than expected in the fourth quarter but raised longer-term targets, the Wall Street Journal reported. (Postpaid means customers who pay a monthly bill, a key metric for U.S. carriers.) (The Wall Street Journal)
But the downside case is easy to sketch. A sharper price fight can squeeze service revenue, and execution risk rises when you are integrating a major acquisition while cutting costs. Regulators are also reviewing Verizon’s Jan. 14 outage; the FCC has asked the public for information about the outage’s impact, according to an agency notice. (Federal Communications Commission)
The next clear marker on the calendar is Feb. 24, when CFO Tony Skiadas is due to present at the Barclays Communications and Content Symposium, Verizon’s investor page shows. After a run that briefly put $50 on the screen, investors will listen for any shift in tone on subscriber momentum, Frontier integration costs, and how fast the buyback is likely to show up in the tape. (Verizon)
