AT&T falls on outlook, Texas Instruments confuses analysts, Minerd sees Bitcoin at $15K

Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre reports on the day's trending tickers.

Video transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: But I want to go over to Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre, who is at home today, not in the studios, but is still going to be able to break down all of today's trending tickers. So Jared, let's just start with AT&T. What's happening with them?

JARED BLIKRE: [INAUDIBLE] it's all about the subscribers. We know that they're spending a lot of money to ramp up 5G and buy all that broadband. And guess what? They've got a lot of stuff on their balance sheet. And some people would call it kind of a hot mess. They're trying to divest some of their assets, entering into a partnership with-- for DirecTV so that it's not on their balance sheet, trying to spin off Warner Media, which contains HBO, HBO Max, with Discovery.

But let me just read some of the analyst commentary here. We have Evercore raised it inline with a price target of $32, saying that AT&T delivered strong mobile subscriber growth, even as Verizon, our parent company, and T-Mobile stepped up their promotional and retention activities. So there was-- AT&T had this incredible get a phone for free promotion, which Verizon later introduced. I believe they just ended it. So a lot of money being spent right there. They-- I believe they said they rate it inline with a price target of 32.

But I also have a note from New Street. And they're saying it's always difficult to parse the market reaction to such a tangle of businesses, recommending focusing on the wireless business, which delivered strong results. They rate it a buy with a price target of 37. This is a year to date chart. Stock really hasn't done much over the last, well, year to date, or a year or two years or five years or 20 years. Well, you get the picture. We'll have to see what happens next, guys.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: It's great to see a long term picture just like that because of that graph there, Jared. Want to get to Texas Instruments because they were out with earnings. I guess the outlook disappointed. And that is causing at least one firm to downgrade the stock. What can you tell us?

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, it was kind of puzzling because they beat on other key metrics. And then they didn't give a very strong outlook. And the Street is puzzled. There was no explanation on the call. So let me bring you up Texas Instruments here. You can see well over the last 20 years or so-- I have that time frame up-- up nicely, but it's down 4% today. So let me dial this back to a year today.

And I'll give you some analyst commentary. Bloomberg Intelligence is saying conservatism in non Texas Instruments part-related constraints may have dampened TI's third quarter guidance to below seasonal norms. But here's something from Raymond James. They rated it an outperform price target 230 to-- they raised it to 230 from 220. But they're also saying the report was puzzling because revenue was significantly ahead of expectations, but it guided revenue flat without much explanation for the conservative guidance.

Given how strongly Texas Instruments has beaten its outlook in recent quarters, we now consider the guidance to be meaningless. The company likely suffers from a lack of confidence at the macro level despite what clearly continues to be tight supply conditions not only at both TI, but also the semi industry at large. I just want to close by adding that Brian Sozzi was saying this morning, he was on the call last night. It lasted all of seven minutes. Didn't answer any questions, and he thought it was a waste of time. Let me tell you guys. I know Brian Sozzi. Don't waste his time.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, Jared, let's look now at cryptocurrency. It wouldn't be a conversation between you and I if we didn't mention one of the cryptos at some point. I know that Bitcoin is making a slight rebound. Tell us about what we're seeing in cryptos right now.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, I'm almost getting slightly excited. A number of events over the last 22 hours. And you can see Bitcoin-- let me get this to a percentage change. Bitcoin up just slightly. And I'll pull up a chart here and then get in some commentary because we did have an interesting meeting of the minds last night with Cathie Wood, Elon Musk, and also @Jack. And it was interesting. I got some nice commentary from Elon. He said SpaceX holds some Bitcoin, hasn't sold any. And he also said I might pump, but not dump. And I would like to see Bitcoin succeed.

But also we've got some news this morning that JP Morgan is giving their Wealth Management clients access to crypto funds. And these are some of the Grayscale Investment Trust GBTC that most people know. But these products are only available to accredited investors, which means you have to have a high enough net worth or income. And it's still, there's still nothing for the average investor.

Also want to add that Guggenheim's Scott Minerd sees Bitcoin heading down to 15,000. Personally, I don't. I want to pull the chart of the last one month. It could, by the way, if we crack my magic level of 30,000 or actually 29.5 now. But we are peaking above this trend line. It's just the bareliest of bullish that I could possibly get off this. I'm not going to get excited until I see it clear 35,000 over here.