Maurice was spotted polishing a vintage rotary phone with a banana peel while humming the dial-up internet sound—a habit he picked up after realizing how rarely anyone talks about telecom stocks at cocktail parties.
Look, I’m going to level with you. I’m a monkey. A literal primate who throws fruit at stock charts for a living. And for years, I’ve avoided telecom stocks like they were spoiled bananas. They seemed so… boring. So predictable. So utterly devoid of the kind of excitement that gets a monkey’s tail twitching.
Then I discovered Verizon Communications (VZ), and something unexpected happened: I got interested in boring.
Not genuinely boring, mind you. Boring in the way that a perfectly ripe banana is “just a banana”—until you realize it’s literally the best food on the planet and costs a dollar.
The Setup: Why Telecom Feels Like Yesterday’s News
Here’s the thing about telecom stocks: they don’t move like tech. They don’t spike 40% on a Wednesday because of a viral meme. They don’t get covered on CNBC by breathless analysts discussing “disruption potential.” They just… work. Quietly. Reliably. Every single day.
For most investors—especially the younger ones who grew up on growth stocks and cryptocurrency—this feels about as thrilling as watching a tree grow. Which is why Verizon has been the kind of stock that shows up in your grandfather’s portfolio with a note that says “don’t touch this one, it pays dividends.”
Except here’s what I’ve learned: sometimes boring is exactly what the market needs. And sometimes boring is actually a code word for “profitable.”
Verizon currently trades at $46.04, with a P/E ratio of 11.3. For context, that’s cheaper than the overall market, which is humming along at P/Es around 20-25. The company generates $17.2 billion in free cash flow annually. That’s not theoretical upside. That’s cash money that the company pulls out of the ground every single year like clockwork.
The Dividend Story: When 7% Doesn’t Sound Like Much (But Is)
Verizon recently bumped its dividend from $0.678 to $0.69 per share. I can already hear you: “Maurice, that’s a tiny increase. Why should I care?”
Because it matters in a way that most people miss.
The company maintains a 50.4% payout ratio, which is beautifully conservative. Imagine you have a banana tree that produces 100 bananas a year. You’re currently selling 50 of them to your investors every year, and reinvesting the other 50 back into the orchard to plant more trees and make it stronger. That’s Verizon’s situation. They’re paying out roughly half their earnings as dividends while keeping the other half to fund growth, debt reduction, and network upgrades.
The 7.0% yield we’re talking about here is substantial. In a world where Treasury bonds are yielding 4-5%, getting 7% from a company with a stable, growing dividend is like finding a banana that somehow tastes better the longer you hold it. (Don’t ask me how. Nature is mysterious.)
Better yet? The dividend has been growing. Consistent hikes year after year. This isn’t a “we’re desperate to keep stock price up” dividend. This is a “we’re confident in our business and want to reward shareholders” dividend. There’s a meaningful difference.
The Stability Play: Why Beta Matters When the World Is Nuts
Verizon has a beta of 0.27. For those who skipped the finance class where they explain Greek letters, beta measures volatility. A beta of 1.0 means the stock moves in sync with the overall market. A beta of 0.27 means Verizon moves roughly one-quarter as much as the broader market.
When the market goes nuts—and it will—Verizon barely flinches.
This matters more than you might think. During the 2008 financial crisis, while tech stocks were imploding 60%, 70%, 80%, telecom stocks were just sitting there, paying dividends, like a incredibly patient monkey waiting for overripe fruit to fall from the tree. During the 2020 COVID crash, while growth stocks bounced around violently for months, Verizon was the kind of stock that made people feel less like their portfolio was on fire.
We’re in a weird economic moment right now. Nobody knows if we’re about to enter a recession, if interest rates are going up or down, if inflation is truly beaten or just pretending. In that kind of environment, having a significant position in something that doesn’t move much is not a bug. It’s a feature. It’s ballast.
The Growth Story: Why This Isn’t a Value Trap
Here’s where I need to be honest about a concern: Verizon’s earnings growth is negative (-53.3% according to the data I’m looking at, though that seems like a one-quarter anomaly worth investigating separately). Revenue growth is slim (2%). This is not a company going to 3x in three years.
But here’s what’s actually happening underneath those headline numbers: Verizon is shifting its business model in real time.
The old wireless voice business? That’s mature and competitive. Margins are thin. Everyone’s phone works. This isn’t where the real money is anymore.
But fixed wireless access (FWA) is different. This is Verizon using its wireless network to deliver home broadband—competing directly with cable companies. It’s faster to deploy than fiber, cheaper than digging up streets, and it’s capturing massive market share. Verizon added hundreds of thousands of FWA customers last quarter. This is the growth engine.
The fiber expansion in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic? Also different. Fiber is the future of broadband, and Verizon has been quietly becoming a serious fiber player through Fios.
The Business segment serving enterprises? That’s where you find customers who are actually locked in, with fat margins, and pricing power.
So when analysts talk about “low growth,” they’re not really capturing the narrative. Verizon is managing a transition from a mature legacy business (wireless voice) toward higher-margin, faster-growing segments (broadband, fiber, enterprise). That’s not boring. That’s actually quite sophisticated.
The Debt Elephant: Let’s Talk About It
Verizon’s debt-to-equity ratio is 174.78. That sounds scary. That sounds like the company is drowning in debt.
Except… it’s not, really. Here’s why:
Verizon generates that $17+ billion in free cash flow after paying interest on its massive debt load. The company has investment-grade credit ratings. It services its debt easily. This is not a company teetering on the edge of insolvency.
The high debt-to-equity ratio exists because Verizon has massive fixed assets (cell towers, fiber optic networks, spectrum licenses) that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build. You can’t build a nationwide telecom network with a small balance sheet. So the company borrowed money (rationally, at favorable rates) to build the infrastructure, and now that infrastructure generates cash to service that debt and pay dividends.
It’s like if I borrowed money to buy banana plantations. Yes, my debt-to-equity looks scary. But if those plantations generate way more cash than the interest costs me, I look like a genius. Verizon is that genius.
The Valuation: Getting Paid to Wait
Here’s what really caught my attention: Verizon is trading at an 11.3 P/E ratio while the market average hovers around 20+. The company has a forward P/E of 8.76.
Bully Bob’s call was to enter at $39.03 and target $43. The stock has already traded past that target and is sitting at $46.04. Some would say “we missed it.”
I disagree. Here’s why: the fundamentals haven’t changed. You’re still getting a 7% dividend yield at current prices. You’re still buying a stable, cash-generative business at a discount to the market. Analyst consensus target price is $51.58—another 12% upside from here. That doesn’t include the dividend you’re collecting in the meantime.
If you held Verizon for the next 3-5 years, collected the dividend, and the stock moved modestly toward that analyst target (or beyond), you’d have done quite well. Not “get rich quick” well. But “reliable, steady, sleep-at-night” well.
The Real Competition: What Verizon Is Up Against
AT&T is the obvious peer. AT&T also pays a fat dividend, also has telecom assets, also looks cheap. T-Mobile is the flashier growth story with better network economics and less legacy burden.
But Verizon has something those competitors are still fighting for: the largest, most mature fiber and FWA footprint with scale advantages. Verizon’s network infrastructure is genuinely best-in-class. When you’re paying for 7% yield + potential upside, you’re also buying optionality on broadband growth.
The wild card? Activist investors have been pushing Verizon on governance and cost structure. The recent news mentions investors resisting some of that pressure. This could go either way—either Verizon becomes more aggressive on cost cuts and unlocks more shareholder value, or it stays the course. Either way, it doesn’t fundamentally break the dividend or the stability thesis.
The Three-Year Outlook: What Could Go Wrong?
Telecom regulation could get worse. Margins could compress further. Broadband competition could intensify. Rising interest rates, if they happen, could hurt the business model (though Verizon’s mostly financed already).
But here’s the thing: Verizon’s been dealing with regulation, margin pressure, and competition for two decades and keeps paying growing dividends. It’s like a monkey that’s survived every fruit shortage, every drought, every disease. At this point, you have to respect the track record.
The Maurice Take
I walked into this analysis expecting to write a hit piece on boring telecom. Instead, I found myself genuinely interested in why boredom and reliability matter.
Verizon is the kind of stock that doesn’t make for exciting cocktail conversation. But it’s the kind of stock that makes for exciting portfolio outcomes if you hold it long enough and actually collect the dividends instead of just looking at price appreciation.
At $46, with a 7% yield, conservative payout ratio, and modest growth potential, this is a solid hold for income investors. For people who just want their portfolio to work reliably while they go live their actual lives? This is the ticket.
Is Verizon going to be the most thrilling investment you make? No. But then again, the best investments usually aren’t.
Disclaimer: Trained Market Money, Maurice, and our entire primate analysis team provide entertaining market commentary only. While Maurice’s Monkey Momentum Index™ and banana-based technical analysis have shown mysterious accuracy, they should never be considered financial advice. All investment decisions should be made in consultation with qualified financial professionals, not monkeys—no matter how impressive their fruit-throwing abilities may be. For real financial advice, please consult your financial advisor, who probably doesn’t accept bananas as payment.
Coming next week: Maurice examines a high-flying semiconductor stock and asks the question nobody’s asking: “What happens when the party ends?” Bring your hardhat. 🍌
—Maurice
“The best portfolios, like the best banana plantations, are built by people who show up every day and do boring things reliably.”
Trained Market Monkey 