Amir Rozwadowski became SVP of Finance and Investor Relations at AT&T in June 2020, starting around the same time as AT&T CEO John Stankey.
Previously, Rozwadowski was a managing director and senior research analyst at Barclays and Lehman Brothers where he covered AT&T and other telecom and media companies.
He said AT&T had historically filled the IR role with an internally-promoted person, but Stankey was looking for someone with an outsider’s perspective who would be candid and provide honest feedback.
Stankey took over at a time when AT&T was going through a rough patch. About nine months prior to Stankey’s appointment, the activist investor Elliott Management sent an open letter to AT&T’s board of directors, criticizing everything from soup to nuts about the company.
Since then, the Dallas-headquartered carrier has made sweeping changes, many of them looking exactly like what Elliott recommended.
Rozwadowski said Elliott’s view was that AT&T needed to focus on its core competency, which is telecommunications. “If you think about the changes over the last 2 ½ years, I think we very much did that,” he said. “A lot of what they were hoping for came to fruition.”
For his part Rozwadowski wants to bring more transparency and more consistency in AT&T’s messaging to the investor community.
But this has caused a couple of bumps along the road.
For instance, the carrier reported very positive second quarter 2022 earnings with 813,000 postpaid phone subscriber net adds — part of its best second quarter in over a decade.
However, because the company reported that some consumers were taking a couple of extra days to pay their bills, investors seemed to focus on that one bit of negative news, and the company’s stock dropped after the earnings.
Rozwadowski said, “Our efforts right now are to be transparent. If we see something we want to express it to investors. We’ve made a number of changes over the last two years, and we’re providing more information.” For instance, the company now discloses fiber revenues and fiber ARPU, based on requests from investors. He said being more transparent and providing more information will help AT&T over time “with credibility with investors.”
In another example of being transparent during AT&T’s earnings, CEO John Stankey seemed a little uncompassionate when he was discussing the effects of inflation and wage increases on the company’s business.
“Obviously, we’d like to pay less in wages,” said Stankey, who earned a total of $24.8 million in 2021, including base pay, incentives and stock awards.
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Rozwadowski said earnings calls are geared toward investors who want to dig into the details of the company’s finances. But of course, other stakeholders are listening, as well. “We attempt to take an integrated messaging approach. From an employee standpoint I think we’ve made great strides in improving relations with employees.”
He said recent employee surveys have seen improved perceptions from workers, and the company’s employees resonate with its efforts to refocus on its core telecommunications business.
“We certainly always want to do the right thing by our employees, but we are always watching our costs,” he added.
5G and fiber
Asked how AT&T’s C-band deployment is going, Rozwadowski said the company has already surpassed its target of 70 million POPs halfway through the year and raised its goal to 100 million POPs by year end.
In addition to its focus on deploying its C-band spectrum for 5G, the company has been laser-focused on fiber deployments.
Its mantra is basically: “5G and fiber.”
But the carrier has not jumped onto the fixed wireless access (FWA) bandwagon with zeal like its competitors Verizon and T-Mobile.
“From a fixed perspective we think fiber is the best technology,” said Rozwadowski. “So in markets where there’s an attractive return, we think it’s the best technology. We have an advantage because we’ve got the largest fiber network. That may not work to others’ advantage. In time you might see more fixed wireless access from us. We understand the opportunity.”
He noted that it hasn’t been that long since AT&T re-engaged its fiber strategy, and that’s what it wants to focus on now.