News
Broadband’s fundamentals should keep it immune from recent stock market uncertainty, mostly.
By: Brad Randall, Broadband Communities
Despite recent volatility in the stock market, Adlane Fellah, the founder and chief analyst of Maravedis, LLC, said the fundamentals of broadband connectivity mostly remain unaffected by recent ups and downs on Wall Street.
Broadband Communities caught up with Fellah to discuss recent stock market woes, and whether or not broadband would see any impacts from the uncertainty.
“Where private equity, teams may be more careful is to not invest in markets where there’s too much overlap with other broadband providers,” he said Thursday, as the Dow Jones surged over 600 points after a steep drop following the opening bell on Monday.
Even in areas with overlap, Fellah said investors would likely still have confidence in building networks.
“Broadband is a utility/necessity,” he said. “The fundamental is there whether stocks go up or down.”
Fellah also said larger service providers, like Verizon and AT&T, continue to perform well.
A main impact on broadband, according to Fellah, is the failure to renew the Affordable Connectivity Program, which creates lingering uncertainty.
Earlier this year, Fellah’s company estimated that 6 million households will lose internet access because of the Affordable Connectivity Program’s demise.
The report, titled “Managed Connectivity for Affordable Housing in the United States 2024-2029,” also concluded that a quarter of former ACP-enrolled households will maintain internet service. According to the findings of the report, half of households formerly enrolled in the ACP will fluctuate to on-and-off service based on promotional programs.
Along with that, Fellah also said the presidential election is causing some uncertainty.
Regarding other trends to look out for, Fellah said AI stocks would likely not continue to increase at the same rates because applications will need to be produced to justify the investments.
“That’s going to take more time to materialize,” he said.
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