Should AT&T Or Verizon Try To Acquire Nokia In 2021?

Every week, Benzinga conducts a survey to collect sentiment on what traders are most excited about, interested in or thinking about as they manage and build their personal portfolios.

This week we posed the following question to over 1,000 traders and investors as to if 5G wireless giants AT&T Inc. T or Verizon Communications Inc. VZ should acquire Nokia NOK in 2021:

• AT&T should buy Nokia
• Verizon should buy Nokia
• Neither should buy Nokia

Given AT&T and Verizon are the nation’s largest wireless carriers, it’s expected they will be the most competitive companies angling for the largest market share of 5G cellular technology in the coming years.

Verizon is the largest U.S. wireless carrier, serving about 89 million postpaid and 4 million prepaid phone customers. AT&T is the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier, with 63 million postpaid and 16 million prepaid phone customers.

Verizon + Nokia: As far as active business relationships are concerned, in October Verizon teamed up with Nokia to offer private 5G capabilities to enterprises across Europe and Asia-Pacific territories.

Private 5G will enable organizations to deliver mission-critical and real-time capabilities and Verizon's continued investment in 5G and network-as-a-service strategy, the companies said.

See Also: How To Buy Verizon Stock

AT&T + Nokia: As is the case with Verizon, it’s no secret AT&T and Nokia have an active partnership in place to leverage their 5G technologies.

The agreement between AT&T and Nokia highlights how AT&T’s enterprise customers can connect and manage a multitude of Internet of Things (IoT) devices on their networks, leveraging Nokia WING’s capabilities, including increased performance and flexibility, and lower latency.

The current AT&T-Nokia partnership also underscores how, as IoT networks transition to 5G and with Nokia WING also supporting 5G network slicing, AT&T will be able to partition its 5G network into multiple networks that can deliver specific capabilities to its IoT customers and support various use cases.

Survey Says: While the 5G partnership caught the eye of our respondents, only 28% felt Verizon should move forward with completing an M&A with Nokia by the end of the year. About 30% of respondents believe an AT&T-Nokia makes sense in 2021.

Meanwhile, 42% of respondents told us both AT&T and Verizon ought not attempt an M&A deal in 2021. Many respondents simply believe Nokia has the possibility to revamp itself, or that Nokia simply carries too much debt for AT&T and Verizon to bother taking on.

Nokia's long-term debt stands at $5.1 billion at the time of publication.