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Telecom stocks: aye or nay? Two strategists offered CNBC their takes on telecommunications now.
Charlie Smith, chief investment officer of Fort Pitt Capital Group and co-manager of the Fort Pitt Capital Total Return fund, declared, "Yes to telecom."
"People are not going to want to do without their cell phones, their high-speed wireless," said Smith. (See his stock recommendations, below.)
Jack Ablin, CIO of Harris Private Bank, disagrees: "We look at telecom from the top down. We're seeing continued P/E contraction, and in terms of momentum, continued breakdown."
Ablin noted a holistic problem rippling through the sector: "Telecoms' biggest customers are the U.S.' biggest banks and brokers." And Ablin said he doesn't foresee those big contracts being re-upped or expanded any time soon. (Dick Bove is more optimistic about banks.)
Smith's Recommendations:
"Cash flows for Comcast [CMCSA
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], Verizon [VZ
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] and AT&T [T
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] are going to hold up pretty well," Smith said. He pointed out that Verizon raised its dividend recently, and praises the firm's rollout of its FiOS ultra-high-speed fiber-optic Internet/TV/telephone service.
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New from CNBC.com:
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Disclosures:
Disclosure information was not available for Smith, Ablin or their respective companies.
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CNBC's Companies in the News:
Lehman Bros. [LEH
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Fannie Mae [FNM
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Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes