Pascal Desroches on shareholder value
From Cutting the Cord: AT&T’s Push Beyond Landlines and Legacy Tech with CFO Pascal Desroches · · After Earnings
“We have pledged to return value in all three ways. We're going to grow the business. We're going to pay a healthy dividend, and we're going to buy back a portion of the shares, giving everyone with a bigger piece of the company.”
On , Pascal Desroches, Senior EVP & CFO at AT&T Inc., spoke about shareholder value during Cutting the Cord: AT&T’s Push Beyond Landlines and Legacy Tech with CFO Pascal Desroches on After Earnings.
About Pascal Desroches
Pascal Desroches, AT&T's CFO, has discussed the company's ongoing transition away from legacy copper infrastructure toward fiber and wireless services. In a March 2025 interview, he stated that AT&T expects to "largely get out of the copper business" over the next five years and projected $3 billion-plus in savings over three years from that shift. He described the company's strategy as growing its core mobile and fiber businesses while legacy revenues decline, and said AT&T aims to return value to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Desroches also noted that over 70% of consumers want to buy connectivity services from a single provider, and he expressed admiration for Apple's customer loyalty. In a July 2022 interview, Desroches addressed recession risks and free cash flow guidance. He said that even in a recession, AT&T expects customers to pay their bills due to the "mission-critical nature" of its services, though he acknowledged delinquency trends were slightly worse than pre-pandemic levels. Desroches described price increases for some customers on older plans as a "painful step" that had shown early positive results. He also stated that AT&T had taken "hard steps" including dispositions and a dividend reduction to position the company for long-term investment and growth.