AT&T CEO warns what inflation means for telecom

AT&T CEO John Stankey said the company could raise prices on its customers – and salaries for its employees – due to inflation.

And he made it clear he wants to do neither.

“We are seeing inflationary pressures,” he said Thursday during AT&T’s quarterly conference call. And he suggested that AT&T may pass on those pressures to its customers through price increases. “Our history would suggest that we know how to do that, and we can do that.”

Those comments dovetail with Stankey’s recent statements on the topic to The Wall Street Journal. “You’ll probably start to see it over the next several quarters, not just telecom – more broadly in the economy because of the patterns that we’re seeing,” he told the publication.

“We’ll be very smart and judicious as we have to apply it,” he continued. “But running this business and not sitting here and evaluating where we have options to move on pricing and be successful, I wouldn’t be doing my job properly.”

As for whether AT&T might pay its employees more due to inflation, Stankey said that’s an option too. He said AT&T is “in the middle of some negotiations right now” with its unionized employees about such issues.

“People stick around and work here because we have great benefits for middle class folks and they often go beyond the wage that somebody gets paid. And as a result of that, we’ve been managing through the dynamics of the wage, the labor market pretty well.”

However, “obviously, we’d like to pay less in wages,” he said.

That’s noteworthy considering both Verizon and Charter Communications recently announced that they both have raised their minimum wage to $20 per hour.

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