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AT&T is the “most Republican of any publicly traded company,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said on Monday.
However, Cramer suggested that company executives’ past support of GOP policies, such as business deregulation and tax cuts, does not seem to outweigh President Donald Trump‘s hatred of CNN.
CNN was among the assets that came over to AT&T last year, after the telecommunications giant’s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner.
Just hours after Elliott Management on Monday revealed a $3.2 billion stake in AT&T, Trump tweeted that he hopes billionaire Paul Singer’s shop can help CNN curb “Fake News.”
AT&T is “overt” with its conservative views, “yet CNN is what the president singles out,” Cramer marveled on “Squawk on the Street.”
All the way back to the 2016 presidential race, predating AT&T’s ownership of CNN, Trump has been accusing the news network as being part of the liberal mainstream media machine working against his interests.
As a result, Trump vowed on the campaign trail to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal. Once in office, he followed through on that threat. But last year, a federal judge ruled against the Justice Department’s opposition, allowing the deal to close.
Earlier this year, the president was at it again, tweeting a call for a boycott of AT&T to force what he called “big changes” at CNN.
Cramer says Elliott’s AT&T stake could get institutional investors into the stock
Looking at what the Elliott investment may mean for AT&T on Wall Street, Cramer said it could help get institutional investors interested in the stock.
AT&T’s stock is the “second most under-owned in the S&P 500” among institutional investors, explained the “Mad Money” host. However, he added that AT&T is “over-owned” among individual investors.
Elliott said that AT&T could eventually be worth at least $60 per share, pushing the stock up as much as 9% in premarket trading. But in early trading on Wall Street, it was only up about half that much.
