Verizon’s finally got a little swagger back

The old telecom wallflower just asked for the aux cord

For years, telecom has been the market’s dependable dad in cargo shorts: boring, consistent, and somehow still paying the bills while everyone else chased the flashy stuff. But Verizon just gave the sector a rare little plot twist.

The company added 55,000 postpaid phone subscribers in the first quarter — a surprise gain that snapped a long drought and marked its first first-quarter subscriber increase since 2013. That’s not just a nice headline. It’s the kind of number that says the business may finally be stabilizing instead of just treading water.

Why investors should care

Verizon also raised its full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $4.95–$4.99, ahead of estimates. Translation: the cost cuts and restructuring under CEO Dan Schulman are starting to look less like corporate yoga and more like actual progress.

That matters beyond VZ stock. Telecom is the defensive ballast inside communication-services ETFs like VOX and XLC. If Verizon stops wobbling, those funds get a sturdier floor under the income-heavy side of the portfolio.

Then Qualcomm showed up with the AI glow-up

Just as Verizon was reminding everyone that telecom can still be useful, Qualcomm (QCOM) cranked the narrative dial the other way — toward growth. Shares jumped more than 11% on reports it could be working with AI names like OpenAI and MediaTek on next-gen smartphone processors.

That’s the kind of rumor that makes investors squint and say, “Wait, telecom can be exciting?” Maybe not exciting like a meme stock. But exciting in the “your phone gets smarter, people upgrade more, and networks get busier” sense.

The sneaky barbell trade

Put Verizon’s stability and Qualcomm’s AI upside together, and you get a pretty neat little barbell:

• one side = defensive yield and fewer nasty surprises
• the other side = AI-driven device demand and hardware growth
• the middle = telecom ETFs trying to look less like a sleepy corner of the market

That’s why funds like VOX and XLC are starting to look more interesting. And if you want an even more direct AI-device angle, semiconductor ETFs like SOXX and SMH are in the mix too.

Big picture: telecom isn’t suddenly becoming the next hot growth story. But if Verizon is stabilizing and Qualcomm is riding the AI wave, the sector might be graduating from “boring dividend stuff” to “quietly useful way to play the AI trade.”