The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused AT&T of selectively disclosing material nonpublic information regarding poor smartphone sales to research analysts, in violation of the regulation that requires such information to be made public.
In March 2016, three AT&T investor relations executives made a round of calls to 20 research analysts, the SEC said, disclosing information regarding internal company data showing a steeper-than-expected decline in smartphone sales for the first quarter. The internal data regarding the sales was not made public until April, the SEC said, and was disclosed to convince the research analysts to lower their first-quarter revenue estimates for AT&T. The alleged selective disclosures violated Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD), which requires information that is material to a company’s performance be distributed to the public.
