AT&T carries an average brokerage recommendation of 1.98 from 29 brokerage firms, a reading that sits between Strong Buy and Buy on a 1 to 5 scale. For investors, the number is a compact snapshot of Wall Street sentiment, but it is not the same thing as a stock-picking formula.
AT&T and the 1.98 reading
1.98 is built from the actual recommendations of 29 brokerage firms, with 13 Strong Buy ratings and three Buy ratings in the mix. Strong Buy accounts for 44.8% of the total, while Buy makes up 10.3%, so the weight of opinion leans toward the bullish side even before any separate stock screen is considered.
29 firms is a broad enough sample to show a consensus, but the average still compresses different judgments into one decimal. A number near 2 suggests that the group is clustered closer to Strong Buy and Buy than to the middle of the scale, which is why the ABR is often used as a quick read on sentiment rather than a full investment case.
ABR versus Zacks Rank
Five Strong Buy recommendations for every one Strong Sell recommendation is the ratio the article uses to show how brokerage firms typically tilt. Yet the same material warns that brokerage recommendations have little to no success guiding investors toward stocks with the most potential for price appreciation, so the average can point one way while still missing the names that move best.
Zacks Rank runs on a different engine. It uses earnings estimate revisions and sorts stocks from Zacks Rank #1 to Zacks Rank #5, with the grades applied proportionately to all stocks that have current-year earnings estimates. That makes it a comparison tool rather than a duplicate of the ABR.
What 1.98 means now
1.98 gives readers a quick filter: Wall Street as a group is leaning constructive on AT&T, but the article’s own caution is that brokerage calls are better used to validate independent research than to replace it. If the ABR and a separate stock-rating tool disagree, the gap becomes part of the analysis instead of a reason to stop there.
AT&T’s current Zacks Rank is the missing piece for anyone trying to compare the two systems side by side. Until that number is checked, the cleanest takeaway is the one already visible in the data: the average brokerage view sits just inside the Strong Buy and Buy band, but the method behind it has limits that investors should not ignore.
