Almost certainly not real. New York is almost certainly a highly profitable telco franchise but for a decade Verizon has been reporting major losses. If they can’t make money from the massive business base and general affluence in New York, they must be losing almost everywhere. The network would benearly valueless and the stock wildly overpriced. Lowell McAdam’s $15-20M annual earnings would be completely absurd.
Verizon actually has been one of the most profitable companies on Earth, throwing off $10’s of billions of cash in recent years. Bruce Kushnick reports
“Verizon New York’s financials showed an expense item called ‘Corporate Operations’ , which came to a whopping $2.6 billion dollars — that’s just in one state and in one year. However, the majority of this expense, 60 percent, has been dumped into the “Local Service” category. This comes to about $1.57 billion in 2014. Problem is — ‘Local Service’ only brought in $1.44 billion and this one line item alone made Local Service unprofitable.”
Most reporters are too lazy – or over-worked – to read basic corporate filings or do simple research.