fell 0.5% in Tuesday trading, making for the ninth straight session of declines for AT&T’s stock, and the company’s longest losing streak since the period ended Jan. 15, 2010..

Fellow telecommunications company Verizon Communications Inc.’s stock.

The declines for AT&T and Verizon come in the wake of Apple Inc.’s.

iPhone 12 launch, which led both wireless companies to take heavily promotional approaches that have become atypical in the past five years. Verizon and AT&T are also set for back-to-back earnings reports, with Verizon on deck Wednesday morning and AT&T due Thursday morning..

As the COVID-19 crisis pressures AT&T’s WarnerMedia film and advertising businesses, and DirecTV continues to shed subscribers, AT&T is increasingly banking on its wireless operations to provide a financial cushion. The company has been the most aggressive with its iPhone 12 promotions when compared with Verizon and T-Mobile US Inc..

AT&T is offering generous iPhone 12 subsidies to both new and existing customers, suggesting a big focus on retaining wireless subscribers, especially as T-Mobile bolsters its own 5G network with spectrum it gained through its acquisition of Sprint. But big wireless promotions bring financial trade-offs, and investors may learn more about the company’s strategic vision for this part of the business when AT&T reports financial results Thursday morning.

“While AT&T’s offer is considered the most aggressive and Verizon’s offer the least aggressive, AT&T is actually playing defense while Verizon is playing offense,” Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote in a note to clients. “While AT&T could benefit from churn reduction, this process is likely to be expensive and is reminiscent in some ways of the aggressive DirecTV promotions ~3-4 years ago which resulted in significant churn at DirecTV last year when the promotions rolled off.”

Another focus of AT&T’s earnings results and conference call will be efforts to improve operational performance more broadly across the business. AT&T is reportedly considering selling some portion of its DirecTV unit and Morgan Stanley analyst Simon Flannery wrote that the company is pulling back on marketing for its low-speed DSL service, which makes up just a sliver of the company’s broadband base.

A divestiture of DirecTV “would likely generate a significant loss,” Flannery wrote, though “the transfer of debt should limit any impact to leverage” Further, “deconsolidating a business with double digit revenue declines could allow investors to focus more on the potential of the other parts of the business,” he wrote, while maintaining an overweight rating and $36 price target on the stock in a note titled “Business Transformation Moving Forward on Multiple Fronts.”

“It is unclear whether this is merely the outcome of a portfolio review that found all of these businesses to be strategically superfluous, or whether there is something more urgent afoot,” he wrote, suggesting that the company could perhaps be trying to bolster its cash position ahead of a crucial wireless auction in December or else that AT&T may be under pressure from ratings agencies to reduce debt more quickly.