Verizon, CareAR Join Hands to Enhance Customer Experience

Telecommunications major Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) recently announced that its subsidiary, Verizon Business, has entered into a strategic partnership with augmented reality and AI-based platform CareAR to offer enhanced service and experience to its customers.

Following the news, shares of the company appreciated marginally to close at $54.60 in extended trade on Monday.

Through this partnership, Verizon will offer its expertise in network technology to CareAR, enabling it to offer instant support and troubleshooting solutions across its portfolio of products and services to its users.

The CRO of Verizon Business, Sampath Sowmyanarayan, said, “Through 5G and edge computing, we can help CareAR deliver advanced AR and AI capabilities on standard mobile, smart glass and drone devices to drive efficiencies and experiences.” (See Verizon stock chart on TipRanks)

Recently, Raymond James analyst Frank Louthan reiterated a Buy rating on the stock with a price target of $64, which implies upside potential of 17.4%.

The analyst said, “Verizon is seeing positive momentum with wireless and Fios broadband, and churn is trending favorably as well. Management is seeing less pressure from public sector as distance learning trends have been better than expected. Still, AT&T’s wireless promotional activity remains in full effect and management indicated that the switcher pool is currently down ~5-10%.

“As such, we are lowering our 3Q21 consumer wireless services revenue estimate from $14.147B to $13.996B, primarily due to what we now expect to be lighter retail wireless net adds in 3Q21. We are slightly raising our commercial wireless services revenue estimate from $3.087B to $3.171B. Altogether, we are taking our adds from 721K to 397K for wireless.”

The Wall Street community is cautiously optimistic about the stock with a Moderate Buy consensus rating based on 5 Buys and 4 Holds. The average Verizon price target of $62.75 implies that the stock has upside potential of 15.1% from current levels.

Verizon scores an 8 out of 10 from TipRanks’ Smart Score rating system, indicating that the stock has strong potential to outperform market expectations. Shares have declined about 8.7% over the past year.