Shares tumbled more than 20% Wednesday after hitting a 52-week low on the prior day. The biggest one-day sell-off for Dollar Tree shares in more than 20 years arrived less than a week rival bargain chain Dollar General reported a dismal quarter and suffered its largest single-day slump ever.

Dollar Tree has been trying to lure customers from other retailers using its rock-bottom prices, but juggernauts like Walmart and Target have also said their customers are under pressure and they’re cutting prices, too.

That has left little leeway for bargain stores because huge chains like Target are cutting prices on groceries, a huge draw for customers who are likely to shop for other items at Target and skip an additional trip to a dollar store.

“Dollar stores have lost market share to larger retailers that have broadened their offerings and gained customer loyalty through everyday low prices,” said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research, analytics and AI at LSEG.

And the economic headwinds that first hit low-income customers at Dollar Tree appear to be climbing upward to those who are better off, according to company executives.

“Dollar Tree has a broader customer base that includes more middle and upper-income households and beginning this quarter, we started to see inflation, interest rates, and other macro pressures have a more pronounced impact on the buying behavior of these customers,” said Chief Operating Officer Mike Creden.

Dollar Tree now expects full-year adjusted earnings between $5.20 and $5.60 per share, down from a range of $6.50 to $7.

The Chesapeake, Virginia, company also projected annual sales in a range of $30.6 billion to $30.9 billion, down from $31 billion to $32 billion. Both of those numbers fall short of Wall Street projections and it showed in the retailer’s plunging stock Wednesday.

Dollar Tree’s second quarter adjusted revenue was $7.37 billion, short of the $7.5 billion that analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research expected.

Dollar Tree earned $132.4 million, or 62 cents per share, for the period ended Aug. 3. Stripping out certain items, earnings were 67 cents per share, 36 cents short of Wall Street projections.

Though inflation is slowing, Americans continue to struggle with sharply higher prices for such necessities as gas, food and housing compared with their pre-pandemic levels.

For the third quarter, Dollar Tree anticipates adjusted earnings between $1.05 and $1.15 per share, with revenue in a range of $7.4 billion to $7.6 billion. That, too, is shy of Wall Street expectations for per=share earnings of $1.31 and revenue of $7.58 billion.

Dollar Tree is also wrestling with internal problems that have hampered growth.

In June the company said that it was looking at strategic options for the Family Dollar stores that it owns, including a possible sale.

Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar nearly a decade ago for more than $8 billion after a bidding war with Dollar General. But it’s had difficulty incorporating Family Dollar into its business and recently announced that it would close nearly 1,000 stores, with most of them being Family Dollar locations.

“On the bottom line, net income is down by a third,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData. “The overall impression is that Dollar Tree has quickly moved from a company that was advancing to one that is simply treading water. Though, to be fair, most of this is because of the troubles at Family Dollar.”

Speaking on CNBC, Bastian said Wednesday that the monetary amount represents lost revenue as well as “the tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels” for the five-day period.

A week ago, CrowdStrike blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off the global tech outage that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike also outlined measures it will take to prevent the problem from recurring, including staggering the rollout of updates, giving customers more control over when and where they occur, and providing more details about the updates that it plans.

Among airlines, Delta was by far the hardest hit hard by the outage, having to cancel thousands of flights, because key systems were crippled by the incident.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating why Delta failed to recover as quickly as other airlines. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last week that the department would also examine Delta’s customer service, including “unacceptable” lines for assistance and reports that unaccompanied minors were stranded at airports.

Bastian said on CNBC that Delta will be seeking damages from the disruptions. CrowdStrike has not made any offers to help Delta financially so far, he added. It has offered free consulting advice.

The data of nearly all customers of the telecommunications giant AT&T was downloaded from a third-party platform in a security breach, the company said Friday, as cyberattacks against businesses, schools and health systems continue to spread globally.

The breach, which took place in April of this year but mostly involved data from 2022, hit AT&T’s cellular customers and customers of mobile virtual network operators using AT&T’s wireless network, as well as landline customers who interacted with those cellular numbers.

Approximately 109 million customer accounts were impacted, according to AT&T, which said that it currently doesn’t believe that the data is publicly available.

“The data does not contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information,” AT&T said Friday.

The compromised data also doesn’t include some information typically seen in usage details, such as the time stamp of calls or texts, the company said, or customer names. AT&T, however, said that there are often ways of using publicly available online tools to find the name associated with a specific telephone number.

Cybersecurity experts concurred, saying that such data can be used to trace users.

“While the information that was exposed doesn’t directly have sensitive information, it can be used to piece together events and who may be calling who. This could impact people’s private lives as private calls and connections could be exposed,” Thomas Richards, principal consultant at Synopsys Software Integrity Group, said in an emailed statement. “The business phone numbers will be easy to identify and private numbers can be matched to names with public record searches.”

An internal investigation determined that compromised data includes AT&T records of calls and texts between May 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2022.

AT&T identified the third-party platform as Snowflake and said that the incident was limited to an AT&T workspace on that cloud company’s platform and did not impact its network.

Cybersecurity experts say the sheer volume of data held by companies on cloud platforms can create its own perils.

“The AT&T data breach underscores the growing risks associated with the vast amounts of data companies now store on cloud and SaaS platforms,” said Roei Sherman, Field Chief Technology Officer at Mitiga, a threat detection and investigation company that focuses on cloud technology. “As organizations increasingly rely on these technologies, the complexity of detecting and investigating breaches has risen sharply.”

AT&T’s investigation is ongoing and it has engaged with cybersecurity experts to understand the nature and scope of the criminal breach. At least one person has been apprehended so far, according to the company.

Compromised data also includes records from Jan. 2, 2023, for a very small number of customers. The records identify the telephone numbers an AT&T or MVNO cellular number interacted with during these periods. For a subset of records, one or more cell site identification number(s) associated with the interactions are also included.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said that it has worked collaboratively with AT&T and the Justice Department “through the first and second delay process, all while sharing key threat intelligence to bolster FBI investigative equities and to assist AT&T’s incident response work.”

The Department of Justice said Friday that it became aware of the breach early this year, but that it met the security standard for a delayed filing by AT&T with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, a filing that was made public Friday.

The DOJ said an earlier disclosure of the breach would “pose a substantial risk to national security and public safety.”

The Federal Communications Commission is also investigating.

The year has already been marked by several major data breaches, including an earlier attack on AT&T. In March AT&T said that a dataset found on the “dark web” contained information such as Social Security numbers for about 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.

Some auto dealerships are still using pens and paper to close deals after back-to-back cyberattacks last month on a company that supplies them with software. That company, CDK Global, is still attempting to reestablish normal operations.

Alabama’s education superintendent said earlier this month that some data was “breached” during a hacking attempt at the Alabama State Department of Education.

Cybersecurity experts are warning that hospital systems around the country, which have already been targeted, are at risk for more attacks and that the U.S. government is doing too little to prevent breaches.

AT&T customers can visit att.com/DataIncident for more information.

Shares of AT&T Inc., based in Dallas, fell slightly on Friday.

___

This story was first published on July 12, 2024. It was updated on July 13, 2024, to correct when the breach occurred and where the data came from. The data was mostly from 2022, but the breach occurred in April 2024. The data was downloaded from a third-party platform, not to a third-party platform.

Boeing is being sanctioned by U.S. investigators for sharing information about a federal investigation of a door plug blowout that left a gaping hole in a Boeing 737 Max 9.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that Boeing “blatantly violated” the agency’s investigative regulations as well as a signed agreement by providing non-public investigative information to the media and speculating about possible causes of the Jan. 5 door plug blowout on a Boeing passenger jet in Portland, Oregon.

During the incident, a panel that plugged a space left for an extra emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines Max 9. Pilots were able to land safely, and there were no injuries.

The NTSB said that during a media briefing on Tuesday, a Boeing executive provided non-public investigative information to journalists about the Alaska Airlines incident that the agency had not verified or authorized for release.

The agency said Boeing portrayed the investigation as a search to find the individual responsible for the door plug work, but the NTSB said it’s focused on the probable cause of the accident, not placing blame on any individual or assessing liability.

Boeing said in a statement on Thursday that it deeply regretted that some of the statements made at the media briefing overstepped the NTSB’s role as the source of investigative information.

“We apologize to the NTSB and stand ready to answer any questions as the agency continues its investigation,” it said.

Shares of The Boeing Co., based in Arlington, Virginia, rose more than 2% in morning trading.

The NTSB said that given its recent actions, Boeing won’t have access to investigative information the agency produces about the Alaska Airlines incident, but it will keep its party status to the investigation.

The NTSB is unable to fine Boeing, as it doesn’t have enforcement authority. While the agency could have stripped away Boeing’s party status, the NTSB may have considered it more important to keep Boeing as a party to the investigation because of its employees’ expertise.

The NTSB said that it may subpoena any relevant records it requires during the course of the investigation. It also will subpoena Boeing to appear at an investigative hearing in Washington D.C. on Aug. 6 and 7. The agency said that, unlike other parties, Boeing won’t be able to ask questions of other participants.

The NTSB said that it will coordinate with the Department of Justice’s Fraud Division, giving them information about Boeing’s recent unauthorized investigative information releases related to the 737 Max 9 door plug investigation.

In May the Justice Department told a federal judge that Boeing had violated a settlement that allowed the company to avoid criminal prosecution after two deadly crashes involving its 737 Max aircraft.

After Max jets crashed in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia, killing 346 people, the FAA and other regulators grounded the aircraft worldwide for more than a year and a half.

It is now up to the Justice Department to decide whether to file charges against Boeing. Prosecutors will tell the court no later than July 7 how they plan to proceed, the department said in May.

Boeing has been under intense scrutiny of late. Earlier this month, CEO David Calhoun defended the company’s safety record during a contentious Senate hearing, while lawmakers accused him of placing profits over safety, failing to protect whistleblowers, and even getting paid too much.

There has been pressure on Calhoun to resign immediately, but he has no plans to do so. Calhoun previously announced that he will step down by the end of 2024.

Amazon is shifting from the plastic air pillows used for packaging in North America to recycled paper because it’s more environmentally sound, and it says paper just works better.

The company said Thursday that it’s already replaced 95% of the plastic air pillows with paper filler in North America and is working toward complete removal by year’s end.

“We want to ensure that customers receive their items undamaged, while using as little packaging as possible to avoid waste, and prioritizing recyclable materials,” Amazon said.

It is the company’s largest plastic packaging reduction effort in North America to date and will remove almost 15 billion plastic air pillows from use annually.

Almost all customer deliveries for Prime Day this year, which happens next month, will contain plastic no air pillows, according to Amazon.

The e-commerce giant has faced years of criticism about its use of plastic from environmental groups, including a nonprofit called Oceana, which has been releasing its own reports on Amazon’s use of plastic packaging.

Matt Littlejohn, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Oceana, said that Amazon’s efforts to reduce plastic packaging is welcome news, but that there’s still more that the company can do.

“While this is a significant step forward for the company, Amazon needs to build on this momentum and fulfill its multiyear commitment to transition its North America fulfillment centers away from plastic,” Littlejohn said in a prepared statement. “Then, the company should expand these efforts and also push innovations like reusable packaging to move away from single-use packaging everywhere it sells and ships.”

There has also been broad support among Amazon investors who have urged the company to outline how will will reduce waste.

The company disclosed the total of single-use plastic across global operations for the first time in 2022 after investors sought more details on plans to reduce waste. The company said that it used 85,916 metric tons of single-use plastic that year, an 11.6% decrease from 2021.

Amazon began transition away from plastic air pillows in October at an automated fulfillment center in Ohio. The company said that it was able to test and learn at the center there, which helped it move quickly on transitioning to recycled paper filling.

The transition process included changing out machinery and training employees on new systems and machines.

Amazon discovered through testing that the paper filler, which is made from 100% recyclable content and is curbside recyclable, offers the same, if not better protection during shipping compared with plastic air pillows, the company said.

Christian Garcia, who works at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Bakersfield, California, said in a release that the paper filler is easier to work with and that the machinery gives staff more space so that it’s easier to pack orders.

Ongoing efforts to reduce waste include a campaign to ship items without any additional packaging, the company said. In 2022, 11% of all of Amazon’s packages shipped worldwide were without added delivery packaging.

Other efforts include piloting new technology with artificial intelligence and robotics company Glacier to use AI-powered robots to automate the sorting of recyclables and collect real-time data on recycling streams for companies. It’s also partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy on new materials and recycling programs.

The U.S. surgeon general has called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms similar to those now mandatory on cigarette boxes.

In a Monday opinion piece in the The New York Times, Dr. Vivek Murthy said that social media is a contributing factor in the mental health crisis among young people.

“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe,” Murthy said. “Evidence from tobacco studies show that warning labels can increase awareness and change behavior.”

Murthy said that the use of just a warning label wouldn’t make social media safe for young people, but would be a part of the steps needed.

Social media use is prevalent among young people, with up to 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 saying that they use a social media platform, and more than a third saying that they use social media “almost constantly,” according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center.

“Social media today is like tobacco decades ago: It’s a product whose business model depends on addicting kids. And as with cigarettes, a surgeon general’s warning label is a critical step toward mitigating the threat to children,” Josh Golin, executive director at Fairplay, an organization that is dedicated to ending marketing to children, said in a statement.

Last year Murthy warned that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that social media is safe for children and teens. He said at the time that policymakers needed to address the harms of social media the same way they regulate things like car seats, baby formula, medication and other products children use.

To comply with federal regulation, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up for their platforms — but children have been shown to easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent.

Other measures social platforms have taken to address concerns about children’s mental health can also be easily circumvented. For instance, TikTok introduced a default 60-minute time limit for users under 18. But once the limit is reached, minors can simply enter a passcode to keep watching.

Murthy believes the impact of social media on young people should be a more pressing concern.

“Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food? These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability,” he wrote.

In January the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies went before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify as parents worry that they’re not doing enough to protect young people. The executives touted existing safety tools on their platforms and the work they’ve done with nonprofits and law enforcement to protect minors.

Murthy said Monday that Congress needs to implement legislation that will protect young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content.

“The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use,” Murthy wrote.

Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal supported Murthy’s message Monday.

“We are pleased that the Surgeon General — America’s top doctor — continues to bring attention to the harmful impact that social media has on our children,” the senators said in a prepared statement.

The surgeon general is also recommending that companies be required to share all their data on health effects with independent scientists and the public, which they currently don’t do, and allow independent safety audits.

Murthy said schools and parents also need to participate in providing phone-free times and that doctors, nurses and other clinicians should help guide families toward safer practices.

While Murthy pushes for more to be done about social media in the United States, the European Union enacted groundbreaking new digital rules last year. The Digital Services Act is part of a suite of tech-focused regulations crafted by the 27-nation bloc — long a global leader in cracking down on tech giants.

The DSA is designed to keep users safe online and make it much harder to spread content that’s either illegal, like hate speech or child sexual abuse, or violates a platform’s terms of service. It also looks to protect citizens’ fundamental rights such as privacy and free speech.

Officials have warned tech companies that violations could bring fines worth up to 6% of their global revenue — which could amount to billions — or even a ban from the EU.

Discount retailer Dollar Tree says it’s looking at strategic options for the Family Dollar stores that it owns, including a possible sale of the segment.

Dollar Tree said Wednesday that alternatives also include a spinoff or other disposition of the business.

Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar nearly a decade ago for more than $8 billion after a bidding war with rival Dollar General.

But the company has had difficulty incorporating Family Dollar into its business and recently announced that it would close nearly 1,000 stores, with most of them being Family Dollar locations.

Last year Dollar Tree launched a comprehensive review of Family Dollar, which included the planned closure of about 970 underperforming Family Dollar locations.

Dollar Tree said that it doesn’t have a set deadline or timetable for completing its review of strategic alternatives.

The Family Dollar announcement comes about a week after Dollar Tree said that it would re-open nearly 200 shuttered 99 Cents Only stores from Texas to California as Dollar Tree locations after the leases were secured out of bankruptcy proceedings.

The transfer of designation rights for 170 locations in Texas, Arizona, Nevada and California, along with some of the furniture, equipment and fixtures inside, was approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Dollar Tree also announced its fiscal first-quarter financial results on Wednesday, reporting an adjusted profit of $1.43 per share on revenue of $7.63 billion. The performance met the expectations of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.

For the second quarter, Dollar Tree anticipates earnings in a range of $1 to $1.10 per share with revenue of $7.3 billion to $7.6 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet predict earnings of $1.19 per share on revenue of $7.59 billion.

Dollar Tree expects full-year earnings between $6.50 and $7 per share on revenue in a range of $31 billion to $32 billion. Wall Street is looking for earnings of $6.89 per share on revenue of $31.36 billion.

Dollar Tree, which has stores under the brands Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree Canada and its namesake, was operating 16,397 stores across 48 states and five Canadian provinces as of May 4.

Shares of Dollar Tree Inc., based in Chesapeake, Virginia, fell about 5% in afternoon trading.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of social networking site Truth Social, slumped before the opening bell Friday after former President Donald Trump was convicted in his hush money trial.

A New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

Shares fell 9% immediately Thursday in after-hours trading as news of the verdict emerged, and were down 5% early Friday.

The stock, which trades under the ticker symbol “DJT,” has been extraordinarily volatile since its debut in late March, joining the group of meme stocks that are prone to ricochet from highs to lows as small-pocketed investors attempt to catch an upward momentum swing at the right time.

The stock has tripled this year, in the process frequently making double-digit percentage moves either higher or lower on a single day. It peaked at nearly $80 in intraday trading on March 26. For context, the S&P 500 is up almost 10% year to date.

Meme stocks, including AMC Entertainment, and GameStop fell as well early Friday, as did shares of social media companies, but the decline for Trump Media was at least double the decline for any stock in either sector before the opening bell.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission before going public, Trump Media warned investors of the potential pitfalls faced by the former president and the adverse affect it might have on the stock. “President Donald J. Trump is the subject of numerous legal proceedings, the scope and scale of which are unprecedented for a former President of the United States and current candidate for that office. An adverse outcome in one or more of the ongoing legal proceedings in which President Donald J. Trump is involved could negatively impact TMTG and its Truth Social platform.”

Earlier this month, Trump Media reported that it lost more than $300 million last quarter, according to its first earnings report as a publicly traded company.

For the three-month period that ended March 31, the company posted a loss of $327.6 million, which it said included $311 million in non-cash expenses related to its merger with a company called Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC was an example of what’s known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, which can give young companies quicker and easier routes to getting their shares trading publicly, but with much less scrutiny.

Trump Media & Technology fired an auditor this month that federal regulators recently charged with “massive fraud.” The media company dismissed BF Borgers as its independent public accounting firm on May 3, delaying the filing of its quarterly earnings report.

Trump Media had previously cycled through at least two other auditors — one that resigned in July 2023, and another that was terminated by its board in March, just as it was rehiring BF Borgers.

Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records at his company in connection with an alleged scheme to hide potentially embarrassing stories about him during his 2016 Republican presidential election campaign.

The charge, a felony, arose from reimbursements paid to then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen after he made a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump was accused of misrepresenting Cohen’s reimbursements as legal expenses to hide that they were tied to a hush money payment.

Trump’s defense contended that the Cohen payments were for legitimate legal services.

The transfer of designation rights for 170 locations in Texas, Arizona, Nevada and California, along with some of the furniture, equipment and fixtures inside, was approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Shares of Dollar Tree Inc., based in Chesapeake, Virginia, rose 2% at the opening bell Thursday.

99 Cents Only Stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month and has been shedding assets ranging from inventory to store leases. The company said in April that it would close all 371 of its stores, ending a 42-year run for the bargain outlet.

99 Cents Only had struggled for some time with shifting consumer demand, inflation and theft, and it’s not alone among bargain store chains.

Dollar Tree posted a surprise loss in its final quarter of 2023 and said that it would close nearly 1,000 stores, most of them Family Dollar stores that it had acquired a decade earlier for more than $8 billion after a bidding war with rival Dollar General.

Dollar Tree Chief Operating Officer Michael Creedon said in a prepared statement on Wednesday that the one-time 99 Cents locations are in priority markets where it expects strong growth potential.

“The portfolio complements our existing footprint and will provide us access to high quality real estate assets in premium retail centers, enabling us to rapidly grow the Dollar Tree brand across the western United States, reaching even more customers and communities,” he said.

Dollar Tree anticipates reopening the stores as early as the fall.

T-Mobile is buying U.S. Cellular’s wireless operations and certain spectrum assets in a deal valued at $4.4 billion, and further consolidating the industry.

T-Mobile would get more than 4 million new customers and control of U.S. Cellular’s wireless operations and about 30% of spectrum assets across several spectrum bands. T-Mobile will also enter into a new master license agreement on more than 2,000 towers and extend the lease term for the approximately 600 towers where T-Mobile is already a tenant.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said the deal will “create a better experience for all of our customers with more coverage and more capacity.”

It may also signal the start of more consolidation in an industry with fewer players than ever. “The writing is on the wall for the carriers and consolidation is now on the horizon and could speed up into 2025,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. “This is the first shot across the bow in the wireless world and we expect more deals over the next year.

T-Mobile is among the more active companies in telecommunications with regard to mergers and acquisitions. In 2020 T-Mobile completed the takeover of smaller rival Sprint. And in 2013 the Federal Communications Commission approved its merger with MetroPCS Communications Inc.

T-Mobile said Tuesday that U.S. Cellular customers will gain access to its 5G network, giving them better coverage and speed. The company said the deal will particularly benefit those that live in underserved rural areas of the country.

“In the face of rising competition and increasing capital intensity required to keep pace with the latest technologies, and following our careful and deliberate strategic review, we are confident that continuing to deliver on our mission requires a level of scale and investment that is best achieved by integrating our wireless operations with those of T-Mobile,” U.S. Cellular Chair LeRoy Carlson Jr. said in a statement.

T-Mobile said that U.S. Cellular customers will be able to remain on their current plans or switch to an unlimited T-Mobile plan of their choice. They will not incur switching costs if a plan change is made.

That is a mixed bag for consumers, said Ives at Wedbush.

“The U.S. consumer has less choice but there is more competition and this could drive prices lower,” Ives said.

The transaction includes a combination of cash and up to about $2 billion of assumed debt. Up to $100 million of the cash component is contingent on hitting certain financial and operational metrics between the deal’s signing and closing.

U.S. Cellular will keep about 70% of of its spectrum portfolio across several spectrum bands.

The deal has been unanimously approved by the boards of United States Cellular Corp. and Telephone and Data Systems Inc, which is a majority shareholder of U.S. Cellular. It is expected to close in mid-2025.

U.S. Cellular’s stock jumped more than 2% in morning trading on Tuesday.