verizon communications inc has made big bets on 5g technology but one analyst thinks they aren’t paying off so far verizon vz benefitted nicely in 2009 by moving quickly with its transition to 4g connectivity a dynamic that helped it cement its reliability in the market bank of america’s david barden wrote thursday but the company hasn’t been seeing the same early yields from its investments in 5g he said in his view that’s because there was a clearer use for 4g in its early days than there is for 5g today with 4g technology there was “so tangible” a need for 4g connections that the technology was “market moving” thanks to innovations at the time like apple inc’s aapl app store and the growing market for android devices which demanded powerful speeds with 5g there isn’t yet that same killer use case “verizon’s understandable fixation therefore on ‘what is next’ led it down a path where unfortunately it now falls short on ‘what is now” barden wrote “it remains a forwardthinking team with premium assets and every right to win down the road when the market knows what to do with these assets and how to value them” see also comcast stock heads for worst slide since 2008 as earnings show broadband growth screeching to halt he downgraded verizon’s stock to neutral from buy in his note to clients writing that it was a “mistake” not to have done so before the company’s latest earnings report that he had realized was “widely” expected to be weak verizon shares are up 02 in thursday morning trading “what is clear now is that verizon faces a conundrum similar to that which the cable industry faces today” barden continued “after 20 years of default dominance the foundational premise of that dominance network ‘quality’ in truth may no longer matter” instead “what matters more is plan pricing handset subsidy and general apathy or inertia” barden doesn’t have a great feeling about verizon’s thirdquarter results which he thinks will be similar to secondquarter numbers in showing benefits from price hikes as well as a “bubble” of churn while the fourth quarter is typically better for the broader industry he wonders how verizon will be able to differentiate itself at a time when wireless deals are usually abundant then he sees the potential for sobering outlooks alongside the fourthquarter report and an expected investor day next spring read as twitter rethinks its san francisco footprint a bigger 9 billion question hangs over the city’s office market he said that the company’s longerterm forecast “needs to come down” given previously expected contributions related to 5g opportunities “we have diminished confidence these new revenue sources will materialize in the near term at the level vz anticipated at its analyst day” in 2022 he wrote “once a new bar is set early next year we expect it will be an opportune moment to revisit the stock’s relative performance outlook” barden added shares have fallen 7 over the past three months as the dow jones industrial average has lost 5