In theory, practice and theory are the same.

Minimal downside risk? AT&T now has $250 billion of debt. Just because Disney & Comcast are chasing similarly a overpriced asset does not make AT&T's acquisition smart in absolute terms. Maybe AT&T's stock goes up a bit in the short-term, but AT&T is a bloated whale already. Swallowing a few big sharks won't make it healthier in the long-term. As Peter Lynch once put it so succinctly: de-worse-ification.

Seems that usually the time horizons are so long as to be almost worthless...if it hits your target in a month, you were right, if it hasn't hit it in a year, everyone forgets anyways.

I remember T selling the "bundle" thing back in the .com bubble, and it sounded like a great, conservative, dividend-paying way to play cellular, cable, landlines, etc. It dropped 30-40% anyway, 2000-2003, and then they then "spun off" all those companies, to "fully value" those assets as separate companies. Now they are trying a different bundle, to compete with Google, Verizon, Netflix, Apple, etc.? Hmmm. All that said, I typically love buying stocks when the P/E is the same as the dividend yield. That 1/1 ratio is really nice. It can be a really crappy story, with too much debt, and still work out.

Verizon bought AOL in 2015 on a similar thesis, but hasn’t quite outperformed T by that much. Would like to hear his take on that as well

Doppleganger....they are both named "Colin" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Montgomerie