Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.
TDSHIGH VELOCITYPRESSURE LEANTelephone and Data Systems, Inc. reads as High Velocity (composite 78/100); pressure / disclosure signals dominate the posture this cycle · primary market Connectivity.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$17M
vs $1.9B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
N/A
1/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
78
High Velocity dominates · Pressure Lean
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $4.4B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 18d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 18d
- 383 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- Control-process language
- 123 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 1 divestiture 8-K
- Latest event 25y ago; heavily discounted
- 123 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 123 activism filings
- Latest activism 1.9y ago
- Control-process filings
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 123 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
- 4 non-reliance 8-Ks
- 8 NT late filings
- Latest event 19y ago; heavily discounted
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 383 8-Ks
- Filed within 18d
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $5.5B
- 10-Q 18d ago
- 6 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $1,308M · Peak count: 1
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | $17M | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | $614M | N/A | N/A |
| 2021 | N/A | $1.3B | N/A | N/A |
| 2020 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Geographic Expansion25%
- Horizontal Consolidation25%
- Bolt On25%
- Platform25%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- horizontal_consolidation
- bolt_on
- platform
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“TDS Telecom may seek to grow its operations through additional investments in fiber and through the acquisition of and/or partnership with businesses that support and complement its existing markets or by creating entirely new clusters of markets in attractive locations.”
“TDS may seek to grow its operations through investments in fiber and through the acquisition of and/or partnership with businesses that support and complement its existing markets or by creating entirely new clusters of markets in attractive locations.”
“U.S. Cellular’s business development strategy is to obtain interests in and access to wireless licenses in its current operating markets and in areas that are adjacent to or in close proximity to its other wireless licenses”
“U.S. Cellular believes that the acquisition of additional licenses within its current operating markets will enhance its network capacity and speed to meet its customers’ growing demand for data services”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Connectivity
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $58.6B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $121.1B
- Recent vs prior
- −52%
- Issuer rank in market
- N/A
- Share of market capital
- 0.0%
Valuation positioning
TDS trades at a -0.5-turn discount to the Connectivity peer median of 7.9×.
- EV / Revenue
- 2.6×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- -0.7×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 7.9×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23.8× | 6.8× | 0.9× | $59.1B | $26.6B | |
| 20.2× | 6.1× | -0.1× | $11.9B | $4.9B | |
| 7.9× | 2.8× | 0.4× | $139.1B | $60M | |
Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.TDS | 7.4× | 2.6× | -0.7× | $2.1B | $17M |
| 6.1× | 2.6× | -0.1× | $126.5B | $3.7B | |
| 6.1× | 2.5× | N/A | $59.8B | $5.1B |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Connectivity. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Buyer landscape.
Public buyers whose stated archetypes, target categories, and recent cadence align with this issuer as a plausible acquisition target. Scores cross EDGAR signal and disclosure overlap.
Likely buyers
No public buyers surface as a strong target-side fit on current signal.
Likely sellers / divestiture partners
No reciprocal divestiture / strategic-alternatives matches identified.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)292026-02-24
- 10-Q (quarterly)1002026-05-08
- 8-K (event)3832026-05-08
- Proxy / DEF 14A1192026-04-08
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)1232024-07-03
Signals on file
- critical
Non-reliance disclosure
2007-04-234 Item 4.02 filings on file; financial-statement non-reliance.
- watch
Late-filing notice
2007-05-108 NT 10-K/10-Q filings on file.
- watch
Divestiture / strategic-alternatives 8-K
2001-12-031 8-K filing matching divestiture / strategic-alternatives language.
- elevated
Activism on file
2024-07-03123 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Serial acquisition history
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
- info
Signal
Recent transaction activity
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.