RESEARCH — THE FILING TAPE #17

Seven of 83: One Holder Is 92.2% of the Superinvestors' Verizon Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.

October 9, 2026

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #17. Verizon is the market's income telecom: a $0.7075 quarterly dividend with an October 9 ex-date, third-quarter results due October 26, and a Hold consensus target of $50.90 against a price in the $45s. We ran it through every filing lens we maintain. Seven of our 83 tracked superinvestors hold it at all — and one of them is 92.2% of the entire cohort. In the parsed insider record, spanning 467 filings, there is not one open-market purchase.

Start with the narrative, because at the moment it is a dividend-and-earnings story. Verizon reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 24: revenue of $34.25 billion, down 0.7% year over year and below a $35.16 billion consensus, against adjusted earnings per share of $1.30, above a $1.27 consensus. The calendar since then has been about income and timing: a quarterly dividend of $0.7075 per share goes ex-dividend on October 9, 2026, with payment on November 2, and the company will report third-quarter results on October 26, 2026. MarketBeat's consensus is Hold from 20 analysts — 12 Hold ratings and 8 Buy ratings — with an average target of $50.90; Scotiabank kept a Sector Outperform rating on October 2 while cutting its target from $52.50 to $51.50. The stock closed at $45.85 on October 5 and traded at $46.41 on October 7, inside a 52-week range of $38.39 to $51.68, at a market value near $191 billion. Our own price file puts the October 2 close at $45.92. Social attention spiked with the dividend date: Verizon drew 87 Reddit mentions in the 24 hours to October 8 in AltIndex's ranking, up 1,142.9%.

Now the filings. GetCoattail tracks the investors best placed to know any company: superinvestors, institutions, insiders, Congress, and 5% holders. For Verizon — the seventeenth Filing Tape audit, after IREN, CoreWeave, Micron, NVIDIA, Tesla, AMD, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Oracle, Dell, Bloom Energy, Palantir, Netflix, Starbucks and Broadcom — the story is concentration and absence: a superinvestor register that is effectively one holder, and an insider register with no purchases at all.

Lens 1: the superinvestors — seven holders, one of them 92.2%

We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, seven held Verizon in long common-stock positions — every reported row is a long position, with no option rows in the count. Their combined position is 3,572,173 shares worth $151,245,804. On a like-for-like pipeline basis the cohort barely moved in the second quarter, falling from 3,603,588 shares across seven holders at March 31 to 3,572,173 shares across seven at June 30 — down 0.9% — in a quarter when the share price fell from $50.20 to $42.34 in our price file, down 15.7%. The pipeline and EDGAR-collection second-quarter totals agree exactly, at 3,572,173 shares.

Of the seven holders, none were new, none increased, four were unchanged and three decreased. The register is dominated by a single name to a degree this series has rarely recorded. The largest holder, Mairs & Power Funds, reported 3,291,850 shares worth $139,376,929, a 1.28% portfolio weight — 92.2% of the entire cohort — and decreased its position 0.7% in the quarter. The other six holders combined hold 280,323 shares, 7.8% of the cohort: Miller Value Partners is unchanged at 168,000 shares, Hillman Capital decreased 11.9% to 57,263 shares, Tweedy Browne decreased 0.4% to 23,878 shares, and Yacktman Asset Management, Kahn Brothers and Dodge & Cox are unchanged at 20,000, 5,682 and 5,500 shares. The top two holders together are 96.9% of the cohort. This is a register that neither arrived nor left in a falling quarter: it stood still, and almost all of it is one fund.

Verizon through six filing lenses
Chart 1: Signal presence by cohort. Superinvestors: 83 managers, 2026Q2 13F (as of Jun 30, 2026). Institutions: full-market 13F aggregation, same date. Insiders: Form 4 record through Oct 2, 2026. Congress: Senate and House PTR record through Oct 3, 2026. 13D/G: filings through Apr 30, 2026. Short interest: FINRA biweekly settlement data through Sep 15, 2026. Source: SEC EDGAR; FINRA; GetCoattail collections.

Lens 2: institutions — fewer filers, 18.56% more shares

Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the register consolidated. At June 30, 2026, 3,125 institutions reported positions in Verizon, down from 3,205 at March 31 — a 2.5% fall — and 3,110 of them reported long positions. Reported share counts rose 18.56%, from 2,394,338,729 to 2,838,745,880 shares, with 1,947 filers entering and 2,027 exiting. The dataset's reported aggregate value rose 1.5% to $121,674,807,255; the aggregate includes option rows, so we treat filer and share counts as the reliable series and the dollar figure as reported (see methodology). Fewer filers held materially more shares in the same quarter in which the tracked cohort stood still.

Lens 3: the 5% register — three filings, all passive, one holder above 7%

Three SC 13D/G filings cover Verizon — zero 13D filings and three 13G filings, from three reporting names, the most recent filed April 30, 2026. The largest row belongs to Vanguard Capital Management, which filed a new 13G reporting 302,904,960 shares (7.18%) as of March 31, 2026. State Street Corporation reported 215,538,375 shares (5.1%) as of September 30, 2025, in a filing dated November 10, 2025. The Vanguard Group reported 0 shares (0.0%) as of March 13, 2026 — the same reporting-name sequence that appeared in our Broadcom, Palantir, Netflix and Starbucks audits; we report the rows as filed, without summing them or calling the zero an exit. No 13D — the filing an investor uses when it wants something from management — has appeared at all.

Lens 4: insiders — zero purchases in the entire parsed record

The insider lens is the emptiest in this series. Across the entire parsed Form 4 record for Verizon (467 filings through October 2, 2026), there are exactly zero open-market purchase transactions — no buyers at all, and no officer purchases in any window. Sales are small and one-sided: 26 sale transactions totalling $20,794,573.52 by six sellers across the full record, of which 23 were recorded as officer sales. In the 90 days through October 2, 2026, insiders filed 59 reports covering seven sale transactions totalling 7,700 shares and $378,906.00, by one seller — and zero purchases. Over the most recent year, purchases total zero transactions against 13 sales totalling $15,895,447.93. Our site's insider aggregate, compiled as of October 9, 2026, matches the full-parse 90-day figures exactly — zero purchases, seven sales, $378,906.00, one seller — so there is no discrepancy to disclose on this lens. Some selling is mechanical — vesting, tax withholding and pre-arranged plans generate filings regardless of anyone's view — and we assign no motives. What the record establishes is narrower and complete on its own terms: in the entire parsed history, Verizon insiders have never bought a share at market price.

Lens 5: Congress — one buy, three sells, all in the House

Across the Senate and House transaction record we maintain (as of October 3, 2026), Verizon shows one purchase transaction and three sale transactions, by one member, with the most recent purchase on April 14, 2026, and the combined record's party field listing D. The House aggregate carries all four transactions; the Senate aggregate has no Verizon row at all. Congressional disclosures report value ranges rather than exact amounts, so we record direction only. The sample is a single member's record, and it leans toward sales.

Lens 6: short interest — 2.02% of the share count, 43.3% below its February peak

As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent FINRA settlement date — 84,077,299 Verizon shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 4.65. That is 2.02% of the 4,154,775,202 shares outstanding in our fundamentals file (a share count as of June 30, 2026).

Short interest in Verizon
Chart 2: Shares sold short in Verizon at each FINRA biweekly settlement, Jan 2024 – Sep 15, 2026 (n = 65 settlements in the chart window; the full collected series runs 137 settlements from Jan 15, 2021). The series peaked at 148,344,833 shares on Feb 13, 2026; the latest reading, 84,077,299 shares on Sep 15, 2026, is 43.3% below that peak and 9.5% below the 92,919,127 shares recorded on Sep 15, 2025. Source: FINRA Equity Short Interest files; GetCoattail collection (vz_short_interest_series.csv).

The recent settlements run 85,680,317 on July 15, then 83,388,266, 76,354,402, 82,444,862 and 84,077,299. The borrow peaked in February and has since fallen by 43.3%, stabilising in a narrow band over the summer. On this lens, at least, the pressure peaked months before the dividend date put the stock back in the social rankings.

The gap, stated plainly

Verizon's filing record is defined by how little of it there is, and how concentrated what remains is. The tracked superinvestors hold 3,572,173 shares across seven managers, and 92.2% of that is a single holder, Mairs & Power, which decreased 0.7% in a quarter when the price fell 15.7% — no tracked manager opened a position, and none increased one. The full market moved differently: 3,125 filers, down 2.5%, holding 2,838,745,880 shares, up 18.56% — consolidation in the broad register while the named register stood still. Insiders recorded zero purchases in 467 parsed filings, against $20,794,573.52 of sales across the full record and $378,906.00 in the last 90 days. Congress is one member's House record: one purchase against three sales, the most recent purchase on April 14, 2026. Short interest, at 2.02% of the share count, sits 43.3% below its February 13 peak — a borrow that crested and receded long before the October dividend date. One plausible reading is that Verizon's second-quarter story was carried by the broad register and by income buyers outside every named register we track, while the concentrated registers neither joined nor fled. The record supports each clause separately; it does not say which register is right.

What would change the picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These are the filings that would change the description:

Until one of those prints, the filing record describes a stock whose broad register added 18.56% more shares in the second quarter while its tracked superinvestors stood still at seven holders — one of them holding 92.2% of the cohort — whose insiders have never bought a share in the parsed record, and whose short borrow has been receding since February.

Related reading: Thirteen of 83: The Superinvestors Cut Broadcom 57.9% While the Price Rose 22.0% — Filing Tape #16; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1; 80% Overlap, No Copycat Signal: Congress vs. the Superinvestors. Verizon's own page: Verizon (VZ) on GetCoattail.

Methodology and data notes

This article describes public filings as of the dates stated. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation. Filings lag reality: 13F positions are as of June 30, 2026, and later trading is not yet public.

Revision history

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