During the pandemic, telcos have created less value for shareholders than every sector but one, financial services, according to Bain & Company analysis of nearly 8,000 companies worldwide. From February to mid-December of 2020, telcos’ total shareholder return (TSR)—which measures the total return a shareholder receives from share price changes and dividends over a certain time period—trailed the average of all sectors by 16 percentage points, though the top quartile of telcos managed to outperform the cross-sector TSR average. What’s more, telcos have fallen further behind the longer the pandemic continues. From April to mid-December, telecommunications was the worst-performing sector as measured by TSR.