AT&T on T-Mobile purchase: ‘we will continue to pursue the sale’

Seemingly undeterred by the Department of Justice’s pending lawsuit and the FCC’s scathing report, AT&T sounded defiant at a UBS conference today with CFO John Stephens insisting that the company is still preparing to take T-Mobile USA off Deutsche Telekom’s hands. And those aren’t just empty words, either — Stephens points out that it has $10 billion in cash set aside right now with another $28 billion in financing and reserves waiting on standby so it can “close the deal very quickly.”

Next up for AT&T is a preliminary hearing with the DOJ this Friday, though Stephens says that any discussions with the feds that come out of the hearing won’t be made public. Unless AT&T submits a revised merger application first, everything is currently focused on next February’s court trial to settle the DOJ matter. Rumors have been circulating that the two companies might look at an Everything Everywhere-style joint venture in the event a merger has no shot of approval, but Reuters is citing its own sources today as saying that “there was no Plan B” — AT&T still wants to push the merger through, which by all appearances is going to require divestitures or other major concessions at this point.