Lumen (LUMN) is a company that I have a lot of history with. I initially bought 47 shares on March 1, 2021 at 12.44/sh. I then sold 116 shares on Dec 20, 2022 at 5.30/sh. so during this period, I got absolutely demolished holding Lumen. I still thought they had a great opportunity because of the acquisition they made of Level3 Communications. This gave them a lot of fiber capacity which would be a huge asset to own. So even though I sold my shares, I was still watching LUMN. Once my tax losses had been sufficiently seasoned, I purchased 185 shares at 3.25. As it continued to fall, I continued buying more shares. 23 shares at $1.86 on June 12, 2023, 199 shares at $2.01 on June 21, 2023, 493 shares at $1.32 on November 21, 2023, then 400 shares at $1.09. I bought shares all the way down. Finally, things started to turn around for LUMN and in mid-2024, their stock price started climbing back up. I sold 300 shares at $3.24 on August 1, 2024 and sold another 200 shares at $4.97 on August 6, 2024. The stock was shooting up because Microsoft had been talking with Lumen about a partnership to supply the fiber to their new data centers. Hopefully this continues to be a success story. At one point, I held 1300 shares of LUMN and it was down to $0.97/sh. This is one time when buying the falling knife has ended up working out, but I have many other stories where the opposite happened and I chased bad money with good.
LUMN still has a lot of debt and they aren’t exactly out of the woods yet, but hopefully they will continue making good decisions. I would love to be able to keep telling this as a success story.