With the S&P 500 hovering near its record highs and looking historically expensive at 30 times earnings, it might not seem like the best time to buy tech stocks. However, that's only true if you plan to chase the sector's most beloved high-growth stocks.
If you focus on the value plays that are trading at lower valuations but still have irons in the fire, then there are plenty of tech stocks that are worth adding to your portfolio. Let's review three of those appealing discount plays: AT&T (T 0.36%), Micron Technology (MU 0.82%), and Cisco Systems (CSCO -0.04%).
Image source: Getty Images.
AT&T
AT&T, one of the largest telecom companies in America, reinvented itself over the past few years by spinning off DirecTV, Time Warner, and its smaller media assets to strengthen its core 5G wireless and fiber businesses. By abandoning its misguided digital media ambitions, it simplified its business and freed up a lot of cash to expand its telecom business.
AT&T generates most of its revenue from its wireless business, which served 118 million subscribers in its latest quarter. Its wireless postpaid business gained 1.7 million subscribers in 2023, 1.7 million subscribers in 2024, and another 725,000 subscribers in the first half of 2025. Its fiber business has also been expanding at a healthy clip. The robust growth of its wireless and fiber segments is offsetting the secular softness of its business wireline segment.
From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect AT&T's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3%. It trades at less than 7 times this year's adjusted EBITDA and it pays a hefty forward dividend yield of 4%. That low valuation and high yield make it a safe stock to buy in this frothy market.
Micron Technology
Micron is one of the world's leading producers of DRAM and NAND memory chips. It controls smaller slices of both markets than South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix, but it manufactures denser DRAM chips than its larger rivals.
Micron's growth usually follows the boom-and-bust cycles of the memory market. The last bust happened in 2023 when the PC market cooled off from its pandemic-driven growth spurt, the 5G upgrade cycle slowed down, and data centers prioritized their purchases of artificial intelligence (AI)-accelerating GPUs over new memory chips.
However, its growth is accelerating again as the PC market stabilizes, smartphone sales rise, and its data center customers install more solid-state drives (SSDs) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to support the newest AI applications. That new boom cycle won't end any time soon.
From fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2027 (which ends in September 2027), analysts expect its revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at a CAGR of 27% and 45%, respectively. With an enterprise value of $133 billion, its stock looks like a bargain at just 7 times this year's adjusted EBITDA. It could still take years for Micron's current AI-driven growth cycle to peak -- and its stock could have plenty of room to rise before it runs out of steam.
Cisco Systems
Cisco is the largest networking hardware and software provider in the world. It bundles together a broad range of campus, branch, wide-area networking (WAN), and data center solutions in its end-to-end deployments, and it increases the stickiness of that ecosystem with integrated cybersecurity tools and enterprise collaboration services.
Cisco struggled over the past five years as the pandemic throttled its sales and disrupted its supply chains. As it overcame some of those challenges in fiscal 2023 (which ended in July 2023), its customers ramped up their hardware orders again. But as interest rates rose and the macro headwinds intensified, those customers throttled their hardware deployments. As a result, Cisco's inventories rose and its orders slowed down.
Cisco's business is stabilizing as it expands its security and observability segments, locks more customers into its sticky subscriptions and services, and benefits from the growing demand of networking infrastructure upgrades for AI-oriented data centers. From fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2027, analysts expect its revenue and earnings per share (EPS) to grow at a CAGR of 5% and 9%, respectively. That's a solid growth rate for a stock that trades at just 17 times its forward adjusted earnings. It also pays a decent forward dividend yield of 2.4%. Cisco isn't an exciting stock, but it could be a great place to park your cash and profit from the long-term growth of the cloud and AI markets.
