AT&T (NYSE:T) reports its earnings before the market opens on Wednesday, and plans a conference call to discuss them at 8:30 a.m. ET that day.

All eyes will likely be on its dividend, at least indirectly – in this report, by way of heavily anticipated forecasts for free cash flow.

It was a resized dividend that hit AT&T in 2021 as it announced its spin-off of WarnerMedia to merge with Discovery. As AT&T chief John Stankey said then, “you have to resize the dividend when you change the size of the company.”

Last summer AT&T cut its free cash flow forecast amid the economic slowdown, after a tepid first half brought in a $4B figure there – and investors automatically connected the dots with a potential threat to their dividend. Third-quarter results brought the same focus.

Now it’s set to provide its first full-year outlook since the media spin-off.

The company faces a multitude of costs – not only its key dividend, but also some $20B-plus in capital spending and a pile of debt to pay down – so for Wednesday’s earnings, AT&T’s free cash flow expectations are a bit of a wild card and have a good chance of driving the stock following the report.

Last summer, as AT&T reined in second-half 2022 cash flow expectations, it had said there was no change to its forecast for 2023 cash flow of $20B; analysts now have settled on $16B as the likely 2023 figure, with any strong departure in either direction serving as tea leaves for AT&T’s investors.

Where analysts fall on that question depends on how they see the cash flow going as well. Wells Fargo’s Eric Luebchow thinks that recent lowering of expectations for free cash flow suggests AT&T could see upside there (with help from wireless service revenue growth, along with a better balance sheet).

Seeking Alpha contributor Matthew Smith says the free cash flow forecast “impacts everything AT&T does; from wireless, to fiber and buying back debt.”

Consensus expectations are for AT&T (T) to post earnings per share of $0.57 on a normalized basis, on revenues of $31.34B (which would mark a year-over-year decline of 23.5%).

Those numbers have actually seen more revisions higher than lower over the past few months: Analysts have revised EPS expectations upward 17 times in three months vs. just three downward revisions.

Earlier Tuesday, rival Verizon (VZ) managed a gain after its own Q4 results, which drew attention from analysts due to a weak 2023 outlook.