Consolidated Communications Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
October 28, 2021

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning. My name is Julie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Consolidated Communications Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

Operator

After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Gina Frasbaudi, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Jennifer, you may begin your conference.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to Consolidated Communications' 3rd quarter 2020 1 earnings call. On the call today are Bob Udell, President and Chief Executive Officer and Steve Childers, our Chief Financial Officer. Comments today will highlight our strategic initiatives and our progress with our fiber builds. Steve will provide details on our Q3 financial performance and an update on guidance for 2021.

Speaker 1

Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call up for questions. Before we proceed, I'll remind you our earnings release, financial statements and earnings presentation are all posted on the Investor Relations section of our website, which can be found at ir.consolidated.com. Please review the Safe Harbor provisions on Slide 2 of our presentation. Today's discussion includes statements about expected future events and financial results that are forward looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. A discussion of factors that may affect future results is contained in Consolidated's filings with the SEC.

Speaker 1

We will file our 10 Q on Friday. Today's discussion will also include certain non GAAP financial measures. Our earnings release includes reconciliations of these measures to the nearest GAAP equivalent. I will now turn the call over to Bob Udell.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. The 3rd quarter was another important step in our multiyear value creation fiber expansion plan. We achieved the 10th consecutive quarter of broadband year over year revenue growth. We upgraded 97, 000 passings to fiber, gig capable service in the recent quarter and completed 219, 000 upgrades year to date. We are on track to exceed the aggressive plan we set of 300, 000 fiber upgrades for this year.

Speaker 2

These network upgrades are the path forward for growth and depict the first phase of our transformation, which is just beginning to take shape. Today, I will provide an update on our fiber build plan starting on Slide 4. Our 5 year plan is to upgrade 1, 600, 000 or over 70% of our total passings by the end of 2025. You can see the planned progression of this build on slide 4 and that we plan to upgrade 400, 000 passings next year in 2022. More than 1, 000, 000 passings will be upgraded in Northern New England alone where more than 90% of our markets have single or no competitor.

Speaker 2

We have a tremendous cost advantage especially in New England where approximately 80% of our fiber is aerial and in close proximity to our existing fiber backbone facilities. We are also leveraging our diverse footprint of suburban and rural markets with additional fiber to the prem builds in Texas, California, Minnesota, Illinois and Pennsylvania. This expansion supports each of our 3 customer channels including consumer, revenue and carrier giving us 3 bites of the revenue apple. In addition to the high percentage of aerial plant in New England, we have a number of fiber deployment advantages including our incumbent position, our robust near net fiber networks and existing conduit capacity for Berry facilities. We built 1700 miles of new fiber in the 3rd quarter and more than 4, 000 miles so far this year.

Speaker 2

We added more than 4, 000 net 1 gig subscribers in the 3rd quarter and have increased fiber subscribers by over 20% year to date. We are now hyper focused on implementing our enhanced digital technology to aid the customer experience and ramp our sales and marketing efforts. Our fiber cohort penetration targets are outlined on Slide 5. We expect to achieve 4% cohort penetration 12 months after passings are upgraded in a quarter, 24% after 24 months and we expect to approach 33% after 36 months in the life of an individual cohort. As we've discussed in the past, in some markets, we are confident we can achieve duopoly parity with penetration in the low 40% range over a 5 year horizon.

Speaker 2

Our go to market strategy has been well tested and we have exciting news coming in mid November related to a brand launch. With our new brand launch, we will offer an entirely transformed customer experience which is designed to make broadband easy. We are offering superior gig symmetrical speeds, the strongest whole home mesh WiFi capabilities the industry offers, no data caps, no contracts and an extremely competitive price point for symmetrical gig internet. We have the capacity to install fiber services within 3 days of order and we have a dedicated premium customer support channel measured by NPS scores for performance and productivity. We are significantly enhancing our digital sales engine in the next 30 days and rolling out an enhanced customer installation process.

Speaker 2

Our strategy is to win subscribers at the neighborhood level and provide a frictionless digital order experience. We are also connecting with our customers at local events through community meetings, both in person and virtually. Now the investments we are making in our digital transformation projects will give us and our customers new intuitive self serve options making it easy to do business with us in the way customers want. These tools will also significantly enhance the customer experience throughout our service delivery process. In the 3rd quarter, we experienced the highest number of online transactions in our history as we enabled new web based order entry tools specifically for Northern New England fiber customers.

Speaker 2

This digital flow through delivers end to end automation of all provisioning and order processing functions including messaging to customers regarding the status of their orders. This is a powerful combination of neighborhood levels of interaction coupled with the latest digital technology capable of delivering the fastest symm purpose proposition of our new fiber services. And there's more to come. Along with our new digital storefront, we will roll out a new brand representing a superior fiber product and a transformed customer experience giving customers exactly what they have been asking for from their broadband service provider. We are very excited to launch our new brand within the next 30 days and the differentiated customer experience which it represents, which will enable us to become the broadband provider of choice.

Speaker 2

Now turning to our commercial and carrier channel, this business continues to be important part of our strategy as we leverage our fiber network investments to grow commercial and carrier data transport revenue. We've continued a long track record of growth in data revenue, which grew 1.1% year over year as we edge out our network. We actually grew on net buildings by roughly 1400 or 11% year over year and we completed nearly 200 on net extensions of our fiber network in the recent quarter. In fact, 90% of our new sales across our markets are on net, which correlates to higher margins, increased opportunity to upsell and a greater ability to ensure the best customer experience. Now, this ultimately contributes to customer satisfaction and strong retention.

Speaker 2

We see good sales activity around our ProConnect, Unified Communications and SD WAN services as leading business solutions. Our commercial go to market strategy leverages our expansive fiber network and our solutions based sales approach, allowing us to become a trusted advisor to our customers while providing simple solutions to complex problems. We leveraged 3 distinct commercial sales channels including direct and agent as well as wholesale. Our carrier team is focused on the emerging 5 gs network opportunities across our regions and with all major carriers. The carrier product mix like commercial is weighted towards Ethernet and we are seeing more interest in carrier grade wave solutions as well.

Speaker 2

Our highly experienced sales team continues to capitalize on new Ethernet and backhaul growth opportunities while proactively managing 2nd generation contracts and price compression in an increasingly competitive landscape. We continue to be optimistic about business recovery from the pandemic and are pleased with the receptiveness for customer in person meetings and resulting projects. Our strong balance sheet enables us to support this channel and commit the capital needed to grow the business with the highest return. I'll now turn the call over to Steve, who will provide more insight on our Q3 financial results. Steve?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Bob, and good morning to everyone. The Q3 was another strong quarter and a step forward in our ongoing transformation of our fiber first build strategy. I'll start by reviewing our overall financial results for the Q3 and we'll provide an update on our 2021 guidance. To begin, our 3rd quarter highlights are on Slide 7 of our presentation. Operating revenue for the quarter totaled $318, 600, 000 down 2.6% compared to a year ago.

Speaker 3

The decline in revenue was driven by erosion of legacy products for voice and video and network access, which are trending as expected and were partially offset by continued growth in our strategic revenues for data and transport and consumer broadband services. Adjusted EBITDA was $127, 400, 000 and represents a 40% adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter. Turning to our consumer channel. Total consumer revenue was $125, 400, 000 down 2.4% compared to the year ago period and over 75% of the coming from our linear video services, which we will discuss in a moment. Consumer broadband revenue was 68, 600, 000 dollars up approximately 1% sequentially and up 2.1% year over year.

Speaker 3

This represents the 10th consecutive quarter of year over year growth in broadband revenue. Broadband growth stemmed from speed and fiber upgrades combined with ARPU gains on new fiber services. This resulted in consumer data ARPU being $58.48 up approximately 4 provided new metrics last quarter related to our fiber passings and penetration rates. Our intent is to provide information to measure the progress as we upgrade the network to 70 percent of our 2, 700, 000 homes to 1 gig capable fiber services. We have nearly doubled our gig capable coverage in 2021, which is now 18% compared to 10% at the beginning of the year.

Speaker 3

Our consumer fiber data penetration at the end of 20 20 is the starting point as we begin our 5 year build plan on January 1, 2021. So far this year, we have increased our gig subscriber base by 20% with approximately 11, 000 net adds, and we've almost doubled our inventory to an 80% increase of gig fiber passings. At the end of the quarter at the end of the third quarter, our total fiber gig plus penetration is 13% and is measured on total inventory, including recently upgraded passings. The pace of the build will influence our fiber penetration as we start taking fiber broadband market share as our sales machine scales and our new brand and product per passing details are outlined on Slide 5. Our year to date average cost per passing is 550 to 600, which includes edge access equipment, labor and fiber components.

Speaker 3

The cost per passing in Northern New England is around the $4.50 range based on the high amount of aerial fiber. The average cost of Connect, which includes CPE, labor and a drop, is approximately $700 The biggest variable of the cost of this drop is the drop length, which varies by market and region, and I'll provide an update on our CapEx guidance in just a moment. Consumer voice revenue was down 5.1 percent or $2, 200, 000 We continue to improve the attrition rate in consumer voice, and while we continue to experience some erosion, we are doing a good job managing the rate of decline in this area. Video revenue was down 2 point $3, 000, 000 or 12.4 percent on a stand alone basis and does account for 75% of the decline in consumer revenue. Our transition to over the top video services has enabled us to cap linear video deployments for our from Optimal TV's video strategy and is actually accretive to margins and free cash flow.

Speaker 3

Now turning to Commercial and Carrier. Revenue totaled $144, 300, 000 in the 3rd quarter, down $2, 100, 000 or 1.4 percent. Data and transport revenue was 91.1 approximately 1.1% year over year. We are 1 of the few companies in our peer group to continue to show growth in data and transport. Catalyst for this growth are dedicated Internet bandwidth, SD WAN and our commercial VoIP solution, which we call ProConnect.

Speaker 3

Commercial voice revenue declined $2, 700, 000 or 6% due to access declines and the migration $1, 000, 000 $1, 000, 000 year over year. Special access declines were offset by increased universal service fund revenue. Subsidy revenue was $17, 300, 000 down 4.4% from a year ago due to a mandated reduction in state funding from the Texas High Cost Funds. We are part of an appeal which was filed with the Texas Telephone recent ruling in an effort to restore funding to prior levels. Operating expenses were 206 point $6, 000, 000 down 1.4 percent from a year ago.

Speaker 3

Primary drivers of the change were network cost efficiencies, lower cost of video programming and the recognition of some property tax rebates. In September, we announced the sale of our non core Ohio assets for approximately $26, 000, 000 In the Q3, we recorded a noncash pretax loss of $5, 700, 000 on assets held for sale, which includes approximately $22, 000, 000 of allocated goodwill. We now expect to close in this transaction in the Q1 of 20 22. Additionally, we will continue to review our portfolio of assets for additional investment or monetization to ensure all assets have a long term strategic fit. At September 30, we recognized a noncash loss of $2, 200, 000 related to the increase in the fair value of the contingent payment right to Searchlight.

Speaker 3

Net interest expense for the 3rd quarter was 40 $3, 200, 000 an increase of $11, 500, 000 from a year ago. The increase reflects our recapitalized balance sheet enabled with the initial Searchlight investment and the global refinancing we completed last October, which allowed us extend maturities, increase liquidity and reduce leverage. For the quarter, non cash interest on the Searchlight note, combined with the amortization, deferred financing cost and the related discount, totaled $10, 900, 000 We are benefiting from lower annualized cash cost as a result of our April bond offering and bank repricing of approximately $18, 000, 000 and also we're able to eliminate 1% annual amortization on the term loan, resulting in another $14, 000, 000 in cash savings. Additionally, as you can see from the capital structure summary on Slide 9, we have no debt maturities until 2027. Our net debt leverage is 3.64 at September 30, up slightly from Q2.

Speaker 3

At the end of the Q3, we had over $500, 000, 000 in liquidity, and we believe we have a fully funded plan, build plans to return to growth. We are on track to secure the FCC approval on the final Searchlight investment by the end of the year. This will trigger Searchlight's second investment of $75, 000, 000 in the second stage closing of the Searchlight Partnership. At this end state, they will hold 35% of our common equity and $395, 000, 000 of perpetual preferred stock plus accrued interest. Pro form a at close, we will have approximately 114, 000, 000 outstanding total common shares.

Speaker 3

Cash distributions from the company's wireless partnerships totaled $11, 100, 000 in the 3rd quarter in our 30 $3, 200, 000 year to date compared to $32, 000, 000 a year ago. Capital expenditures totaled $144, 300, 000 in the 3rd quarter and $339, 500, 000 year to date. Our CapEx spend was our Q3 CapEx spend was approximately $30, 000, 000 higher than our plan as we proactively secured fiber materials and broadband CPE given the supply chain challenges facing the industry and the broader economy. Over 40% of our total capex year to date is supporting our FTTP build projects and our digital transformation technology. So let me sum up our Q3 results and the opportunity ahead.

Speaker 3

Operationally, we are making excellent progress in our fiber build and are placed on pace to exceed our upgrade target of 300, 000 fiber passings this year. Continue to achieve key strategic revenue growth in broadband and data transport services, which continues to provide stable business results and cash flow. We are changing the revenue and subscriber mix as we're becoming a leading fiber provider and begin our transformation and return to revenue growth in 2023. I'll close my comments out with an update on our full year guidance, which outlined on Slide 12. Capital expenditures for the full year of 2021 are now expected to be in the range of $440, 000, 000 to $460, 000, 000 an increase to the previous range of $400, 000, 000 to 420, 000, 000 dollars As I mentioned, we took proactive steps to secure CPE in fiber materials to support our build plan.

Speaker 3

We are affirming all other guidance measures with no changes. With that, I'll now turn the call back to Bob.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Steve. Let me say this, if this were a race, and make no mistake it is, we're in the first stage of it. There will be twists, turns and pit stops along the way, but we have an experienced team executing and delivering on this bold growth plan. I want to express my gratitude to our consolidated team for their dedication and resiliency. Their excitement is evident in our latest employee satisfaction survey and our positive results are a product of their hard work.

Speaker 2

Our focus right now is launching a superior fiber product with a differentiated customer experience. We have a large opportunity and numerous competitive advantages to becoming the broadband leader in the markets we serve. This business, it's an endurance sport and we're a proven team in it to win. Our strategy is clear as outlined on Slide 10. We're accelerating our fiber builds, extending fiber to over 70% of our addressable locations and I think we'll exceed that.

Speaker 2

We're leveraging that fiber to grow broadband revenue across 3 customer groups, giving us 3 chances to win. And we are redefining the broadband experience with new friendly ways to serve our customers under a new brand. Our path forward is all about building long term sustainability and value for our investors, our customers and our employees. And our 5 year plan is fully funded and we have the support from an experienced strategic partner in Searchlight. This is a fantastic time to be in our industry.

Speaker 2

With that, Julie, we'll now take questions.

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Jason Kim with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Thank you and good morning. What's the customer mix in terms of the net adds coming from your existing DSL customers versus the new customer relationship? And regarding consumer broadband revenue, it's nice to see the continued year over year growth, but the rate of growth sequentially was a little bit slower in Q3 versus what you saw sequential growth in Q2, anything to note there?

Speaker 2

Yes, I'll take the first part of that and Steve will take the second. The mix started out early with more upgrades as we were iterating on our go to market strategy installation process. So that's been a good process for us, 1st using upgrades to get experience with the development of all the tools that were that are coming together with the launch of our new brand. So I would say initially it was sixty-forty, 60% new, 40% upgrades and we're now in the eighty-twenty percent range as we exit Q3. Steve, do you want to talk about ARPU and revenue?

Speaker 3

So Jason, on the revenue growth, which I think was your question, you're right. We were probably about 3.5% Q2 to Q2 last year and we're 2.1%. Now I think that's just a reflection of how aggressive or kind of the buildup for our brand launch. We're not we're kind of muted on marketing dollars for new ads and things like that. So I think it's just kind of a play of where we're at on how aggressive we're being on the marketing, probably the timing is maybe some price increases in Q2 as well.

Speaker 4

That's helpful. And then we're seeing a lot more companies expanding their fiber expansion plans. So not just within their existing footprint, but filling out nearby towns if the economics are attractive. Is that something you would consider? And if so, how is it framed opportunity for consolidated and as well as how to pay for it?

Speaker 2

Yes. The way that we look at that is like we do any other build plan. We look at the return and if it's low to mid teens and remember, our core network is closer to subscribers already. As we went through the RDOF analysis, for example, we found towns that we could build without RDOF that were attractive. And so we're doing some of that.

Speaker 2

That's in the 600 that we added over the last 12 months to our plan, but I'd say a small percentage of it. So at this stage, we're being opportunistic. We're looking at our return models on an area by area basis, working with communities on public private partnerships to offset when the build isn't attractive from a private funding perspective and extending or edging out. So we're maintaining some capacity in our plan to embrace those opportunities as they become available or obvious to us.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Williams with Cowen and Company.

Speaker 4

I have 2 questions. 1 is just on the increased CapEx guide. You mentioned that you're seeing or you're anticipating supply chain concerns and maybe you're building fiber components and buying CPE equipment. Can you just help me understand the situation? Are you seeing supply constraints or are you anticipating it?

Speaker 4

And does that essentially mean that you're warehousing, say, CPE equipment and that could essentially mean you're pulling forward 20 22 CapEx as they shift the warehouses in 2021? And then the second question is on margin trajectory. It's nice to see you get back to the 40% mark even with the investments in the business. And it sounds like we expect some exciting stuff in a couple of weeks, which should help margins due to automation and So how should I think about the margin through 2020? So I know you're not giving guidance, but we're going to say CAF II drop off in the Q1.

Speaker 4

I imagine that's where you hit the bottom of your margin percent and then sort of running back. Is that the right way to think about it? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. I'll take the first part of that, Greg, and good morning. And Steve, again, we'll take the second, I think. With regards to the supply chain, you're reading that right. We have accelerated fiber acquisition and we're putting it up fast to mark our places on poles and in the ground.

Speaker 2

So we want to be first to upgrade any markets that we think long term might get attention from the cable competitor or anyone else. So, we're doing well on the physical plant side. And with the change and upgrade in our customer experience, we found ourselves in that inflection point between Wi Fi 5 and Wi Fi 6. And so we've been somewhat cautious and concerned about chip shortages and working closely with our suppliers on Wi Fi 6 gear and buying additional Wi Fi 5 gear to hedge as production commitments slipped and delivery slipped. So I would say, yes, you're seeing inventory grow probably in the 30 $1, 000, 000 to $40, 000, 000 range.

Speaker 2

And you're seeing us accelerate some of that that would have been in 2022. But I think we'll be doing for 2023 because I don't see the supply chain issue on the chipset side being resolved worldwide in the near term future. Steve, do you want to take the second part of that? Yes,

Speaker 3

sure. Greg, thanks for the question. Yes, so I think the way you framed your question on margins for '22 with the cap drop off being the low point, I think you're exactly right. And just to be clear, I know we've said this on every earnings call and it's very public, but to your point, we will be taking a step down in CAF II revenue starting January 1 as we transition to R and D. We had $48, 000, 000 run rate basis this year.

Speaker 3

We stepped down to about $6, 000, 000 That declined 42. You think about us being at the midpoint of the guidance for this year, and maybe that's your starting point going into 2022, assuming how well we manage the rest of the business and execute on the fiber growth plan across the rest of the customer channel. But I do agree and the drop off in ARDA in the subsidy money, I mean, we're not about terminal value on ARDA funding, right? We're building this for the future, and the build plan reflects what we needed to do to step up to make up on ARBOC. And I think Bob talked about the increase in 600, 000 homes since we announced the Searchlight partnership on the build out.

Speaker 3

So that's where we're trying to make that up. But to your point, I think 'twenty 2, we will take a step down on revenue and margins. And then over and we will expect to start showing sequential growth sometime in 'twenty get to full year growth in 'twenty 3, and we will see margin expansion to the high 40s, low 50s in the 5 year build plan.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rollins with Citi. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Thanks and good morning. Just a follow-up. In addition to the comments on CAF II, are there some other tailwinds or headwinds that investors should be mindful of in terms of the outlook for 2022 EBITDA? And then just separate on the Searchlight transaction. On Slide 15, it refers to the 395, 500, 000 dollars Is that the balance at the close or has that been ticking to some degree over the past number of months?

Speaker 4

Just want to appreciate what that like entry number is once everything is closed with this final tranche?

Speaker 3

Thanks. So Mike, I'll take the second question and Bob can take the first 1 on that CAF II and tailwind. Yes, so with respect to the note, I guess the way to think about it is they originally contributed $3, 000, 000 The ultimate balance or kind of discounted from $425, 000, 000 based on cost of capital is the $3.95 So the $3.95 will have we've been picking that since inception. That amount is doing the math on a 9% coupon to get the $3.95 plus a year of tipped interest on top of it. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4

Yes. So in other words, it has been ticking over roughly the past year. So it's the $3.95 plus whatever that fixed amount is over that period.

Speaker 3

Correct.

Speaker 4

That's helpful. Thank you. Okay.

Speaker 2

And the second part related to tailwinds, I think the infrastructure funding is on the margins some really great tailwinds. We've got a great engine for maximizing the public private partnerships that are possible and we've been close to Secretary Raimondo who is working through the NTIA process for allocating $40, 000, 000, 000 of the infrastructure plan assuming it gets voted in DeLong, we are assuming that that's likely to happen at some stage. And in the states, we are getting very close to all the major states that we offer service in from Washington State through Northern New England and Texas, Illinois, Minnesota on their broadband offices to ensure we're best positioned to maximize that opportunity. So I think you'll see us announce some more of those partnerships in 2022, some more significant than others and that will accelerate or increase our penetrations because those are like building marketing engines when you have the town, the city or the county pitching the broadband uplift that that effort will provide for the economy and the local value of quality of life.

Speaker 4

If I could just follow with 1 other question. I was just noticing in your commentary and the slides the growth of on net buildings. I think it was from about 13, 200 to about 14, 600 this past quarter. And I'm just curious, like, can you help us conceptualize what the total addressable market for buildings are in your territory? And how this growth of buildings can relate to an expanded addressable market for commercial

Speaker 2

revenue? Yes, I can't give you a specific number, top of mind, I'm looking in my notes, but I would tell you that in competitive markets, where we are getting more than our fair share by all assessment that we have done historically and that's usually in the 20% share range across what we call our metals and that's divided by size of customer. So we've got a very good channel management strategy and we only go into a building when we see it goes through a capital committee process that Steve chairs, our CFO chairs and so it's quite disciplined. There's more addressable market than we've tapped and that's why we show perpetual growth on data and transport across commercial and carrier. So we can maybe size that for you in the future, but top of mind, I don't think I can.

Speaker 4

Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Love Chau with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hey, thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to go back to some of the supply chain commentary. It's good to see your build costs have remained in line right now. Have you seen any changes in the labor market in terms of either labor availability or labor cost? And maybe you could just talk through how you're managing those items to keep the build on time and on budget?

Speaker 2

Yes, that's a great question, Eric. What we're seeing is some tension around fiber slicers and engineers and some on the door to door direct sales front. And some of it's been COVID related on the sales front, I think. But the other has been just demand for fiber engineers and slicers. And so with our most recent contract in Northern New England, which was really a partnership with the union, we are adding roughly 80 to 100 technicians that many of which will be fiber slicers and we're doing we have our own training school that we've set up and so we're able to have a predictable cost because of it being an employee base and yet we have a very good unit pricing arrangement with our contractors And so we're watching carefully those agreements, making sure that where we have to, we supplement them with some additional incentive for closeout of projects.

Speaker 2

It's not moving the needle significantly at this stage, but it is a couple of points of cost increase on the capital side, but it hasn't taken us out of our range per unit at this stage, but it's on our watch list. So I'd say it's engineers and splicers on the build side and on the go to market side, you know, it's some tension on direct sales resources.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thanks for that. Just 1 more for me. The small asset sale you did in Ohio, so just given the amount of private capital we've seen looking to get into the space today, maybe you could talk about other geographies, other product sets that you would consider non core and would be willing to monetize if the circumstances warranted?

Speaker 2

Yes, I think like in the past, I'm hesitant to give specifics on that because the more we evaluate, the more we're willing to build if it fits a reasonable return. So we're still in conversation with people on other geographies. And if it's remote and not necessarily in close proximity with some of the larger states that we've already announced we're building in, then it's probably potential for a spin off if somebody can service it faster than we're going to get to it. And those discussions continue. But there's a certain cadence necessary when we have so much focus on the build plan, on the go to market strategy, on executing with the new service experience that we're only going to process those things so fast or so many at 1 time.

Speaker 2

And so there's probably some good queued up interest and we're going to work through them in a systematic way and probably have more to announce in 2022.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks for the questions.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Bob Udell.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Julie, and thank you all for your interest in our company and for joining our call today. We look forward to updating you on Q4 at our next call. Have a great day.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Consolidated Communications Q3 2021
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