Charter Communications Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 28, 2023

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Charter Communications First Quarter 2023 Investor Call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you will be given instructions for the question and answer session. Also as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would now turn the call over to Stefan Anninger.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning, and welcome to Charter's Q1 2023 investor call. The presentation that accompanies this call can be found on our website, ir. Charterdot under the Financial Information section. Before we proceed, I would like to remind you that there are a number of risk factors and other cautionary statements contained in our SEC filings, including our most recent 10 ks and also our 10 Q filed this morning. We will not review those risk Factors and other cautionary statements on this call.

Speaker 1

However, we encourage you to read them carefully. Various remarks that we make on this call concerning expectations, Predictions, plans and prospects constitute forward looking statements. These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from historical or anticipated results. Any forward looking statements reflect management's current view only Charter undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements or to make additional forward looking statements in the future. During the course of today's call, we will be referring to non GAAP measures as defined and reconciled in our earnings materials.

Speaker 1

These non GAAP measures as defined by Charter may not be Please also note that all growth rates noted on this call and in the presentation are calculated on a year over year basis unless otherwise specified. On today's call, we have Chris Winfrey, our President and CEO Tom Rutledge, our Executive Chairman and Jessica Fisher, our CFO. With that, let's turn the call over to Chris.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Stefan. During the Q1, we added 76,000 Internet customers with contributions from our Spectrum 1 offering and our rural construction initiative. We continue to operate in a low transaction environment and yet we added 686,000 Spectrum mobile lines. At the end of the Q1, we had 6,000,000 total mobile lines. Just over 10% of our Internet customers now have mobile service We expect mobile penetration to meaningfully grow over the next several years and our increasing convergence capabilities will contribute to Internet growth.

Speaker 2

We grew revenue and EBITDA by 3.4% and 2.6% respectively during the Q1 and our capital expenditures reflect progress on our key initiatives. This is a very unique time for the cable industry with generational opportunities across our 3 key initiatives, each of which is designed to drive customer growth and long term cash flow growth. The first initiative is evolution, which includes the most significant spectrum enhancement to the cable network since the late 1990s at a very low cost. Network evolution also includes the convergence of our connectivity products. 2nd is the largest expansion of our Since the 1980s, bringing broadband to unserved and underserved areas.

Speaker 2

And finally execution, which is all about investing in and delivering great service. I'll provide a brief update on these initiatives. Our network evolution plan is progressing well. We have now completed the physical work for high split in 2 midsized markets. We increased the network capacity to 1.2 gigahertz, which is equivalent to the acquisition of 400 megahertz of spectrum.

Speaker 2

We also allocated more spectrum for upstream use. In these markets, we're now capable of delivering 2 by 1 gigabit per second service And we're launching the same CMTS based 1.2 gigahertz high split to an additional 6 markets. These DMAs represent about 15% of our footprint. In parallel, we're preparing the 2nd step of our network evolution plan, which will cover about 50% of our footprint and which adds the deployment of distributed access architecture, allowing us to deliver 5 by 1 gigabit per second speeds. Step 3 of our network evolution plan covers about 35% of our It should begin in late 2024.

Speaker 2

That step adds a further expansion of our network to 1.8 gigahertz. We We expect our network evolution initiative will be essentially complete by the end of 2025 at the previously noted $100 per passing target, excluding the benefit of any network savings, which will come. Our converged product offering also continues to evolve. Spectrum 1 is performing well in the marketplace. It offers the fastest connectivity and includes differentiated features like mobile speed boost And Spectrum Mobile Network, each of which run on our advanced Wi Fi product.

Speaker 2

Today, over 40% of our residential Internet customers have our advanced Wi Fi product, which just last month we also launched to the SMB marketplace. Over 70% of our customers Mobile customers now use the Spectrum mobile network outside of their homes. Spectrum 1 also offers significant savings for customers at both promotional and retail pricing. So our opportunity in converged connectivity in mobile is very large. We particularly like our ability to mix the lease economics of our 5 gs MVNO for the 10% to 15% of the time that our mobile customers don't have access to our faster spectrum mobile network.

Speaker 2

We have a strategic partner in Verizon and We're a meaningful contributor to active lines on its network and its financials. When we look at the pricing and the usage of fixed wireless access Disclosed by T Mobile, it's clear that the MVNO price we pay per gigabyte is dramatically better than the economics mobile operators achieve with fixed wireless access offerings. In the expansion category, our plans are on track. During the quarter, we activated 44,000 subsidized rural passings. Subsidized rural passings growth is accelerating with 20,000 subsidized rural passings activated in March.

Speaker 2

Costs are coming in as planned and we have the labor, The equipment and the supply necessary to execute our build. If we get the permit support we need, we can complete our RDOF commitments 2 years ahead of the yard office deadline. The pace of penetration gains and subsidized rule passings continues to exceed our expectations with 6 month Penetrations at approximately 40%. And finally, we remain committed to the execution of our core operating strategy, which prioritizes customer experience and customer satisfaction, ultimately driving faster customer growth. Our proactive maintenance efforts are fundamentally changing the customer experience.

Speaker 2

And using telemetry, we can address service impairments before customers even know they exist, pulling forward service calls that otherwise would have occurred and preventing service related disconnects. We expect the mix of proactive truck rolls will increase significantly in the coming years. We're also seeing the benefits of our investments in training and tenure faster than expected. Employee retention among our frontline service employees during the Q1 was the best I've ever seen. And while investments in our employees generate upfront expense, they ultimately deliver longer tenured employees, which produce higher quality transactions, fewer repeat transactions, lower average handle times and better sales yields.

Speaker 2

So increasing tenure also allows for a greater amount of our network evolution project to be performed with our own employees, which will save money and increase the quality of the upgrade. Additionally, the increasing digitization of our service platforms where we've invested significantly in machine learning and the precursors to AI will further reduce transactions. More to come in that in the future quarters, but the key point here is that the combination of longer employee tenure, Network evolution benefits, the conversion of our video platform to IP and digital service investments all create a long runway for us to continue to reduce service transactions, operating cost and churn, which increases customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value and our returns. So ultimately, we're focused on doing everything that a customer would want us to do, investing in the network to offer even faster speeds, Providing seamless connectivity products not available elsewhere. Then bringing that same seamless connectivity to markets that have never had broadband before and delivering better customer service by investing in digital service platforms and a more tenured, more qualified service employee, all while helping save customers significant money in an inflationary environment.

Speaker 2

So our strategy is focused on delivering differentiated Converge connectivity products that essentially improves people's lives and creates value for shareholders. Now I'll turn the call over to Jessica.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Chris. Before discussing our Q1 results, I want to remind everyone that starting this quarter, we've made some changes to the way we report our P and L. First, we now include mobile service revenue in the residential and SMB revenue as appropriate, and mobile equipment revenue is now reported in other revenue. On the expense side, we no longer report mobile expenses separately and those are now included in the applicable expense categories. Ultimately, these changes better reflect the converged and integrated nature of our mobile business and our operations and offer structure.

Speaker 3

For additional information regarding these changes, please review footnote A on Page 7 of the trending schedule we posted this morning. Now let's turn to our customer results on Slide 5. Including residential and SMB, we added 76,000 Internet customers in the Q1. Video customers declined by 241,000 partly driven by a programming expense increase passed through in January of this year. Wireline voice declined by 220,000 and we added a record 686,000 mobile lines.

Speaker 3

Although our Internet customer growth continued to be positive in the Q1, market activity levels remain low. During the quarter, total churn was slightly higher than last year, but still near record lows and well below pre pandemic level. We've seen a small impact from fixed wireless access competitors in the price sensitive customer segment. Generally speaking, however, these customers typically exhibit higher levels of churn regardless of competition. And given the issues with fixed wireless product As confirmed by third parties and questions surrounding that product's reliability and scalability, we expect fixed wireless customers to find their way back to us over time.

Speaker 3

We continue to drive very strong mobile growth with our high quality, differentiated and attractively priced service. The majority of new lines continue to come from existing Internet customers, though the percentage of lines coming from acquisition has increased significantly since the introduction of our Spectrum One product. And as we mentioned last quarter, our converged customers have meaningfully lower Internet and customer relationship churn. As Chris mentioned, we also continue to perform well in rural areas. The new rural disclosures we issued today on Page 5 of our trending schedule show that we continue to see robust growth in rural passings.

Speaker 3

During the quarter, we activated 44,000 subsidized rural passings despite winter's construction seasonality. Penetration of subsidized rural passings continues to exceed our original targets, And these rural customers are purchasing products beyond Internet, including mobile, video and wireline voice. Moving to financial results starting on Slide 6. Over the last year, residential customers were down slightly with new customer growth driven by Internet, set by video only customer churn. Residential revenue per customer relationship grew by 2.5% with promotional rate step ups, rate adjustments and the accelerated growth of Spectrum Mobile, partly offset by a higher mix of non video customers and growth of lower priced video packages within our base.

Speaker 3

As Slide 6 shows, residential revenue grew by 2.5% year over year. And as a reminder, starting this quarter, our residential revenue now includes mobile service revenue, which grew from $387,000,000

Speaker 2

in the Q1 of

Speaker 3

2022 to $497,000,000 in the Q1 of 2023. Turning to commercial, SMB revenue grew by 2% year over year, reflecting SMB customer growth of 2.4%. Enterprise revenue was up by 3.1% year over year. Enterprise PSUs grew by 4.9% year over year. And excluding all wholesale revenue, enterprise revenue grew by 7.3%.

Speaker 3

1st quarter advertising revenue declined by 7 2% year over year due to less political revenue. Core ad revenue was down 2.1% year over year, driven by lower local and national advertising revenue, offset by our growing advanced advertising capabilities. Other revenue grew by 34% year over year, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales and higher rural subsidies. In total, consolidated Q1 revenue was up 3.4% year over year. Looking to 2nd quarter revenue growth, I would remind you that we will lap April 22 rate adjustments and face the headwind of strong political advertising revenue in the prior year.

Speaker 3

Moving to operating expenses and EBITDA on Slide 7. In the Q1, total operating expenses grew by $316,000,000 or 3.9% year over year. Programming costs declined by 6% year over year due to a decline in video customers of 5 point 2% year over year and a higher mix of lighter video packages, partly offset by higher programming rates. Note that our Q1 programming costs included $50,000,000 of favorable adjustments, which is similar in size to Sports Network rebates and other favorable adjustments we saw in the first quarter last year. Looking at the full year 2023, we continue to expect programming costs per video customer to be approximately flat year over year.

Speaker 3

Other costs of revenue increased by 19.9%, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales and other mobile direct costs. Cost to service customers increased by 6.9% year over year, driven by adjustments to job structure, pay and benefits to build a more skilled and longer tenured workforce, resulting in lower frontline employee compared to 2022 and additional activity to support the accelerated growth of Spectrum Mobile, partly offset by productivity improvements. As a result of the programs we discussed at our December Investor Meeting, our employee attrition declined more quickly than we had expected, which is allowing us to lower our normal hiring in the first half of this year and increase overall tenure and quality. Longer term, we continue to expect additional efficiencies and cost to service customers over time as a result of our continuing lower service transactions, service tenure and digital service investments, proactive maintenance and network evolution investments. Sales and marketing costs grew by 7.6%, primarily driven by higher staffing across sales channels and the accelerated growth of Spectrum Mobile.

Speaker 3

And other expenses grew by 6.7 percent driven by higher labor costs. Adjusted EBITDA grew 2.6% year over year in the quarter. Turning to net income on Slide 8. We generated $1,000,000,000 of net income attributable to Charter shareholders in the Q1, down from $1,200,000,000 last year, with higher adjusted EBITDA more than offset by higher interest expense. Turning to Slide 9, capital expenditures totaled $2,500,000,000 in the first quarter, above last year's first $23,000,000 compared to $541,000,000 in the prior quarter, driven by Charter's subsidized rural construction initiative and continued network expansion across residential and commercial greenfield and market fill in opportunities.

Speaker 3

I would also note that in the Q1, we saw a sequential decline in total CapEx associated with our subsidized rural construction initiative, as we purchased a significant amount of rural construction equipment inventory as supply chain issues improved in the 4th quarter. 1st quarter capital expenditures excluding line extensions totaled $1,600,000,000 compared to $1,300,000,000 in Q1 of 2022. We spent more on upgrade rebuild given our network evolution initiative. Customer premise equipment, which includes installation costs with higher year over year and support capital was also up just given timing. Our expectations for full year 2023 capital expenditures have not changed, in part because the costs associated with our network evolution Initiatives are coming in as planned.

Speaker 3

For the full year, we continue to expect capital expenditures excluding line extensions to be between $5,000,000,000 $6,800,000,000 Following the expected completion of our network evolution initiative at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026, CapEx excluding line extensions as a percentage of revenue should decline to below 2022 levels and continue to decline thereafter. And we expect 2023 line extension capital expenditures to reach approximately $4,000,000,000 We continue to expect 2024 and 2025 line extension CapEx to look similar to our outlook for 2023 at approximately $4,000,000,000 per year. And our 2024 Assume that we win funding for or otherwise commit to additional rural spending. As Slide 10 shows, we generated $664,000,000 of consolidated free cash flow this quarter versus $1,800,000,000 in the first quarter of last year. The decline was primarily driven by higher CapEx, mostly driven by our network expansion and network evolution initiatives and an unfavorable change in working capital, excluding the impact of mobile devices, which was typical seasonality for our Q1, but larger than last year.

Speaker 3

The year over year headwind was partly driven by outgoing payments related to the larger inventory buildup in Q4 of 2022 that I just mentioned. For the full year, however, we expect the change in working capital, excluding the impact of mobile devices, to be roughly As our capital and payroll accruals should rise over the course of the year. Mobile device working capital will remain a headwind given the mismatch in timing between when we receive EIP payments and when we pay handset providers. Also in the Q1, we didn't make And generally speaking, we make 4 federal cash tax payments a year with 2 quarterly payments made in the and one payment made in each of the 3rd and 4th quarters. We're not changing our cash tax outlook that we provided on last quarter's call.

Speaker 3

And simply providing a bit more clarity on the timing of cash tax payments. We finished the quarter with 97 $800,000,000 in debt principal. Our current run rate annualized cash interest is $5,100,000,000 As of the end of the Q1, our ratio of net debt to last 12 month adjusted EBITDA was 4.47 times, And we intend to stay at or just below the high end of our 4 to 4.5 times target leverage range. During the quarter, we repurchased 2,600,000 Charter Shares and Charter Holdings common units totaling about $1,000,000,000 at an average price of $3.75 per share. Charter's bandwidth rich two way network nearly 56,000,000 homes and businesses with gigabit and converged services everywhere.

Speaker 3

And given the significant investments we've made in that network over a multiyear period, we are now in a position to upgrade it further in both a cost efficient and time efficient manner to offer the fastest speeds and the most advanced telecommunications services in the country. Additionally, Our scale and our capabilities are allowing us to rapidly expand that network, both to unserved and underserved areas through our rural construction initiative and to other high ROI expansion opportunities. Those initiatives combined with our service oriented operating strategy and prudent capital allocation are poised to drive long term customer growth, higher free cash flow and shareholder value. Operator, we're now ready for Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. Our first question will come from Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Thanks so much. If I could do one for Chris, one for Jessica. Chris, on the go to market strategy for wireless, I'm just curious what percentage of the wireless lines being created by the 12 month promotion you're hoping will convert to full pay after the promotional period expires. I think As part of that, we think about what's the data usage, how is that tracking for the promotional wireless lines versus the non promotional lines? Or How many of your gross adds are phone numbers being ported in versus creating new phone numbers?

Speaker 4

Just trying to understand the revenue opportunity from that promotion. I certainly get The retention benefits. And then Jessica, not really sure what you're willing to say, but When you think about your prior commentary about labor investments impacting both 1Q and 2Q, should we start to think about A little bit more margin expansion in the back half of the year. Any comments you're willing to make on swing factors for margins, the remainder of the year would be helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 2

So Doug, I'll start it out with the go to market on Spectrum 1. We have Two offers out there today. 1 is for acquisition of free line together with Internet and essentially the other one is if you First in line, we'll get the second one for free for an existing customer. Those customers are great customers. They have good usage and they're getting the fastest product In the country from a connectivity standpoint.

Speaker 2

And when I said it before, but when the promotional period rolls off, They're going to have not only the fastest connectivity product, but they're going to have the best price in the marketplace as well at $29.99 That includes taxes and fees, no contracts. So it's a very, very attractive offer from a quality standpoint and from a pricing standpoint, not only at promotion, but at retail. So Our expectation is these are great customers, they're normal lines and they're not going to be able to replicate the service or pricing That they're getting from us at retailer or promotion anywhere else in the marketplace. Our expectation is that it all sticks.

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, Doug, we understand that there's some false market chatter. We should be clear on some other things. The majority of our gross adds are Coming from paying lines, less than 5% of our lines today are tablets and those have the same rate plans as phones. And we don't include wearables in our numbers either.

Speaker 3

So, the lines that we're putting up are good lines.

Speaker 2

One other thing to add to that. This is not a moment in time. We were talking about it before the call. Our intent here is to grow and to grow more And to continue the path that we're on. So I think this is just the beginning and we're excited about what we're doing, not just from a mobile perspective, but from an Overall connectivity standpoint and the value that we can bring to customers both in quality of the product and save them a lot of money.

Speaker 3

To your question on margin and what happens in the second half of the year, the increases that you see both in sales and marketing And cost to serve right now in the year over year really driven by strong mobile sales. But if you think about what happens to them for the rest of the year, In sales and marketing, if you look back at last year, 2Q 2022 sales and marketing expense was sequentially lower than 1Q, which might put a little bit of pressure on the year over year comp in Q2. But the year over year growth rate of sales and marketing And we'll have lapped our mid year 2022 staffing adjustments and in Q4 we'll lap the Spectrum 1 related Sales costs increase. Similarly, on the cost to serve side, I expect year over year growth in cost to moderate in the second half of twenty twenty three, which I think is consistent with what we said before, and end the year at growth levels that are more consistent with where we were with where we've been previously, which is largely flat. So I do think that as we go through the year to In line with what we've said, the business continues to become more efficient and we continue to expect to be able to operate it more efficiently and generate growth from them.

Speaker 2

And I'd just add Two quick things to that Doug. One is on the cost side, if you think about all the OpEx and the CapEx investments that we've talked about, It's really setting us up for a prolonged multiyear period of continuing lower costs to serve for customer relationship, which will benefit our cash flow for years to come. But the other piece at the end of this year, which ties back to your first question, We have a wall of good customers who are receiving a Promotional rate today that are going to roll to a retail rate at $29.99 in STIX. So you've not only got the cost side that starts to Lapped the prior year investments, but you also have the revenue side that starts to kick in at the Q4 of this year and that just gets better and better as we go. Thank you both and thanks for the rural disclosures as well.

Speaker 2

Absolutely.

Speaker 1

Thanks Doug. Katie, we'll take our next question please.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Thanks. Good morning. I guess for either of you, just wanted to hear more about the kind of process of accelerating those rural build outs. I think you talked about, I think it was March relative to the full Q1. Is this the kind of is it a simple, I mean, not a simple, but is it better weather Allows for greater and faster construction.

Speaker 5

Just what are the puts and takes of getting that number Even higher as we move through the rest of spring summer through the year and not to get put too fine of a point on it, but does the 6 month clock that you guys talk about start when homes are activated. I just want to make sure I got sort of the definitions around activated and marketed to etcetera. So just trying to get a sense of the rollout for the rest of this year. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Ben. The point you made about the seasonality with winter is right. In my prepared remarks, I mentioned in March, it was That it was much higher in terms of the already coming out of the back end. The full year target is 300,000 subsidized rural builds and we intend to meet that. We're on Plan to meet that.

Speaker 2

So from an internal planning perspective, we're right on where we need to be. If you have to keep in mind that we a lot of our build has taken place in places like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and January February, there's just a little bit harder to get around, whether you're going on poles or whether you're going underground, it's It's a little harder in that environment. So nothing that we haven't expected and already coming out the back end we're picking up. Unless there's a more technical For Jessica, it's from activation that we'd start the clock with 0 to 6 months. So once the plant is constructed, it's opened up for marketing, that's the T minus 0, so to speak.

Speaker 6

Got it. Okay.

Speaker 3

And that's the way it's being reported in the new trending schedule details. So you're getting those passings in sort of in the reporting as the 6 month clock starts.

Speaker 5

Yes. And then just as a follow-up to Doug's question, and I don't like doing the battling earnings calls thing, but since it came up Quite specifically last night on the T Mobile call, these promotional lines, the additional lines you're adding, it sounds like Those are lines being used and your expectation is as those roll to pay, those lines will continue to be lines. I think their argument was sort of these are not coming from anywhere, they're just being created. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that as you do roll to pay because it's obviously a decent piece of your line count. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thanks. Look, I always find it strange when somebody tries to do your IR for you, but we had a great quarter. These are great ads. We said what we said and they're going to stick because it's high quality product. It's the fastest market and it saves customers a ton of money.

Speaker 2

So beyond what we've already said, I think we'll leave it at that And continue to grow our line counts and we'll do our own IR. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Thanks.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Ben. Katie, we'll take our next question please.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from John Hodulik with UBS, your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Great, thanks. And again, thanks for the rural disclosure. So it looks like if you pull out the rural ads, You guys added about 50,000 subs. Just anything you can talk about in the core markets, if you could talk about what you're seeing sort of incrementally from a competitive Again, the fixed wireless guys are talking about bringing on more capacity and expanding into new markets. Does that become more of an issue as they roll out?

Speaker 7

And then you talked about this deployment of high split infrastructure. Would you expect To see better trends in those markets as you sort of turn on that service and improve, say, upstream capacity, sort of along the way. So should we expect it to be something of an iterative process where things get better as the infrastructure gets more competitive? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Hey, John. So in the trending schedule, you'll see that the subsidized rural customers that were added in The quarter was 17,000, which means the bulk of our net adds came from our existing footprint. So we're competing very well across the entire markets. That includes Both where we have existing certainly existing fiber overbuild, as well as where there's new fiber overbuild and we're competing and More than holding our own in that footprint, we saw a little bit of softness both in the gross adds and to a lesser extent really on churn, but mostly in gross adds. Interestingly, is it non gigabit overbuilt area because it's the first time that somebody's had an alternative.

Speaker 2

And so fixed wireless access in that marketplace seems like an interesting alternative until people find out ultimately that The throughput and the capabilities aren't the same as the broadband that we provide. So we're competing very well across all markets, Just to be very clear, but that's the dynamics that we're seeing inside the legacy footprint. The passings that we're building the subsidized rural build, not only do we expect to Have continuing improving performance through Spectrum 1 of the legacy footprints, but the passings that we're building from a rural standpoint just continue to get larger and be A larger contributor to our growth over time. On HiSplit, we're Enhancing the spectrum availability of our network, which improves contention on the upstream as well as higher both downstream and upstream capabilities, which gives Marketing claims in the marketplace, but it also signals to competitors that we're they're not going to have that marketing claim with us. And so The upstream is helpful, but I think it's more at the stage to have a significant marketing claim in the marketplace and we get a fair amount of network benefits And so we'll get payback from both of those both from competitiveness as well as Essentially reduce truck roll and reduce node splits over time as well from what we're doing.

Speaker 7

Got it. If I could just follow-up real quick, is the goal still To have higher adds this year versus last year.

Speaker 2

Thank you. It is our goal to have higher net additions in Internet this year than we did last year.

Speaker 1

Thanks, John.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Chris.

Speaker 2

Thanks a lot.

Speaker 1

Katie, we'll take our next question, please.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Phil Cusick with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Speaker 1

Hi, guys. Thank you. Chris, I have to tell you,

Speaker 7

it's a lot more fun from our side when companies do someone else's IR. So don't be shy.

Speaker 2

We won't step into that rut.

Speaker 7

All right. First to follow-up on John. Jessica, you spoke in March about broadband activity through the quarter. Anything you can add about that? And any thoughts you have on sort of 2Q, Susie's analogy or anything different?

Speaker 6

And then in video, I understand a lot

Speaker 7

of video decline has been Fewer broadband adds to connect to, but are you also seeing an acceleration in disconnects? And what

Speaker 3

Yes. So Phil, Talking about going into Q2, Q2 is always a seasonally more difficult quarter. But in terms of trends, we did continue to see what I sort of had said in at the end of February and that I think that our Trends looked a little better across coming in and in March than they had in February, which was better than January. And we continue to see that now with the context of Q2 being kind of what it is. So I think that we continue to think that, the things look pretty good, or at least better than they

Speaker 2

So I'll take the video. There's a pretty clear correlation to when we've taken rate increases either on video or even the more recent increase that we had on the Internet. So there is a downgrade element that takes place at the point Of a programming pass through, which we've had to do because of where the programmers have been. I also think in addition to that, because the point of sale discussion with the customer has been focused on Internet In mobile, the length of that conversation is a little longer. And I think there are things that we can do to have a better attach rate to a video at the point of sale Now and certainly in the future as we think about the rollout of Xumo towards the back half of this year, it's a very compelling product.

Speaker 2

It's Very simple. It's straightforward. It has tremendous amount of utility towards customers for both their OTT as well as any live video viewing and Subscriptions that they have, it's I've said it before, it's the platform that I'd like to have on all of my TVs. And I think it's going to be very attractive to customers and I think it has the opportunity to really improve our trajectory on video as well in a profitable way.

Speaker 7

Will Xumo be reported as a regular video sub or you'll have a different category for that?

Speaker 2

We haven't gotten through all the reporting definitions yet, but I think the right way to about it to the extent the customer takes a video service from Charter, then it would be reported as a video PSU. And to the extent it's just A platform that we're distributing that our customers can use as connectivity plus customers, then likely it's just going to be a Xumo unit and it will be an added benefit to our Connectivity relationship. But I reserve the right to take that out loud together with Jessica over time, but I think that's the more natural way it will go.

Speaker 3

Yes. And as we get closer to a rollout, we'll try to provide some additional information on where we think that's our land.

Speaker 7

Thanks again.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Phil.

Speaker 1

Katie, we'll take our next question please.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Peter Cipino with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Good morning. Thank you. On the subject of your truly gaudy mobile results, could you discuss the evolution of Device promotions as part of your mobile strategy and whether we should be modeling use of cash for device promotions in the future?

Speaker 2

Sure. I think the device business, that's not why we got into mobile. And we got into mobile to provide The fastest connectivity service and to save customers money on their monthly overall connectivity service and to bring convergence, a product that It doesn't really exist anywhere but Charter and Cable generally today. So Never say never, but we don't see a need and we don't have any plans to be aggressively into the subsidy business from a device standpoint. We don't need to because we provide significant value, the best fees, the best product and the best amount of savings already with what we're our go to market strategy today.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Peter. Katie, we'll take our next question, please.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Jonathan Chaplin with New Street. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Thanks guys. Two questions. The early work that we've done on bead suggests the return to those markets could be Phenomenal. Potentially double what you guys may be seeing in Ardolf market that the full subsidy is awarded. I'm wondering if you can help size What the opportunity could be?

Speaker 8

I think you got like roughly 20% of the Arloft opportunity. Could it be something of that magnitude Of the beat opportunity. And then as we total up broadband ads in the industry, it looks like there's been a bit of a slowdown for the overall industry this quarter. I'm wondering if you've got any context for what 3, this quarter, I'm wondering if you've got any context for what might be driving that. Is it just a pull forward of growth from COVID, from the sort of period of higher growth during COVID or is there something else going on?

Speaker 8

Thanks.

Speaker 2

So I'd start First thing, the RDOF returns that we have are extremely attractive. And we're really pleased with what we're doing both on RDOF as well as The other state grants that were coming out of some of the ARPA and other COVID funds and that's been highly successful. On bead, it's really too early to tell. We've been very successful where we've gone into different subsidy RFPs simply because we're aggressive And because we're the most experienced rural builder in the entire country. So when we go tell a local state or federal government that we're going to build and we're going Within a certain timeline, we have probably the most not probably we have the most credibility because we're the largest rural provider today.

Speaker 2

We're the largest rural builder. We've won awards for success in quality of what we do. And we have the ability not just to bring broadband into these rural But we have the ability to save customers significant amounts of money on their already high mobile build as well as bring video into So it's not just a single play Internet. We bring us a whole suite of connectivity services that save customers money. We've been successful.

Speaker 2

And so both economically As well as from a quality standpoint, our success rate is high and our credibility is very good. But in terms of what we win in bead, And it's certainly it's factored into some of our outlook on CapEx, but time will tell how successful we can really be on that front. But I'm bullish. I think we're going to do well.

Speaker 3

The thing that I would add to that is that, Jonathan, we have a very disciplined sort of Practice now and how we bid for these offerings. And so we're very comfortable with our ability to price the passings With our ability to then bid for an appropriate amount of subsidy against that and then to go on the back end and execute against building the passings in a way that's cost effective and that generates the returns that we set out for. So there There's a hypothetical math exercise that you can do to try to get to what we would win, but what I would be clear about is what we win, We'll win at good returns and we'll execute it on the back end and bring those returns back into the company.

Speaker 2

Yes. We have great visibility to our costs. We have Supply, labor, equipment all lined up and we know what it costs in each of these different markets already. So our experience Today is really going to bode well for giving us confidence in what we did on. On the overall broadband market, I do think that there continues to be the headwind of all the COVID volume that Forward in the broadband market and in combination of just a lower transaction, lower moving environment.

Speaker 2

And so I think the entire market is still suffering from that as a little bit as well as a small swing back into wireless substitution. So we're seeing some of that As well. Housing starts also been down, so that clearly contributes into this as well. And all of which I think Temporary nature of the difficulty there. I think if you hear from the entire industry is when is it going to come back to normal and none of us really have a crystal ball.

Speaker 2

But I think if I listen to what others are saying or including our peers, there's no reason to think that we don't get back into normalized market environment. It's just become very difficult Perfect exactly when that happens. In the meantime, we compete well, we're growing both in legacy markets as well as obviously in our new build area. And through a combination of market normalization as well as a very large pipeline Of unserved rural passings that we're constructing, the opportunity for growth in Internet as well as in mobile is very good for us.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Jonathan.

Speaker 2

Thanks. Thanks.

Speaker 1

Katie, we'll take our next question, please.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Craig Moffett with MoffettNathanson. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Hi, thank you. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about wireless margins, Jessica. You shared 1 more quarter of wireless Results that I think it's while I sort of get that the remarkable pace of subscriber growth means customer acquisition cost is very high. It also leaves sort of to the imagination how the business will actually scale over time. So Anything you could share with us about underlying wireless margins or customer lifetime values of wireless subscribers?

Speaker 7

And in particular, what traffic you might offload and how that might affect it going forward would be very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes. So, Craig, I think back in December, we actually gave where we are in terms of Margin in the business exclude or income in the business excluding customer acquisition costs. And we showed there that if we run it as a standalone business, which we don't, But that we would make good margins in the business. We certainly have read the work that you've been doing trying to use some of the financial information available out there to back in The costs, obviously, I'm not going to comment on exactly what those were, but you might have Heard from us if we thought that you were materially incorrect on them, I or from someone else for that matter. It's important though to step back and think about we don't run the wireless business just for margin in the wireless business.

Speaker 3

We run our entire business to generate the most cash flow on a the most cash flow per passing that we can Across the network and that means that you have to have more customers, which means you have to price at a value and it means that you have to generate More money per customer and we believe in doing that by adding services to the customer, which we do by adding wireless to our current broadband Video and voice customer base. And we also are seeing that there's benefits Having those products bundled together, not just in the form of driving better pricing for our customers, which we'll do, but in the form of reducing Sure. And ultimately, we think also increasing what we can do in terms of customer acquisition across both the broadband and the wireless product as they become sort of a converged connectivity experience. So we're really confident in our ability to continue to Have financial benefit from the wireless business going forward because of the value that it adds to what we can provide to the customer and the resulting increased cash flow that we get on a customer by customer basis when those customers take more products from us including the wireless product.

Speaker 2

Craig, on the traffic offload, I mentioned in the prepared remarks that we've now deployed Spectrum Mobile network To all capable devices, which is our advanced Wi Fi service and that's in 40% of our residential customers, we've now begun to launch That advanced Wi Fi service and spectrum mobile network to SMB as well. So up until this point, the vast majority of the traffic off has been inside of an existing customer's household and hasn't given the ability for them to do significant amounts of offload outside the household and especially mobile network Really over the course of the past 4 or 5 months is accelerating that ability to have traffic offload. And that's prior to us Fully deploying CBRS, which we intend to do, and we're already live in one large market. It's going very well. Whereas I think we had publicly said that we had 15% of our usage was Through the lease of the 5 gs MVNO network, that's now decreasing already pretty quickly.

Speaker 2

And so the 85 That was on our network before is now moving up to 87% just in a matter of months. And that will continue to increase over time as we deployed More Spectrum Mobile network to advance WiFi as well as CBRS over time. And so it's It's attractive today and it will continue to be more attractive and the profitability and the cash flow today is really tied up in the subscriber acquisition cost. Great. Thank you, Craig.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Katie, we'll take our next question please.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Jessica Ehrlich with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Two questions. 1 on mobile pricing longer term. I mean, do you think this is similar to broadband when you guys entered the market, I don't know, decades ago At a significant discount to telecom and then grew it over time as your share grew. So just kind of how you're thinking about it longer term?

Speaker 9

And then second on Xumo, Can you remind us what the timing of the rollout is? But also on advertising, can you compare it to linear? Like How are you thinking about it in terms of inventory load, CPMs? I mean, it seems like you'll have a lot more data.

Speaker 2

So I'll take the you may need to come circle back and remind us what your question was on the broadband. I wasn't sure I I think it was had the corollaries to mobile. But on Xumo, back half of this year, we haven't announced it a month. The progress of the Xumo team is going very well. The products looks great.

Speaker 2

And so we expect to be deployed Fully deployed as charter at the end of this year. The advertising business will come through several Places one is live video where you can think of that as connected TV CPMs. We have that today. We have the largest spectrum we have the largest App delivery of essentially virtual MVPD of anybody in the country because of the way that our app is used. And so we monetize through higher CPMs The ends of Connected TV spots today that will be amplified through the Xumo platform.

Speaker 2

And then in addition to that, Xumo We'll have its share similar to any other Connected TV platform of advertising and subscription revenue. And some of those advertising spots will be conveyed to the affiliate, which in this case would be us. And so we expect to participate both as an equity holder in Xumo and its Advertising revenue model as well as a way to amplify our own existing advertising revenue streams that we have today.

Speaker 3

On the longer term question on mobile pricing and sort of where we go there, I think the most important thing For us to worry about right now is that we're trying to take share in that market and to take share. We're priced to take Sure. And while we're doing it, we're still able to make good margins on that product. And so I don't think that there's some sort of long Pricing game to think about right now. What we're really thinking about is what we do to take share in the market to provide mobile service to more of our customers, the fastest and best priced in the industry and to use that to generate cash flow for

Speaker 2

the business? Longer term, if you think about it, there's 2 ways to think about it, To pontificate, one is, is mobile really a product or is it just an attribute of our connectivity service? And over time is their ability to create an entirely new category of seamless connectivity. Today mobile lines are sold at an individual level and And broadband soldered a household level. Today, they're sitting on 2 separate bills.

Speaker 2

And I'm not sure that either of those need to be True. In the future, it could be a single product that none of our competitors have and none of our competitors have a path to replicate. So that's one way of thinking about it. Another is instead of thinking about it as broadband is to think about it as a corollary is to think about it what we did In the telephone space, the wireline telephone space where we used it as a significant way to for a prolonged period of time to Save customers significant amount of money to drive connectivity and other products that we have by saving them money through an over the top product Where we had a better mousetrap and we didn't have a bunch of high priced legacy revenue that we had to worry about and we could be aggressive in the marketplace. I think those notions, they go hand in hand.

Speaker 2

We've talked about Spectrum 1 and how that may evolve over time in terms of We may try different ways to go to market that could include pricing, packaging, billing to really create Potentially a brand new category in the space.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Jessica. Operator, we'll take our last question, please.

Operator

Thank you. Our last question will come from Michael Rollins with Citi. Your line is now open.

Speaker 6

Thanks and good morning. Two topics. First, I was curious if you could share more details on the activity you're seeing in the business segment. Any changes in behavior of your customers at the beginning of the year and if this macro backdrop is having any specific impact Charter positive or negative on how it's been performing? And then just one other on the ACP.

Speaker 6

Just curious how many ACP subscribers that Charter currently has and how this program is contributing to the broadband performance? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Hi, Michael. I'll take those. In the business, it's different between SMB and Enterprise. Honestly, SMB is a little bit soft right now. We're still growing.

Speaker 2

You can see that in our numbers. The SMB space has been a little soft. I don't think we're alone in seeing that. I also think that fixed wireless access may be selling cheap, Low quality residential products into a lower portion of the SMB space. It's we see some evidence of that.

Speaker 2

I think that's temporary. As it relates to enterprise, we're doing very well in enterprise, the retail side. We have ongoing cell tower backhaul revenue pressure. But in the retail space for enterprise, whether it's fiber Internet access, Ethernet, our managed services, Our UCaaS services, we're actually doing very well. It takes a while to activate sales, but I think we had our best sales quarter ever in Q1 Pre activation, so the enterprise space is doing well and I expect the retail piece to continue to grow well and to actually to accelerate.

Speaker 2

On ACP, we're not going to get into specific numbers other than to say it's a big program for the government. It's important to the government. And we've been very active in deploying ACP at their request. It's been very successful. The vast majority of the We have, we're already existing customers who are now benefiting from that benefit.

Speaker 2

And we are, we believe, the largest ACV participant and we're We're hopeful that the government continues to renew that program over time because we think it's a good program and it's been important and it's a good benefit in the marketplace.

Speaker 1

Thanks. Thanks, Michael. Back to you, Katie.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back over to Stefan Anninger for any closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thanks everyone and we will see you next quarter. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's event. You may now disconnect.

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Charter Communications Q1 2023
00:00 / 00:00