“we have also incrementally reduced our short-term direct supplier and vendor financing obligations in the third quarter, and we expect to continue to do so in the fourth quarter.”

In context

“lutions are also growing in the high single digits due to momentum with fiber as we make it available for more small to medium-sized businesses. And total business solutions year-to-date EBITDA is down slightly year-over-year as growth in wireless is largely offsetting declines in wireline. At the end of the day, we see the same underlying trends we've seen year-to-date with Business Wireline EBITDA, and we now expect low double-digit declines for the full year. Now before I close, I'd like to quickly provide an update on the progress we're making on improving the flexibility of our balance sheet. As a result of our strong cash generation, we're on track to achieve our net debt reduction target for the year. In addition to debt reduction and liability management we discussed last quarter, we have also incrementally reduced our short-term direct supplier and vendor financing obligations in the third quarter, and we expect to continue to do so in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, the paydown of these obligations is a headwind to free cash flows. We are reducing these liabilities in a high interest rate environment, which will help contain our cash interest costs. Therefore, I'm really pleased that we're doing this while still exceeding our initial free cash flow targets for the year. In addition, lowering our financing obligations should enable a more radical quarterly cadence of our free cash flow in 2024. As we think about our debt maturity towers for the next two years, we feel we are in a solid position and expect to address near-term maturities as they come due with cash on hand. We had more than $9 billion of cash equivalents and interest-bearing deposits on hand at the end of the quarter. In this high-rate environment, we find ourselves in th”