“keeping us on pace to achieve our full-year target of $4 billion in buybacks.”

In context

“.5% growth in the second quarter. Value-added services, which contribute about one-third of these revenues, can be variable from quarter to quarter. But we expect continued acceleration in our fiber and wireless connectivity revenues in the fourth quarter. While Business Wireline continues to manage through structural declines in legacy services, the team is doing a great job positioning the business to drive sustained growth in advanced connectivity services while operating more efficiently. Based on this solid execution, we continue to expect Business Wireline EBITDA pressures to moderate versus last year, with a full-year decline in the low double-digit range. During the third quarter, we returned $3.5 billion to our shareholders. This includes nearly $1.5 billion in stock repurchases, keeping us on pace to achieve our full-year target of $4 billion in buybacks. We ended the third quarter with net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 2.59 times, down slightly from 2.64 times last quarter, reflecting strong cash generation and growth in adjusted EBITDA. We ended the quarter with more than $20 billion of cash, including proceeds from recent debt issuances. This puts us in a great position to fund our capital returns program and pending acquisitions. We closed the sale of our remaining stake in DIRECTV in July and received approximately $320 million in cash in the quarter. We expect to receive an additional $3.8 billion of cash, with the large majority expected over the course of the fourth quarter and the early part of next year. As a reminder, these post-sale proceeds are reported within investing activities in the statement of cash flows and excluded from”