Charter Communications Inc (CHTR)

“And we'll have a tailwind from the rate for the cost pass-through that's hitting in late July and early August.”

“Broadband ARPU will improve sequentially in Q3.”

“Based on our June 30 standalone share count at close and on an as-converted as-exchanged basis, we expect our total shares to be about 177 million.”

“Given the pending Cox closing and its financing, and our focus on liability management, we have paused our share repurchases through the end of the third quarter.”

“As of the end of the third quarter, including the impact of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions and including the impact of our second quarter debt repurchases and assuming the success of the exchange offer announced yesterday evening, we expect our ratio of net debt to last 12-month adjusted EBITDA to be just above 3.9x.”

“Our outlook for a significant reduction in capital expenditures has not changed.”

“but our cash flow growth is not, and we have full confidence in the significant free cash flow ramp we're about to see.”

“But I think our original outlook is still the same.”

“We had publicly said that we thought that we could get into, essentially, into the low 90s. And that point of view hasn't changed.”

“So that was kind of what should be a onetime push down as we modified the product capability in a good way. And then we'll expect to be moving back up as the continued WiFi offload and continued CBRS deployment takes place over time.”

“Our focus is on penetration as well as connectivity ARPU and overall customer relationship ARPU excluding the programmer app allocation, both of which I think will grow in FY '26.”

“We expect share repurchases to restart in the fourth quarter and we expect to be in a position to repurchase shares throughout the deleveraging process to 3.5x.”

“Paying down debt, including the opportunity to repay secured maturities as they come due, will be part of our effort to reach our long-term leverage target and we expect there to be continuing opportunities for liability management approaches to support deleveraging.”

“If successful, this exchange will reduce our total debt principal and accelerate deleveraging.”

“We also plan to reduce our total debt through liability management.”

“We continue to expect that our calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between $500 million and $800 million.”

“And after our evolution and expansion initiatives conclude, our run rate capital expenditures for standalone Charter would be below $8 billion per year.”

“And as we've said before, looking beyond 2026, we expect total capital spending in dollar terms to be on a meaningful downward trajectory.”

“For standalone Charter, we continue to expect total 2026 capital expenditures to reach approximately $11.4 billion.”

“The back half of this year will benefit from political advertising, cost pass-throughs and efficiency initiatives, and we're working on a number of additional initiatives to improve the full year trajectory.”

“Currently, for the full year 2026, we expect standalone Charter EBITDA, excluding the impact of transition costs to decline around 1% year-over-year.”

“But we still expect the sum of our Cox transition costs and capital expenditures to be at or better than what we anticipated.”

“Those adjustments didn't impact 2Q, but will drive better residential revenue in the back half of the year.”

“As we complete our network evolution, we'll have over 250 megawatts of available capacity without additional investment and capacity for much more at a very low cost with future potential partners.”

“But the plan is to both delever earlier and further, but not forgo the buyback opportunity at what is a historically low valuation.”

“So today, we're moving our post-transaction leverage target to a flat 3.5x, which we expect to achieve within 3 years following the close of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions.”

“We're now recruiting well over 1,000 new residential and business sales jobs in Cox territories, which will drive higher sales.”

“And while we'll update that estimate after close, I think it will grow to $1 billion.”

“We still expect run rate transaction expense synergies of at least $800 million per year.”

“We expect our pricing and packaging to drive lower churn, higher customer satisfaction and better NPS.”

“A lower product pricing, including our $1,000 savings guarantee for new and existing customers when taking mobile will help drive higher household product penetration, maintaining healthy Cox household ARPU.”

“We expect to drive better Internet customer performance and unit growth acceleration with very underpenetrated mobile and video.”

“AI service and cost benefits are also beginning to ramp, and we're implementing a series of additional cost management measures.”

“We also expect second half EBITDA for standalone Charter to benefit from a previously discussed cost pass-through on Internet this summer and political advertising.”

“we expect to stabilize and return to broadband growth over time with our better converged connectivity product and pricing, higher demand for speed, data and reliability and as our NPS scores improve, benefiting both churn and sales.”

“Within a couple of months of closing, we will launch the Spectrum brand and our pricing and packaging within the legacy Cox footprint.”

“We're working with the California Public Utilities commission towards the summer close.”

“Is that a 2-year tailwind where you're going to have much higher sales because you are new and because you're providing all this additional product and pricing and value. That will be the case.”

“So clearly, the broadband stand-alone pricing, which is part of the rationale for getting the deal done is broadband pricing is going to be lower, both at promotional and retail and the broadband reported ARPU for Cox is going to go down.”

“We do continue to plan to grow EBITDA slightly this year with the benefit of the tailwind from political advertising.”

“Even with this de-levering, we continue to expect significant ongoing capital returns to shareholders.”

“Following the close of those transactions, we will target the low end of the 3.5 to 3.75x range, which we expect to achieve within 3 years following close.”

“During the pendency of the Cox deal, we plan to be at or slightly under 4.25x leverage pro forma for the Liberty transaction.”

“We continue to expect that our calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between $500 million and $800 million.”

“Just to highlight that reduction in capital expenditures, on its own, from approximately $11.7 billion in 2025 to less than $8 billion in 2028, is equivalent to over $28 of free cash flow per share based on today's share count.”

“And after our evolution and expansion capital initiatives conclude, our run rate capital expenditures should be below $8 billion per year.”

“Looking beyond 2026, we expect total capital spending in dollar terms to be on a meaningful downward trajectory.”

“We continue to expect total 2026 capital expenditures to reach approximately $11.4 billion.”

“By the end of this year, about 50% of the current spectrum network will be upgraded to symmetrical and multi-gig service, with significant work on the remaining 50% already in flight.”

“And I think because of that, from an overall Internet ARPU growth perspective, it will be close either way in terms of where we land on overall Internet ARPU growth for the year, but it will depend on a number of those factors that Chris talked about, and the tuning around offers as well, and it is what you do with the overall pricing profile across all of our products.”

“I think on ARPU growth for the year, it'll be close either way in terms of whether we end up with net growth.”

“Guarantee Internet service through a new invincible Wi-Fi product we'll launch in February.”

“Mobile's profitable, It'll continue to grow.”

“Note that first half 2026 EBITDA will be more challenged than second half EBITDA, given the onetime benefits we saw in 1Q last year. And the benefit of political advertising that we expect in the 2026.”

“We will have significant additional capital available to return to shareholders.”

“We will continue to generate very meaningful and growing levels of free cash flow.”

“Free cash flow will take off from an already significant amount”

“2025 was our peak year of capital expenditure. And capital expenditures after this year will decline significantly.”

“We expect subsidized rural passings growth of 450,000 in 2026. Our last large build year.”

“If you think about that together with programming and programming cost per video sub, I expect that programmer cost per video sub will be up in low single digits when you that program or streaming app allocation.”

“But there might be additional mobile ARPU declines in the year over year going forward. But sequentially, I think that we've we've bottomed out on that front.”

“At the end of 2025, we were about 40% of our footprint had that new pricing and packaging. We'll probably be at 60% at the end of this year.”

“I expect that to be meaningfully slower this year than what we saw last year, largely related to of investment that we already made sort of bringing the expense rate up”

“Yeah. I think that's right. And if you think about how that translates into you know, something like cost to service customers, like, ultimately, I expect that to service customers to be slightly down over the year. In the year versus last year.”

“We expect to revert to normalized CapEx in the range of 7.5 to $8,000,000,000 per year by 2028.”

“Even with this delevering, we continue to expect significant ongoing capital returns to shareholders.”

“So today, we are moving our post transaction target leverage to the low end of a new 3.5 to 3.75 times range, which we expect to achieve within three years following close.”

“Which provides flexibility to reduce leverage by up to zero five turn annually over the next several years.”

“During the pendency of the Cox deal, we plan to be at or slightly under 4.25x leverage.”

“We currently expect that our calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between $500,000,000 and $800,000,000.”

“And after our evolution and expansion capital initiatives conclude, our run rate capital expenditures should be below $8,000,000,000 per year.”

“Looking beyond 2026, we expect total capital spending in dollar terms to be on a meaningful downward trajectory.”

“And expect it to exhibit about the same amount of spend as we expected for 2028.”

“We expect total 2026 capital expenditures to reach $11,400,000,000”

“We expect our capital intensity to return to 13% to 14% of revenue by 2028 at Charter standalone.”

“I'm not projecting broadband relationship growth this year. We expect to see an improved trajectory from the investments we've made over the past three years.”

“And by the end of this year, 50% of the current spectrum network will be upgraded to symmetrical and multi-gig service. With significant work on the remaining 50% in flight and moving to completion in 2027.”

“In 2026, we'll nearly complete our rural build-out providing us with over 1,700,000 new subsidized rural passings with growth for years to come.”

“Assuming regulatory approval of Cox, Spectrum will cover over 70,000,000 households, which gives us additional scale to develop new products and services serve more business customers, and save customers significant money.”

“So ultimately, what what happens then, you know, to think about it in March, instead of individual costs. So you might have video ARPU continuing to decline”

“Probably do, I think, maybe 20 or so more, but we'll be in all the states where we have you know, CBRS power licenses, you know, within this”

“Lower leverage will drive some impact to our weighted average cost of capital, which should in turn positively affect valuation.”

“It could be as much as $1,000,000,000 for the full year 2026.”

“And we can probably do the same even with the Cox integration.”

“And EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter will be pressured by at least as much as it was in the third quarter, given last year's political advertising strength and the same macro pressures we saw in the third quarter.”

“We're pulling them from the market as of the beginning of November, but they're putting a bit of pressure on our ARPU growth in 4Q”

“That's putting a bit of pressure on our ARPU growth in 4Q, which, combined with some sales channel mix pressure in marketing and resi sales, will put us in that place where you did hear it correctly that I think they were a little more pressured in Q4 than we had anticipated that we would be when I spoke about it a few months ago.”

“As I've noted before, during the pendency of the Cox deal, we plan to be at or slightly under 4.25x leverage pro forma for the Liberty transaction.”

“And we expect full year cash tax payments to total approximately $1 billion.”

“And we expect full year change in cable working capital to be modestly positive.”

“We continue to expect total 2025 capital expenditures to reach approximately $11.5 billion, lower than our original outlook of $12 billion, primarily as a result of some network evolution capital pushed into 2026.”

“We continue to expect subsidized rural passings growth of approximately 450,000 in 2025, in addition to continued nonrural construction and fill-in activity.”

“And with the additional upside potential from future EBITDA growth, a declining stand-alone share count and the powerful economic and strategic benefits of our Cox transaction, the pro forma entity will generate higher free cash flow per share in spite of delevering, which will reduce our cost of capital.”

“Before moving to Q&A, I wanted to remind everyone that as our capital spending peaks this year and as we begin to benefit from President Trump's new tax legislation, we are poised for rapid free cash flow and free cash flow per share growth over the next several years.”

“That allocation should grow over time as more customers authenticate into our streaming application offers, but is neutral to EBITDA.”

“Post close, however, we will move our long-term target leverage to 3.5x to 4.0x, and we would expect to delever to the middle of that range within 2 to 3 years following close.”

“Further, even including the impact of the Cox transaction and associated integration capital, we expect total combined company capital expenditures to decline in the first full calendar year post close.”

“Despite that push, our goal is to ensure that 2025 is the peak capital year, even if by a small margin.”

“In total, we expect to spend approximately $230 million of our own capital net of subsidies to build out those passings over the next several years.”

“Our free cash flow is about to surge.”

“So the mobile business is now becoming a real tailwind to our free cash flow growth, and it will continue to increase.”

“Yes. I think the answer to your first question is, yes, we're seeing higher sales. We're seeing lower churn and better upgrades. So video sales at new Internet acquisition as well as video upgrades to existing Internet. And so it's all of the above, and it's going well. And I expect that to continue to improve here.”

“We should have a much slower year-over-year growth rate in the back half of the year versus the front half.”

“Marketing and resi sales, there, I also would say still low to mid-single-digit growth for the full year.”

“So I think still flat to slightly down in the year-over-year.”

“As a result of the permanent bonus depreciation and interest deductibility rules, I would expect more projects to meet that positive ROI hurdle.”

“As I mentioned on our Cox transaction investor call on May 16, during the pendency of the Cox deal, we plan to be at or slightly under 4.25x leverage pro forma for the Liberty transaction.”

“On a stand-alone basis, we still expect 2025 to be our peak capital spend year in dollar terms.”

“We expect to grow adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2025 and year-to-date, we're on track with the first half EBITDA growth of 2.6%.”

“We continue to expect rural passings growth of approximately 450,000 in 2025, in addition to continued nonrural construction and fill-in activity.”

“This allocation should grow over time as more customers authenticate into our streaming application offers, but is neutral to EBITDA.”

“Hulu should become available for those customers prior to the launch of ESPN Unlimited.”

“I should also feel very comfortable with the outlook that was in the proxy statement for combined CapEx of the combined company. I feel pretty comfortable with the envelope that exists inside there as well.”

“The Charter CapEx outlook, other than some timing between years that get pushed from one year to the other, investors can depend on what we've provided for the Charter CapEx.”

“We are now in the midst of our peak capital intensity period and moving beyond that peak on its own sets us up for rapid free cash flow and free cash flow per share growth over the next several years as capital intensity declines meaningfully.”

“The new tax legislation will ultimately save us several billion dollars in cash taxes over the next 5 years, helping to finance our capital expenditures and investments and supporting our free cash flow for at least the next 5 years, while creating higher free cash flow per share essentially permanently.”

“And given the powerful economic and strategic benefits of our Cox transaction, the pro forma entity will generate higher free cash flow per share in spite of delevering, which will reduce our cost of capital.”

“And in our modeling, the new rules can drive $10 or so of free cash flow per year for each of the next 6 years.”

“And finally, we plan to add with all of that, our combination with Cox, which provides meaningful share price and free cash flow accretion to our shareholders.”

“Post close, however, we will move to our long-term target leverage to 3.5 to 4.0x. And we would expect to delever to the middle of that range within 2 to 3 years following close.”

“2025 should also be our peak year of capital intensity, even including the impact of the Cox transaction and associated integration capital, assuming that it's closed with capital intensity falling going forward.”

“The majority of the $500 million spending shortfall this year will be spent next year in 2026.”

“The transaction is priced at an attractive valuation, and it's accretive to top line growth, margin and to levered free cash flow per share, even when absorbing the impact of a modest delevering of the combined business and without factoring in the benefits of a lower cost of capital and the value of Cox as a sophisticated long-term shareholder.”

“And then in other, there, I would say also still in the low to mid-single digits, though as I've noted before, other because of what's inside of it can be a bit more volatile than some of the other expense items.”

“If you look at what piece of that is in 2026, I think it's reasonable to assume that there's savings that's similar to or slightly larger than what we saw in this year.”

“I'm in the same place that we were before on programming, cost per video customer, and cost to service customer, cost to service customers where I would expect it to be flat to slightly down for the year.”

“On the operating expenses side, Ben, you know, we had a little more volatility in the quarter in the growth rate from our marketing and residential sales, but I still anticipate over the course of the year that the that that line will grow in the low to mid-single digits.”

“As we laid out last quarter, our plan is to grow EBITDA in 2025.”

“We expect to gradually increase our leverage to the middle of our four to four and a half times range pro forma for the Liberty transaction over the next several quarters.”

“Just a brief comment on 2025 cash taxes. We still expect, under existing tax legislation, that our calendar year 2025 cash tax payments will total between $1.6 billion and $2 billion.”

“We also don't anticipate the tariffs to have a meaningful impact on our P and L as the vast majority of our P and L expenses are programming, labor, and service driven and are not subject to the new tariffs.”

“We continue to expect total 2025 capital expenditures to reach approximately $12 billion.”

“While we continue to assess the potential impact of new tariffs, we don't currently expect tariffs to have a significant impact on our capital expenditures for this year. And over the next several years.”

“Continue to expect rural passings growth of approximately 450,000 2025.”

“We expect that as we rebuild our plant to approximately 6,000 homes passed in Los Angeles over the coming quarters, we will incur additional CapEx, though not at the level that would require us to change our outlook.”

“We are adding two by one gigabit per second service to recently upgraded markets this year and the next phases of our network evolution will deliver five gig and ten gigabit per second service.”

“I do.”

“That reduction in capital spending from approximately $12 billion in 2025 to less than $8 billion in 2028 is equivalent to over $25 of annual free cash flow per share.”

“As we continue to grow the business financially, we will also see outsized improvements to free cash flow, driven by the end of our major one-time investment in our network evolution and subsidized rural initiative.”

“And, really, it's one of the key sort of cornerstones to how we can get comfortable with a plan for EBITDA growth inside of 2025, because we have that mobile revenue and, therefore, mobile margin as a driver of growth in the business.”

“In sales and marketing, as you point out, there, I think, there's a little more growth, maybe low- to mid-single-digits, given what we're doing to drive cost and grow customers and to rollout or continue the rollout of the Life Unlimited brand.”

“In that respect, I think, across programming and cost to service customers, I generally expect that we'll be flat to slightly down, acknowledging that we think about programming on a per video customer basis, and that mix does matter there a lot.”

“The peak cell phone Internet impact, we seem to have gotten there, and there will be a declining pace of fiber overbuilt.”

“2025 customer growth should benefit from 2024 rural passings growth as well as passings growth in 2025.”

“And we plan to launch 2 x 1 service in additional markets later this year.”

“We've been providing bill credits to customers in impacted areas and those one-time credits will offset some first quarter revenue.”

“But we look forward to fully rolling that out in the first half of this year and delivering even more value to consumers, up to $80 of retail app value when subscribing to our video packages.”

“Look, Ben, from a outlook perspective, we're really confident about the mid-term, our ability to grow Internet.”

“And as our capital spending peaks this year, we are poised for strong free cash flow growth and shareholder returns.”

“And while we always prioritize our free cash flow for organic opportunities first and then accretive M&A and buybacks, there are currently no organic capital expenditure opportunities on the horizon that give us concern with that capital expenditures outlook.”

“Just to highlight, that reduction in capital expenditures on its own from approximately $12 billion in 2025 to less than $8 billion in 2028 is equivalent to $25 of annual free cash flow per share based on today's share count.”

“And after our evolution and expansion capital initiatives conclude, our run rate capital expenditures should be below $8 billion per year.”

“Looking beyond 2025, we expect total capital spending in dollar terms to be on a meaningful downward trajectory, even inclusive of BEAD spending.”

“We now expect our total network evolution initiative capital to reach $5.4 billion over the period 2024 to 2027 versus $4.6 billion previously, given our [full plant walkout] (ph) and the finalization of more detailed project plans.”

“And our RDOF build is still expected to be completed by the end of 2026, two years ahead of schedule.”

“We expect total line extension capital expenditures to decline after 2025 even inclusive of BEAD, which we wouldn't expect to be more than a few hundred million dollars per year for the four years starting in 2026.”

“In that case, I think that we're quite confident that the new pricing and packaging will be really successful in driving additional cash flow per customer because of the value that we've pushed into the bundles and what that means for the total margin that we can generate on the services offered to those customers.”

“So the one piece, I think, that's been easy to see upfront is that, that strategy around sort of pushing value back into the bundle and utilizing that to drive higher customer ARPUs, I do think will be quite effective.”

“While we're still finishing the 2025 operating plan, it's clear 2025 capital expenditures will not exceed the range of capital spend that we outlined in January of this year, even inclusive of a small amount of initial BEAD pending.”

“Our new pricing and packaging will drive more sales with higher selling of our best products, grow customer ARPU at Connect despite lower product pricing, and reduce billing, service and retention calls, while reducing churn.”

“We think we'll have all that placed in the first half of 2025 and be able to present that to customers as part of our pricing and packaging.”

“Even with that, our expense reduction efforts, which I've mentioned before, include things that are both short-term and have already rolled in as well as some medium and longer-term items that are still building. I think that they'll put us in a good place.”

“And then going into next year, we're, of course, going to target EBITDA growth. But there are some meaningful headwinds, which I think include our Internet customer losses in 2024 and a nonpolitical year for advertising.”

“We still anticipate strong EBITDA growth in Q4, though it might not accelerate the way that we had hoped given that some of our expense reduction impacts, I think, came in a little earlier than we expected and we will have the storm impacts that hit inside of Q4.”

“But I think we're making the right investments and doing the right things to compete... but certainly a better unit growth setup for 2024 for 2025 than what we saw for 2024, I think, for us and probably for the rest of the cable industry.”

“In 2025, there won't be ACP and we'll still have the continued tailwind of newly built passings, both organic as well as rural footprint.”

“In the fourth quarter, when you think about the seasonality and the work stoppage benefits, we won't have those inside the fourth quarter. We'll still have approximately 100,000 nonpay to deal with from ACP that we expect to see early in the quarter, in the fourth quarter.”

“The update also includes 2024 network evolution estimated spend of approximately $1.1 billion, down from the previous estimate of $1.6 billion.”

“That update reflects full year 2024 line extension spend of approximately $4.3 billion, down from $4.5 billion, partly offset by slightly higher core CapEx, primarily due to the shift of some of our construction labor from rural efforts to hurricane rebuild activity.”

“We currently expect to incur approximately $100 million in incremental capital expenditures, the vast majority of which will be captured in our rebuild capital expenditures line.”

“We expect market activity and selling opportunities to pick up over time.”

“And while we expect some normalization of external factors as we head into 2025 and much lower capital intensity beyond 2025, we're not standing still”

“So total capital intensity is now poised to decline significantly after 2025 even including the unique onetime opportunity that subsidized rural spend and network evolution has presented us.”

“Excluding the benefit of future capital and operating cost savings, our network evolution has and will cost a very low incremental $100 per passing.”

“Looking beyond 2025, we expect total capital spending in dollar terms to be on a meaningful downward trajectory, even inclusive of BEAD spending.”

“We now expect our total BEAD spend will be substantially less than our spend in RDOF, in each case, net of subsidies.”

“Our RDOF build should still be completed by the end of 2026, two years ahead of schedule.”

“That has pushed back equipment purchasing and operational deployment and we now expect our network evolution initiative project to be completed in 2027.”

“We remain the only true convergence pure planner footprint with a fully distributed gig capable wireline and wireless network across a growing 58 million passings everywhere we operate, soon to be symmetrical and multi-gig in all of our communities.”

“I think this is something that, maybe if we're lucky, back end of next year from just the customer commitments and service aspect, we could see the benefit of that.”

“We may also have some incremental operating expense, although we expect that to be relatively small.”

“For sure there's going to be, as we both mentioned, I think Jessica and I, that there'll be more non-pay disconnect in the third quarter.”

“I think that we can continue to do buybacks over the course of the rest of the year and still do what we have said that we would do from a leverage perspective.”

“We remain fully committed to maintaining our split rated debt structure, including access to the investment grade market, given the significant benefits that it offers to all of our capital providers.”

“In sales to marketing, I think we had said 2% to 3% growth. And at this point, I would expect us to be in the low end of that range, if not a bit below.”

“I had said we expected programming costs per video customer to grow in the 1% to 2% range year-over-year. I now expect that to be flattish year-over-year.”

“We previously had said that we expected costs to serve to be flat with 2023. I now expect that to decline by 1% to 2% inclusive of bad debt expense.”

“I think that we'll probably do better than that sort of flat working capital expectation, but I'm not prepared to say by exactly how much.”

“We expect to continue to move closer to the middle of our 4x to 4.5x target leverage range through the end of this year.”

“We still expect line extension spend of approximately $4.5 billion, and network evolution spend of approximately $1.6 billion.”

“For the full year 2024, we now expect capital expenditures to total approximately $12 billion, down from between $12.2 billion and $12.4 billion previously.”

“We continue to expect accelerating EBITDA growth in the back half of the year, given our expense management initiatives, Spectrum 1 promotional roll-off, and political advertising revenue.”

“So far, we are performing well with ACP retention, but the largest driver of Internet customer losses associated with the end of the ACP program will be in non-pay disconnects, and they will occur in the third and fourth quarters, likely weighted to the third.”

“So our efforts to deploy a new hybrid DTC linear model first for the industry remain on track and we expect it to be fully deployed next year.”

“We expect market activity and selling opportunities to pick up over time, and the cell phone companies will face challenges. as a customer bandwidth demands continue to grow.”

“The lack of ACP will also drive higher levels of market churn and selling opportunities for connectivity services over time.”

“I expect we'll have a better view of the total ACP impact once we're inside the fourth quarter.”

“And when our network evolution initiatives complete, we'll have a ubiquitous, symmetrical, multi-gig capable network supporting continued growth in data demand from customers and new applications such as AR, VR and AI.”

“We also continue to expect our RDOF build to be completed by the end of 2026, two years ahead of schedule.”

“If we refinanced all of our debt due in 2025 and 2026 at current rates, the impact to our rent rate interest expense would be less than $60 million.”

“Yes. And so EBITDA, we're very confident on that.”

“we're focused on driving healthy EBITDA growth in 2024 through a short-term competitive and investment cycle.”

“Generally, I would expect that the gap in those 2 growth rates should narrow over the course of the year because the base of free lines becomes more stable given promotional roll-off.”

“We remain comfortable with our 4 to 4.5x range based on the outlook that we have.”

“But we see the ability for it to accelerate across the rest of the year when you consider the roll-off of Spectrum Mobile, political advertising and our continued expense initiatives in the business as well. And so because of that, in all of the scenarios that we've looked at, we continue to expect EBITDA growth in the year.”

“So I would expect our EBITDA growth to be more pressured in Q2.”

“With the continued temporary impact from cell phone Internet competition and the potential headwind from the end of ACP, we will continue to face short-term customer growth headwinds.”

“We expect to continue that trend, moving closer to the middle of our 4 to 4.5x target leverage range through the end of this year.”

“For the full year 2024, we continue to expect capital expenditures to total between $12.2 billion and $12.4 billion, including line extension spend of approximately $4.5 billion and network evolution spend of approximately $1.6 billion.”

“And financial growth in the back half of the year should accelerate given our expense management initiatives, Spectrum One promotional roll-off and political advertising revenue.”

“In the second quarter, we will face some tough expense comparisons, particularly in other expense as well as ACP headwinds.”

“Our residential revenue will be supported by Internet ARPU growth and our growing mobile customer base.”

“We continue to expect to activate approximately 450,000 new subsidized rural passings in 2024, about 50% more than in 2023.”

“We expect our hybrid DTC-linear model to be fully deployed next year.”

“Later this year, we'll begin launching the next wave of markets with distributed access architecture technology.”

“If we refinanced all of our debt due in 2025 and 2026 at current rates, the impact to our run rate interest expense would be less than $140 million.”

“We also continue to expect our RDOF build to be completed by the end of 2026, 2 years ahead of schedule.”

“We expect to complete our network evolution initiative in 2026, all at an incremental cost to just over -- or just $100 per passing, excluding the benefit of operating and capital savings that result from the project.”

“However, I talked about that we are offering all of our ACP customers a free mobile line for a year. And depending on the level of success of that program, if we did see a reacceleration in the number of free lines, the gap between those 2 things could widen again.”

“So Ben, on the line item expense guidance that we gave earlier in the year, I don't have an update to any of those specific items. But what I would tell you is that, because of some of the work that we're doing around expenses across the business, I think it's possible that we come in lower than what we guided to, to begin with.”

“But we're going to fully deploy it. It's exciting. It has a great return.”

“Our penetration also continues to grow at a better-than-expected pace and we'll cover more -- we'll activate more subsidized rural passings this year, both of which Jessica will cover.”

“Yeah. On the EBITDA performance inside of 2024, I guess -- I'm not going to give EBITDA guidance, but I think we can talk about the few things. So, you do have a political advertising year, that is a tailwind.”

“But given the investments that we're making, we do expect there to be a material benefit to cash taxes if the legislation were to go through.”

“and we intend to stay at or just below the high end of our 4 times to 4.5 times target leverage range.”

“We currently expect our calendar year 2024 cash tax payments under current legislation to land between $1.5 billion and $1.9 billion, depending on a number of factors.”

“We don't expect any potential BEAD build subject to acceptable guidelines, as Chris mentioned, to begin until 2025.”

“In turn, our non-rural passings growth should continue to be robust and similar to 2023 growth, subject to the pace of overall housing growth.”

“Slide 12 shows that so far, with additional state bids that we expect, we will have committed to build approximately 1.75 million subsidized rural passings.”

“We'll continue to evolve our converged offering in 2024 with additional features and capabilities.”

“So, we are focused on the key strategic initiatives that enhance our long-term competitiveness and growth capabilities, and we expect to return to a more normalized Internet growth over time.”

“We continue to believe the impact from fixed wireless is temporary.”

“And following the completion of our network evolution initiative, capital expenditures, excluding line extensions as a percentage of revenue, should decline below 2022 level, which has important long-term cash flow implications.”

“Turning to network evolution, where our long-term capital expenditures outlook remains essentially unchanged, we continue to expect to spend approximately $100 per passing to evolve our network to offer multi-gigabit speeds.”

“We also expect our RDOF build to be completed by end of 2026, two years ahead of schedule.”

“And we expect to complete the project in 2026, so fast, ubiquitous, low-cost upgrade of our capabilities, which our competitors can't replicate.”

“Excluding the benefit of any savings that result from the project, we continue to expect our network evolution to cost a very low $100 per passing.”

“And we expect mobile penetration to meaningfully grow over the next several years, as the quality and value of our converged connectivity services gains wider recognition.”

“If we refinanced all of our debt in the next three years at current rates, the impact to our run rate interest expense would be less than $90 million or 2% of that run rate interest expense.”

“The full year cash tax outlook, which I provided during our fourth quarter 2022 call, still stand.”

“If programmers insist on customers paying twice, we just won't carry those channels.”

“However, I want to reiterate and be very clear that where state BEAD rules are not conducive to private investment, we will not participate in those states.”

“So, we should expect to be more efficient across those areas going forward, whether that's sort of every quarter mix.”

“I don't have any change in my expectation relative to cost to serve in sales and marketing, exiting the year at close to zero.”

“We expect that we're going to spend a little over $1 billion this year in 2023 on high split, which leaves a substantial a substantial amount of spend in the project and a large portion of which if we continue at our current pace would hit inside of next year.”

“And we expect the cost of those boxes to continue to decline significantly.”

“In addition, faster pacing of our rural build should bring additional positive impact to customer net additions next year.”

“As we move toward 2024, pressure on our EBITDA growth will begin to abate, with growing transaction efficiency as we benefit from building employee tenure and easier comps as we have now lapped the impact of those employee investments.”

“And we intend to stay at or just below the high end of our four to 4.5 times target leverage range.”

“Excluding the impact of mobile devices, we now expect our full year 2023 change in working capital to be negative by a few hundred million dollars, given the timing of capital expenditures and lower-than-expected accrued programming at year-end.”

“We also continue to expect 2023 line extension capital expenditures to total approximately $4 billion.”

“As Chris noted, we continue to expect to spend approximately $100 per passing to evolve the network to offer multiple gigabit speeds.”

“Capital expenditures, excluding line extensions, should total approximately $7.2 billion, higher than our previous expectation.”

“We now expect that for the full year 2023, programming cost per video customer will decline by approximately 3% year-over-year.”

“We don't expect any potential BEAD build, subject to what Chris mentioned, to begin until 2025.”

“We continue to expect approximately 300,000 new subsidized rural passings this year.”

“We plan to modernize all of our distribution agreements upon renewal in a way that works for customers.”

“And excluding the benefit of any savings that result from the project, we continue to expect our network evolution to cost a very low $100 per passing.”

“We expect to add approximately 300,000 new subsidized rural passings in 2023 and to accelerate that pace in 2024.”

“We expect that upward trend to continue as we realize the benefit of our operating investments.”

“We expect mobile penetration to meaningfully grow over the next several years as the quality and the value of our converged connectivity service gains wider recognition.”

“And following the completion of our network evolution initiative, capital expenditures, excluding line extensions as a percentage of revenue, should decline to below 2022 level, which has important long-term cash flow implications.”

“And while labor and equipment costs have both increased, we expect the average net cost per passing of these 1.3 million passings to be similar to our original RDOF net cost per passing estimate.”

“Because of these adjacent passings, we now expect that our RDOF initiative will yield a total of 1.3 million passings to be constructed over a multiyear period.”

“We are working through our 2024 operating plan right now. Given the greater subsidized rural passings and construction opportunity we currently see, we may partially fund that opportunity by very modestly slowing our network evolution plan, as Chris mentioned.”

“Whether we finish our network evolution initiative by the end of 2025 or mid-2026 will really depend on the supply chain for distributed access architecture components and managing annual capital spend, given the larger customer growth opportunity and construction speed of RDOF, where we're ahead of the build requirements and we'll end up with more passings than originally expected, state grants, and hopefully, beat passings.”

“I don't see any reason to think that we're going to have difficulty managing through those roll-offs.”

“we remain on track for deployment later this year.”

“we're going to be very focused on deploying that CBRS where there's a high and fast ROI... we're going to build that in a measured way across our footprint, fully deployed the CBRS and the markets that we've acquired over time.”

“everybody wants to hear if we haven't said it already, our goal is still to have higher net adds this year than it was last year.”

“I think as we continue to scale up the mobile business, have longer-tenured customers there as well as to improve our service activity that we'll continue to gain efficiency on the expense side for our internal expenses and drive additional profitability to the business that way as well.”

“I think you should anticipate that our total cash taxes are consistent with the guidance that we've previously given, and that those payments are - those remaining payments are spread between Q3 and Q4.”

“Yes. But I also expect the Mobile attach rate to our existing Internet customers to increase too, because it's resonating not just for new customers, but for existing customers.”

“If you move into Q4, you'll start to see the Spectrum on promotional roll off. And have sort of the continuance of the other factors that I talked about. But that will be partially offset by lapping the November 2022 Internet-only rate adjustment.”

“I would expect because that rural build sort of has to continue at a pace over time that you will see that greater level of consistency in CapEx across the quarters, with maybe less back-end loading into Q4 than what you've seen in other than what you've seen us do in the past.”

“Could we have a small amount of turn potentially, but I don't think it's going to be material given the quality and the value that we're providing”

“Longer-term, we also expect to see continuing benefits in operating expenses from further digitization, network improvements, and benefits of programs like proactive maintenance.”

“we believe our financials will improve as we move later into the year with additional revenue growth in Internet and mobile that will begin showing in Q4 and lower service cost per customer as we realize the 10-year benefits of our investment in employees and lap last year's labor step up.”

“We intend to stay at or just below the high end of our 4 times to 4.5 times target leverage range.”

“We continue to expect 2024 and 2025 line extension CapEx to look similar to our outlook for 2023 at approximately $4 billion per year.”

“we expect 2023 line extension capital expenditures to reach approximately $4 billion.”

“Following the expected completion of our network evolution initiative at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026, capital expenditures, excluding line extensions as a percentage of revenue, should decline to below 2022 levels and continue to decline thereafter.”

“For the full year, we continue to expect capital expenditures, excluding line extensions to be between $6.5 billion and $6.8 billion.”

“Longer term, we continue to expect to see additional efficiencies in cost to service customers as a result of our continuing lower service transactions, service tenure and digital service investments, proactive maintenance, and network evolution investments.”

“we continue to expect approximately 300,000 new subsidized rural passings this year.”

“we expect the lines to perform well as long-term customers.”

“Excluding the benefit of any network savings, we continue to expect to spend $100 per passing.”

“we maintained EBITDA despite the significant employee investments we made through 2022, which will start generating growth benefits later this year.”

“we expect mobile penetration to meaningfully grow over the next several years”

“We are really confident in our ability to continue to have a 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.”

“But what I would be clear about is what we win we will win at good returns, and we will execute it on the back end and bring those returns back into the company.”

“The full year target is 300,000 subs rural builds, and we intend to meet that we’re on plan to meet that.”

“But the other piece at the end of this year, if it 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 and stick.”

“we intend to stay at or just below the high end of our 4 to 4.5x target leverage range”

“Our expectations for full year 2023 capital expenditures have not changed in part, because the costs associated with our network evolution and rural construction initiatives are coming in as planned.”

“And that will continue to increase over time as we deploy more Spectrum Mobile network through advanced WiFi as well as CBRS over time.”

“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.”

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

“Similarly, on the cost reserve side, I expect year-over-year growth in cost to serve to moderate in the second half of 2023, 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.”

“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.”

“We continue to expect 2024 and 2025 line extension CapEx to look similar to our outlook for 2023 at approximately $4 billion per year.”

“And we expect 2023 line extension and capital expenditures to reach approximately $4 billion.”

“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.”

“For the full year, we continue to expect capital expenditures excluding line extensions to be between $6.5 billion and $6.8 billion.”

“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.”

“Looking at the full year 2023, we continue to expect programming cost per video customer to be approximately flat year-over-year.”

“Looking to second 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.”

“And given the issues with fixed wireless product feeds, 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.”

“We expect the mix of proactive truck rolls will increase significantly in the coming years.”

“If we get the pull permit support we need, we can complete our RDOF commitments 2 years ahead of the RDOF deadline.”

“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.”

“Step three of our network evolution plan covers about 35% of our footprint and should begin in late 2024.”

“we expect mobile penetration to meaningfully grow over the next several years and our increasing convergence capabilities will contribute to Internet growth”

“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 cost to serve for customer relationship which will benefit our cash flow for years to come.”

“Yes. The 2023 broadband net adds, I said our goal is to have higher broadband net adds this year, and I think we will.”

“Already in 2023 and over the next three years, we will evolve our network to ubiquitously offer symmetrical and multi-gigabit speeds.”

“Our pace coming into the end of the year within the 15,000 to 20,000 passings per month range, and I would expect -- we're starting the year at that pace and we're going to end at a faster pace to get to that total of 300,000 number.”

“We expect to build around 300,000 subsidized rural passings in 2023, which are mostly RDOF and they're incremental to the normal business as usual pace of build.”

“So the overall margin in the business is improving going forward.”

“And then for it to sort of the year-over-year growth to decrease across the year until you're more in line with the sort of growth trajectory that we've seen before, which is really largely flat.”

“In cost to serve, quarter-over-quarter growth in Q4 was 5.8%. I would expect Q1 to look more like -- to look a bit like that.”

“We continue to generate significant free cash flow and intend to both invest for long-term growth and simultaneously returned excess capital to shareholders in the form of buybacks.”

“Our six-month penetration of passings in our newly built rural areas continues to be around 40%, and we expect penetrations in these areas to continue to grow.”

“We expect the BEAD program to present a unique and attractive opportunity for us to expand our network with subsidies, generating significant returns that solidly exceed our cost of capital.”

“At that time, we expect that our RDOF spend will begin to ramp down.”

“We expect 2024 and 2025 line extension CapEx to look similar to our outlook for 2023 at approximately $4 billion per year.”

“Turning to line extensions. In 2023, we expect line extension capital expenditures to reach approximately $4 billion.”

“And we continue to expect additional efficiencies in cost to service customers over time as a result of the continued digitization of service, productivity improvements and our network evolution investment.”

“These adjustments will add some pressure year-over-year to cost to service customers expense growth in the first half of this year. But that year-over-year growth should moderate in the second half of 2023.”

“Looking at the full year 2023, we expect programming cost per video customer to be approximately flat year-over-year.”

“Over time, we expect our rural construction initiative to be a significant contributor to our customer growth with attractive mid- to high-teen internal rates of return.”

“And we expect, assuming a reasonable regulatory framework, to participate in the $42.5 billion BEAD program.”

“As we also mentioned in December, we've been successful in winning a number of other state and local grants in 2022 and expect the same in 2023.”

“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 level and continue to decline thereafter.”

“We hope to complete our RDOF build ahead of the original commitment, and that faster completion is good for our returns, the communities where we build, obviously, and it creates credibility for future subsidized builds and option value for future growth.”

“The rural builds are actually performing at least as well or actually better than we expected. And from a financial perspective, I'm still confident in where we are on the returns that we had said that we would have against those belts.”

“But I don't think people should expect any fundamental changes and views on how we operate the business or how we create value for shareholders.”

“Peter, to the first part of your question, I'd say yes we expect to be able to pull the broadband growth through.”

“But it will be followed by a return to more normal levels. And so ultimately, in the medium and long term, I think that the trajectory of EBITDA growth is back closer to pre-pandemic levels. But I acknowledge that, I think that, there could be a little bit of slowness in that growth in the short term.”

“But I think based on what Tom talked about that then as we sort of execute on the converge connectivity plan and as we see it return to normalcy in the market, we certainly expect that in the medium to long-term, that that will pick up back-up and so that you will have that increasing revenue growth again.”

“So there was some impact of the EBB to ACP conversion on broadband in the quarter. It was much smaller than it was last quarter, and we expect it to be much smaller going forward.”

“I don't expect any seismic shifts.”

“We intend to stay at or just below the high end of our 4 to 4.5 times target leverage range.”

“We continue to expect core cable capital expenditures to be between $7.1 billion and $7.3 billion for the full year 2022.”