VZ (VZ)

“And I would expect that for Q3, you will see positive new account growth as well.”

“Our cash generation and the strength of our balance sheet provides significant optionality, which gives us the confidence to raise our full year 2026 target for share repurchases to up to $4.5 billion.”

“We remain on track to reach our target leverage range during the 2027 time frame.”

“We expect to have this additional spectrum deployed within weeks of the FCC issuing these licenses.”

“We're also making great progress with the Frontier integration and remain on track to deliver over $1 billion in operating cost run rate synergies by 2028.”

“Importantly, we are confident that the headwinds from promo amortization have peaked and that these pressures will ease across the second half of the year and into 2027.”

“Our $9 billion cost program for this year is on plan, on pace and is a multiyear tailwind that will continue to bear fruit in the years ahead.”

“Fourth, the transformation work streams I described last quarter are producing tangible results, and we are fully on track to deliver at least the $9 billion of OpEx and CapEx savings we said we would.”

“We'll talk about 2027 when we report our Q4 results. But as I said, the second half of 2026 will be better than the first half, and we see 2027 being better than 2026 as well.”

“Given what we're seeing on the new model around subsidies, which are going down pretty dramatically, promo amortization is going to turn from being a headwind to a tailwind for us next year.”

“The revenues that we're talking about are meaningful. They've got margins that are equal to or greater than our existing margin structures, and they will begin to impact our revenues and margins beginning next year and grow substantially over the next 5 to 10 years.”

“As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, the promo amortization headwinds have peaked and will ease across the second half of the year and into 2027.”

“And as we think about looking ahead, we expect wireless service revenue to be about flat for the full year, which implies that the second half would suggest that we see positive revenue growth.”

“And we said the third quarter would be approaching 3% and Q4 growing around 4%.”

“As Dan said, we expect the amount of revenue associated with these deals to be in the billions over the next several years.”

“As Dan mentioned, the strength of our year-to-date results and the operational momentum of the business gives us confidence to increase our free cash flow guidance. We now expect to deliver 9% to 10% free cash flow growth year-over-year for 2026.”

“We are executing towards our full year guide of $16 billion to $16.5 billion as we continue to focus on future growth opportunities within mobility and broadband.”

“With the strong year-to-date performance and our visibility into the second half, we now expect to grow our full year adjusted EPS by 6% to 7%.”

“In addition, we continue to anticipate wireless service revenue improving in the second half of the year.”

“We now expect to grow mobility and broadband service revenue 2.5% to 3% for the full year.”

“The back half of 2026 will be stronger than the first half, and 2027 should be stronger than 2026.”

“In the back half of 2026, our mobility and broadband service revenue growth is expected to accelerate with Q4 forecasted to grow by approximately 4% year-over-year.”

“We expect this initiative to noticeably contribute to our revenue growth starting next year and to grow substantially from there.”

“We have other deals that we expect to announce by year-end that, taken together, are expected to be worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years.”

“We expect that we will realize annualized savings of approximately $200 million versus our current course and speed.”

“We expect to close this transaction in the second half of 2027.”

“In Q4, we will also lap the year-over-year headwind from our decision to keep our pricing in line with the value we provide.”

“It will also drive improving revenue growth as we add more net subscribers across postpaid, prepaid and broadband, and begin to benefit from a reduction in our promo amortization headwinds.”

“And with our new value proposition, we expect our cost of acquisition and retention to continue to improve.”

“We are now raising our full year buyback target to up to $4.5 billion, reflecting both our accelerating free cash flow and our conviction that Verizon's stock at current levels represents a compelling use of capital.”

“Consequently, we are raising our full year guidance for free cash flow growth from approximately 7% or more growth to 9% to 10% growth.”

“As a result, we are raising our adjusted EPS guidance to 6% to 7% growth for the year.”

“For the full year, we are now guiding revenues to grow 2.5% to 3%, the upper half of our previous 2% to 3% range.”

“As a result, we are now guiding our Q3 mobility and broadband service revenue to approach 3% year-over-year growth, and our Q4 mobility and broadband service revenue is now anticipated to grow at approximately 4% year-over-year.”

“We see this trend continuing to accelerate in the second half of the year.”

“We continue to expect postpaid phone net adds to be in the upper half of our 750,000 to 1 million range for the full year.”

“We expect to improve on our first quarter's wireless service revenue performance by maintaining low churn, being disciplined around cost of acquisition and cost of retention, and continuing to drive net adds.”

“No, I don't think you should really adjust any of your thoughts around that. We're going to drive quite aggressively on the broadband front.”

“We remain firmly on track to achieve our target net unsecured leverage ratio of 2.0 to 2.25x during the 2027 time frame.”

“We are on track to deliver our full year free cash flow guidance of $21.5 billion or more.”

“We're on track to achieve our CapEx guidance of $16 billion to $16.5 billion for the full year.”

“our first quarter performance puts us on track to deliver on our $5 billion of operating expense savings target for 2026.”

“We are on track to deliver over $1 billion in runway operating cost synergies by 2028.”

“Given these factors, we are confident we will achieve our full year revenue guidance and expect to have an even stronger and more sustainable revenue profile by the end of 2026.”

“We're on track to deliver our 2026 guidance, including increased guidance for postpaid phone net adds and adjusted EPS growth.”

“we remain on track to return to our target leverage ratio in 2027.”

“We are reaffirming the balance of our guidance, mobility and broadband and service revenue growth of 2% to 3% with Q1 being the low point of 2026 and free cash flow growth of approximately 7% or more versus last year.”

“We also now anticipate our postpaid phone net adds to be in the upper half of our $750,000 to $1 million range.”

“Consequently, we are well on our way towards our OpEx savings target of $5 billion in 2026.”

“delivering on our more than $1 billion of run rate operating cost synergies by 2028.”

“We are solidly on track to have more than 32 million fiber passings by the end of this year.”

“I believe that you're going to continue to see COR and COA at reduced levels.”

“We see opportunities to do an increase in our delivery by 40% plus, and we spend a ton of money on vendor support here, and we see our way to reducing those costs by over 70% as a result of what we're doing with AI.”

“our plan of at least $3 billion is appropriate at this time.”

“expect that you'll see improvement in our broadband numbers as we go through the year”

“we expect to see that accelerate as we go forward. We're going to continue to invest heavily in broadband.”

“we are still very focused on driving our fiber footprint $40 million to $50 million over the medium term.”

“As we continue through the cost transformation, the expectation is that we'll continue to reduce -- to further reduce costs beyond 2026.”

“we expect EBITDA to grow at a faster rate than adjusted EPS when you factor in both the Frontier acquisition interest expense, which is about $1 billion and also the depreciation from the asset base, which is about $1.5 billion.”

“So as Dan mentioned, we do expect improvements in ARPA as the year progresses.”

“I would say, in general, we expect to see account net adds continue to improve as well as ARPA as we go through 2026 and as we go to 2027.”

“We believe we're going to start to see the headwinds of promotion and amortization on our revenue growth rate start to flip and become tailwinds.”

“we expect to repay substantially all of Frontier's debt by the end of the year.”

“We expect our free cash flow performance to ramp as we further realize the full run rate of our operating expense savings and grow volumes responsibly.”

“We expect these more efficient levels to be sustainable under our current strategy, and we see additional opportunities to further improve our trends as our transformation matures.”

“we expect to maintain a lower cost of acquisition and retention as we look forward.”

“We anticipate Q1 mobility and broadband service revenues will be the low point of 2026.”

“Yes. I mean I still think that's probably a good estimate of the 10% to 15% of new.”

“Churn remains a pivotal opportunity in 2026, and we expect our investment in the customer as well as increased convergence opportunities to benefit retention over the next few quarters.”

“With the vast majority of these related disconnects behind us, we expect to see further improvements in public sector wireless volumes across the first half of 2026.”

“And so I think the combination of what we're seeing at Frontier and what we can do internally here at Verizon, leads me to be comfortable with that 40 million to 50 million.”

“Our guidance for our adjusted EPS growth, our free cash flow growth and our postpaid phone net add targets are all significantly above historic trends for Verizon.”

“However, because of the work being done to streamline our cost structure, grow adjusted EPS and drive CapEx efficiencies, we are now in a position to grow our free cash flow in 2026 even with the inclusion of Frontier and our investments in the customer.”

“As Dan mentioned, we have line of sight to delivering $5 billion of operating expense savings in 2026.”

“And we're looking at $5 billion this year and we see billions more as we look forward into 2027 and 2028.”

“Our view is, as we go into 2027, that 180 basis points of headwind goes away for us.”

“And we mentioned the Frontier integration, and we said we expect 2x the operating expense run rate synergies so at least $1 billion of synergies by 2028, and those synergies will ramp as we execute on our integration work.”

“We'll continue the fiber build pace at least 2 million prems passed, which is at least the combined pace of both Verizon and Frontier from last year and 40 million to 50 million passings over time.”

“And we expect to be substantially complete with our C-Band build here in 2026.”

“Although that puts about 180 basis points of pressure on our revenues for this year”

“Consistent with our growth profile and cash flow generation, we expect to significantly increase our total return of capital to shareholders over the next 3 years.”

“We expect to return to our target leverage range of 2.0 to 2.25x in the 2027 time frame.”

“In addition, our C-Band build will be substantially complete in 2026 and any initiatives outside of mobility and broadband are being aggressively rationalized.”

“Our 2026 CapEx spending is expected to be in the range of $16 billion to $16.5 billion, a combined improvement of $4 billion from Verizon and Frontier's capital expenditures from 2025.”

“While we were not guiding on adjusted EBITDA, we do expect adjusted EBITDA to grow at a faster rate than adjusted EPS.”

“We expect wireless service revenue growth to be approximately flat in 2026.”

“We anticipate that 2026 will be a transitional year for revenue as we lap prior year price increases, absorb promotional amortization and await the benefits from churn reduction and increased volumes.”

“We expect to deliver performance that is a step function improvement from our recent historical trends across our key metrics.”

“As we indicated before, we expect our unsecured leverage ratio to increase by approximately 0.25x once Frontier's EBITDA contributions are factored in.”

“As the revenue benefits of a volume-based growth model scale across 2026, we will continue to rely on growth from areas such as FWA, perks, premium mix and prepaid to help offset continued promo amortization pressures as well as lapping last year's price increases.”

“We now expect to realize over $1 billion of run rate operating cost synergies by 2028, double our initial estimate.”

“We intend to continue our fiber build-out, adding at least 2 million fiber passings this year, with our goal to reach 40 million to 50 million fiber passings over the medium term.”

“We are building an in-year war chest of $5 billion in OpEx savings, with a substantial portion realized by headcount reductions, alongside marketing efficiencies, real estate rationalization, contract renegotiations and more.”

“I'm hopeful that LTVs go up this year as we act responsibly, and we reduce churn.”

“If we reduce churn by 5 bps, we are already halfway to our target.”

“we reiterated our guidance for the year at $19.5 billion to $20.5 billion for 2025.”

“We're on track to meet all of our investment goals for the year and deliver within our guided range or better.”

“we remain on track to deliver our full year financial guidance, which includes our previously raised expectations for adjusted EBITDA growth adjusted EPS growth and free cash flow.”

“As Tony mentioned, we'll continue to pay down debt. We'll continue to be steadfastly committed to our dividend.”

“We will invest significantly across all elements of our marketing mix and customer experience to drive mobility and broadband growth, and we will fund these investments by aggressively reducing our entire cost base.”

“We also remain committed to our long-term net unsecured leverage target range of 2.0 to 2.25x. This is not going to change.”

“in the prepared remarks that we expect 2025 to get all our initiatives completed and will be likely at the lower end of the range or better”

“We have Frontier coming in, as we said previously, that will add about 0.25 turn to the metric and that will be for a short period of time.”

“We will provide 2026 guidance during our January earnings call and we will report progress against these objectives quarterly.”

“we're significantly investing in cyber and in the power of convergence with our acquisition of Frontier, which we expect to close early next year.”

“Looking ahead, we remain on track to close the Frontier deal in the first quarter of 2026.”

“As expected, we faced the promo amortization headwind in the quarter, and we expect this headwind to continue.”

“we can begin to take our fair share of the new to the industry, postpaid adds, we're going to start off by increasing it because today, we take somewhere between 0% and some very low percent of the new-to-industry postpaids.”

“We are going to examine every element of our OpEx and our CapEx, and we are going to fully fund all of our initiatives with OpEx savings and drop them to the bottom line so that we can accelerate EPS growth as well.”

“We are going to compete and grow responsibly across all market segments. And over time, meaningfully increase our share of net adds, particularly in postpaid.”

“We're well-positioned to continue to improve the business EBITDA margins this year.”

“We said we're gonna get to eighty to ninety percent of C-band this year deployed, and we see lower churn where C-band is deployed.”

“If I look into the second quarter, I'm pretty certain we will do better on broadband in the second half of this year than we did in the first.”

“We are well-positioned to deliver on our improved outlook in the second half of the year.”

“We continue to realize efficiencies in our C-band deployment and Fios expansion, enabling us to effectively meet or exceed our network goals well within our capital budget.”

“Our robust perk offerings continue to grow at a steady pace, keeping us on track to achieve our goal of 15 million perks by year-end and providing a healthy contribution to service revenue.”

“The team is working through the necessary steps to complete the acquisition, and we remain on track for an early 2026 close.”

“We are expanding our Fios footprint and remain on track to deliver 650,000 new passings in 2025.”

“We remain confident that the team has the tools to execute effectively in the current environment and deliver healthy volumes for the full year 2025.”

“Our fiber build is tracking ahead of plan, and we're positioned to deliver 650,000 incremental passings this year.”

“Our C-band deployment is ahead of schedule and on track to cover 80% to 90% of planned sites by year-end, with nearly all sites now standalone capable.”

“We're also raising our guidance for free cash flow for the year, driven by our strong cash flow from operations and further supported by the positive impact from the tax reform.”

“Given our financial performance and the momentum in the first half of the year, we are raising our full-year guidance for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS.”

“We did a CX launch on June 24th, and that work is also augmented by AI, and we expect to see improvements there.”

“Our wireless service revenue and CapEx guidance remain unchanged.”

“The increase is driven by an estimated benefit of $1.5 billion to $2 billion from the recently enacted tax legislation, as well as the disciplined operational execution that drove our strong adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow performance in the first half of the year.”

“We are raising our 2025 free cash flow guidance to a range of $19.5 billion to $20.5 billion.”

“We are increasing our guidance for adjusted EPS growth to a range of 1% to 3%, reflecting the new adjusted EBITDA outlook.”

“Given the strong adjusted EBITDA performance in the first half of the year, we are increasing our full-year guidance to 2.5% to 3.5% growth, an increase of approximately $125 million at the midpoint.”

“We continue to make progress towards our long-term leverage target ahead of the closing of the Frontier transaction.”

“In addition, prepaid revenue has reached a turning point and was flat in the second quarter compared to the prior year period. We expect prepaid to positively contribute to wireless service revenue growth in the second half of the year.”

“As Hans said earlier, we continue to expect upgrade activity to increase by a mid-single-digit percentage in 2025 as compared to 2024.”

“Overall, core prepaid ARPU rose above $32, and we have now reached an inflection point where, after four quarters of volume growth, we expect prepaid to positively contribute to wireless service revenue growth for the remainder of the year.”

“While we anticipate public sector pressures to persist in the second half of the year, we expect the impact to subside towards the end of the year.”

“As we near the closing of the Frontier acquisition, we will provide a comprehensive update on our strategy, broadband expansion, and capital allocation considering all stakeholders. We look forward to providing an update in the next few months.”

“We continue to expect mid-single-digit growth in upgrade activity for the full year.”

“And by next year, we're going to have basically built all our C-band on top of the grid.”

“FWA demand remains strong, and we are on track to deliver our goal of 8 million to 9 million FWA subscribers by 2028.”

“A key highlight is fixed wireless access, which surpassed the five million subscribers milestone, keeping us firmly on track to achieve our goal of eight to nine million subscribers by 2028.”

“It's gonna start scaling even more in the second half. I think it will be a bigger contributor in 2026 than in 2025.”

“We're not gonna guide on 2026. But the extensions of bonus and RNA are permanent. So while we won't guide on 2026, yeah, I would expect that the impact in 2026 would be significant.”

“As we've mentioned previously, we will consider buybacks once we reach our leverage target.”

“I'm happy to say that I think we have line of sight to 15 million perks, an increase of 1 million perks by the time the year ends.”

“So we have good momentum coming out of March and currently in April right now. And this gives us comfort that, in 2025, we'll have better phone net adds than in 2024.”

“We're off to a great start, and we're very confident the EBITDA guide and it starts with the strong service revenue growth that Hans mentioned at 2.7%.”

“This gives us comfort that, in 2025, we'll have better phone net adds than in 2024.”

“We remain confident in our ability to deliver on our operational and financial goals for 2025.”

“We remain confident in our ability to deliver better consumer postpaid phone net adds year-over-year for the full year.”

“Even with the recent declines in consumer confidence, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our 2025 financial guidance.”

“And then what I said on handsets, it still remains. If we're going to see those type of increases on handsets that we've heard, we are not planning to absorb those.”

“Our plan is to close it in the first quarter.”

“Value on our prepaid business, historically, has been a drag on our service revenue. In 2024, it was a 0.8% drag on our overall service revenue. We expect that to turn positive in the second half as volumes grow nicely, and that will help with the long-term service revenue growth.”

“But overall, for the year, we still think mid-single-digit growth for upgrade holds.”

“For the whole year, I think we're still committing to a mid-single-digit growth in overall upgrade.”

“And we expect to see a full run rate benefit of that for the balance of the year.”

“Obviously, the goal here is to grow the business margins for the full year, and we're off to a great start.”

“Given all of this, we feel that churn is transitory, abating and expected to get back to a BAU posture by the second half of the year.”

“But again, if the tariff is going to be as high as they say on the handsets, we are not planning to cover that in our work.”

“That will not change any type of investments we're doing in CapEx or anything.”

“But if we take our capital expenditures, it's a very small portion of the $18 billion, which is the midpoint of the guide this year that it is exposed to any tariffs.”

“Overall, we believe this is just the beginning of how we'll earn lasting customer loyalty and continue to grow the Verizon base, including deliver better consumer postpaid phone net adds in 2025 compared to 2024.”

“All of that is in addition to revenue benefits from a growing FWA base along with the wholesale business and the momentum with prepaid, which we expect to turn service revenue positive in the second half of the year.”

“We now anticipate 15 million subscriptions on our platform by the end of this year, an increase of 1 million perks from our prior forecast in the year-end 2025.”

“This is a solid start to the year, and one we expect to build on as we expand our C-Band and Fios availability.”

“we continue to expect positive service revenue contribution from core prepaid in the second half of the year.”

“On fixed wireless access, our multi-dwelling unit solution is expected to gradually ramp over time, along with continued expansion of homes and businesses covered with the ongoing C-Band deployment.”

“On Fios expansion, we are ahead of our plan year-to-date to deliver 650,000 incremental passings this year.”

“On mobility, we're on track to deploy C-Band to 80% to 90% of our planned sites by year end and we are aggressively rolling out 5G advanced features.”

“Our fixed wireless access product continues to lead our broadened growth and we have a great momentum to reach our next milestone of 8 million to 9 million fixed wireless access subscribers by 2028.”

“So in the multiyear plan, we have to '28, there's no pressure.”

“With fixed wireless access and fiber, we have the most complete offering covering all segments of the market and we will cover more than 100 million premises over the time.”

“So, it's going to be a great year again for fixed wireless access.”

“So, a combination of all of these gives us a lot of comfort of good ARPA growth in 2025.”

“For 2025, the price actions that we've already done are in the hopper, more than $1 billion-plus of our service revenue growth is already baked in just with those price-ups.”

“But with the MDU solution also coming in and then ramping up Fios at the same time, we're going to see a continuation of our strength in broadband.”

“We think postpaid is expected to grow between 8 million and 8.5 million lines in 2025 all in for Business and Consumer.”

“So, we intend to drive more of that to the bottom-line going through 2025, and we look forward to driving more business here.”

“I think 2024 was the bottom of our low upgrade rate. And we're going to start seeing gradual improvements in 2025. I think mid-single-digits is what we have assumed in our plan and our guidance.”

“We've had eight quarters of phone gross add growth, and we see that momentum continuing into 2025.”

“In 2025, we expect higher for net adds than in 2024.”

“We anticipate helping to broaden their reach and enable our mutual customers with AI training and inference capabilities at the Edge over time.”

“The process is going as planned, and we continue to expect the transaction to close by early 2026.”

“This outlook assumes mid-single-digit growth in upgrades and no change to current tax legislation.”

“As we shared in the fall, we expect promo amortization headwinds to peak in 2025.”

“I would highlight the underlying wireless service revenue growth is expected to be nearly double the guided range when excluding promo amortization.”

“We're off to a great start to hit our next milestone of 8 million to 9 million fixed wireless access subscribers by 2028.”

“But of course, a little bit less opportunities going into the first half of 2025 probably.”

“We will be postpaid phone net add positive with second number, without second number, this year as well as promised in our plan to do that.”

“All-in-all, we feel good about the full year financial guidance that we gave earlier in the year. We even said, if you have read the press release, which I hope that all of you have done, that when it comes to the wireless service revenue and EBITDA, we are at midpoint or above on both of them for the full year.”

“Our focus is to continue to pay down debt between now and the closing of the Frontier deal.”

“And as Sampath mentioned, we expect the consumer business to have positive postpaid phone net adds for the full year, and that's with and without the second number offering.”

“The second is a fiber churn, which is already world-class, one of the best in the world, will go down another 40% when we bundle mobility and fiber.”

“But over a period of time, you should expect lower churn from us from a couple of things.”

“And you're going to see continued progress and continued momentum in our value business going forward.”

“And we are in 2025, targeting an expansion of our Fios build up to 650,000 prems.”

“So I've been building Fios for 20 years or so now. And we're on track this year to pass approximately 500,000 prems.”

“So there will be upside in our mobility case as we continue to get to 35 million to 40 million homes of fiber definitely.”

“And we foresee that getting 35 million to 40 million will be with or without BEAD funding.”

“And today, we're announcing an update to our long-term leverage target of 2.0 to 2.25 times.”

“And as we've said many times, we will consider share buybacks but our unsecured leverage metric reaches 2.25 times, and that target is unchanged.”

“The first one is we will see penetration well north of 40% in our business.”

“I think with a positive four net add trajectory, strong FWA and Fios performance, we are on track to get to that 80-20 mix over a period of time.”

“Post-close, I see that pace growing to up to 1 million plus prems per year.”

“We expect that to cover another 30 million homes over the next four years on our award-winning multipurpose network”

“So our broadband targets going forward is basically going to say that we're going to double the fixed wireless access targets by 2028 to 8 million, 9 million fixed wireless access subscribers.”

“But overall, the strong position and cash flow puts us in a position to pay down debt in the second half of 2024, and we are on track to do so.”

“We will not consider any conversation about buybacks until we get to 225.”

“Very comfortable with the revenue guide for the year.”

“In particular, we remain on track to further reduce the leverage on our balance sheet in the second half of the year.”

“Our full year guidance for CapEx spending remains unchanged at a range of $17 billion to $17.5 billion.”

“Our improving operations and results build on our first quarter momentum, keep us on track to meet our 2024 financial guidance and are paving the way for a sustained growth.”

“And as we said in April, we expect free cash flow to have a similar shape to last year and build throughout the year.”

“We do expect to see savings towards the back end of 2024 and into 2025.”

“In addition, Hans mentioned the voluntary separation program. And some of that savings will start manifesting in the back end of this year and into 2025.”

“Looking ahead, we expect less of a contribution from second number in the back half of the year.”

“Also, I would say the year-over-year comps are a little more challenging in the second half as we lap the pricing changes from 2023.”

“First we expect to see sequential growth in service revenue in the second half of the year.”

“And as we said in the prepared remarks, we also said that any impact that we would see we'd see on service revenue up to 50 basis points of headwind and we're tracking inside of that number right now.”

“We are evolving our broadband strategy as we approach 4 million to 5 million fixed wireless access subscribers, and we'll continue to scale the business along with the private networks while driving mobility growth.”

“We expect to generate strong cash flow in the back half of the year that will support paying down debt.”

“With the majority of ACP disconnects now behind us and the momentum growing in our core prepaid brand, we are better positioned for the remainder of the year and heading into 2025.”

“We believe the majority of the pricing churn is now behind us and we continue to expect full-year consumer postpaid phone churn to be flat or slightly better than last year.”

“This was in-line with our expectations as we recently implemented several price increases that are expected to generate well over $1 billion in annualized wireless service revenue.”

“We're also working to enhance our network coverage by partnering with AST SpaceMobile to provide satellite to device connectivity using the 850 megahertz spectrum. This will bring our network to unserved communities, as we target 100% coverage from coast to coast.”

“That number will continue to grow as we expand C-band reach.”

“Total postpaid phone net adds of 148,000 is a big improvement year-over-year and sequentially, and we expect to have positive postpaid phone net adds in consumer for the year.”

“We said we were going to be phone net add positive in consumer and that's on track as well.”

“First of all, we're on track for our cost target that we have given to the market -- to The Street.”

“Consumer net adds should be positive in 2024.”

“And nonetheless we expect to generate strong free cash flow and we see no obstacles in paying down debt in a meaningful way in the second half of 2024.”

“We still see the same puts and takes on free cash flow for the full year as we described in January.”

“Given the strength and momentum of our business, we continue to see a clear path to meaningfully delever the balance sheet in the second half of this year.”

“Our full year guidance of $17 billion to $17.5 billion in CapEx spending remains unchanged.”

“Our execution in the first quarter keeps us on track towards our full year 2024 guidance, as we continue to deliver against our key financial metrics.”

“As with mobility, we saw good momentum with the broadband net adds as we exited the quarter and we expect that to continue.”

“And we also see pressure, year-over-year pressure on the handset insurance claims and we expect that to level off in the second quarter.”

“We expect to see further operating leverage in the second half of the year.”

“As we said in the prepared remarks, we'll see a full quarter's effect of the pricing changes that we announced in the consumer business.”

“We're not going to discuss specific cost targets, but as Hans mentioned, we're operating a lot differently, and we feel really good about the cost actions that we're taking and the progress that we're making that are driving the EBITDA improvements that you saw in the first quarter and that we expect throughout 2024.”

“And the margin exposure from ACP is actually very small.”

“The impact or any impact would be seen on service revenue up to potential 50 basis points of headwind.”

“You know, overall in 2024, it's reasonable to expect similar or lower churn in the consumer business compared to 2023.”

“As Hans said, we expect free cash flow to build throughout the year, similar to 2023.”

“With a full quarter's impact from our recent pricing actions, we anticipate the second quarter's adjusted EBITDA growth to accelerate year-over-year.”

“We expect the elimination of the program to result in lower wireless service revenue but have minimal impact on our adjusted EBITDA.”

“We are focused on putting our board in a position to continue to raise the dividend each year, building on our current industry record of 17 consecutive increases.”

“This gives us greater flexibility to accelerate deleveraging throughout the second half of the year, bringing us closer to our long-term leverage targets.”

“So, I'm really pleased with the platforms, and that means we're on track for the savings we talked about going into '24, it's more about the same.”

“However, we are confident that we will continue to deliver strong business volumes in 2024.”

“When we come down to 2.25 times, we have said we will start considering buybacks, but our ultimate long-term goal is to get around 2 times.”

“So, just to add a couple of things here. So, on 2023, we delivered about $300 million to $400 million in savings. And as Hans mentioned, we expect the program to ramp in 2024 and the savings are contemplated in the guide.”

“And on the BEAD program, we will participate when that comes out in the market where we see we can compete and where we see a good return on investment.”

“And then on promo amortization, that continues to be a headwind with the increase in 2024 similar to the increase we experienced in 2023.”

“It was about $142 million in the fourth quarter, and we expect the prepaid headwinds continue into 2024 as we stabilize that business.”

“We also have an improving volume profile in our Consumer business. As we said in the prepared remarks, we expect to have positive phone net adds in Consumer in 2024 and stable Business volumes as well.”

“The midpoint of our guidance range implies over $2 billion of service revenue growth.”

“Overall, we expect a strong free cash flow profile that will support our capital allocation priorities and position us for meaningful unsecured debt reduction in 2024, which we expect to come in the latter half of the year.”

“Tailwinds to free cash flow will come from our adjusted EBITDA growth outlook as well as the expected $1.5 billion reduction in CapEx in 2024 based on the midpoint of our guided CapEx range.”

“As discussed in prior quarters, capital spending for the full year is expected to be between $17 billion and $17.5 billion, down from $18.8 billion in 2023.”

“Our adjusted effective income tax rate is expected to be in the range of 22.5% to 24% based on current legislation.”

“We expect depreciation and amortization to be relatively flat in 2024 compared to 2023.”

“In addition, EPS is expected to be impacted by approximately $0.07 to $0.09 of higher pension and OPEB expense, primarily due to the expiration of certain credits.”

“Specifically, higher interest expense is expected to impact adjusted EPS by $0.16 to $0.19, over 75% of which is driven by the continued reduction in capitalized interest related to the C-Band licenses being placed into service.”

“Full year adjusted earnings per share is expected to be $4.50 to $4.70.”

“We expect deleveraging of the balance sheet to accelerate in 2024 as CapEx comes down to BAU levels and we continue to generate strong cash flow.”

“We expect further progress on our cost efficiency program in 2024.”

“We believe we're taking the right steps to better position our offerings in the market and expect to see some stabilization in 2024.”

“We expect continued and healthy organic ARPA growth in 2024.”

“That will enable our Board to continue to raise our dividend and also enable us to bring down leverage.”

“And as we lower our capital intensity from the C-Band build out and our new business structure, we expect to see continued strong free cash flow generation going forward.”

“And if you think about the headwind, we'd see it at about $2 billion right now, and we'll have to see how things play out with what the proposed legislation is.”

“The guidance assumes that the ACP funding remains intact. In the event the funding goes away, we have plans to address it and we'll see what happens there.”

“Similar to Consumer, we are taking pricing actions in the first quarter in Business that could result in elevated phone churn in the period.”

“So it's a lot of ongoing here that gives us confidence that we will sequentially continue to improve.”

“On the cost target, we are definitely on track for delivering on the $2 million to $3 million that we talked about when we launched a new structure.”

“So heading into 2024, we continue to focus on strong free cash flow generation and opportunities for meaningful debt reduction. And we don't see any obstacles of Delevering.”

“Let me close with this. Our performance has put us firmly on track to meet our full year financial targets and position us well as we approach 2024.”

“Our cost efficiency program remains on track to meet our savings goal of $2 billion to $3 billion annually by 2025.”

“We have the best networks in the market and we will extend our lead as we complete our C-band deployment, first augmenting urban areas, and next year in suburban and rural markets.”

“We are confident that we will deliver on the financial guidance that we issued to you at the start of the year and this morning are announcing higher free cash flow guidance for 2023.”

“Yeah. So what we have said before was that we want to come to a ratio of 2.25 over the net debt to EBITDA and we are going to continue to work our way down and that is a primary goal for us.”

“On the KPIs, you are correct and we rollout the C-bandwidth we have better retention and better step-ups. And of course, we also expect that we can take share.”

“We are not going to see any significant revenues that has an impact on Verizon overall in ‘24. We are going to see that in ‘25, but why it's important is that, this is an area we never been into.”

“On the value segment, in prepaid and TracFone, as we said in the prepared remarks, we are at the low point to first half of ‘23 and from here on, we should start sequentially improving.”

“And then offsetting that, as we've mentioned in the prepared remarks, prepaid continues to be a headwind the in the near term as we continue to work to improve the business and that's still ongoing.”

“And we're also seeing some of the headwinds from the promo amortization starting to ease a little bit, that's starting to flatten out, which is good news.”

“On the plus side, I would say, look the pricing actions we took this year, obviously have a tailwind in the fourth quarter and carry over into next year. So we continue to see momentum there.”

“We executed a number of pricing actions as you saw. The legacy mix and match that we did earlier in September will yield about a $100 million of incremental benefit in the in the fourth quarter”

“And then offsetting that, we expect higher interest costs from both in the rate environment and the reduction in capitalized interest due to the early clearing of the C-band spectrum.”

“With respect to CapEx, we said a couple of times here in the past that we expect to run at $17 billion to $17.5 billion for 2024, which is back to a business as usual level of spend that you've seen from us.”

“Our segmented and disciplined approach to consumer mobility is working and we expect our momentum to continue building in the fourth quarter.”

“Overall, I'm pleased with our ability to deliver stronger operational and financial trends. We are focused on finishing the year strong with continued improvements in volumes and financials, setting us up for meaningful deleveraging opportunities in 2024.”

“We're working to bring our leverage ratio to the pre-Spectrum acquisition levels.”

“We currently anticipate another incremental $0.03 to $0.04 in the fourth quarter.”

“We expected a better trajectory for the remainder of the year, as the teams continue to scale some of our key brands such as Visible, and Total by Verizon and execute on our ongoing integration efforts.”

“We expect to continue to deliver strong volumes and expand their relationships by leveraging our position as the wireless market share leader for small and medium businesses, large enterprises and public sector customers.”

“We anticipate that momentum will continue as we are on track to exceed our postpaid phone net adds from Q4 of last year.”

“And then with taxes, as you know, under current legislation, taxes are going to be pressured by the continued phase out of bonus depreciation and we'll see how that plays out.”

“As we mentioned last quarter, we believe we're seeing the bottom for prepaid volumes and the team is committed and working daily to grow our value business.”

“So, when you put that all together, we're very confident that all the initiatives here will continue to drive the meaningful revenue growth in the second half.”

“So, on the service revenue, we're very confident in the guide.”

“While we do not normally guideline free cash flow, our strong results give us a clear line of sight to more than $17 billion of free cash flow for the full year.”

“We are on track to deliver $200 million to $300 million of savings this year from our transformation efforts, and continue to make progress towards achieving our goal of $2 billion to $3 billion of annual cost savings by 2025.”

“We are on track to deliver our wireless service revenue guidance for the year.”

“We're well on track to meet our target of 4 million to 5 million fixed wireless access subscribers by the end of 2025, from a current base of nearly 2.3 million subscribers.”

“Based on our results this quarter and what we see ahead, I'm confident that we will deliver on our 2023 financial guidance.”

“As far as we can see right now is BAU is around 17 to 17.5, and that's going to see that we can deploy the C-band, getting all the benefits we talked about.”

“It'll probably come one in the second half. It usually comes. So, we're going to see that. But I don't foresee that we will come back to the levels we've seen before from a point of view of Verizon.”

“One thing to note, just on the prepaid revenue, we did see a headwind in the quarter of about $125 million. I would expect that to be at a similar level in the third quarter before it eases up in the fourth quarter.”

“And then once we get to the leverage metric of 2.25, we will consider buybacks at that time.”

“As soon as we get hold of the next tranche of spectrum, the team is ready to continue to deploy that. That's going to give us both more capacity, but of course more coverage as well.”

“To summarize, in mobility, our segmented and disciplined approach to the market is working, and our efforts to improve the consumer group's performance will continue throughout the second half of the year.”

“As previously stated, we expect higher interest expense to impact our full year earnings per share by $0.25 to $0.30, and there's no change to that view.”

“Our peak capital spend is behind us, and we are now at a business-as-usual run rate for CapEx, which we expect will continue into 2024.”

“We continue to expect 2023 capital spending to be within our guidance of $18.25 billion to $19.25 billion.”

“Additionally, we expect less pressure from the amortization and promotional cost in the second half of the year, given the softer upgrade environment and our disciplined approach to promotional spending.”

“We now have nearly 2.3 million customers on our FWA product, and we expect growth to continue at a fairly similar pace in the third quarter.”

“We're on track to achieve our forecasted $2 billion to $3 billion in annual savings by 2025.”

“We'll continue to grow our cash generation profile and maximum shareholder returns, aided by our cost efficiency program and lowered capital expenditures.”

“All-in-all, our cost efficiency program is on track to achieve our target of $2 billion to $3 billion of annual savings by 2025, which will help to fund our growth as well as drive margin improvements over time.”

“With the conclusion of the program, we would expect a step down in the pacing of overall CapEx throughout the remainder of the year and continue to expect 2023 capital spending to be within our guidance of $18.25 billion to $19.25 billion.”

“To complement this, the team expects to make additional progress across 2023 on the development and implementation of cost efficiency initiatives resulting in a meaningful savings run rate at the end of the year.”

“We believe that the actions the teams are taking will grow the top line driving both EBITDA and cash flow.”

“Additionally, the consumer team is working to improve efficiencies around device promotions and credits that we expect to yield revenue benefits across the remainder of the year.”

“As a result of these combined pricing actions, we anticipate approximately $75 million of incremental quarterly revenue moving forward.”

“We expect to see the benefits of these actions ramp across the second quarter as the business segment began billing customers closer to the end of the first quarter, while consumers started earlier this month.”

“Together with the elevated disconnects and our SafeLink brand that Hans referenced, we expect pressure on prepaid net ads to increase in the second quarter before they abate later in the year.”

“As we look to build on the free cash flow growth generated in the first quarter, we expect to see significant improvement in our dividend payout ratio this year, putting the board in a strong position to increase the dividend once again and bring us closer to our debt targets over the following years.”

“With almost all our 10 billion C-band capital expenditure program behind us, we expect our cash generation profile to expand over the next few years, driven by revenue growth, cost management and efficiencies with capital expenditures.”

“While this may result in missing out on revenue, it is a right move and one that will lead to higher margin and cash flow over time.”

“That puts us in a position where we can start to see accelerated levels of debt reduction versus what you've seen in the past year or so.”

“There are no major price increases included at this moment.”

“So net-net, the CapEx reduction year-over-year gives us a good tailwind to think about cash flow for this year.”

“I mean, yes, on the premium segment, there is seasonality in the first quarter, and I don't think that's going to be different this year.”

“Looking beyond 2023, given our exit rate from 2022 we don't expect to hit the long-range outlook as we projected at the Investor Day last year. However, due to the way we have positioned our network and service offerings coming into 2023, we do expect increasing growth in revenue and cash flow in subsequent years.”

“Our adjusted effective income tax rate is expected to be in the range of 22.5% to 24.0% based on current legislation.”

“Finally, we expect approximately $0.03 to $0.05 of impact from higher depreciation expense primarily driven by the C-band equipment being put into service across '22 and into '23.”

“Higher rates of pension and OPEB, in addition to the lower pension asset base resulting from negative returns in 2022, are also expected to impact our adjusted EPS by approximately $0.12 to $0.15 compared to 2022.”

“As noted on our third quarter earnings call, high interest rates are expected to result in approximately $0.25 to $0.30 of interest expense pressure in 2023 due to higher floating rate debt costs and higher securitization costs for our growing device payment portfolio.”

“In addition, we expect promo amortization to be approximately $1 billion higher than last year.”

“We expect we will deliver a best-in-class network experience while reducing our 2022 CapEx levels by more than $5 billion over the next couple of years.”

“We believe that we will become increasingly efficient with our capital, using less capital to generate every dollar of revenue for years to come.”

“The heavy lifting is now underway as we execute against our goal to deliver $2 billion to $3 billion of run rate savings by 2025.”

“expect us to pursue more ways to move away from the aggressive handset subsidies with offers like Welcome Unlimited plan, which offers attractive headline pricing for customers while reducing device subsidies.”

“Scaling of new business, such as private 5G networks and edge computing will also be a strategic focus in 2023.”

“We are moving into 2023 with momentum and expectation for improved performance based on recent actions and planned initiatives.”

“Our fixed wire access is also expected to contribute more meaningfully to service revenue as we enter the year growing rapidly with a base of more than 1.4 million subscribers.”

“We expect that our network differentiation will be the cornerstone of our service revenue growth and that it will allow us to continue to attract the highest quality customer base in the industry and maintain our market-leading share of the B2B market.”

“So by the end of the year, you should see a network with incredible speeds, both downlink and uplink and positioned to deliver 5G capabilities such as network slicing, voice over 5G NR among others.”

“You can expect continued fiber expansion in the years ahead.”

“We can get to the top end of the range there with strong execution, the activity around the cost program scaling, that flywheel moving faster than our base assumption.”