Cable One, Inc. (NYSE:CABO) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

And then as a follow-up, Todd, I was wondering if you – mentioned how many net adds you had in Q1 from ACP, I think you mentioned you were adding subs up until April. So just curious if that was a meaningful number. Thank you.

Todd Koetje: I can let Julie maybe go about the value-conscious customers, then I can address the ACP.

Julia Laulis: Yes, right. So residential data revenue was down because of the ARPU decline. And the ARPU decline was driven by the pieces that I went through earlier. The largest piece of that being the competitive pressure response in a few systems. And then things like the migrations, which are positive to revenue being blunted by us adding in things that used to cost extra like usage-based billing and unlimited data, as well as rate card adjustments, which are, again, positive to revenue, but being offset by more promos and the value-conscious rates. That’s just a small piece, the value-conscious rate of the overall ARPU decline. I don’t know – I think your question was when do you think residential revenues will stabilize?

We haven’t given guidance about – and we never ever since being public, have we given guidance about where we think revenue or adjusted EBITDA will go. We have said that we are going to have a positive free cash flow year. And I will say that I believe that everything that we’re doing right now sets us up for positive revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth in the future. ACP, we only did ACP installs until February 7.

Todd Koetje: Yes. That’s exactly right. Steven, February 7 was the day that we were mandated to stop, and we had basically started to pull on that already before that point in time. And so the comment around every single month of this quarter was a positive subscriber add on a net basis was including after February 7. So we didn’t break down what was ACP net adds for January and the first 7 days of February, but suffice to say, we weren’t really impressing on something that we already knew was going to be going away.

Julia Laulis: Well, and even if I exclude any ACP customers that came in, in the first quarter, our connects were up substantially. So they’re not on the back of ACP. My guess would be, and it would only be a guess because I can’t quantify it, is that the connects are likely coming from competitors like, we’re getting connects that normally might go to fixed wireless.

Steven Cahall: Got it. Thank you.

Julia Laulis: Because we’re focusing on that segment which is the value-conscious segment.

Steven Cahall: Great.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And your next question will come from the line of Kohulan Paramaguru with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Kohulan Paramaguru: Hi, thanks. I’ve got two questions. Firstly, on the ARPU. Can you give us a little bit more color on what ARPU those gross adds are actually coming in on? If we do some rough math, it indicates if these offers are the reason for the ARPU decline, it would imply sort of a sub-$50 ARPU. Just trying to think about if this is value accretive to the business or how should we think about this in the long run? And secondly, around MBI, does your comment around not necessarily needing to come to the capital markets for the deal, including assumed drawdown on the RCF? Thanks.

Todd Koetje: Yes. Good questions. I’ll address both. Julie can jump in on the ARPU and the value accretive side of the equation. It’s a great question as you’re selling in at a lower price point to a new customer, one of the critical things to assess is how long-term accretive is that customer. And when you have 80% capacity in your network because of the way that we’ve invested in our network, and you have organizational capacity, many of these customers coming in markets that we already served with that network, the way that we can deliver the product from a cost to install Julie referred to in her prepared remarks around self-installs as well as the way that we can support that product and that customer with a lot lower CPX, the value-accretive nature of that new customer, even at those lower price points, even if they never upgraded is accretive.

Julia Laulis: Otherwise, you wouldn’t have done it.

Todd Koetje: And then you’ve got to look at the fact that over time, that is a customer that is likely to upgrade as both self-intentioned price upgrades as well as where we can potentially see some of these promo prices roll off that Julie alluded to. But that’s a critical part of that because customers for the sake of having customers has never been part of our strategy. The other element you asked about related to MBI is, yes, what we have committed in terms of our $1 billion credit facility, what we generate from free cash flow, what MBI has committed that does not necessitate any change of control if it were to come into CABO and their free cash flow is what informs my remarks.