Walter Piecyk : And do you think the bondholders fully appreciate the risk to them as a result? Did they have a date in mind? Where they understand the risk to them in terms of underlying asset value?
Hamid Akhavan: I think that’s a good question for the bondholders. I certainly will not be able to answer on their behalf. But I think you’re raising a good question. I think it’s a good question, but it’s certainly not for me. It’s certainly for the bondholders to respond.
Walter Piecyk : And just on operational, Hamid, on the wireless side. I mean, what do you think it takes to get consumers to recognize the value proposition? Is there anything new that — I mean, obviously, Amazon when they first launched it kind of came and went — not — I would say, the perfect launch, I guess. But is there an opportunity to exploit that distribution channel going forward to try and get some better recognition of the product and get some actual sales onto the network — more material sales on the network?
Hamid Akhavan: So look, I have been part of the mobile business for all of my life. And every generation of it, I’ve been front and center. And I can say that we are realistic about what it takes to win in a saturated market, but there’s also incredible advantages to having a unutilized national network. A couple of times I’ve told people, nothing there’s more dangerous in mobile business than having an unutilized network. I think there’s many ways we can approach this market. We’ve already paid to develop this network. And you can imagine that I have the operating expenses and capital expenses already incurred. And so can we sharpen our go-to-market in a way that others can’t. We have some ideas and hopefully, we can execute on them.
We have — I would not say one should read too much on our initial entry, which is still very excited, incredibly excited about Amazon as a channel. Other channels that are exciting, other development that is happening, the right thing to do is — for us the right thing to do was reevaluating where we are and how we approach it. I don’t want to have a approach to market that is either unprofitable or unsuccessful. But we believe we have a lot of arrows in our quiver to use we have not yet pulled out. So time will tell. Our approach to a postpaid market will start back half of this year. It will be continuing work like everybody else, in perpetuity, that’s going to be hand-to-hand combat in the market. But we think we have enough tools to compete.
The other thing you have to look at it, U.S. market is the richest market in the world for mobile communication and we are just about to enter age of AI, where everybody thinks that connectivity and data is going to go to the next level that nobody has ever seen. So we feel we are prepared with the infrastructure that is underutilized, incredibly agile, ready for AI. There are enterprises and partners that are talking to us every day about their vision of where they can take, where they can go with us. And we are excited about it. The other thing about it is that even for a — always known in telecommunication ever since I started working for the bell system, I knew one thing, for no other reason than just having choice 20% of every telecommunications carrier who change their supplier if they’re given another choice.
It’s — and we are not looking for a dominant market share. Our profitability and sustainability will be incredibly good even with a modest share of the market as a fourth player in spite of our significant advantages in terms of infrastructure and technology that nobody else has today. Long answer to a short question, but we are excited about where we are. We just need time and capital. I mean it’s not the road map for success is clear. You just need a time line and the capital to execute on it.
Dean Manson: So with that, operator, I think we’ll take one more question.
Operator: Next question is coming from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.
Sebastiano Petti : Just a couple of quick follow-ups. I mean, to John’s question earlier about the trajectory of net additions, I mean, Hamid, you just did talk — on the wireless side, you did just talk about improvement in the back half. As you get through whatever potential headwind ACP may pose or not pose, can we get to positive growth as we kind of exit the year? Or is that the goal we should be anticipating as we get to the other side, maybe into 2025 as your efforts continue to ramp? And then relatedly, again, also following up on an earlier question on the cost savings side. Can you help us a little bit with the geography of that $1 billion of cost savings as we’re thinking about the business units. Obviously, Pay TV, you have subscriber declines and there’s some variable costs associated with that.
But — and you’re thinking about the retail side, but on the retail wireless side, you’re probably making some investments to focus on these improved or higher value subscribers. So there’s probably marketing cost, cost of service there. There’s probably also cost of service as you load the network to an extent or scale the network stuff. Help us think about maybe geography-wise across your business units, where should we be thinking about these $1 billion of savings kind of appearing or hitting the bottom line?
Hamid Akhavan: I’ll take the easy part of the question, and then I’ll pass the difficult part to Paul. Yes, we do expect and plan on having a positive growth — net positive growth on the retail wireless business for this year. So that this is in our view, the business would have turned around by end of the year, and we are already seeing a first installment of that in March coming out of the first quarter. The churn is low and as low as it’s been since the business was acquired. The actions we have taken to reduce churn were not the onetime lucky actions, and there was no market support to suggest that, that churn was accidental. So that will be — that is our target and goal to get to a growth this year and we see it at the moment where we sit here today, that is clearly visible to us. Now I’ll pass the second part to Paul.
Paul Orban : I want to be clear though that the $1 billion does not include any cost reduction related to variable cost or a decline in the subscriber base. It’s totally excluded from that. We will obviously see that in various segments. From a standpoint of where it sits, it’s across all segments, all of our areas are tightening their belt, and we’re using cost-cutting measures across the board. And it happens in all captions in the P&L, so whether it’s cost of sales, cost of goods or G&A. And I think you saw that in our Q1 numbers, and you should continue to see that going forward.
Hamid Akhavan: And I want to mention that we have the least cut from the — where we face the market and we have not endangered any strategic objectives or a strategic opportunities that we have, I’m heavily focused on making sure that we position the business for the long-term growth. We have a number of excellent long-term opportunities right now in our shop that we are nurturing and developing these cost optimizations are not coming at the expense of the future of the business. I can attest to that.
Dean Manson: Okay. Thank you all for your interest. We look forward to updating you again next quarter.
Hamid Akhavan: Thank you, everyone. Bye.
Operator: Thank you. This will conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.
