United States Cellular Corporation (NYSE:USM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Service addresses in 2024 will likely be closer to what we delivered in 2022. In summary, we remain on track to achieve our 2026 fiber program goals. Recognizing the number of service addresses may fluctuate from year-to-year. We will give more specific guidance for 2024 during our year-end call. However, we wanted to provide directional insight on next year’s fiber program in the context of our expected address and CapEx results for 2023. In closing, I want to acknowledge all of the TDS Telecom associates. It is taking a tremendous amount of engagement and adaptability to execute on our strategy. And I want to thank the entire organization for pulling together to make that happen. I’ll now turn the call back over to Colleen.

Colleen Thompson: Okay, we will now open up the call to questions. As a reminder, our focus today is on the quarter. And we will not be taking questions on the strategic alternatives reviews for UScellular. Operator, we are ready for the first question.

Operator: Thank you, Ms. Thompson. [Operator Instructions]. We’ll go first this morning to Rick Prentiss at Raymond James.

Richard Prentiss: Thanks. Good morning, everybody.

Colleen Thompson : Good morning, Rick.

Richard Prentiss: First question, thanks for the extra color on the tower revenue distribution pie chart. Have you had a chance to think through of the T Mobile 29%, I think it shows. How much is Sprint or potential Sprint churn that might be out there, LT, I think you mentioned that you expect the industry CapEx slowdown will affect the 24 Tower leasing revenue, but just also wondering about kind of a churn effect.

Douglas Chambers: Good morning, Rick. We don’t — so of the Sprint T-Mo disconnects, a lot of that activity occurred in the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year. We’ve had about 100 cumulative lease terminations as a result of the merger. That slowed way down in the second and third quarter. So we think we’re through most of it. So the short answer is, we don’t think there’s a lot left with respect to additional terminations. You can see sequentially, our tenancy rate went down a little bit because of that exact reason.

Richard Prentiss: Okay. That’s what I was wondering. Okay. And then on fixed wireless, obviously, you’ve got the C-band now earlier than originally planned. Can you help us understand where you think the addressable market is as far as households for the fixed wireless product, how many households do you cover now, how many households would you like to cover over the next couple of years, just so we can kind of size that opportunity?

Laurent Therivel: Yes, sure, Rick. So the — let me talk a little bit about the dynamics there. I mean, the first dynamic is, I mentioned it in the prepared remarks, but as we turn on our mid band spectrum that allows us to both provide better speed experience to our customers. It also allows us to handle more capacity. One of the things I pay a lot of attention to is do we need to stop selling anywhere because of the impact that fixed wireless subs are putting on to the mobile network. And thus far, we’ve been able to restrict any stop sells to a truly very, very small number of towers. And so the impact on the mobile network has been manageable thus far. And we expect that to continue because we are going to be targeted in how we roll out mid band.

Part of the rationale for which towers we choose to put mid band on is the demand placed on it by fixed wireless. And so at a high level, if you look at the growth rate that we’ve experienced in the past, over the last, let’s call it, 18, 24 months, I expect that growth rate to continue. The final full potential of that product, it’s a little bit difficult to predict. You have to think through both how the product plays competitively. And certainly if I just look at how well it matches up against cable products and upgraded fiber footprint and so on, I could see that product growing to 400,000 or more households. The challenge though will come as those households come on board as they start using mid band spectrum, obviously, the usage per household increases as well.

And so you have to scale that back a little bit based on demands on mobile capacity. I don’t know what that looks like yet because we’re in the very early days of rolling that product out. Thus far, we’re very bullish. We haven’t had to, like I said, shut down any sites or stop selling at any sites. But I think probably 400,000 is the absolute top of the addressable market range, simply because you are going to have to dial it back based on capacity needs. Hopefully, that answers your question.

Richard Prentiss: It does. And final one, it’s a theoretical question. I’ll try to slip that in there. When you think about the difference between OIBDA and EBITDA, large part is the minority interest. You guys receive dividends from those minority interest. So if you think about one of the strategic alternatives might be to do something with the minority interest, how should we think about theoretically, why sell something where you get a dividend. Is there some tax-efficient means. Would you consider stock? Just trying to think through the logic of that minority interest line item of what might be interesting to do and why?

Laurent Therivel: Yes. So I mean, as you mentioned, I mean, we do see healthy cash flow distributions from those partnerships. We’re happy with how those partnerships operate. How those partnerships interact and influence the strategic assessment, I’m not going to comment on today.

Richard Prentiss: One thing that maybe is safe on is would stock be a consideration instead of cash if things were looked at, as kind of when you think about tax efficiency methods?

Vicki Villacrez: Yes, Rick, we’re not going to comment on any questions that relate in that area. So we’re just not going to comment on any outcome implications. We’re not even going to speculate today, but thank you.

Richard Prentiss: You can get without trying [ph]

Vicki Villacrez: Yeah, Rick. Operator next question.

Operator: Thank you. We’ll go next now to Phil Cusick at JPMorgan.