Cable One Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 1, 2025

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Rebecca, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cable One First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Jordan Morky, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, and welcome to Cable One's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. We're glad to have you join us as we review our results. Before we proceed, I would like to remind you that today's discussion contains forward looking statements relating to future events that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding future broadband revenue, customer growth, connects and churn rates, new product rollouts, customer yield from new build activities, including related costs, future cash flow, future ARPU, future levels of competition, capital expenditures, the anticipated impact of our change in dividend policy, our ability and sources of capital to fund the retirement of our 0% convertible notes in 2026, the anticipated after tax proceeds from the expected monetization of certain investments and our future financial performance, capital allocation policy, leverage ratios and financing plans. You can find factors that could cause Cable One's actual results to differ materially from the forward looking statements discussed during today's call, in today's earnings release and in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10 ks. Cable One is under no obligation and expressly disclaims any obligation, except as required by law, to update or alter its forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Speaker 1

Additionally, today's remarks will include a discussion of certain financial measures that are not presented conformity with U. S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP. When we refer to free cash flow during today's call, we mean adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures as defined in our earnings release. Reconciliations of non GAAP financial measures discussed on this call to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release or on our website at ir.cableone.net.

Speaker 1

Joining me on today's call is our President and CEO, Julie Lawless and Todd Cucci, our CFO. With that, let me turn the call over to Julie.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jordan, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today's call. Today, I want to unpack the factors which underlie my belief that we will achieve long term subscriber growth and grow residential broadband revenue in 2025 and beyond. As I noted during our year end call in February, we are executing on a multiyear plan to achieve sustained profitable growth in a rapidly changing and more competitive environment. While our first quarter customer results were not what we wanted, a closer look at how the quarter unfolded, along with multiple green shoots of growth now emerging, presents a more promising path forward.

Speaker 2

As I'll detail further, we believe much of the noise of Q1 is behind us. With the right people, platforms, and processes in place, we're building a more effective and scalable customer acquisition engine, one that we believe will drive meaningful growth over the long term. We work very hard to listen to our investors. And right now, every discussion focuses on long term broadband customer growth. So I want to spend most of my time today discussing that topic.

Speaker 2

Let me start by addressing our first quarter residential broadband customer numbers. The key driver of our customer decline in the first quarter was lower than expected connects. Driving growth through new connects has been the focus of our plans, and I'll speak more about the early progress we are seeing in a moment. Our results were further impacted by unusual churn events, which are now behind us. With churn already reverting to historically low levels and with our plans to steadily improve Connects underway, we remain confident in our ability to deliver residential broadband growth over time.

Speaker 2

One of the key drivers of sustainable growth is the strength of our customer retention. After excluding the unusual events of this quarter, our churn levels remained historically low, and we're taking deliberate action to keep them there. Guided by our promise to keep our customers connected to what matters most, we are proactively enhancing our retention efforts. A great example of this is our homegrown AI driven churn propensity model, which rapidly identifies the customers most at risk of leaving. Once identified, we take targeted action to engage and retain them.

Speaker 2

The combination of this high touch plus high-tech approach reflects our broader commitment to providing an effortless yet personalized customer experience with neighborly service that sets us apart. Importantly, we believe we are positioned for stronger performance through the remainder of the year, supported by a return to a more normalized churn profile, our plans to drive higher connects and continued efforts to compete effectively throughout the MSO. I'd like to highlight several encouraging green shoots that we believe contribute to our future growth, particularly through increased connects. To start, I'll share an update on the products we've introduced for value conscious customers, which we believe will play an important role in our broader growth strategy. First, there's our PayGo product, which we piloted specifically for the value by choice customer.

Speaker 2

We've rebranded this product as FlexConnect as it effectively competes with cell phone Internet by providing faster speeds along with a more reliable connection and unlimited data, all at a great value with ultimate ease of use. Since launching the pilot, we've seen growth in both customer count and ARPU within this cohort as the ability to choose their speed, unlike cell phone Internet, has led many to upgrade to higher tiers that better fit their needs. We will begin to market FlexConnect aggressively across the MSO and expect that it will be an effective tactic to increase connects. Second, we are now piloting Internet lift, a product designed to serve the value by need customer. This offering is available to individuals who meet specific eligibility criteria, and we're taking a targeted local approach to reach them.

Speaker 2

Internet lift represents an incremental broadband revenue opportunity for us. Early pilot results show that lift is bringing additional customers to us with minimal risk of cannibalizing our existing base. We plan to accelerate our marketing efforts for Lyft across targeted portions of the MSO with broader rollout beginning in the weeks ahead. In addition to new products, we're leaning into strategic infrastructure innovations that support long term growth. One example is how we're reengineering our approach to selecting and executing new builds to acquire customers more efficiently.

Speaker 2

Moreover, we're beginning to see early signs that this is working. Stronger early penetration means we now expect the same number of passings to yield more customers within the first two quarters of release. At the end of the day, our ability to grow our customer base comes down to two things: how effectively we retain existing customers, and we're doing that exceedingly well as reflected in our continued low churn rate and how compelling our value proposition is for new customers. While no single product or initiative stands alone as the driver of growth, together, they create a powerful ecosystem of choice, including flexibility, reliability, and neighborly service for our customers. This not only improves our customers' lives, but it also supports our plan for long term broadband revenue growth.

Speaker 2

Of course, none of this happens without the right people, and we have the team and the organizational structure in place to make it happen. I'm incredibly proud of the talent, experience, and momentum within our new customer acquisition and retention teams. Their energy, combined with strong collaboration across other functional areas, gives us confidence that we are going to see positive results. Turning to ARPU. We saw a slight dip this quarter driven by a variety of small factors, including promotional offers, which have proven track records of strong retention, increased adoption of AutoPay Plus and its associated discount, and credits issued to certain customers impacted by third party fiber cuts.

Speaker 2

That said, ARPU remained stable, and the trends that we see support growth in the coming quarters. These include higher sell in of our gig and multi gig products, momentum from new product offerings and the number of discounts scheduled to roll off. Taken together, these factors position us well to improve ARPU through the balance of the year. Related to the potential growth of ARPU, I also want to highlight the continued growth of our Secure Plus product, which has seen a 16% increase in customer adoption since the start of 2025. Secure Plus delivers a suite of security focused features, including remote access to the home network and household wide password management.

Speaker 2

Secure Plus is available a la carte for $8 a month or as part of our ultimate Wi Fi bundle, which we introduced last November at $24.99 per month. The bundle is resonating well with customers with 17% of new customers choosing it this quarter, a strong signal that our approach is aligned with the needs of today's connected homes. When you combine these trends with our road map and ongoing executable plan, I remain confident in our ability to grow residential broadband revenue in 2025. Finally, before turning the call over to Todd for a review of our financial performance, I want to touch briefly on our decision to revise our capital allocation strategy, specifically the suspension of our dividend. We remain committed to a balanced approach to capital allocation.

Speaker 2

And after careful consideration, we have decided to suspend our quarterly cash dividend in order to accelerate our debt reduction strategy and invest in organic growth initiatives. As Todd will cover in his remarks, we believe this change will bolster our financial strength and enhance our ability to proactively access the capital markets on favorable terms. With confidence in our strategy, the strength of our team and the plans we're putting into action, we are well positioned to execute on our goals through the remainder of the year. We remain focused on our long term objectives of residential broadband customer and revenue growth while maintaining the financial discipline necessary to sustain strong free cash flow generation. And now, Todd, who will provide a recap of our first quarter financial performance.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Julie. Beginning with the top line, for the first quarter of twenty twenty five, our total revenues were $380,600,000 compared to $404,300,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Residential data revenues decreased $10,700,000 or 4.5% year over year. During the first quarter, residential data subscribers and ARPU both decreased by 1.1%. However, as Julie noted, we continue to have confidence in our execution strategy to deliver residential broadband revenue growth in 2025.

Speaker 3

The remaining decrease in total revenues was primarily attributable to a decrease in residential video revenues of $9,600,000 or 15.8% year over year, driven by losses in video subscribers as we continue to navigate the final phases of our video product life cycle. On the business services side, for the first quarter of twenty twenty five, business data revenues grew by 1.2% compared to Q1 of twenty twenty four. As we mentioned earlier this year, our carrier and enterprise fiber businesses remained strong, delivering consistent results with an average contract term of about five years. Carrier sales recently reached their highest monthly level since 2022, and we secured several new multimillion dollar long term contracts that not only add recurring revenue, but also expand our network reach into new commercial areas, setting the stage for future growth. Operating expenses were $99,900,000 or 26.2% of revenues in the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $106,500,000 or 26.3% of revenues in the prior year quarter with the decrease driven largely by a reduction in programming and labor costs.

Speaker 3

Selling, general and administrative expenses were $95,400,000 for the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $90,400,000 in the prior year quarter. SG and A as a percentage of revenue was 25.1% for Q1 of twenty twenty five compared to 22.4% for Q1 of twenty twenty four with the increase driven largely by non cash stock based compensation, billing system implementation costs and insurance related costs, partially offset by a reduction in payroll costs and improved bad debt expense. Net income was $2,600,000 for the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $37,400,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, driven by lower income from operations and an increased non cash equity method accounting loss in Q1 of twenty twenty five. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.00 $3,000,000 in Q1 of twenty twenty five, representing a 53.3% margin compared to $217,000,000 a 53.7% margin in Q1 of twenty twenty four. Capital expenditures of $71,100,000 in Q1 were $5,200,000 or 8% higher than in Q1 of last year.

Speaker 3

During the quarter, we invested $7,100,000 of CapEx for new market expansion projects and $3,900,000 for integration activities. We expect the impact of any tariffs to be manageable and we are well positioned to carry out our previously outlined plan for total CapEx in the low 300s for the full year. Adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures was $131,600,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five or 65% as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA. We will continuously assess the optimal allocation of the significant cash flow generated by our business, maintaining a commitment to long term growth initiatives and a highly disciplined conservative balance sheet management strategy. As Julie said, after careful and extensive consideration, we have decided to suspend our quarterly cash dividend on our common shares.

Speaker 3

This represents approximately $67,000,000 annually and over $200,000,000 of discretionary free cash flow over the next three years that we will be able to allocate towards accelerated debt repayment, refinancing support and ongoing investment in organic growth initiatives. While our near term priorities will be centered around fortifying our balance sheet and investing in long term growth, we will also remain balanced with our return of capital to shareholders and will opportunistically evaluate future share repurchases under our remaining $143,000,000 authorization subject to achieving lower leverage levels. We repaid nearly $45,000,000 of debt in the quarter, including $40,000,000 of early debt repayment along with an additional $10,000,000 subsequent to the quarter close. Since Q2 of twenty twenty three through today, excluding borrowing associated with our recently renegotiated MBI partnership agreement, our total debt repayment has exceeded $450,000,000 As of March 31, we had approximately $149,000,000 of cash and cash equivalents on hand and our debt balance was approximately $3,600,000,000 consisting of approximately $1,700,000,000 in term loans, $920,000,000 in convertible notes, dollars $650,000,000 in unsecured notes, dollars $273,000,000 of revolver borrowings and $3,000,000 of finance lease liabilities. We also had $977,000,000 available for additional borrowings under our $1,250,000,000 committed revolving credit facility as of March 31.

Speaker 3

Our weighted average cost of debt for the first quarter of twenty twenty five was 3.9% and our net leverage ratio on a last quarter annualized basis was just north of four times. As we continue our accelerated debt repayment and invest in EBITDA growth initiatives, we remain confident this ratio will decline and we reiterate our expectations that our leverage will remain below four times pro form a for the potential MDI consolidation in late twenty twenty six. A large majority of our borrowings are either fixed issuance or have been synthetically fixed at underlying base rates that are approximately half of the prevailing floating rates. The nearest final maturity for any of our debt instruments are $575,000,000 of 0% convertible notes does not occur until 2026. Given the available capacity under our revolving credit agreement and our free cash flow generation, we would be well prepared to retire those instruments without accessing the capital markets for additional incremental capital.

Speaker 3

However, as we previously stated, we will remain ready and opportunistic in evaluating attractive windows in the capital markets. Turning to our investment partnerships, we posted updated information about our unconsolidated investments on our Investor Relations website. For the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, the annualized adjusted EBITDA of select companies was approximately $682,000,000 up 10% from the prior year. These companies also grew broadband subscribers by 11% and added over 240,000 new fiber passings during the year. That momentum carried into the first quarter with residential and business data customers increasing by approximately 16,000 or 1.8% sequentially.

Speaker 3

These figures exclude MetroNet where our ownership stake is smaller. The pending monetization of our Ziply and Metronet investments in the coming months along with our monetization of CTI towers in the first quarter are expected to generate well over $100,000,000 of combined after tax proceeds with each investment providing a solid return. We believe these outcomes, both the strong operating execution and the successful monetization of our investments reflect the strength of the businesses we partnered with and the opportunities we continue to see ahead. Before we open it up for questions, I want to reiterate our confidence in the strategy we're executing to drive long term sustainable broadband revenue growth and durable cash flow growth. As we allow the appropriate amount of time for our new and ongoing investments in people, operational platforms and go to market playbooks to come together, we believe we have the foundational elements in place to return to delivering the differentiated results that have defined Cable One's reputation throughout our history.

Speaker 3

With that, we are now ready for questions.

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Frank Loutham with Raymond James.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you. So you have fallen into the trap that I've seen other companies that I've covered fall into where, bankers or someone have talked you into eliminating the dividend entirely. So I would be interested to know what led you to that decision. And specifically, are there any kind of going concern issues or debt covenants or some other issue that we're aware of in the business environment that would require you to cut the dividend?

Speaker 4

And does this have anything to do with the short term debt jumping out $575,000,000 in the quarter?

Speaker 3

Hey, Frank, it's Todd. Appreciate the question. I'll reassure you and our stakeholder audience, it has nothing to do with any going concern or debt covenant concerns. The the capital allocation strategies that we've been extensively revisiting, not just in the quarter, but active discussions, active listening to many of our stakeholders was what drove us to that decision. This allows us, as we said in our prepared remarks, to accelerate our debt repayment in addition to what we generate in leverage free cash flow in excess of $300,000,000 annually, you know, in in the next really two years in advance of the potential MBI transaction, another hundred and 20,000,000 of that will be allocated towards debt repayment.

Speaker 3

Therefore reiterating our view and our comfort that we'll be below four times as we've said as we've stated previously.

Speaker 4

Was eliminating the dividend part of the the way you were confident you were gonna get there before? Or is this is this new? And then as a follow-up, you mentioned about getting back to broadband subscriber growth. Can you articulate when you think you'll be able to cross that line?

Speaker 3

I'll address the first, and I'll let Julie jump in. But no, I said last quarter that we are confident in that less than four times without, you know, a decision being, effectively made on that dividend suspension. So that would not be a quarterly rate to that. It just further reemphasizes that point.

Speaker 2

And on broadband growth, whether we segment out are we talking about broadband revenue or broadband, subscriber growth or customer growth?

Speaker 4

Subscriber growth.

Speaker 2

We believe, yeah, we believe we can do both, quite honestly. And and it's we've been working on the setup of that for some time, and it started with a team that was professional and experienced in a more competitive environment as well as the platforms that would allow us to track and be much more measured and strategic about the actions that we took. And so for the first quarter to start out what I would call slow ish, it's not a surprise to me because all those things were still being put into place. And even with that, we did see you know, our biggest focus area has been connects because our churn is just so amazingly low. So working on connects, and we did see connects improve month over month and still feel good about about that trajectory.

Speaker 2

And that is not the way that it occurred last year, so that is something that we're bending the curve on. And that is before we put our comprehensive plan into place. So, you know, I'm not gonna pick a month or a week where I'm gonna say, here's where you're gonna see broadband customer growth, but I will say in '25 that that is what I believe we're going to deliver, and we absolutely will deliver revenue growth, broadband revenue growth in '25. I'm happy to talk about why why why I think that's the case. But

Speaker 4

Sure. Glad to hear that.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

Speaker 5

Thank you for taking the question. Could you unpack what the onetime unusual churn event was in the quarter? Sure. Just kind of the just one quick other follow-up there. But as we look out to the fourth quarter as well, right, there were some one off activities or one off events that were not necessarily supposed to be looked upon as run rate for the 2025.

Speaker 5

But here we are. And so just what underlies your confidence, just kind of piggybacking on Frank's question, what underlies the confidence of returning to broadband revenue growth for the year? If you think about the starting point with subscriber, the subscriber decline as well as the ARPU decline in the quarter, Just if you could unpack the confidence there, particularly given the competitive backdrop. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the one time events, the unique headwinds that we referred to at year end were primarily around ACP, the sunset of ACP. We did also have a change in key team members that we referenced as well.

Speaker 2

So that would be the events from the fourth quarter of twenty four. In the first quarter of twenty five, it's not one thing. It's a bunch of little things that that, if we took those out of the equation, our our churn is low regardless. But if we took those out, it would be historically low. And that was some heightened churn associated with our billing migration activities, the shutdown of unprofitable fixed wireless towers and the customers that were on them that we gained from an earlier acquisition and some weather weather related events, tornadoes and storms.

Speaker 2

So I would call those unusual and generally nonrecurring type of events. And, again, our churn is incredibly low. It's it's historically low if we remove those items. And that, with us being in the current competitive environment that that you referenced, you know, our team is just so fanatical about measuring and getting the data from our experiments so that we can make smart decisions. And just just one example related to churn, we've been tracking acquisition cohorts, connect cohorts from the first quarter specifically when we look at it overall time, but since we're measuring first quarter, since 2021 to current.

Speaker 2

And each year, our retention has gone up, and we are now 300 bps higher than we were in '21. So that's just an indication of the work that's done around churn and how these small things, unusual things occurred in the first quarter. Let's see. What else did you ask? Oh, confidence.

Speaker 2

So, again, the way I actually say it to the team is, hey. We haven't even shot our big cannons yet. Like, we're we're we're it's basically water guns, and we're getting ready to bring out the cannons because we wanted to put together a plan that was incredibly disciplined and strategic and comprehensive, not just bits and parts and tactics. And so we've been spending a lot of time, immense amount of work going on by the teams. You know, what advertising messages will resonate?

Speaker 2

What does the research say about how our customers wanna be approached? How do we interrupt share flow to our channels? Because we know when customers come to us, they stay with us. So, again, given that connects and nets improved month over month for the entire quarter and knowing that, you know, the plan for the for the future starting imminently is to roll out products that we've trialed, and we have data. So now we can forecast what to expect from those products, things like FlexConnect, which will go head to head against cell phone Internet.

Speaker 2

And there is just so much data that we have learned from our trials. What people appreciate about it, the demos that are being attracted by it, the data usage of that group, it it it may even lead to other use cases like wireless substitution, win back, for example, or products like Lyft, which are completely incremental to us, where we're going after the value by need customers. So we're not only helping out our neighbors, but we're getting incremental revenue. And, again, by trialing it, we have the confidence to understand that it won't cannibalize current customers. Tracking campaigns, for example, we did a campaign an acquisition campaign late in '24, and it resulted in a 13% lift.

Speaker 2

And and that's fantastic, but it had a discount. So we've been tracking it over time, and we're retaining in the mid nineties, and that is post discount roll off. So that is a super successful campaign. Now that we know that we know that we're not you know, we're we're threading the needle between lift and and ARPU and customer satisfaction, we can replicate that over and over again. We are getting so much more sophisticated now that we have these best in class platforms in place, and so we are revamping, for example, our new build process.

Speaker 2

And so far, that's yielding about 2% higher penetration within two months of completion at a lower cost of capital. I think about ancillary products, that customers are proving by their purchasing decisions that they want and need these things, and there is price elasticity there because of that need, because of that value. So things like Secure Plus or Ultimate Wi Fi. And those are just things that we're doing now, not things that are on the drawing board. Those were just some of the reasons why I have confidence.

Speaker 2

I have confidence, Sebastiano, because I know what we're getting ready to do.

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Operator

Your last question comes from the line of Brandon Nispel with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Speaker 1

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I was hoping maybe you could help us in in some of your trials with FlexConnect and Lyft, help us understand what intake ARPU looks like for those products. And then hoping you could provide an update on what percentage of your footprint is now overbuilt with fiber and the percentage of your footprint you think you're competing with fixed wireless in. Thanks.

Speaker 2

So FlexConnect is really pretty interesting because, again, it's going up against cell phone Internet. We call it a value by choice. In other words, people are choosing to have a a value type product, but but they're not in the same demo as the Lyft folks who who have a a strong need because of their income levels. FlexConnect offers customers really a super easy way to onboard and service themselves very similar to what cell phone Internet is like. However, it has a choice of speeds.

Speaker 2

Now I can't necessarily tell you what the ARPU is in that group because the the the speed and price the speeds and prices that we're going to aggressively market are changing in our mass rollout versus our trial because we learned some things in the trial. But there are two levels, a $45 level and a $75 level, and I can tell you that a portion not not half, but a portion of the customers are electing to get the higher speed tier. And, again, what we're learning about the people that are choosing that and their happiness, with their satisfaction with the product, and their data usage is really interesting. And and wait for the advertising. I'll just tease you with that.

Speaker 2

I think it's pretty punchy. Let me just put it that way. Lyft, likewise, is it its trial is nearing its end, and we're getting ready to market that as well. And there's a very discreet TAM for Lyft. Right?

Speaker 2

So these are folks that have to be eligible in order to get this product. And so we'll be marketing very discreetly to that group. It will represent all incremental revenue, and actually find a place for folks who are, most likely ACP customers in the past to to find their home back with Sparklight again. Footprint for fiber, about half and half.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Well, it's a little over 50%, Brandon. Very consistent with what we talked about last quarter. It hasn't moved meaningfully. And then with a broadband offering from a mobile mobile operator, that's in nearly all of our markets as we also said last quarter.

Speaker 3

That hasn't changed meaningfully either and really can't because it's pretty widely available.

Speaker 2

If anything it contracts.

Speaker 3

Yeah. If anything from a spectrum capacity constraint, it will contract over time. But right now, that is the case. And that's, as Julie said, the product connect challenge, which is why we've been piloting and now executing on some of these new initiatives that will go head to head.

Speaker 1

Thanks for the color.

Operator

I will now turn the call back over to Julie for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Rebecca. As we wrap up today's call, I want to thank our associates again for their continuing hard work and dedication to our customers and one another. This has been a challenging time for our company and our industry, but our people continue to believe in our mission to connect people to what matters most. Indeed, high speed data remains one of the most important products in rural America, where it is a lifeline for people to work, learn, and receive medical care. While today's discussion centered on topics that our shareholders and investors frequently ask about, it's important to remember that it's our associates who provide an invaluable service to our customers.

Speaker 2

So to each of our associates, please accept my thanks for all that you do. Thanks, everyone, and speak to you again next quarter.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

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