Cable One Q2 2025 Earnings Report

Cable One EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $3.23
• Consensus EPS: $8.23
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$5.00
• One Year Ago EPS: $10.29

Cable One Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $381.07 million
• Expected Revenue: $379.81 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$1.26 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Cable One Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2025
• Date: 7/31/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, July 31, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Cable One (NYSE:CABO), together with its subsidiaries, provides data, video, and voice services in the United States. The company offers residential data services, a service to enhance Wi-Fi signal throughout the home. It also provides various residential video services from basic video service to digital services with access to hundreds of channels; and provides a cloud-based DVR feature that does not require the use of a set-top boxes. In addition, the company offers Sparklight TV, an IPTV video service that allows customers to stream its video channels from the cloud through an app on supported devices, such as the Amazon Firestick, Apple TV, and Android-based smart televisions. Further, it provides data, voice, and video products to business customers, including small to mid-markets, enterprises, and wholesale and carrier customers. The company serves residential and business customers, comprising data, video, and voice services. Cable One, Inc. was incorporated in 1980 and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.

Cable One Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Sequential residential broadband ARPU rose $2.39, driven by segmented pricing changes, promotional expirations and higher adoption of premium speed tiers (46%).
• Positive Sentiment: Cable One completed its final billing system migration, consolidating over 30 legacy programs onto a unified platform and forecasted multi-million dollar annual cost savings starting in late 2025.
• Negative Sentiment: Cable One recognized a $586 million non-cash impairment charge on intangible assets and goodwill due to a stock price decline, reducing book value without impacting cash flows.
• Negative Sentiment: The company does not expect to grow total residential broadband customers in 2025 and forecasted full-year residential broadband revenue to be flat or modestly down versus 2024 amid competitive headwinds.
• Positive Sentiment: Business data revenue grew 1.2% year-over-year to $57.4 million, led by strength in the high-value fiber and carrier segments and new multimillion-dollar long-term contracts.

Presentation

[Operator]

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Lacey, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cable One Second Quarter 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]

If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jordan Warkert. You may begin.

[Jordan Morkert, VP, Finance - IR at Cable One]

Good afternoon, and welcome to Cable One's second 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, anticipated cost savings and other benefits to be derived from our billing system migration and our other investments in growth enablement platforms, anticipated benefits from our mobile service pilot program, future cash flow, ARPU and capital expenditures, future levels of competition, potential stock buybacks, our ability and sources of capital to fund the retirement of our 0% convertible notes in 2026, the estimated MBI put call purchase price, MBI's future debt levels, the anticipated after tax proceeds from the expected monetization of certain investments, expected cash tax savings to be realized as a result of the recently passed federal tax bill, our CEO succession process, 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 and our forthcoming second quarter twenty twenty five quarterly report on Form 10 Q.

[Jordan Morkert, VP, Finance - IR at Cable One]

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. Additionally, today's remarks will include a discussion of certain financial measures that are not presented in 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.

[Jordan Morkert, VP, Finance - IR at Cable One]

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. 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.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Thank you, Jordan, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today's call. This quarter's results were influenced by a combination of internal actions we took during the period as well as a few external factors. These included some pricing and packaging adjustments for a subset of our customers, double the typical volume of promotional roll offs, continued competitive headwinds, and seasonal softness in our college markets. Against that backdrop, residential broadband revenue increased on a sequential basis by 1.9% compared to the first quarter, driven primarily by higher ARPU.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Business data revenue was $57,400,000 and consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $203,200,000 both results consistent with Q1 levels. Despite the residential broadband customer losses we experienced in the quarter, we're encouraged by the sequential improvement in Connect throughout the first half of the year with continued month over month growth in June representing the first month during 2025 with a year over year increase in connects. We believe our drive towards simplified pricing, segmented marketing campaigns, and value enhancing product and service offerings is laying the groundwork for stronger subscriber uptake and improved operating performance over time. In addition, the completion of the final phase of our billing conversion marks a key milestone in our multiyear investment in growth enablement platforms, positioning us for more agile product launches and deeper customer engagement going forward. I'll first review residential broadband customer trends.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Residential data customers declined by 13,000 in q two, driven by continued softness in connects and elevated churn. However, as I just noted, we have seen sequential month over month growth in Connects every month this year through the end of Q2. This trend suggests our new products and go to market strategies are showing early signs of positive impact. Elevated disconnects this quarter were driven by customer response to recent segmented pricing changes, churn arising from promotional roll offs and seasonal churn in our college markets. Completing the final phase of our autopay plus rollout also resulted in some incremental churn.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

But autopay plus, which includes a $5 surcharge for non enrolled customers, has been a positive program for us by either increasing ARPU or reducing billing costs and improving retention over time. Broadband revenue increased on a sequential quarter over quarter basis, driven by a $2.39 increase in ARPU. This was due to the impact of segmented pricing changes as well as promotional expirations, greater adoption of value enhancing services like Secure Plus and Ultimate Wi Fi, and as I noted above, the completion of the rollout of our autopay program. Selling to premium speed tiers of gig or above remained high at 46%, reinforcing customer demand for higher speed plans and further supporting ARPU. Looking ahead, we expect ARPU to remain stable for the remainder of the year.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

We're seeing early traction with Lyft Internet, which is helping us reach value conscious customers in a financially sustainable way. FlexConnect adoption has not met our expectations to date, but we continue to believe that both FlexConnect and Lyft will play an important role in today's competitive environment. These products compete directly on price with cell phone Internet while offering a superior experience with unlimited data, consistent speeds, and greater reliability. Key differentiators given that our customer average data usage is now nearly 800 gigabytes per month, and over 27% of our customers regularly surpass a terabyte of data. To further elevate our customers' connected home experience, we recently launched TechAssist, a $10 per month support service that offers expert help with a wide range of Wi Fi connected devices outside of our Internet equipment.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

From setup to troubleshooting and ongoing support, TechAssist provides customers with convenient, reliable assistance for tech issues related to smart thermostats, doorbells, security cameras, and more. While we don't expect TechAssist to generate material revenue in 2025, it reflects our focus on delivering customer centric innovation and practical value added services that simplify daily life for our customers. We are optimistic it will begin to generate meaningful results in 2026 and beyond. Turning to competitive dynamics. Fiber to the home overbuilds, largely from incumbent telco providers, now represent approximately 53% of our passings.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

In addition, cell phone Internet competition is nearly ubiquitous across our footprint. While we expect competitive intensity to persist, we believe our neighborly service, enhanced platforms, and evolving set of products position us to defend and grow share over the long term. We're continuing to fight hard for every new customer while staying focused on retaining our existing ones. While we're seeing some encouraging signs, steady month over month growth in Connects during the first half of the year, stable ARPU and early momentum from new products, given the customer losses we experienced in the second quarter, we do not expect to grow total residential broadband customers in 2025. In addition, we currently expect total residential broadband revenue for 2025 will be flat or decrease modestly for the full year as compared to 2024.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

We remain focused on driving innovation that simplifies the customer experience and enhances operational efficiency. One example is Ask Tommy, our AI powered assistant that not only handles tasks typically managed by our field techs, like contacting customers with appointment windows and rescheduling when necessary, but also provides techs with AI driven technical expertise to help diagnose and resolve issues more quickly. This tool reflects the kind of everyday workflows we're beginning to automate, allowing us to better allocate resources and dedicate our highly trained technicians to more complex service needs. This is just one example of how we're using AI in practical, impactful ways. Earlier this month, we executed the final phase of our billing system migration, transitioning Hargray and legacy Sparklight customers onto our unified platform.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

This initiative consolidated more than 30 legacy programs, enabling all acquired companies to operate under the Sparklight brand. This project was central to our ongoing transformation. Being on a unified platform will significantly enhance the customer experience by streamlining our rate structures across markets, enabling more flexible pricing, and allowing us to respond more quickly to competitive changes. It also delivers a faster, more intuitive interface for our customers. While this represents a significant step forward, there are a number of post migration work streams to be completed before we fully realize the benefits of this transformation.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

We expect the billing migration will result in several million dollars in annual cost savings starting in late twenty twenty five as we further leverage the system for pricing, product, and service innovation. We're excited to share that we've signed an agreement with a mobile virtual network enabler or MVNE to pilot mobile service in several of our markets. This marks the start of a focused initiative to explore whether mobile can complement our wired broadband product by delivering added convenience, greater flexibility, and stronger overall value for customers. By offering connectivity both inside and outside the home, we aim to strengthen long term relationships and improve retention while meeting more of our customers' everyday needs. Our belief has been that mobile makes sense only if a few key conditions are met, improved wholesale economics, better mobile network reliability standards in our markets, mature enablement platforms, and a fully featured product with the potential to attract value conscious customers.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

The shifting market dynamics and advancements in technology have improved the economic viability of mobile, making this a good time for us to launch this pilot program. Mobile has the potential to enhance customer lifetime value, reduce churn, and support packaging opportunities that reinforce the strength of our core broadband business. We'll take a disciplined approach on this new initiative and see what we learn as the pilot progresses. To wrap up, while competition is fierce and there's a lot more work to do, we believe we are taking the right strategic actions to grow the business over the long term. We're seeing better sequential monthly trends and customer ad activity over the first half of the year, early momentum from some of our new product lines, and we anticipate greater efficiencies and improved customer experience from our unified billing platform going forward.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Most importantly, we believe we are building a growth engine thoughtfully and recognize that continued transformation will be required to fully realize our long term ambitions. And now Todd, who will provide a recap of our second quarter financial performance.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

Thanks, Julie. Total revenues for the 2025 were $381,100,000 compared to $394,500,000 in the 2024. Residential video revenues drove the majority of the decrease in total revenues with a year over year reduction of $9,000,000 or 15.8% due to continued video subscriber attrition. Residential data revenues decreased $1,100,000 or 0.5% year over year driven by a 3.2% decline in subscribers partially offset by a 2.4% increase in ARPU. However, on a sequential basis, residential data revenues increased $4,200,000 or 1.9% over the first quarter driven by a 3% increase in ARPU.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

Business services data revenues grew 1.2% year over year in Q2 twenty twenty five driven by continued strength in our high value fiber and carrier segments. These high performing categories benefited from robust sales activity, increased connection volumes and the ramp of previously announced multimillion dollar long term contracts. On a sequential basis, Business Data revenues increased 0.2%. Operating expenses were $102,400,000 or 26.9 of revenues in the 2025 compared to $105,800,000 or 26.8% of revenues in the prior year quarter, with the decrease driven largely by a reduction in programming costs. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $92,000,000 for the 2025 compared to $90,800,000 in the prior year quarter.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

SG and A as a percentage of revenue was 24.1% for 2025 compared to 23% for 2024, with the increase driven largely by investments in growth enablement platforms, partially offset by a reduction in labor costs. Taken together, these platforms and ongoing operating efficiencies are expected to generate annual run rate cost savings of approximately $15,000,000 across both operating and SG and A expense, including the anticipated savings from our billing system migration. While some of these savings may be offset by inflationary cost pressures or reinvestment in growth initiatives, we expect a meaningful net benefit over time. During the quarter, triggered by a decline in the price of our common stock, we conducted impairment assessments of our intangible assets and goodwill and recognized a combined non cash impairment charge of $586,000,000 This charge doesn't impact our cash flows, operational strategy or growth initiatives. Adjusted EBITDA of 203,200,000 was 53.3% of revenues in 2025.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

In 2024, adjusted EBITDA was $212,400,000 or 53.8% of revenues. Capital expenditures were $68,400,000 in Q2, a decrease of $3,200,000 or 4.5% year over year. During the quarter, we invested $8,700,000 of CapEx for new market expansion projects and $2,200,000 for integration activities. Adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures or free cash flow was $134,800,000 in the 2025, representing 66.4% of adjusted EBITDA compared to $140,800,000 and 66.3% in the prior year. We will continue to evaluate how best to deploy the meaningful free cash flow generated by our business with a steady focus on long term growth and disciplined conservative balance sheet management. With the passage of the tax bill earlier this month, we expect to realize approximately $40,000,000 of cash tax savings in 2025 and approximately $120,000,000 of aggregate cash tax savings through 2027 based on our preliminary estimates and available information. We used a portion of our substantial free cash flow in addition to cash savings from our dividend suspension to pay down over $70,000,000 of debt during the quarter. On top of nearly $5,000,000 of scheduled term loan amortization payments, we voluntarily paid down $45,000,000 of revolver borrowings and opportunistically repurchased over $21,000,000 of senior notes and term loan borrowings at attractive discounts to face value. This brings our gross debt repayment during the last two years to well over $05,000,000,000 excluding the $175,000,000 revolver draw related to the amendment to our MBI strategic partnership late last year. In addition, we repaid another $25,000,000 of revolver borrowings earlier today.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

In addition to disciplined debt repayment and deleveraging, we may opportunistically and prudently buy back shares under our remaining $143,000,000 authorization, dependent on the trading level of our common stock, market conditions and other factors. As of June 30, we had approximately $153,000,000 of cash and cash equivalents on hand and our total debt balance was approximately $3,500,000,000 consisting of approximately $1,700,000,000 in term loans, dollars $920,000,000 in convertible notes, dollars $633,000,000 in unsecured notes, dollars $228,000,000 of revolver borrowings and $3,000,000 of finance lease liabilities. We ended the quarter with substantial committed liquidity available under our $1,250,000,000 revolving credit facility providing meaningful financial flexibility. Our weighted average cost of debt for the 2025 was 3.9% and our net leverage ratio on a last quarter annualized basis was 4.1 times. Nearly $2,800,000,000 of our 3,500,000,000 of debt contain fixed or synthetically fixed base interest rates that are substantially below current market rates.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

Between our free cash flow generation and the substantial available capacity under our revolving credit facility, we expect we will be able to fully retire our 2026 convertible note maturities without needing to arrange for additional financing. Even so, we will continue to monitor the capital markets in order to be in a position to take advantage of attractive opportunities should they arise. Turning to MBI. Now that the June 30 measurement period has concluded, we've narrowed our estimated range for the purchase price if the call or put option is exercised. We now expect the purchase price to fall between $460,000,000 and $510,000,000 and the amount of MBI's total net indebtedness at the time it is acquired will be between $845,000,000 and $895,000,000 If the put option is exercised, we would anticipate the closing to occur on 10/01/2026.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

Over the last two years, we've completed or announced the monetization of five equity investments, and we expect to continue to evaluate strategic options for our remaining equity investments. Earlier this month, we monetized our stake in MetroNet, and our monetization of Zipline remains on track to close before the 2025. Together, these transactions are expected to generate in excess of $100,000,000 of combined after tax proceeds, supplementing our discretionary cash and excess liquidity position. Before we open it up for questions, I want to reiterate that although we operate in a competitive environment, we are confident that our strategy will result in long term sustainable growth. Between positive monthly Connect activity trends during the first half of the year, our new value focused product offerings, the rollout of segmented marketing campaigns and expected efficiencies from our investments in strategic growth enablement platforms, we believe we are making progress towards our goal of growing our business over the long term.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Julie before we move into Q and A.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Thanks, Todd. Before we open it up for questions, I want to briefly touch on the CEO succession plan we announced in the second quarter. After twenty six years with Cable One and more than forty years in the industry, I will be retiring later this year upon the earlier of the appointment of my successor or year end. I will continue to serve as CEO until my retirement and will remain as a senior adviser through 2026 to support a smooth transition. The board has retained a leading executive search firm and is conducting a comprehensive search process for my successor that includes both internal and external candidates.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

This process is designed to ensure a stable transition and execution of our long term growth strategy. With that, we're ready for your questions.

[Operator]

Your first question comes from the line of Brandon Nispel with KeyBanc. You may go ahead.

[Brandon Nispel, Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Julia, you mentioned that competitive overlap with fiber now stood at 53%. I think that's up quite a bit from the last disclosures. Hoping you could talk a little bit about, the net adds and or losses that you're seeing in in fiber versus non fiber markets.

[Brandon Nispel, Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Trying to understand if there's a difference or if some of the competitive losses are just sort of going to fixed wireless. Thanks.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Sure, Brandon. Thanks. Actually, last quarter, we said that our overlap with fiber was 50%. So we went from 50 to 53 during the course of the quarter. And in terms of fiber versus non fiber, we don't really see fiber is broken down into the big guys who are moving relatively slowly and then some smaller folks who are, making some incursions into small parts of small markets.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

So based on competitive intelligence that we have, our losses are coming from a lack of connects that are likely being taken by cell phone Internet. During the quarter, we had connects that were higher each month during the year, and June represented a year over year month where connects were actually higher in '25 than '24. So we feel relatively good that we're making progress there, albeit not as high as we would like to see. We also had elevated churn, and I think going through examples will help illustrate how the activities that we talked about in the script, those internal actions that we mentioned, they affected both ARPU and churn. So so I'll give you some examples to illustrate.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

We did do some pricing changes for a subset of customers. And as we've talked about, actually quite a bit in the past, we take a targeted approach there where some customers' rates are going down, some customers' rates are going up. We also had, pricing normalization as we've gone through our billing migration and harmonized all the brands into Sparklight. We had the roll off of promotional discounts. And, this quarter, promotional discounts were roughly double of our typical volume.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

And, what happens when we do the the promos is we get a higher response rate, so that's good. We're bringing more customers in the door. But there will be some, attrition when they roll to higher rates. Now this cohort actually retained incredibly well, actually higher than our base, and we're gonna keep an eye on them to see, how they continue to retain, but you can see where those promo roll offs would have created churn and a bump in ARPU. We also have seen broader adoption of our value added services like Secure Plus and Ultimate Wi Fi, and our gig plus plans are continuing to sell in at 46%.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

So that's that's helping on the ARPU side. And then the last thing that affected churn, but also ARPU, is the completion of our final phase of our auto pay program. And so we had the remaining quarter of our customers who had not been exposed to that because they were in our family of brands. And what happens when we roll this out is we see the highest nonenrollment rate. That means they are being charged that $5 surcharge.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

But over time, people adopt into the autopay program, and so thus, their their monthly rate will be coming down. I hope that helps explain.

[Brandon Nispel, Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Yeah. That was it's great great color. I was hoping maybe then as as a follow-up, you could help us understand what promo roll off looks like going forward. And given that you saw higher churn from sort of promo roll off, are are you implementing any sort of unique same tactics that might help churn and save those customers? Thanks.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Great. Great questions. Yes. So these are promos that were affected in 2024. And through the remainder of the year, we expect this dynamic to remain elevated.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

And we do have actually, when I talked about the team in the past, I talked about folks that we have brought on board who come from highly competitive, environments, or even entrepreneurial environments, and the person who is in charge of our retention tactics is hard at work. And, again, at this point in time, Brandon, these this cohort is is retaining at a higher level at its point in time in its life cycle than our base. So it sort of suggests that it's a right sized value for them, I would say.

[Brandon Nispel, Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Appreciate you taking the question. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Sam McHugh with BNP Paribas. You may go ahead.

[Sam McHugh, MD & Head - Telecom Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Awesome. Thank you very much, guys. First on on broadband, obviously, we've seen an acceleration in losses again, but then they are pretty strong. It seems like you're still struggling to to balance the two. You talked about FlexConnect not quite meeting expectations.

[Sam McHugh, MD & Head - Telecom Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

So when when we think about this, what what's your priority? Is it subscribers or is it ARPU? Like, which is the the number one priority? Secondly, you talked about ARPU being stable. Just to clarify, are you talking about year over year now or sequentially from from 2Q? Thank you very much.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Hi. Thanks, Sam. When it comes to our priority, it is, in fact, a a truism that we are attempting to balance both. But, there are puts and takes, in each one of our markets. It's one of the it's one of the positives of having, systems in 24 states that have different dynamics going on at a time.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

So, again, while there's increases in some markets, there's decreases in others, or maybe there's different tests going on with all in pricing, that sort of that sort of thing. When we're talking about ARPU being steady, we're saying from this point forward through the rest of the year, we plan, we assume that ARPU will be stable. For color on FlexConnect, I'll turn it over to Todd.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

Yeah. And, Sam, on the on the stability side, as Julie just said, you know, we've been really close to the mean now for the last four quarters. Right? Say, quarter to quarter ARPU with some of the promotional dynamics, with some of the segment and rate adjustments that we've made is gonna have some change. But when we talk about stability, we obviously look at that, as you've heard us say before, through the lens of, you know, a longer term period than the next quarter.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

But as Julie said, for the rest of the year, we expect ARPU to remain stable. We don't anticipate large fluctuations, but rather steady performance. As it relates to flex, you know, it it did it didn't meet our expectations in terms of additional connects, additional gross adds for the quarter. As you recall, we were launching that later in the quarter. At the same time, we were prioritizing, you know, the best execution that we needed, to complete the migration, of our billing system as well as the revamp of our website and our digital ecosystem.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

We basically identified that getting those two core platform implementations complete was gonna give us a better foundation for launching that product. And so we're actively right now refining, the go to market, on the back end of those two critical implementations, and readying a relaunch of that, which will occur in q three. We'll put increased marketing behind that, increased branding support behind that, and we still expect that FlexConnect will be an important lever in our broader segmentation strategy for new customer acquisition, specifically with that value conscious customer base.

[Sam McHugh, MD & Head - Telecom Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

And if I can ask a small follow-up as well. AT and T has been talking about accelerating with Internet air in the second half of this year. I know in your markets whether you've seen a noticeable change from kind of how they go to market on copper copper saves.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

Yeah. It is a good question, and it is a relevant one. We've talked about that really for the last couple quarters, because in some of the smaller markets, specifically, where AT and T has not upgraded, their copper network to fiber, they have, been very aggressive with that product. Whether that's a a save or an interim strategy, you'll be better, to, you know, analyze, that. But, that is a product that we believe, a solution like FlexConnect can go head to head with, in those environments.

[Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer at Cable One]

Their upgrades have slowed, but counter to that, their pressure on that, fixed wireless cell phone Internet product have accelerated.

[Sam McHugh, MD & Head - Telecom Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Super clear. Thanks a

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Sebastian Petti with JPMorgan. You may go ahead.

[Sebastiano Petti, Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

Beck on for Sebastiano. Thanks for taking the question. You know, it's great to hear the pilot for mobile. You know, you guys mentioned that the economic viability of the offering has improved, and and that's kind of the driving factor. But I'm also curious if you would characterize the strategy as a competitive response in any way.

[Sebastiano Petti, Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

It seems like, you know, all the big telcos are increasingly pushing convergence, so I'm wondering if you guys kind of see that at a go to market level. And then secondly, on mobile as well, I mean, any initial thoughts around go to market? You know, would we expect something like free lines, for example, like some of your cable peers do? Thanks.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Thanks, Bastiano. It's Julie. It it isn't just the improving economics. It is also the, stability of the mobile networks in all of our markets, we had an issue with heretofore, as well as getting a fully rounded product, that is to say that it was fully featured and that the enablement platform was tried and true. So all of those factors are coming into play now, making us feel comfortable that this is something that would be in alignment with the Sparklight brand image. It would not cause it any harm. When it comes to convergence and what we think we can this can do, we we see it as adding a a piece of well, an ease of life to our customers quite honestly and having a product that meets their needs and hopefully helps with our main product, which is broadband. So by bundling the two together, we, of course, are hoping that it is a value to our customers and helps our broadband service as well as offers us an opportunity for enhanced profitability.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

I think that's the lens through which we see convergence is is through the lens of profitability. In terms of go to market, what I can tell you is that we expect to be live before customers in our pilot markets by the end of the year, and you can imagine that we will be testing many, many different things to learn, as we go.

[Sebastiano Petti, Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

Great. Thanks, Julie.

[Operator]

Your final question comes from the line of Frank Louthan with Raymond James. You may go ahead.

[Frank Louthan, Managing Director at Raymond James Financial]

Thank you. On the billing system conversion, when will that have finished going through its first full billing cycle? And and are you confident at this point that it's you're not dropping customers or it's gonna have any other other issues, like you had earlier this year? Thanks.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Well, hi, Frank. It's Julie. I I don't think that we've had any problems with our first phase of our billing migration nor the second. We've gone through a complete cycle, meaning all four cycles, of phase two. And so, no problems with billing customers, with reporting, with provisioning.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

We do have follow ups, because almost everything flows from that. So every piece of provisioning, we will be down turning multiple different billing systems, different provisioning systems. We'll be going from five web sites to one. There's still work to be done, but the billing migration is done. And, while very, very tough, it is going well.

[Frank Louthan, Managing Director at Raymond James Financial]

Alright. Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Julie Lawless for closing remarks.

[Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President at Cable One]

Thank you, Lacey. This is a dynamic time for our industry, and I am proud of how our associates continue to step up, execute with discipline, and stay focused on providing great experience for our customers. I remain grateful to and thankful for them and all their hard work. Thanks again for your time and interest in Cable One.

[Operator]

That concludes today's call. You may disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Jordan Morkert, VP, Finance - IR
• Julie Laulis, Chair of the Board, CEO & President
• Todd Koetje, Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

• Brandon Nispel, Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
• Sam McHugh, MD & Head - Telecom Equity Research at BNP Paribas
• Sebastiano Petti, Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan
• Frank Louthan, Managing Director at Raymond James Financial