DISH Network Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 23, 2023

There are 16 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the DISH Network Corporation Q4 and Year End 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Tim Messner. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

All right. Thanks, Shelley. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We're joined on the call today by Charlie Ergen, our Chairman Eric Carlson, our CEO Paul Orban, our CFO.

Speaker 1

And then on the wireless side, we've got Tom Cullen, EVP of Corporate Development John Serenga, President and COO of Wireless and Dave Mayo, Our EVP of Network Development. Before we start, I need to remind you of our safe harbors. During the call, we might make forward looking statements, which are subject to risks, Uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from historical results or from our forecast, we see no responsibility for updating the forward looking statements. For more information on factors that might affect future results, please refer to our SEC filings. We're going to generally go straight questions, but before we do that, I'm going to turn it over to Eric for a brief update.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Tim. Before we open it up for questions, just Quick update. This morning, we experienced an internal outage that's continuing to affect our internal servers and IT Tophany. Our DISH and Sling services and our wireless and data networks continue to operate normally and are up and running. However, some of our internal communications, Customer care functions, Internet sites were affected and are currently down.

Speaker 2

We're analyzing the root causes and any consequences of the outage while we work to restore the affected

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

And Rick Prentiss, your line is open.

Speaker 3

Yes, thanks. Hey, it's Rick Prentiss, Raymond James. Hope you're all doing okay Two questions if I could. First is a very detailed question. It looked to us like wireless Retail equipment revenue seem low for the implied Q4 given the year to date.

Speaker 3

Was there anything unusual there or any kind of catch up? The second question is more strategic with Stephen leaving the operations and joining the Board, T Mobile, AWS had an announcement this week talking about private networks and working together for 5 gs. How should we think about The enterprise wholesale side, what's needed to get that business going and when could it become meaningful?

Speaker 4

I'll take the first question.

Speaker 5

Yes. This is Paul. I'll take

Speaker 6

the first question. As it relates to retail wireless COGS revenue or hardware revenue, it was down slightly when that student unit shipped. You may notice though that equipment COGS is up higher. In the Q4, we shipped a lot a 100 percent of 5 gs units that has our chipset in it. That's going to be a good investment for us because in the future, We'll be able to upgrade customers to our network and obviously get M and L Economics at that point in time.

Speaker 4

And this is Charlie on the second part Question. First, the T Mobile AWS announcement is what we would expect. I think that We're leaders in where the wireless networks are going to go. I'd expect that everybody is going to have cloud based Networks and also and whether they have a private cloud or a public cloud, maybe everybody will do a little bit differently, but that's going to be The necessity to get into the enterprise businesses and there's going to be a lot of business for everybody in the enterprise businesses. We're Better positioned there, we would expect as a gross generalization with 4 players with national networks, 25% of the enterprise business wouldn't be unreasonable for us to get.

Speaker 4

As opposed to the retail business where we're starting decades And maybe getting to low single low double digits would be a reasonable expectation for us. We're just not going to be a dominant player in the retail wireless business. But network is designed for enterprise, it's designed for wholesale. And so we think we'll get our and we're leaders there And from an architecture point of view today, so that will and then to the further part of your question, it's a slow sales cycle, Obviously, because you have to go through and architect everybody's got a little bit different flavor of what they want So we're looking at verticals where we already have relationships, whether that be in rural America, think Smart, think agriculture, think whether it be in the leisure and entertainment business, we're already doing video for some of the customers, that's and then there's all kinds of verticals that our partners are whether it be a Cisco or an Amazon or Dell that already have sales forces already in those products. So I think you're going to see a lot of business for everybody.

Speaker 4

And once Companies start putting new private networks, it will force their competitors to do it because they just won't be competitive without their own private networks. So That's the big picture answer. And so, I think we've said we would expect that you'll start seeing real revenue from that next year From us. And you'll but you'll start seeing you'll see some movement this year, obviously. You'll see some announcements from people in the industry.

Speaker 4

It'd be great I'm a fan if T Mobile goes out and get customers, I'm a fan of that because whatever they can do, we can do better.

Speaker 3

And do you think Von or voice over new radio, is that something enterprise wholesale people want to see working or is it More nationwide coverage, but what's kind of one of the hurdles to that long sales cycle that they're really wanting to see that box checked, anything in particular?

Speaker 4

I think cracking up, you broke up a little bit. I think you asked whether what's the hurdle to the sales cycle? It really is showing where a company can get productivity increases. Obviously, it's an investment, so they got to make they can make a return on that investment. Where do they get productivity?

Speaker 4

How do they make their products cheaper, faster, safer? How do they have increased their security as a result of it? And you got to go through A lot of these are big companies that are looking at you going through a lot of layers from the CIOs to the CFOs to the executive branches To go through and make that investment.

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks, Charlie.

Operator

Phil, your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hey, Charlie. It's Phil Cusick, JPMorgan. Thanks for your time. 2, if I can. 1, can you talk about the Comment in your disclosure today that said you've started sites that will cover 60% of the population.

Speaker 7

Are you able to start and complete the incremental 10% by June? Or are we getting ready for you to miss this year's 70% deadline and extend to 25? And what fines would be in there if it comes to that?

Speaker 4

I'll let Dave Mayo answer that.

Speaker 8

Yes. Hi, Phil, it's Dave. So we're optimistic about 70%. We talked about 15,000 sites started in At the end of the year, yielding greater than 60 percent ops, we've now started over 17,000 sites. We're on pace At that 1,000 sites a month number that we've been talking about for a couple of quarters, typically takes 3, maybe 4 months from the time you start site to finish the construction, get power and telco.

Speaker 8

Power and telco is probably the are probably the 2 risks that we have, but We're optimistic that we'll see the 70%.

Speaker 7

So the bottom line, we're

Speaker 4

on track. Bottom line, let me be clear. We're on track to beat to 70%. We don't expect to be paying fines.

Speaker 7

Okay. I just wanted to Give you the opportunity to let everybody know that that does automatically go out

Speaker 4

to $0.05 if it comes to I don't see why the disclosure disclosure is confusing, but bottom line is we're on track for 70%. We're not spiking the football, but we're on track and we don't expect fines.

Speaker 7

Thank you. And can I ask as well, what does it take to do a wider launch of Boost Infinite at this point?

Speaker 4

I'll answer briefly and maybe turn that over to John. But We're going we have 2 paths. 1 is the FCC requirements for data, right? So to build data in a network, That's where we're covering going to cover 70% of the pops and data. The problem that we've run into is that we are For commercial launch of EPINET, we need voice and we're doing 5 gs voice or Bonner.

Speaker 4

We made the strategic call not Do 2 gs, 3 gs, 4 gs voice and have all that legacy and carry that around for the rest of our life, right? So we're thinking long term about that and saying, look, let's have the best voice in the industry, Let's go with 5 gs Voice. That was there are many companies that are working on that. Obviously, T Mobile has launched a couple of markets. The Chinese are working on But we're now the largest as far as we know, the largest company that has real time under the United States the voice of 5 gs in the United Dave, and John will give you a little bit more detail on that.

Speaker 4

That we've got it so now we've got it up and working. That was Probably one of our biggest technical challenges and we're very thankful to the Maveniers of the world and our vendors that kind of helped us Get there. We wouldn't have got there without them. And so now we're starting to roll that out as fast as we can, but we've kind of got over those hurdles. But that's what we need for Commercial launch.

Speaker 4

So what happens is you're going to see a 6 month lag. I'm going to say 6 month, it could be a little Less than that, but a 6 month lag from the time we get data to the time that we optimize that network fully to be able to do Voice of to do 5 gs voice because it's very tricky and you had to have very dense network to do it. John?

Speaker 9

Yes. Thanks. Hi, everybody. It's John. Charlie hit a number of the key points.

Speaker 9

There's really 3 major things we need to accomplish. We need to get 70%, as Dave talked about. We need to exit our TSA with T Mobile, which we expect to complete by the end of the Q2. And then we need to get our postpaid business Up and running and expanding. We did launch Boost Infinite Early Access Programs.

Speaker 9

It's riding closely alongside progress with the network. We do have 12 big markets and 30,000,000 POPs, where we're loading Boost Mobile customers on our 5 gs network today with Vonar. We're happy with how The performance of the network is going and we're starting to get devices onto that network. So we're now loading Motorola and most

Speaker 7

recently Samsung devices on to

Speaker 4

our DISH 5 gs

Speaker 9

network for Boost. And Samsung devices on to our DISH 5 gs network for Boost and that sort of cleans away for Starting to work with Apple and get Apple certified. Apple is obviously very important from a postpaid market share perspective, so we're working hard on that. And with Infinite, you'll see us get moving as an MVNO to build momentum, but then we can really hit the gas when we get devices onto our network in our markets. We do expect to increase our full commercial bond coverage, which is 30,000,000 POPs today, Includes markets like Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Cleveland to name a few.

Speaker 9

We do expect to be able to increase that by about 50% per quarter We certainly hope to beat that. We are getting tremendous support from our teams and many of our key partners in making that happen. But we like postpaid. We like it better with our own owners' economics and we're full steam to go make that happen You'll start to see a boost input in the market here in the first half of the year with more marketing and advertising support.

Speaker 4

By the way, just since you guys are all many of your finance guys, a postpaid customer is materially more profitable than a prepaid customer. And I've said this many times that the marketplace is to me as a former financial analyst is a bit upside down with prepaid being The most competitive in the world and everywhere else in the world prepay is actually less competitive than postpaid or More expensive than postpaid. And postpaid probably not as competitive as it should be. So, it's a little bit upside down. So we're excited to be able to enter The really lucrative part of the wireless business, the consumer side, that's not to say I believe personally the enterprise business Will be equally or more lucrative for us, but the postpaid side has been a long time coming for us.

Speaker 4

We started And with Tang, on a small scale, but now we're able to with $30,000,000 you start to It starts to be something you can market and by the end of this year we'll have scale at 70% of the United States, that's about the size of where Sprint was. That starts to be interesting for us.

Speaker 5

Thank you again.

Operator

Your next question comes from Doug Mitchelson. Your next question comes from Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse.

Speaker 4

Operator, we'll move on.

Speaker 10

I'm sorry, I'm here. Can you hear me?

Speaker 4

Yes. Hey, Doug.

Speaker 10

Hey, sorry about that. Interesting system. So I guess first question, Charlie, I'm just thinking about your broader strategy and financing needs in the next few years. So the 11.75% pricing for dishes latest bond issue, Have you rethinking anything? I guess, I think about the need to roll over your existing bonds, need to invest in wireless and Then potentially buying out that T Mobile spectrum is kind of 3 buckets of financing needs.

Speaker 10

And any clarity as to how you're Thinking about those three things and anything I'm missing and your latest thoughts would be helpful. And I've got a follow-up.

Speaker 4

Yes. Sure, Doug. Big picture is, obviously, we look at the marketplace and where we Probably, we're in the hindsight went a little too early for the bond deal before the 1st of the year, but We wanted certainty to make sure that we better our build out and took that overhang off the table and get into and so Paul could answer this maybe a little bit better. But we obviously at DBS have a we have a bond payment due on March 15, we intend to pay that with our DBS from DBS with cash on hand there. They continue to generate Good cash flow and we'll look at their maturities in the future with their cash flow.

Speaker 4

And then obviously, we're We're looking at retail, wireless and the NetworkCo to finance some of that business. And I think the first hurdle we look at there is a convert next year, about in March, I think it is in next year and we'll look To refinance that with hopefully an equity component. The I think you talked about the 800 megahertz. That's we've said publicly that's a nice to have. It's not a must have.

Speaker 4

There are positive developments there. It's obviously we built that frequency out, so there's not a build out cost, the incremental build out cost for that. So there There's some opportunity there, but we're not suicidal and we're not going to sacrifice balance sheet For some short term gain. So we will have capital needs in the future, but we're going to start our network is going to start Generating a lot of cash and we just got to make those 2 marry up in a timely manner and relate that to The Street in a way that you guys can understand It's so deja vu for me back in the DBS business when exactly the same position. And Once we launched our satellite, we had a period of time where we had to make it work and work out the kinks.

Speaker 4

But once we're able to do It started generating a lot of long term cash and interesting the best metric Early on there was pre marketing cash flow. But it all turned I used to always say it was like a slot machine, you put a dollar in and get $2 back every time you got a customer. So you couldn't go fast enough. I mean, you put a dollar in, but you got the $2 back over a period of years. So we're in a very similar situation as our network comes up to scale.

Speaker 10

That's right in

Speaker 4

the right And that's before you add the enterprise business in, which we have to prove to The Street, obviously. But internally, we know that that's a place we know that's a place people are going to go.

Speaker 10

And that leads right into my follow-up, which is On the retail side, since you've already addressed enterprise, when should we expect kind of a material ramp in When does that kick in? Does that later this year post the broad launch? Is that really a 2024 event? When does that start?

Speaker 4

You'll start seeing some numbers, but you won't see you're going to see material ramp when you have scale, which I define as 70% With voice coverage, so again, given our build out, takes 6 months from build out to optimize. So that gets you to 70% by the end of this year, Optimized and then you can do things like national market and then things because you have scale to do it. It doesn't mean that we're not going to put people that we're not going to add Subscribers prior to that on our network, we will. But in terms of the hockey stick, it starts when you have scale. And We're a good steward of capital.

Speaker 4

And I'll just give you an example. But the prepaid business, if we invest $1 in the prepaid business, We get a small return on it. And if we invest a dollar in the postpaid business, we get a big return. So we're obviously Saving capital for the postpaid business, and that's a pivot that the market probably doesn't fully understand yet. It's not your fault.

Speaker 4

We haven't gone out and explained it to you, but that's a pivot that you're going to see this year and you're going to see that that makes a world of difference In the long term financial stuff, and that's before you add enterprise. If you give us no credit for enterprise, if you gave us 0 credit for enterprise, you'll see You'll ultimately be able to see it in the postpaid business that you can generate a return on capital from just the consumer assuming that we can get our Fair share of postpaid customers. Thank you

Speaker 11

for the time.

Speaker 4

And continue to continue on the prepaid path obviously Just not as a priority over postpaid.

Speaker 10

Got it. Thank you, Charlie.

Operator

Your next question comes from James Ratcliffe.

Speaker 5

Hi. If I could on Going back to the T Mobile 800 Megahertz, it's nice to have. I noticed you wrote up the value of the option In 4Q and attributed to both increase in obviously option values and also increased probability, Can you talk about what drove an increased assessment of probability that you'd exercise the option?

Operator

Thanks.

Speaker 4

I can only say that there have been that there's positive things around that frequency and that's about all I can say. And so that's why the probability went up and so forth.

Speaker 5

So essentially that became more appealing Spectrum to own?

Speaker 4

I said there's positive developments in terms of a return On that spectrum. Yes. And then this is Paul.

Speaker 6

I'll just jump in there. What happened is the probability that we would exercise it increased, Which obviously leads to Charlie's comment that there's positive things going on there.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from John Hodulik.

Speaker 7

Great, thanks. Maybe a couple of follow-up questions, if I could. So first of all, Charlie, does the pivot The postpaid market come with substantially higher EBITDA losses as you sort of go after that market. I mean, I've seen the EBITDA, the wireless EBITDA losses sort of ramp a bit. Does it ramp further from here as you go after that market?

Speaker 7

And then in terms of the timing, is the timing of the postpaid launch Sort of more tied to the iPhone certification or is it the 70% voice coverage or both? Thanks.

Speaker 4

I didn't hear it. Did you hear part of that, but let me maybe ask the answer question in a little bit broader terms and you can ask a follow-up.

Speaker 7

The

Speaker 4

focus that we have is focus we have today as management is let's hit the 70% With the FCC milestone, right? That takes any chance of taking our spectrum back off the table. It takes something that a lot of times people focus on I had a conversation, and it's an unbelievable effort during COVID and supply chain shortages to even do that From a standing start. So it's a real it'd be real feather in our cap. We'd be really proud to do that.

Speaker 4

So that's the focus. The 2nd focus has been to get off as John mentioned, this is something that's important that The Street probably didn't focus on, but We're on 2 operating systems, OSSBS systems and the TSA that we have from T Mobile and then our own internal. We've got to get everything to our own internal System and we got to migrate all those customers over, which is not as difficult as CDMA migration, but nonetheless That's a big focus for us to do and takes a lot of time and effort to do it. So that we got to get done. So those are 2 big things to get done before the end of the next quarter.

Speaker 4

And then, to your point, you in postpaid world, obviously Apple is a trusted partner and important for us. We haven't been able to do the kind of things that maybe they'd like us to do or we'd like to do in the prepaid business. You just it's hard to sell a $1,000 phone to customer who has no credit. But in the postpaid world, that's obviously a different issue. So we're excited to get started with them.

Speaker 4

And yes, I think it is a that when the 15 comes out and you can put it on your network in a postpaid environment and you got and you're Pretty close to scale at that point. I think that's a game changer for us, to the extent that we get certified and have a business arrangement with Apple that's Productive for both of us, right? So we have to focus on that because that's not done yet. But it gives you a feel for some of the big things that we work

Speaker 9

Last quarter,

Speaker 4

we were able to get a couple of things. We now have Samsung and Mavenir In our network, so we have 2 vendors that prove ORAN works. We have 2 vendors for radios, a third vendor in test This should be completed pretty soon. The world that we've got phones now both on Motorola and Samsung That work on our that have all our bands and for the network. So we're making a lot of progress every day.

Speaker 4

It's It's not showing up in the numbers yet, probably not going to show up in numbers next quarter, but then you're going to start seeing it. You'll start seeing the beginnings of that. And then as we get to scale, you'll see the real At that point, somebody will be glad they're an investor.

Speaker 7

Got it. Yes, I guess the

Speaker 6

Jonathan, I think your first question was, are postpaid more costly from a SAC perspective than prepaid? As Charlie alluded to earlier, postpaid, we will end up subsidizing less. So it should be a cheaper Acquisition costs when we add those No.

Speaker 4

Sac per se will probably be higher. Yes. But the subsidy will be With that our boots are but the churn is much lower. So you just got to and again, the real world is today, We're seeing at least in the industry 1% churn in postpaid and we're seeing 4% plus in postpaid and prepaid. So that gives you a feel You know for it.

Speaker 4

Look, I would say a postpaid customer is worth 5 times what a prepaid customer I could be off by one turn there. It could be 6, could be 4, but that anyway, you can see where that goes.

Speaker 7

For sure. And I guess just to finish that off, I mean, but as you go after the postpaid opportunity, should we expect sort of an uptick In EBITDA losses to capture that opportunity from where we are here exiting the 4th quarter?

Speaker 4

I hope so. In other words, we look at EBITDA, but we obviously look If we look at long term cash flow, so EBITDA is not our driving force. It's all about cash. So we would It would be a nice problem to have assuming we were doing it efficiently. Got it.

Speaker 4

Thanks guys.

Operator

Your next question comes from David Barden.

Speaker 12

Hey, guys. Thanks. This is Dave Barton from BofA. I guess a couple ones. Just a housekeeping Item and maybe this is getting to the heart of the question of good things happening around 800 megahertz.

Speaker 12

But with the rerating of the value of that option, People are wondering if the opportunity exists to maybe sell that option to someone else or execute it on someone's behalf, And we might look at that as a funding vehicle for DISH rather than kind of the entry point to spend $3,600,000,000 On spectrum you already have. The second question, if I could, would

Speaker 4

be I'll stop you there. Okay. I would just comment on that and then you can ask your question that we're not going to do anything that does make economic sense, Right. But it's clear that we value the option, right? But we're not going to do anything that doesn't make any That make economic sense.

Speaker 4

So that you could there's no downside in that option. There's no downside in doing nothing, right? There's only upside. Fair enough. And if your strategy was you would only do something as it was accretive, The only way you do anything, then it's a positive.

Speaker 4

Obviously, if you're suicidal and you do something at all costs, that might be a different story. Fair enough. And if I could just maybe

Speaker 12

just do 2 follow ups. So just maybe, Charlie, I think you kind of Made an offhand remark about this earlier, but could you tell us a little bit about the process that maybe you think did or didn't happen That led to the Amazon T Mobile relationship and whether you think that maybe there are other relationships Like that, that could emerge in the private 5 gs network development space with the hyperscalers. And then my last question would just be related To the kind of Charlie, you keep talking about getting to scale and that being the gatekeeper, the threshold through which once you get there, you'll create Scalable return opportunities. About a year ago in March, Verizon, who has More skin in the game than anyone who's put $100,000,000,000 of money into this, laid out a multiyear game plan for revenue growth. In May, you did kind of the same thing.

Speaker 12

Over the course of last year, Verizon, again, Skilled player presumably has the keys to most of the doors out there in the market decided that that opportunity wasn't nearly as large as they thought and had to really scale back People's expectations. And you guys have not kind of revisited that thought process. I'm interested to kind of understand why you I think nothing has changed from kind of the view you had in May when it seems like all the other players have changed their view. Thanks.

Speaker 4

Yes. Again, it boils down to we have a modern 5 gs smart network Based in the cloud on Open RAN principles. That's the again, I'll say it again, that's Netflix versus Blockbuster. See, if you're Blockbuster, you're not going to say, oh, we think OTT streaming is we thought it was a big thing, but we're scaling it back because you just can't do it. You can't do it with stores, Right.

Speaker 4

But if you're Netflix, you say, well, we have the modern network, we have the modern technology. It took Netflix some time. Wall Street was very skeptical of them early on. It took them time to Prove the concept, but it was better, faster, cheaper. And it's pretty hard to fail in business if you're better, faster, cheaper.

Speaker 4

And our network is going to be better, faster, cheaper and it's architected different. So it's I don't want to spend a lot of time on it because It's not something that you would say it's going to be readily understandable on this call, but you're starting to see The skepticism of Open RAN and the kind of things we're doing, you just saw a white paper from all the big players in Europe yesterday. They almost verbatim articulated dishes and Mark Ruan's architecture. They almost verbatim Articulate everything we said. And they have legacy, so they're starting in more rural areas to start, right?

Speaker 4

So Legacy is a negative for it's nice that you have scale, they all do, but legacy is an anchor around their neck. And so we have an opportunity there to the extent that we execute. Obviously, you have to execute and that's what we have to prove. And then obviously, the T Mobile Amazon, again, we're not exclusive to Amazon. They're not exclusive to us.

Speaker 4

Amazon got into and helped us. They've been a great partner. They've helped us a lot and they're putting an investment in so that they can go Sell this architecture to people around the world. And we would expect that many more telcos will sign up with Amazon or Perhaps the other cloud providers because everybody now I think almost everybody believes the core should run-in the cloud. And I think that they're going to get kind of the everybody's going to look at edge compute and some of those things and that leads to that leads that's A precursor to private networks.

Speaker 4

And so I guess maybe The Street looked at that as a negative, At least as far I don't know the exact deal, but I think the more the merrier when it comes to private networks because I think you need that's something that We need competition between companies to make sure it scales.

Speaker 12

Fair enough, Charlie. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Kanan.

Speaker 11

Hi, this is Kannan Venkateshwar from Barclays. Charlie, from a funding perspective, obviously, you mentioned the 800 megahertz is an You can choose or not choose to exercise. And then from a scaling perspective, it sounds like the retail business In terms of scaling may happen more towards the end of the year or next year. Does that mean for this year You don't need to raise any more capital and you're more or less done with capital fixes or should we expect more by way of funding? And secondly, I mean, in some ways funding is a discretionary choice for you.

Speaker 11

It depends on how fast you really want to go in order to build retail. And so I would love to get your thoughts on the scaling there. Is it a function of the funding you can raise? Or is it Independent of that and you're going to essentially scale to 70% of the country once the network is up and running? Thanks.

Speaker 4

The short answer is we don't need to raise capital this year to meet our business objectives, right? The second part is a little more complicated because everything is intertwined. Everything is interrelated. So You I'd say it this way. Investors are smart and they'll invest in good business plans and good management And to the extent they understand it.

Speaker 4

And so to the extent that we have good plans and good execution And to the extent that we need to go faster because it makes sense, then I think that and to the extent you would need to raise capital to do that, I think they would be available. To the extent you have a bad plan and bad management, you're probably not. I don't know. We're not arrogant. We're but I think we're confident.

Speaker 4

But we know we have a lot to learn. We know we're making lots of mistakes. But we're through the hard part. I'm just through the hardest part.

Speaker 11

Got it. And anything on the scaling component? I mean, to what extent you might choose to maybe Extend the service all throughout the country today this year versus maybe doing it more gradually over the next couple of years?

Speaker 4

It's a good question. We will extend the postpaid throughout the whole country this year. Obviously, Through some country that will be on that will be on that will ride on T Mobile's or AT and T's network. So That's not as economical for us, but we will but it will give us nationwide scale, which is important. A customer we put on T Mobile or AT and T is more profitable than a prepaid customer by far, But it's not as profitable as putting them on our own network.

Speaker 4

So you can imagine how we'll play that. So we will to answer your question, it's a we will be nationwide on postpaid.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Charlie.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jonathan Chaplin.

Speaker 7

Hi, Charlie. A couple of questions, if I may. I'm wondering if you can give us an update on the DBS deal And the prospect of a wireless spin on DBS, I'm surprised given comments earlier that we actually haven't seen an announcement yet. So wondering what might be holding that deal up that seems so obviously in everybody's interests. And then You mentioned that you don't need to raise capital this year to meet business objectives.

Speaker 7

Do you need to raise capital before March 2025 To meet business objectives sort of leaving aside refinancing the convert and things like that.

Speaker 4

The second part, I would say based on what we see today, we would have to raise capital before March 2025. I think there was a question about DBS deal. Obviously, I've said I've always felt that it was inevitable. I have changed my opinion on that, but we have nothing to report today. On wireless spin, I mean, obviously, our Board looks at a lot of different Opportunities, there's certainly the wireless business on the retail side is you can make the case It's separate and apart from the wholesale side of our business.

Speaker 4

It does track a lot with what Eric and his team do daily with DBS and Sling, While the same potential customers and those kinds of things. So there potentially are strategic things that may make sense there, But nothing to announce today.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks, Charlie.

Operator

Your next question comes from Brian Kraft.

Speaker 13

Hi, it's Brian Kraft from Deutsche Bank. Good morning. As Dave Barton alluded to in his question earlier, there's been a lot of discussion lately about the slower than expected pace of Private 5 gs adoption among enterprises. Many investors are asking the question as to whether there's some connection between that And Stephen Bai leading his management role at DISH as Head of Enterprise. Can you just talk about what's going on there from a demand perspective?

Speaker 13

If you can share anything on maybe why Steven decided to leave? And lastly, how you're managing the enterprise sales effort now? Who's leading that? Thank you.

Speaker 4

I can't speak for Steven, but he did get an opportunity to be a CEO of the company and he's well qualified For that, but I think Steven would take the call. Right. And obviously, he remained on our Board. It's important. I don't personally think that there was anything in his leaving that would reflect badly would reflect any kind of Concerned that the private enterprise business isn't a big business.

Speaker 4

I don't think I don't if anything, I think that If anything, I think he and we are probably more optimistic than we were a year ago on that. So but feel free to call him because I just can't I don't can't speak for him.

Speaker 13

And can you just talk thank you for that. Can you talk about who's leading the business now and how you're managing the sales effort and leadership there, now that he's no longer in that role?

Speaker 4

You want to take that, John?

Speaker 9

Yes. Hi. It's John Smaringa. Look, we've been building our team for the last 4 years. There's a lot of talent inside DISH Wireless now.

Speaker 9

So I don't think it's about any one person. And I'm personally calling on a number of enterprise customers as are several members of our senior management team. And I think the momentum is picking up to Echo Charlie's comments. We're really busy having really good discussions with a lot of big companies and that's what we expect to be doing. And I think we said earlier we'd be seeing some of that business start to pick up next year, but we're not confused.

Speaker 9

Job 1 is getting our 5 gs network up and operating at scale and there's a lot of focus there and

Speaker 4

we're not going to

Speaker 9

take the eye off the ball Looking at other things that it's really about sequencing. We need to get the network up and running first and then there's lots of opportunities in the pipeline we can take advantage of.

Speaker 4

Operator, we'll take one more question from the analyst. Operator, one more from the analyst community before we move to media.

Operator

And after we take that final call, we will begin the media portion of this call. And again, that would be star 1 to ask a question from the media. And our final call from the analyst is coming from Michael Rollins.

Speaker 5

Thanks. A question and a quick follow-up. So In terms of the wholesale side of the business, what are you seeing in terms of the potential to sign some Large anchor wholesale deals for the 5 gs capacity you're building. And are there certain commercial milestones that you need to reach Potentially different than what you outlined on the retail side, in order to put DISH in a prime position for acquiring These wholesale opportunities. And then just a quick follow-up on the network.

Speaker 5

I was just curious, as you're on this pace of building 1,000 or starting 1,000 sites per month. At what point in the future does that pace change either accelerate or decelerate from the current level? Thanks.

Speaker 4

Yes. This is Charlie. I think we've answered that first part of your question a number of times. But From an enterprise side of our private network side of the business, we're already positioned because we've got The architecture that we believe is required to do that properly, right? And that's before you get into things like AI and CHAP GDP only a positive for what we're doing, We properly foresaw as part of what we needed to be able to do.

Speaker 4

Scale will matter And reaching 70% of the country will starts opening up a lot more opportunities Because now some conversations are only on a regional basis today. So that is probably the one thing that's missing, but we're not having to change The architecture of what we're doing. So we're already positioned and so forth. And I think the thing is ultimately regardless of who signs private network Deals is going to be a positive because if your competition does it, if Uber signs a deal, then Lyft has to sign a deal or they're just going to be out of business, that's an example. So that's that part.

Speaker 4

And then on the what was the second part? Charlie, on a question, I think

Speaker 5

more about the wholesale side Of the equation, so like someone using you as their wholesale partner like an MVNO relationship, whether it could be a cable company or A big Internet company. So someone using you for national wholesale capacity To meet whatever strategy.

Speaker 4

Yes. Same answer because we'd have to have scale in the network. And We have 2 things have to happen. We have to be off TSA from T Mobile, which we again are focused on for the first half of the year or by end of June. And the second one, you have to have scale, which again we're focused on by the end of this year.

Speaker 4

Then I think we have a really neat platform for people who might be From a wholesale perspective, but that's very similar to what the enterprise opportunity is as well. And then on the

Speaker 5

Thanks. And the second question

Speaker 4

is Yes. I think that once we hit 70% that that 1,000 a month will decline. In other words, what at that point, there's a I think Dave's focus I shouldn't talk for him, but since I'm talking, his focus will be to optimize the network within the markets that we are. There'll be some small sell. There'll be some fill in stuff as we get traffic on the network and finally we have a dead spot.

Speaker 4

And we'll focus on well, that will still be new towers, But it probably will be a lot less than the $1,000 run rate.

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Mike Dano.

Speaker 14

Yes. Thanks for taking my question. Hopefully, you can hear me okay. I had 2 separate questions. One is, can you just kind of Explain how the network launch is going to work throughout the rest of this year.

Speaker 14

I mean, do you have the voice VONER service up and running now and how is that going to be expanded and how does that how does the rest of that like Commercial launch of the DISH Network work throughout the rest of this year. And then my second question is if you could just talk about that, The satellite opportunity, there's a lot of companies that are offering satellite to phone services and I wondered what your thoughts about that are particularly given the Ownership of EchoStar. Thank you.

Speaker 9

This is John. I'll take the first part and then pass it to Charlie for the second. So, made a few comments on this earlier in the call. First of all, all of our on air sites are providing 5 gs broadband. And now as a subset of those, we're going market by market to tune the market for commercial Bonner.

Speaker 9

And as I said earlier, we now have handsets That are available through Boost Mobile that run on our DISH 5 gs network with commercial banner and we view that as going pretty well. So as we look at really the 20% markets from last year, we're going through each of those markets And doing the optimization and the fill in so that we can achieve commercial Vonner KPIs. When that happens, We load that market up with handsets that work on our network and we start marketing services with those devices. And we are basically going to be launching new markets every sometimes every week. But as said earlier, we expect to increase that 30,000,000 Pop footprint by about 50% every quarter, and we hope to beat that.

Speaker 9

And you'd see us certainly Marketing services digitally in those areas, starting with Boost Mobile and then adding Boost Infinite. And we're doing Quite a bit of work to prepare our indirect distribution to market and provide those devices to our customers. And you'll see us really picking up speed there as we do that throughout the year. And really by this time next year, we'd expect to have commercial Bonner Available throughout the 70% footprint, as we've said earlier.

Speaker 4

And then this is Charlie. On satellite to handset or device, Obviously, it might be a really good question to ask EchoStar on their conference call. But we're unique in that obviously the common ownership between the two companies. We're when you look at the 2 companies together, we understand satellites really well. We understand video really well.

Speaker 4

And now we understand the future of telco Really well. All within the same sister company. So We're well positioned for we believe that there's going to be a big market for satellite to handset. There's a number of there's a half a dozen companies That are playing or announced that they want to play in that category. The FCC is going to do a rule making with some rules around it That are interesting.

Speaker 4

We will have to see. They'll pick winners and losers when they do that. We're well positioned. We are doing some satellite to handset today, both in Europe and the United States. We own spectrum, A fair amount of spectrum in both North America and Europe.

Speaker 4

And As a result of that, we have a very clear understanding of the technical challenges To make that happen in a way that you might know satellites, but if you don't know telco, those two things you have to make Those things merit each other. And the big positive development there is that the 3 gsPP standard now Has a NTN or non terrestrial network standard that relates to satellite that has never been there before. So that in Release 17, that is So chipset manufacturers can make something to a standard so that handsets and devices Can operate with satellite. So I think there'll be a number of players that will play there. There'll be a number of players that will fail, and there's certainly room for one really, really good system.

Speaker 14

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Amy McLean.

Speaker 15

Hi there. I feel like the odd man out asking A video question, but the Cox Media blackout, should we probably not expect any resolution before The FCC weighs in on Standard General and Techno?

Speaker 2

Yes. Amy, this is Eric. Obviously, you know the situation with COGS. We're open for discussions with Cox. But as we've talked about on the call before, Retrans is one of those things that from a rate perspective is really going up Higher than any cost of programming.

Speaker 2

And like we're as we talked about it on the wireless side, so you don't feel like such an outlier. I mean we are Economic focused. And so we look at the cost of the content and the benefit To our customers, all things being considered, I mean, we'd rather have the COGS stations up than not. But at some point, it doesn't make economic sense for us. And so we're unfortunately caught in that particular Piece of negotiation and Cox has decided to put our customers in the middle of it.

Speaker 2

And so, I can't tell you when or if We'll reach a resolution with Cox, but we've had a decent relationship, and we certainly hope that we would. But at this time, I can't announce any resolution.

Speaker 4

And this is Charles. I'd just add a couple of things. One is obviously TEGNA acquisition and trying to really get More monopoly power they already have is something for the FCC to look at. But the and obviously that may have played into this particular Dispute on their side. But the fact is that local broadcasters, I feel for them Because they we have real statistics.

Speaker 4

We know what our customers watch, both on OTT and linear TV satellite. We absolutely know what they watch. We've seen the trends for 25 years. The fact that the local networks now are going the path of regional sports Where the cost gets so high that it's more that you any rational company will make more money by not Having the service. And customers are continuing to show that they might have watched it And the broadcasters themselves are cutting back on the content, and so they're not producing the high value drama shows and stuff are going somewhere OTT, customers are following them there.

Speaker 4

And so the former President of NBC, many years ago, I saw he said that people Go and watch the least objectionable programming, right? And that's true. And so they our customers are going to find alternatives To the networks and even the mainstay of professional football, which is probably the one mainstay they have It's readily available to a number of sources today. So the next step in retrans is down, not up. And the broadcasters have a budget and they have debt to pay and they haven't got the memo yet.

Speaker 4

So I think you're just going to see more people. I just think you could and every time they lose a customer, they used to come back to them. Those Cox channels, they are not coming back to their local news. They are not coming back to those drama shows because now they're watching They're the ecosystem. They're watching something on We over Netflix and they've got hooked on some other show and they're just not coming back.

Speaker 4

And the fact of the matter is that any customer that wanted Cox from us has left DISH. So now it's a tax if we put them back up. So that's the I said it about regional sports. I'm saying it now. That's where that's going.

Speaker 4

And it's a shame because the local broadcasters are caught in a bias between The network and the distributors. So we have some empathy for their plight, but we cannot be their bank

Speaker 5

Unless we get a return.

Speaker 4

And right now, we don't get a return.

Speaker 15

If I can just throw in one more. I know that Sling just launched this free stream service. I mean, Do you see fast channels as a way, for some leverage when it comes to retrans or affiliate fees for channels?

Speaker 2

I mean, Amy, I don't see FAST necessarily being leveraged for Retrans and obviously there's certain things around that that you're likely aware of. But I mean on Sling it's as easy as Customers the customers that we have on Sling love Sling. But as you know, OTT is a bit seasonal. It's not much different from regional sports really. And so folks can come in and out very easy.

Speaker 2

And FreeStream is It's great for us to launch because it keeps folks kind of in our Sling ecosystem, right? And so we're trying to make it easy for customers To watch TV and having it be a seamless experience. Folks still love TV. Unfortunately, it's just gotten hard to watch TV. And so FreeStream helps to have customers within our Sling ecosystem that may want to pay for college football Over the course of 4 months and then pick up some general entertainment on a fast channel and come back for basketball.

Speaker 2

And so it's very easy for us and it was just it makes sense for our Sling customers

Speaker 4

to

Speaker 2

have kind of a fast Offering, along with our direct to consumer offerings, where you can buy an AMC plus or Discovery plus etcetera. I don't see that necessarily where I see it impacting retrans is, obviously, there's more content to watch and the content costs less. And so as Charlie said, when Cox goes down and you don't really miss your local news and you find it elsewhere, You don't go back. And so it makes linear TV that much harder.

Speaker 4

And Mig, this is Charlie. We have no leverage Again, we have no leverage against Cox or any local broadcasters. There are absolute monopolies in their markets. We have no leverage. But the consumer has leverage.

Speaker 4

And the consumer is saying to us, we do not want you to raise our price. And there is so much content out there. There are so many places we can go Absent the Super Bowl, there's just not many in NFL football, which are now widely available other places, There is no network programming that generates much excitement anymore. Or

Speaker 8

that type of stickiness.

Speaker 4

Or that kind of significant. So it's rare. So it's so there's a newspaper Of this decade, which is you can't you raise your price for newspapers and there's a few people continue to read the newspaper. I'm one of them. But the fact of the matter is that I don't read the newspaper.

Speaker 4

I get my news elsewhere now and if I lost my newspaper tomorrow, Probably okay. Operator, we're a little tight on time. We'll take the last media question.

Operator

And our last question is coming from John Celentano.

Speaker 7

Hi. It's John Celentano from Inside Towers. Thanks for taking the question. And Charlie, no trick questions this time. I just wanted a clarification that you will be breaking out your Graber numbers, 5 gs versus prepaid or MVNO numbers going forward and when how soon that might happen?

Speaker 4

Yes. I guess I'll look at the call for that.

Speaker 6

Well, we have no intention to do that right now. It's probably a little premature. As things progress, we'll take a look at that and consider it. But right now, we have no plans to do so.

Speaker 7

Okay. Well, it would help, but we'll look forward to that. Thank you.

Speaker 4

All right. Thank you everyone for joining. Appreciate it, operator.

Operator

You're welcome. And this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
DISH Network Q4 2022
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