Hello and welcome to Charter Communications' second quarter, 2026 Investor Conference Call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you will be given instructions for the question and answer session. Also, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Stefan Eninger.

Thanks, Operator, and welcome, everyone. The presentation that accompanies this call can be found on our website, ir.charter.com. I would like to remind you that there are a number of risk factors and other cautionary statements contained in our SEC filings, and we encourage you to read them carefully. Various remarks that we make on this call concerning expectations, predictions, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from historical or anticipated results. Any forward-looking statements reflect management's current view only, and Charter undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements as a reminder all growth rates noted on this call and in the presentation are calculated on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise specified on today's call we have chris winfrey our president and ceo and jessica fisher our cfo with that let's turn the call over to chris thanks stefan during the second quarter we added over 400 000 spectrum mobile lines making that 1.7 million lines over the last 12 months for growth of 16%.

We now have over 12.5 million mobile lines and remain the fastest growing mobile provider in our footprint. Our video customer losses continue to improve with our 21,000 video customer loss significantly better than last year. We now have the best video product and value in the marketplace. In the internet, we have a fully deployed and fully converged gigabit plus network across our entire footprint. but competition for new customers from expanded competitive footprint remains high. Our second quarter internet customer loss of $172,000 was higher than a year ago, similar to what we saw in the first quarter. Revenue was down 1.7% year over year, driven by lower residential revenue. Second quarter EBITDA, excluding Cox transition expenses, declined by 3.2%. Softer Gross Additions remains the primary driver of our internet customer growth weakness, while churn remains largely unchanged. And while internet customer growth is taking longer to reverse, the growth of new competition will subside. We expect to stabilize and return to broadband growth over time with our better converged connectivity product and pricing, higher demand for speed, data and reliability, and, as our nps scores improve benefiting both churn and sales the timing of all that is hard to predict but our cash flow growth is not and we have full confidence in the significant free cash flow ramp we're about to see our outlook for a significant reduction in capital expenditures has not changed we also expect second half ebitda or standalone charter to benefit from a previously discussed path cost pass through on internet this summer and political advertising ai service and cost benefits are also beginning to ramp and we're implementing a series of additional cost management measures jessica will circle back on her free cash flow profile and outlook in a moment so let me highlight what we're doing right now day to day to win in the marketplace a recent change to our marketing and sales channel focus has been the redoubling of our efforts to improve our internet funnel and yield by focusing first on the internet sale, with a growing focus on mobile and video upgrades thereafter. And that bundling, of course, drives significant value and churn benefits. Internet customers that also purchase our mobile product turn nearly 40% less than internet customers who don't have mobile. And the more lines per account, the greater the churn reduction. Today, our mobile customer penetration of internet is about 20%, with an average of just below two lines per mobile customer so significant upside remains for mobile penetration and lines in broadband churn reduction internet customers that purchase our video product similarly turn over 40 less an activation of our programmer app inclusion offer further reduces churn across all broadband relationship tenures currently 55 of our eligible video customers have activated at least one of our inclusion apps with over four apps activated on average we're also focused on improving customer satisfaction and resulting nps good prices and saving customers money is a key driver of nps and that starts with internet pricing with available price locks when including our mobile and video services including our one thousand dollar savings guarantee for new and existing customers with mobile service and reliability are the other top drivers of nps we believe our service capabilities are unique anchored by a 100% US-based sales and service team and that provides a significant upside. Our digital service capabilities are set to meet customers where and how they want to be serviced and when automated we're ensuring that channel delivers the same quality as the top 10% of our agents. When on-site service is needed we guarantee same-day service or we provide a credit the reality is we're now often arriving within two hours of calls and we see tangible examples where we increasingly delight customers with our service at the same time we have real opportunities for improvement and reliability how we communicate with customers and what i call paper cuts in the service experience at charter we've already made the investment in the service infrastructure our employees and capabilities we'll turn that into that investment into a better service reputation changing perception perception takes time but the organizations increasingly focused on customer satisfaction and were incentivized around nps and we're doing the right things from a resource allocation customer mindset and organizational perspective to make that happen that includes adding complementary talent from cox and on september 1st nick jeffrey will join as chief operating officer alongside the talented team we have today turning to the cox transaction we're now hoping to close mid to late august our Our operating strategy of product investment and innovation, saving customers money, and onshoring our service capabilities has allowed us to be successful in M&A. Recently investors have been asking us about what might come next, but the reality is we have a large transaction right in front of us now, which creates significant value. We have a fully developed integration plan for Cox, and we have confidence in our ability to execute well and at a faster pace than previous integrations. we expect to grow the asset shortly after close we'll launch our spectrum pricing and packaging within the Cox footprint we expect to drive better internet customer performance and unit growth acceleration with very under penetrated mobile and video our lower product pricing including our $1,000 savings guarantee for new and existing customers when taking mobile will help drive higher household product penetration maintaining healthy Cox household ARPU that's despite their higher individual product prices today we expect our pricing and packaging to drive lower churn higher customer satisfaction and better mps the bundling and migration approach will deploy at cox is the same we successfully used with resonant in 2013 twc and bright house in 2016 and with ourselves really over the past two years we also expect significant b2b upside by leveraging what each company does well with a long runway for growth and acceleration the addition of cox's hospitality capabilities segra rapid scale and a long-standing investment in its b2b infrastructure will benefit the broader spectrum we still expect run rate transaction expense synergies of at least 800 million dollars per year while we'll update that estimate after close i think it'll grow to billion dollars as a reminder transaction synergies do not include any benefit from operating or capital expenditure synergies separate from those synergies in procurement and overhead there will also be a significant number of new frontline hires we're now recruiting well over 1 000 new residential and business sales jobs in cox territories which will drive higher sales we couldn't hire these jobs until we had better visibility on a likely closing date with California. Across sales, retention, and customer service over the next year will onshore and in-source all call center activity, moving the platform to 24-7 coverage for service in Cox markets. This will bring work back to the U.S. and in-source work that is currently handled by a significant number of offshore contractors. We expect to absorb most, if not all, of this offshore volume from Cox through existing spectrum operating efficiencies and digital capabilities. Following the closing the Cox transaction, I want to frame what we'll represent as an industry partner for innovation. We'll have roughly 1.3 million miles of network with over 70 million passings, with a fully converged multi-gig internet and mobile offering available to all of those passings. We'll have approximately 37 million customers, meaning a selling opportunity of nearly 35 million passings without a relationship today. Together, we'll generate approximately $67 billion in revenue and approximately $28 billion in EBITDA. Spectrum will operate under two MVNOs with the best mobile networks in the country and the only fully converged capability in our footprint. Today, there are approximately 164 million mobile lines in our footprint and only 13 million of those will be Spectrum Mobile, 8% penetration with a faster, lower-cost mobile product. So while we're growing mobile quickly, there's still a very large growth opportunity in front of us. Turning to capital structure, Jessica and I listened to feedback, and we heard both equity and debt investor preference for lower leverage despite our significant free cash flow and continued capital return. So today, we're moving our post-transaction leverage target to a flat three and a half times, which we expect to achieve within three years following the close of the Cox and Liberty broadband transactions. And we're taking a multifaceted approach to delevering, which Jessica will discuss in a few minutes. But the plan is to both delever earlier and further, but not forego the buyback opportunity at what is a historically low valuation, all of which provides a robust backdrop to a broad segment of shareholders and bondholders who benefit from our free cash flow growth and capital allocation stepping back from maintaining an optimal capital structure the biggest value driver opportunity for us is going forward is returning to growth and our recipe for winning in the marketplace is simple deliver the best connectivity at the best overall value with the best service our network is a unique and strategic asset which can't be replicated it offers converged service in 100 of our footprint with gigabit speeds and low latency everywhere our speed and reliability are set to improve dramatically over the next few years as we complete our network evolution when you look at both our wireline and converge network and the traffic we already deliver today it's clear we're more than just america's connectivity company we provide the mission critical ai infrastructure that will ultimately demand our superior speed reliability and low latency capabilities we expect to be a significant beneficiary of ai through network demand data center connectivity our own service capabilities and cost structure and the potential utilization of our edge data centers which have fiber primary and backup power and cooling in space as we complete our network evolution we'll have over 250 megawatts of available capacity without additional investment, and capacity for much more at a very low cost with future potential partners. And while our focus is squarely on broadband, we also have separate resources focused on developing new revenue streams and ensuring we can develop network capabilities and products that others cannot replicate. With that, I'll hand it over to Jessica.

Thanks, Chris. Please note that any forward-looking financial or customer information that we provide in today's discussion or presentation does not include COX or any transition costs related to COX integration planning, unless otherwise noted. Now let's please turn to our customer results on slide seven. Including residential and small business, we lost 172,000 internet customers in the second quarter, driven by lower connects year over year, while churn was essentially flat. As Chris has said before, we've been facing top of the funnel softness. We continue to see expanded fixed wireless competition versus a year ago, including lower sales from low-income consumers, ongoing mobile substitution, and fiber overlap growth at a rate similar to prior quarters with aggressive promotions by certain competitors. Though I would point out that we continue to lead the market in converged connectivity pricing at Connect and have higher market share than our fiber competitors even in our mature fiber overlap. As it relates to satellite, so far we haven't observed meaningful share loss to Starlink, including in our subsidized rural footprint, but we continue to monitor it closely and take it seriously. In mobile, we added 406,000 lines with higher gross additions year over year, offset by higher disconnects. Video customers declined by 21,000 versus a loss of 80,000 in 2Q25. With the improvement primarily driven by lower video downgrades, lower customer churn, and higher upgrades year over year resulting from our seamless entertainment product improvements including our programmer app inclusion packaging and the new pricing and packaging we launched in late 2024. new connects to our fully featured video package with apps were also better year over year with some benefit from the world cup in rural we continued to see strong customer relationship growth generating 47 000 net customer additions in our subsidized rural footprint in the quarter subsidized rural passings grew by 127 000 in the second quarter and by 487 000 over the last 12 months which is in addition to our continued non-rural construction and fill-in activity moving to second quarter revenue results on slide eight over the last year residential customers declined by 1.8 percent residential revenue per customer relationship declined by 1.8 percent year over year but was essentially flat when excluding the programmer app allocation headwind of 251 million dollars this quarter versus 67 million dollars in the prior period prior year period there were other puts and takes including pricing and packaging mix within our customer base and a decline in video customers during the last year offset by the growth of spectrum mobile lines As Slide 8 shows, in total, residential revenue declined by 3.5% and was down by 1.8% when excluding costs allocated to streaming apps and netted within video revenue in both periods. From a pure internet revenue perspective, we are balancing rate actions in an inflationary environment and retention activities, where our more aggressive retention offers in the first quarter are largely normalized over the course of 2Q. as chris mentioned we're making some pricing adjustments which also include meaningful speed upgrades for the vast majority of affected customers those adjustments didn't impact 2q but will drive better residential revenue in the back half of the year turning to commercial total commercial revenue grew by 1.5 percent year over year with mid-market and large business revenue growth of 2.8 percent and when excluding all wholesale revenue mid-market and large business revenue grew by 3.5%. Small business revenue grew by 0.7%, reflecting year-over-year growth in revenue per small business customer of 1.5%, partly offset by year-over-year decline in small business customers of 0.8%. Second quarter advertising revenue grew by 12.3%, given higher political revenue year-over-year. Excluding political, advertising revenue declined 4.6% year over year other revenue grew by 7.1 driven by higher mobile device sales partly offset by a 45 million dollar one-time benefit in the prior year period in total consolidated second quarter revenue was down by 1.7 year over year but decreased 0.8 when excluding advertising revenue and programmer app allocation moving to operating expenses and adjusted even on slide nine in the second quarter total operating expenses were virtually flat year over year programming costs declined by 9.7 percent due to 251 million dollars of costs allocated to programmer streaming apps and netted within video revenue versus 67 million dollars in the prior period a higher mix of lighter video packages and a point eight percent decline in video customers year over year partly offset by higher programming rates. Other costs of revenue increased by 11.3%, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales, mobile service direct costs, and higher advertising sales costs given higher political revenue and a higher mix of third-party impressions. Cost to service customers, which combines field and technology operations and customer operations, grew 1.4% year-over-year, primarily due to higher fuel and medical costs. marketing and residential sales expense declined by 3.1 percent year over year due to lower marketing expenses from procurement initiatives but our volume of impressions in our marketing activity generally was much higher year over year transition expenses related to the pending cox transaction totaled 65 million dollars in the quarter driven by systems disentanglement from cox enterprises and systems integration with cox communications transition expenses have been coming in a bit higher than expected some of that is closing delay and some is from a change in the expected mix of operating costs versus capital expenditures but we still expect the sum of our Cox transition costs and capital expenditures to be added better than what we anticipated finally other expense declined by 2.5 percent primarily driven by lower professional service expense adjusted ebitda declined by 4.3 percent year over year in the quarter and declined by 3.2 percent when excluding transition expenses currently for the full year 2026 we expect standalone charter ebitda excluding the impact of transition costs to decline around one percent year over year the back half of this year will benefit from political advertising cost pass-throughs and efficiency initiatives and we're working on a number of additional initiatives to improve the full year trajectory. Turning to net income, we generated $1.3 billion of net income attributable to charter shareholders in the second quarter, essentially flat with the prior year period with lower year-over-year adjusted EBITDA offset by a gain on extinguishment of debt related to open market debt repurchases in 2Q26, which I will discuss in a moment. Turning to slide 10, second quarter capital expenditures totaled $2.9 billion, virtually flat with last year's second quarter, with lower line extension spending offset by higher network evolution spend, which lands in upgrade rebuild spend. For standalone charter, we continue to expect total 2026 capital expenditures to reach approximately $11.4 billion. And as we've said before, looking beyond 2026, we expect total capital spending in dollar terms to be on a meaningful downward trajectory and after our evolution and expansion initiatives conclude our run rate capital expenditures for standalone charter would be below eight billion dollars per year that reduction in capital expenditures on its own from approximately 12.1 billion dollars over the last 12 months to less than eight billion dollars in 2028 is equivalent to over 30 dollars of free cash flow per share based on our June 30th share count. If we take consensus 2026 free cash flow for standalone charter and substitute our expected 2028 CapEx for 2026 CapEx, our current stock price would imply a free cash flow multiple of a bit over two times and a free cash flow yield of nearly 50%. Turning to second quarter free cash flow on slide 12, second quarter free cash totaled $1 billion, dollars about 75 million dollars lower than last year given lower ebitda and a less favorable change in working capital partly offset by lower cash paid for taxes turning to cash taxes second quarter cash taxes totaled 101 million dollars we continue to expect that our calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between 500 and 800 million dollars we finished the second quarter with 94 billion dollars in debt principal the weighted average life of our debt is 11.7 years our weighted average cost of debt remains at an attractive 5.2 percent and our current run rate annualized cash interest totals 4.9 billion dollars during the quarter we repurchased 4 million charter shares totaling 838 million dollars at an average price of 210 dollars per share as of the end of the second quarter our ratio of net debt to last 12 month adjusted EBITDA was 4.18 times and stood at 4.21 times pro forma for the pending Liberty Broadband transaction. Cable industry growth has been pressured by the pace of new competition growth combined with a challenging housing growth and move environment. Those factors have reduced our customer and EBITDA growth and our trading multiple. We've always regularly evaluated our balance sheet to maintain our financial strength and strategic flexibility and to be responsive to our debt and equity holders as a result today we are lowering our post-transaction leverage target to a flat 3.5 times which we expect to achieve with consistent progress along the way with within three years of the close of the cox and liberty broadband transactions we've already begun executing a multi-pronged strategy to achieve that goal during the second quarter we repurchased over 1.2 billion dollars of our own debt in the open market for 1 billion dollars in cash reducing our total leverage by capturing approximately 250 million dollars of discount we also plan to reduce our total debt through liability management last night we announced the launch of a capped exchange offer targeting 20 billion dollars of par value of our investment grade related debt that trades at a discount to PAR. Participating bondholders will receive new PAR bonds in applicable 12 or 15-year maturities, and in some cases cash, in equivalent value to the current discounted trading value of the exchanged bonds plus a premium. If successful, this exchange will reduce our total debt principle and accelerate deleveraging. As of the end of the third quarter, including the impact of the Cox and Liberty broadband transactions and including the impact of our second quarter debt repurchases and assuming the success of the exchange offer announced yesterday evening. We expect our ratio of net debt to last 12-month adjusted EBITDA to be just above 3.9 times. Paying down debt, including the opportunity to repay secured maturities as they've come due, will be part of our effort to reach our long-term leverage target. And we expect there to be continuing opportunities for liability management approaches to support deleveraging. Our leverage target is not aspirational. We have high confidence in the strength of our business and its ability to generate substantial cash flow to achieve our targets. Given the pending Cox closing and its financing, and our focus on liability management, we have paused our share repurchases through the end of the third quarter. We expect share repurchases to restart in the fourth quarter. And we expect to be in a position to repurchase shares throughout the deleveraging process to 3.5 times. We expect our deleveraging efforts to create value for all providers of capital, including shareholders and debt holders. And we remain committed to maintaining an investment grade rating on our secured debt. Before turning the call over to Q&A, I want to make a few comments regarding our pending Cox transaction and our reporting plans, some of which I mentioned last quarter. Our first post-close quarterly results, which we expect will be our third quarter results, will reflect a full quarter for Legacy Charter plus a stub period for Legacy Cox. So year-over-year actual comparisons won't be helpful, but we intend to present Charter's quarterly trending schedule with pro forma data along the lines of what you received today. Going forward, we will report similar customer, PSU, and revenue data for both legacy entities days for several quarters following close, both separately and on a consolidated basis. We will not show expenses or capital expenditures by a legacy entity. That's not possible given the shared nature of key large items like programming, overhead, and significant centralized capital spend. We will also continue to report transition expense and capital related to the integration and will provide updates on certain items, including estimates for the synergies we realized so that you can better isolate the organic growth of the business. Our balance sheet and P&L will also be impacted by purchase accounting. Part of that will be fair market value step up of Cox assets, reflecting the fair market value of the consideration we pay for the Cox assets as of the closing date. Taken at today's charter share price, the current implied transaction enterprise value for the Cox business is $27 billion, dollars which is roughly five times EBITDA on transaction EBITDA and a 4.4 times multiple when including 800 million dollars of transaction synergies which we now view as conservative as of the end of the second quarter and pro forma for the cox and liberty broadband transactions our net debt totaled approximately 110 billion dollars and consisted of legacy charter net debt of approximately 93 billion dollars the net debt we are assuming from liberty broadband of about 1 billion dollars the approximately 4 billion dollars of debt we will issue to fund our cash payment to cox enterprises and legacy cox debt principle of about 12 billion dollars note that for balance sheet purposes the cox debt we will assume will be fair value in an amount less than the face value based on current market prices A few other items to keep in mind. After close and on a quarterly basis, we will expense a charge of approximately $103 million of preferred coupon for Cox's ownership of preferred partnership units. That charge will be reported in our P&L as part of net income attributable to non-controlling interests, similar to how we reported the advanced Newhouse preferred interest following our transactions in 2016. We will also have some below the EBITDA line charges, including additional transaction advisory expenses which are contingent and payable at closing. We also expect restructuring and separation expenses through the integration process that will close below EBITDA as well. Interest expense will increase for the combined company given the debt assumed from Cox, the new charter debt issued for the cash portion of the purchase price, and the accretion the discount on assumed cox debt as i mentioned last quarter our outstanding share count will increase as we issue the equivalent of just over 46 million charter shares to cox enterprises comprised of common and preferred partnership units partly offset by a net charter share reduction of about 4.7 million shares associated with the liberty broadband transaction that 4.7 million figure is lower now than when we announced the Liberty Broadband transaction, primarily due to our ongoing share repurchases from Liberty Broadband. Based on our June 30 standalone share count at close and on an as converted as exchange basis, we expect our total shares to be about 177 million. And with that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen when it is your turn you will receive a message on your screen from the host allowing you to talk and then you will hear your name called please accept unmute your audio and ask your question as a reminder we are allowing analysts to ask one question today we will wait one moment to allow the queue to form our first question will come from craig moffett with moffett nathanson you may now unmute and ask your question hi thank you um i'm going to see if i can squeeze in too if i can um first uh jessica a while back you said uh i think it was two quarters ago you you guided to positive um uh broadband arpu for

the year i wonder if you could just update us on your outlook for broadband arpu for the year and then um i wanted to ask a question about wireless comcast yesterday uh said that 90 percent of all their traffic is now offloaded onto wi-fi or perhaps some of that over cbrs can you give a comparable number for charter and and how you see that progressing sure so craig i'll start with arpu um broadband arpu will improve sequentially in q3 uh the use of more aggressive retention offers as i as i said um lessened through 2q and largely normalized in

June. We're still feeling the impact from some of those more aggressive offers in 2Q, and we will over the course of the rest of the year, but the impact isn't building in the same way at this point. And we'll have a tailwind from the rate for the cost pass-through that's hitting in late July and early August. You know, I understand the sensitivity and the rationale for the focus around broadband ARPU, but I remind people we don't manage the business for product level ARPUs. Our focus is on penetration as well as connectivity ARPU and overall customer relationship ARPU, excluding the programmer app allocation, both of which I think will grow in FY26.

I'll just tag on to that a little bit. The pressure that we had inside of Q1, which you know carried through q2 really was a bet at the time that you could get a substantial lift through putting in that retention and you know it had some impact but not enough to really merit what we did so we pulled back i owned that it took a bit to pull back and you know when we did it had a cascading impact to carry forward on on the you know our crew through the retention so um that was the driver inside of q2 and as jessica mentioned you're going to have lift coming from you know that going away and in addition to that the great increase passed through the other thing we just take a look at a full year perspective leaving aside you know cox integration leaving aside what jessica said about you know management for total customer relationship market which is a full suite of products that we include you know we have nick jeffrey coming on board on september 1st and the last thing i want to do when he's coming on board with really a stated focus from our perspective of enhancing our go-to-market capabilities and our net promoter score and really hopefully being a big catalyst for those two categories and returning us to growth as some towel to hamstring the ability of the company to go do some things to accelerate our growth. And so I don't think it's wise for us to focus on product ARPU generally. We've always said that. But particularly in this environment, we're focused on creating shareholder value, and I don't think it makes sense to kind of hamstring us that way. Okay. The second question you asked, Craig, was around wireless. I hadn't seen that Comcast reported up at 90%. We'd been at 88%, and we were kind of moving up to 89% through exactly the same reasons, which was the continued offload that we have through Wi-Fi, through seamless authentication, not only in our footprint, but in Comcast and also in the Cox footprint as well, across the three, you know, major cable operators, and in addition to that, the continued rollout of CBRS. What we did inside the quarter is we, you know, effectively moved the type of speed pass-through for our products to make sure that we had better service above certain caps that were in place. And so as a result, what you ended up was a bit more 5G usage than we've had before because of the product changes we made to improve the customer experience the customer service so i'd actually push this back down to 87 which is where we've been previously not because there was less offload but because there was actually more 5g traffic usage which was a positive thing from a consumer perspective so that was kind of a you know what should be a one-time push down we you know modified the product capability in a good way and then we'll expect to be you know moving back up as the continued wi-fi offload and continued cvrs deployment takes place over time so slightly different you know for that reason but you know on the same trajectory would

be my my estimate thanks greg operator we'll take our next question please your next question will come from vikash harlalka with new street research hi thanks so much for taking the question too if record um you've changed your goal for EBITDA for the year um I just wanted to um ask what changed um in the first six months for you to lower your uh target for EBITDA and then second there were some press reports mentioning that Starlink may look to partner with Charter any comment on

that thank you sure so on the ebitda side you know i i think some of what changed and and chris described a bit of it was expectations around um broadband subscribers and and arpu over the course of the year based on um some of those things that we had done around offers that we thought might work but it didn't work out as well there's also a little bit of pressure and some controllable expenses you know things like fuel um and medical where um where we haven't been able to sort of make adjustments against those in the same way as you can some others uh we do have uh the ability and and you know we've done um we've done quite a bit to think about uh expenses for the second half of the year and and how we can uh be in a better place uh and so uh as chris said we've made some changes around uh moving price adjustments through we are um doing some work around driving down expenses across the business and in some cases from making uh some changes to benefit plans to bring them more in line with market uh and to doing some simplification on the overhead side that i think makes a lot of sense and that's that's rolling through now so we continue to have

levers and we'll continue to push to um be in a better place than uh than that trajectory as we get through the year i want to be clear what jessica said is you know what we're providing as an outlook as an update to what was previously provided but we're actually targeting to do better through all the reasons that jessica gave um the question on starlink um look it's natural for us we talk to many industry players anytime that we think that we can you know enhance our own product capabilities or do things that are innovative in the marketplace or we can lower costs for customers you know those the type of conversations that we have with you know many industry players we do that all the time um i don't think it makes any sense to get into the

detail of you know any of those conversations other than say you should expect us to continue to do that you know across the board and and when there's something to announce or talk about you will do that and that certainly is not the case today thank you good operator we'll take our next question please our next question will come from stephen kale with wells fargo thank you um first i wanted to maybe piggyback on craig's question about your wireless offload um as well as the last question on starlink it's possible we could see uh spacex or starlink try to build the fourth wireless network. You've taken an asset light approach to wireless, but you're able to do all this offload. I was wondering if you think there's the potential for Charter to partner with potential builders over time and use the architecture that you have along with what someone else might do in wireless and if there are partnership opportunities that could create value. So I'd love to understand that better. And then I was wondering if you could just touch a little bit on how Cox Internet trends have sort of transitioned versus your internet trends? And do you think the trends that they're seeing in the market are the same, better, or worse than yours? And is there any change to the playbook, since it sounds like competition is picked up once you close the acquisition? Thank you.

Sure. You know, look, let me take a more global approach to your first question around our willingness to use our network for offloading our principal focus as a company has always been about you know retail in the consumer segment and the b2b segment um and sometimes that means that we've foregone appropriately or sometimes you know maybe we should have had a different point of view the wholesale opportunities that exist with capabilities of our network i'll start out i'll give you an example just as a parallel you know the b2b side you know we've done a lot of work around cell tower backhaul um years ago um which was a good business it's great ry you know it's not as good as it used to be but the what we did there made a lot of sense similarly you know you can talk about the data center business that exists today for fiber connectivity and i think cox has done a really good job of being aggressive and getting after that and because we're so retail focused i think we're getting into it now we'll have a great opportunity but you know maybe we didn't focus on it as much as we should have you can then to get to your question use that as a parallel with our you know just our seamless authentication capabilities across wi-fi and cbrs and should we be using that in a wholesale environment versus our current retail approach that we have and i think the answer is it depends um it depends on you know what's the long-term path that we're doing how does it impact us you know from our main objective on the retail side But we are doing offload today. You think about the Amazon deal that we did with their fleet, which is public, where we have seamless authentication for Amazon drivers and the trucks to be able to offload to us at a more attractive rate than what they typically pay for cellular services. I could see us being, and we have had those discussions for electric vehicle companies, think about the tremendous amount of offload that they have to do from all the cameras that are operating during the course of the day and need to upstream, you know, where our network is uniquely connected. capable of doing that and being able to monetize it for us, but to save customers, in that case, a wholesale customer, lots of money. So we have those capabilities. We've set up a platform called Bright IQ that enables all of that to take place seamlessly. It works very well and to the extent that we can be innovative around that, create additional revenue streams. If it's going to be material, it's certainly something we would think about. but I think that between one partner or another it's just the answer is it just depends and we'll think it through at the right time you know by the way we could do that for you know even even mobile operators as well you know in terms of being able to you know offload for them in a different way than they already do today private SSIDs and you know we could I'm not sure that's somewhere we'll go but it's it's another potential business opportunity that's out there thanks Stephen? Oh, he asked a question about, sorry, come back, Cox trends. Nothing, you know, nothing new or major to report. Cox's trends on both subscribers and revenue has been a couple clicks lower than here at Spectrum, and that continues to be the case. So I wouldn't say there's been any traumatic change of what we've seen relative to our own performance since the time of signing up the transaction no change to the playbook um you know cox has been a very well invested asset uh over the years uh it's prided itself on you know good service and and uh having a great reputation in the market and the communities that they serve but i do think um you know when you look at our products which include speed for internet the convergence with mobile our video product for sure and its ability to have seamless entertainment the zoomo deployment and uh the pricing of all that both on a standalone basis in particular when it's put together i you know i don't want to get over our skis but i we're going to come into the cox markets with a brand new name which is the spectrum name and always when you're you know a quote-unquote new entrant you know and you have an opportunity to be something new an alternative at better pricing with better products That's a real opportunity for Lyft across all of those products. And that's always been the strategy. It's still the case, given the fact that the closing has been delayed as much as it has been. And we were ready to go really in March and April. But we've been working through the process with California. We're glad that we're where we are with that process. but we're more ready now as a result to go faster and deploying that product pricing and packaging into the Cox markets. And we're really excited about getting this done and getting going for the benefit of the employees, customers, and, you know, a real, I think, growth opportunity that's there.

Thanks, Stephen. We'll take our next question, operator.

Before we go to our next question, as a reminder, if you'd like to raise your hand, you may use the raise hand feature at at the bottom of your Zoom interface. And our next question will come from Walter Pysik with LightShed Partners, please go ahead.

Thanks, Chris, I just wanna go back to the last question because I think what he was asking about wasn't necessarily about just wholesaling the hotspots, but also whether closing out like that last 12%, meaning like joining in a network build, whether it's SpaceX or someone else, whether that might be something that makes sense to put some dollars behind. yeah um let me start with you know that probably the hottest topic of the day and i want to be really clear we don't have any plans to do anything different as it relates to our capex trajectory so you know given where we are and if if we had if there were opportunities i think that there are ways that we could look at them from an off-balance sheet sort of not part of our own

capital perspective not in this specific one but but our but our capital trajectory in terms of of what we've laid out in the multi-year capital plan is set.

Yeah, so I don't think we, you know, there's no specific plans that we have today to do anything around what you described. I would step back and say, you know, we're in a capital light approach that we're really enamored with as it relates to going for mobility and the ability to deliver, you know, converge retail services. We have great partners, Verizon now principally on the residential side who's been a great partner great network and in we've recently launched on the b2b side incrementally going forward with t-mobile also you know obviously a fantastic network in a capital light approach for us that makes a lot of sense but we're also able to add in some additional features and product features into the business side that we didn't have before as well as the ability to sell a lot more lines and move upstream into that space and they've great partners as well you know pretty seamless in terms of the launch um and working very well with with both of those partners and we're pleased so there's there's no driving need for us to quote unquote build a network of any type because we have it i mean the other way to think about it i've always said not to be provocative but we're the largest facilities-based wireless provider in the country which is a little counterintuitive but the reason i say that is not only do we We offload 87% to 88% of our own traffic, but we, you know, the cable operators and Wi-Fi generally, Wi-Fi is the workhorse of spectrum and of data delivery across the entire footprint, and it's Wi-Fi that delivers probably 75%, 80% of the traffic for the MNOs, for the wireless telcos, and so that's our wire line and Wi-Fi facilities that's delivering not only wireless offload for us but also for you know the major telcos as well and so i i don't think it's that productive we're the largest uh wireless facilities provider in the country particularly when we close cox so maybe today it's comcast and tomorrow and it's us as number two but you know we're going to be the largest wireless based facilities provider in the country and i don't think there's a real need for us to feel like we have to go after that last 12 percent given the partnerships that we have and the economic setup that we have today yeah and when you look at the offload that you have um could you give any sense in the mix between you know the extra ssid from someone's home modem versus the hotspots that you may have deployed on on wires or in communities and things like that like what's what's the relative split there and is it changing as you maybe invest a little bit in cbrs yeah it is changing um you know when we first trying to think of the best way to answer your question um you know when we first came out with spectrum mobile we were closer to 84 85 percent and you know we had publicly said that we thought that we could uh get into essentially into the low 90s and um and that point of view hasn't changed now you've got a lot of other things going on in terms of overall traffic volume where traffic occurs and people's usage but i think for the most part that still holds So you can see where we've moved up the chain, going beyond just our own network of Wi-Fi authentication, but then when that got extended to out of footprint with Comcast and then Cox, it continues to move up. And then CBRS, which is still early days, so we're across a vast number of markets, but we're well on our way on the increment to just continue to penetrate more deeply on an ROI-based approach, based on where there's density in traffic. that justifies the investment the payback we get in that is well under a year um so it's and that you know just be clear that's always been included in our capital expenditure outlook so i think we'll continue to you know move upstream but as you saw even in this past quarter when i answered the question for craig there are things that will bump you back down a little bit as we do things with the product but i think our original outlook is is still the same and i think the mix is first and foremost it's our own wi-fi uh the second is uh out of footprint You know, when a New York customer goes to Philadelphia, for example, but increasingly, to your point, it's the CVRS as that gets more fully deployed, not just for us, but as it gets more fully deployed in the Comcast footprint, in the Cox footprint, which soon enough will be Spectrum. You know, that CVRS deployment that each of us makes benefits the other because we have the same capabilities there as we do with Wi-Fi. Thanks.

Thanks, Walter. And thanks to everyone else. that concludes our call. Layla, back to you.

Thank you everyone for joining. This concludes today's call and you may now disconnect.