Lumen Technologies, Inc. Q2 FY2024 Earnings Call

Greetings, and welcome to Lumen Technologies’ Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. All lines have been muted to avoid background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. This conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Breen, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Jim, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Lumen Technologies second quarter 2024 earnings call. On the call today are Kate Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Chris Stansbury, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I need to call your attention to our Safe Harbor Statement on Slide 1 of our second quarter 2024 presentation, which notes that this conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements and the risk factors in our SEC filings. We will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures reconciled to the most comparable GAAP measures which can be found in our earnings press release. In addition, certain metrics discussed today exclude costs for special items as detailed in our earnings materials, which can be found in our Investor Relations section of our Lumen website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kate.

Thanks, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining. I'm cognizant of the timing of this call, because over the past two days the markets have been a bit noisy with lots of uncertainty about the health of the economy in the next six to 12 to 18 months. In contrast, the announcement we made last night about Lumen's pivot to growth is all about building critical infrastructure to support the AI economy for the next several decades. To net it out, there are three key takeaways from our call today. First, Lumen's enterprise operational turnaround is progressing well with continued sales momentum across our growth portfolio and further improvement in customer satisfaction. We are also executing extremely well in our Quantum Fiber business. Second, Lumen has been anointed as the trusted network for AI by some of the most important technology companies on earth. With over $5 billion in major partnerships inked to date and visibility to nearly $7 billion more in opportunities, we see the market for Lumen's private connectivity fabric as providing a major positive momentum shift for this company. Third, given our success in forging these partnerships, we're seeing a significant improvement in our overall liquidity profile, further securing our ability to transform the company and pivot to growth. Let me give some detail on the operational turnaround part first. As I've described on prior calls, we're focusing on delivering dramatically improved customer experiences from quote to cash, giving customers a reason to choose Lumen for core network services. The best way to measure that progress is to look at three areas, sales, customer satisfaction, and securing the base. I'm delighted to share our progress across the fundamentals. After a blockbuster Q1, we continue to see strong sales performance in the second quarter, with North American large enterprise and mid-market sales up nearly 26% year-over-year. Additionally, large and mid-market new logo sales increased 10%, and net total contract value for all channels was up nearly 40% year-over-year. Two notable wins are Uber, who is leveraging custom fiber waves from Lumen to ensure unparalleled connectivity between their data centers, and the state of New Mexico, who is using Lumen to build its first statewide education network. To complement these sales results, we saw another step-function improvement in customer satisfaction in our service delivery process with year-over-year transaction net promoter scores rising 10 points for large enterprise, 35 points for wholesale, 37 points for mid-market, and a whopping 42 points for public sector. Once again, every one of our enterprise customer channels shows significant year-over-year improvements which should manifest in lower churn, higher gross sales, and improved overall revenue growth over time. Finally, we're making progress securing the base with our relentless focus on five key levers: installs, renewals, migrations, usage, and disconnects. We think the best way to measure our progress here is to compare ourselves to market trends. And once again, we saw less revenue declines this quarter than our industry peers. We continue to fine-tune our motions, developing and launching new product bundles and educating our customers on the best migration path from legacy to modern technologies. And while we're excited by the progress for our operational turnaround in legacy core network services, the real breakthrough to share with you is how we're repositioning the company for the future in the growing market of AI. Two ways that we're repositioning Lumen. First, we're cloudifying telecom by delivering a digital platform to enable enterprise customers to digitally design, price, order, and consume secured network services quickly, securely, and effortlessly. We're thrilled with our progress driving adoption of our Lumen Digital flagship network as a service offering with companies like Versa, T-Marzetti, and DXE Technologies, as well as many other companies across the industry. The second way we're repositioning the company for growth is with Lumen's private connectivity fabric. To summarize what's happening, the dramatic rise in AI innovation is bringing explosive growth in data center build-out. And data centers simply have to be connected. We're honored that technology powerhouses like Microsoft and several other big technology firms are choosing Lumen to build their AI backbone. And they're choosing us for two reasons. First, our world-class fiber network with its unique routes, vast coverage, and state-of-the-art fiber solutions from our strategic partnership with Corning. Second, the digital platform we're building makes consumption quick, secure, and effortless. With $5 billion in closed deals so far and the active discussions we're having with a long list of additional customers, we believe Lumen is becoming known as the trusted network for AI. The growth in this type of sale will be meaningful and accretive to our cash position in the short term and positions us for long-term predictable revenue growth in the future. Looking ahead, I'm sure you, like everybody else on planet Earth, are wondering how big these networking deals are going to be for AI and what the market looks like? So I'm going to share our early hypothesis with you. We think there are likely to be three distinct phases. The first phase, as evidenced by our closed deals, is with huge technology companies, cloud providers, and social platforms that are AI thought leaders and are building and training AI models responsible for the explosive growth in data center build-out. They were the first to recognize that today's Internet simply won't serve tomorrow's AI economy, and they're partnering with Lumen to massively expand their connectivity infrastructure. We think the next tranche of demand is likely to come from the AI model inference phase, probably with forward-thinking enterprises who see AI as a way to transform their businesses. Think financial services, health care, and retailers to start. And finally, in the third phase, we suspect breakout growth and demand for connectivity and digital on-demand network services will come when AI starts interacting with other AI systems. We're in very early discussions with strategic partners who are helping shape our view in this space. Please note that these recent announcements, which were not included in our 2024 guidance, fund the necessary upfront operational and capital expenditures to ramp and scale these new AI workloads. Additionally, these deals provide funding for continued innovation and strategic cost takeout. And that leads me to my next important piece of news. Today we're announcing that we see a path to creating $1 billion in cost savings by the end of 2027. This next cost wave of efficiency will come from deeply strategic infrastructure simplification in three major areas: network, product portfolio, and IT. These infrastructure projects are rooted in network standardization. We're now integrating the networks from four different architectures, engineering them into one simplified, standardized, and unified network fabric. This move provides a step function change in the level of simplification that we can drive inside the company, providing breakthrough improvements in our customer and employee experiences. Let me provide just a little bit more color on the impact of the plan. Our target is to ensure that the majority of our net new services are on this unified network fabric by the end of 2025. This will enable massive simplification in our product portfolio, enabling us to significantly reduce our product count from thousands of product codes to a target of around 300, a massive simplification enabler across Lumen and our ecosystem. Once we unify the network and simplify the product portfolio in our enterprise business, we'll go after technical cost savings in IT. For example, we'd like to compress our 24 order management systems to a target number of one and reduce our 17 billing systems to, of course, a target of one. This work is going to take a few years to complete, but it will yield material and enduring bottom line benefits. To reemphasize, the work wouldn't be possible without the additional liquidity gained from our private connectivity fabric sales, which also allows us to self-fund a spending increase in key areas to drive out these costs for the long term. To summarize our enterprise business transformation efforts, we've got the cash, we've got the assets, and we've got a world-class leadership team needed to execute on the next phase of our transformation, unlocking breakthrough growth opportunities and strategic cost savings moving forward. And finally, I'm really delighted to share that our mass market segment is showing steady results improvement. We continue to opportunistically deploy capital, enabling 136,000 locations in Q2, on track to deliver 500,000 new fiber-enabled locations this year. We also continued our strong fiber sales momentum from the first quarter of 2024, as indicated by our record level of 2Q fiber net additions of 40,000. And we're happy to announce we've reached over 1 million fiber subscribers in July. This is a significant milestone and reinforces the value of the product we're delivering to the consumer. It also shows our mass markets team really knows how to execute well. With that, I'll turn the call over to Chris.

Thanks, Kate. Before I discuss the quarter, I want to take a moment to reflect back to Q2 earnings last year. Since that time, we've successfully completed a refinancing that addressed over $15 billion of our debt and extended over $10 billion of our maturities. We secured access to over $2.3 billion in new liquidity. We launched our PCF solutions as well as our suite of new digital offerings. We generated early growth in our public sector and the growth segment of our large enterprise business. As of yesterday, we announced the largest sales in the company's history, totaling nearly $5 billion, fueled by our AI hyperscaler customers. This is all as we drive a network unification from four discrete enterprise networks to one, resulting in over $1 billion in cost efficiencies. None of this would be possible without our world-class management team who's executing on our vision. We're moving with pace and we're not done. The recent developments in our business reflect major proof points in terms of early and material execution on Lumen's transformation path forward and we are pleased the market is starting to value this opportunity. We believe we're in the first inning of the AI growth opportunity for our fiber infrastructure and Lumen Digital Services. Accordingly, the positive impact these private connectivity fabric sales will have on our financials are powerful and clear. First, we believe the progress we've made on driving PCF sales these past few months is just the beginning of a vast new total addressable market, which brings long-term, sticky revenue offsetting higher churn legacy product declines. Second, we estimate that the cash received from PCF sales will close any free cash flow deficit between now and when we reach sustainable positive free cash flow growth. Third, we will have ample free cash flow to invest in our transformation and reduce debt. Finally, in our view, PCF sales are significant and incremental to the overall value of Lumen's business. The building blocks of our value creation are clear, starting with our nationwide fiber network. We believe Lumen is one of the few companies with the resources and scale to provide the critical infrastructure for AI, and the partnerships we've announced represent a large and growing opportunity to provide private connectivity fabric solutions. We see a runway to growth as we transform telecom, and we believe that sets up a value creation path for Lumen, all as we continue to execute on our core strategic goals of commercial excellence, securing the base, and innovating for growth. As Kate mentioned, our sales growth engines within our large and mid-market enterprise channels in our business segment, along with our mass market segment, showed solid performance this quarter with large enterprise and mid-market sales, both up over 26% year-over-year. Additionally, Quantum Fiber broadband net additions of 40,000 again sets an all-time record and we passed the 1 million total fiber subscriber mark in July, outstanding work by the team. While consolidated revenue and adjusted EBITDA still face the impacts of legacy declines, we are encouraged by improvements we're making in the business. Now let's move to the discussion of financial results for the second quarter. On a year-over-year basis, total reported revenue declined 10.7% to $3.268 billion. 36% of the decline was due to the impact of divestitures, commercial agreements, and the sale of the CDN business. Business segment revenue declined 11.4% to $2.577 billion, and approximately 42% of that decline was due to the impact of divestitures and commercial agreements. Mass markets segment revenue declined 8.2% to $691 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.011 billion, with a 30.9% margin and free cash flow was negative $156 million. Next, I'll review our detailed revenue results for the quarter on a year-over-year basis. Within our North America enterprise channels, which is our business segment excluding wholesale, international, and other, revenue declined 3.6%. We continue to expect public sector to be the first channel to pivot to sustainable growth later this year, followed by mid-market and then large enterprise. Overall, North American business declined 5.5%. Large enterprise revenue declined 6.9% in the second quarter. Our grow revenue was approximately flat year-over-year with continued pressure in nurture and harvest product revenue. Mid-market revenue declined approximately 7% year-over-year with improvement in grow, offset by nurture and harvest. Public sector revenue increased 8% year-over-year driven by strength in our grow and other product revenue and partially offset by declines in nurture and harvest. We continue to see traction with large bookings in this space, which take time to ramp to revenue, and these wins give us continued confidence that public sector will be the first sales channel to return to sustainable growth this year. Wholesale revenue declined approximately 10% year-over-year. The harvest portion of the wholesale portfolio, which is comprised of products like TDM, voice and private line, saw revenue contract by 17.9% year-over-year in the second quarter. This is primarily driven by telco partners that are selling legacy services. Our harvest product revenue will likely continue to decline over time and is an area that we will manage for cash. International and other revenue declined 67.1% driven primarily by the divestiture of our EMEA business and the sale of select CDN contracts in the fourth quarter of last year. Moving to our business product lifecycle reporting, I'll reference the results based on our North America enterprise channel. The 3.6% year-over-year decrease was due to declines in our nurture and harvest segments, partially offset by grow, particularly enterprise broadband, dark fiber, and IT. While results can vary in any quarter, we expect sustained strength in the grow product revenue as we execute on our core turnaround. Within nurture and harvest, we continue to expect headwinds in these markets to decline in categories. However, we continue to take proactive steps to migrate customers to newer technologies, and these actions improve our customer's experience and will provide an uplift in customer lifetime value for Lumen. Additionally, we will continue to pursue opportunities for cost optimization when we help customers migrate from off-net legacy and TDM-based services onto Lumen's network. Within North American enterprise channels, grow products revenue increased 1.5% year-over-year. Grow now represents approximately 43% of our North America enterprise revenue and for our total business segment carried in approximately 80% direct margin this quarter. Nurture products revenue decreased 12.1% year-over-year. Nurture represents 30% of our North American enterprise revenue, and for our total business segment, carried an approximate 66% direct margin this quarter. Harvest products revenue decreased 10.6% year-over-year and continues to be negatively impacted by declines in TDM-based voice and private line. Harvest represented approximately 16% of our North America enterprise revenue in the second quarter. For our total business segment, they carried an approximate 77% direct margin this quarter. Other product revenue improved 18.5% year-over-year. As a reminder, other product revenue tends to experience fluctuations due to the variable nature of these products. Now moving on to mass markets. Our fiber broadband revenue grew 14.6% year-over-year and represents approximately 38% of mass markets broadband revenue. During the quarter, fiber broadband enabled location ads were 136,000, bringing our total to over 3.9 million as of June 30 and pacing towards our targeted annual 500,000 build target this year. We also added 40,000 Quantum Fiber customers, which is our best fiber net add quarter reported to date, and this brings our total to 992,000. Fiber ARPU was $62, up slightly, both sequentially and year-over-year. Importantly, we reached a significant milestone of 1 million fiber broadband subscribers in July. At the end of the second quarter, our penetration of legacy copper broadband was approximately 9%, and our Quantum Fiber penetration stood at approximately 25%. As we look ahead, we will continue our market-by-market assessment of the mass market's business as we explore a range of strategic options to maximize its value. Those options include potential joint ventures, wholesaling arrangements, or future divestitures to generate incremental cash. Now turning to adjusted EBITDA. For the second quarter of 2024, adjusted EBITDA was $1.011 billion compared to $1.229 billion in the year-ago quarter. Second quarter EBITDA was positively impacted by our strong first quarter sales bookings, as well as efficiency improvements from our second quarter cost actions and overall margin management. Special items impacting adjusted EBITDA totaled $136 million. The majority of special items in the quarter were related to severance. For the second quarter of 2024, our adjusted EBITDA margin was 30.9%. Capital expenditures were $753 million. Free cash flow, excluding special items, was negative $156 million. As we previously stated, we're leaning into our network investments to support the rapid growth and demand our customers are facing. Now, before I provide an update on our 2024 financial outlook, I'd like to provide some color around the near-term impacts of our PCF sales and the additional liquidity and flexibility we have. As Kate mentioned, we're moving full speed ahead in investing in our transformation, which includes additional spending on network and systems unification that will ultimately lead to more efficient operations and a better customer experience. Given our improving liquidity profile, we intend to pull forward some expenses from 2026 and 2027 into 2025, accelerating the timeline of our cost takeout goals. With the investments in transformation and costs associated with recent PCF sales, and in conjunction with continued legacy revenue declines, directionally, we see 2025 EBITDA below 2024 levels, with a significant rebound in 2026 and growing thereafter. We will provide more detailed 2025 guidance on our fourth quarter 2024 call in February. Now moving on to our financial outlook. We now estimate fiscal year 2024 EBITDA to be in the range of $3.9 billion to $4 billion. CapEx in the range of $3.1 billion to $3.3 billion. Cash interest in the range of $1.15 billion to $1.25 billion and free cash flow in the range of $1 billion to $1.2 billion. This guidance includes some incremental operating expenses, capital expenditures, and cash flows associated with our PCF sales growth, the gain on a sale of an investment, as well as incremental spending to ultimately improve our cost structure and margins. This additional operating expenses and capital expenditures will be fully funded upfront by incremental PCF cash flow. And with that, I'll turn it back to Kate for closing remarks.

Thanks, Chris. Before we open up the call for questions, I wanted to pause to acknowledge where we are. AI represents one of the most significant technology shifts in history. Every person and every organization on earth will be impacted. AI needs data, data needs data centers, and data centers need to be connected. What was once an overbuilt fiber network is shifting from commodity to something much more valuable. At Lumen, we aren't streamlining and digitizing our operations to try to find growth in legacy telco markets. Instead, we're building a digital platform to help us become the trusted network for AI so we can capitalize on the markets that will likely see explosive growth for decades. This is Lumen's moment. We are playing to win. This is the business that we are in. Operator, we're ready for questions.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. Your first question comes from the line of Michael Rollins with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thanks and good afternoon. First, with respect to the $5 billion of sales, curious if you could give some additional color on the competitiveness of that process? Are these customers using single vendors for the solution or multiple vendors? So this is something that's not just helping Lumen, but maybe the ecosystem. And then for Lumen specifically, can you share the mix of assets that are existing fiber, existing conduit, leveraging assets that are already out there from you versus what you're building as new infrastructure? And as you consume some of those fiber inventories such that investment mix or margin mix might look differently over time as you continue to sell within this new private connectivity fabric segment? Thanks.

Hey, Mike. So I'll take the first part, and I’ll let Chris do the second part. So first part, what does the competitive landscape look like? Look, obviously, I'm a little bit biased, but here's my observation. Our network is the crown jewel that we always thought it was. It's got great coverage, unique routes, it's diverse, and it's got state-of-the-art fiber because we've been taking care of it for a long time. That's giving us great positioning with our customers. They're looking at sometimes building some routes by themselves. Most of the time, they're understanding that we can get them there faster with higher quality and better service, and that's the observation across the deals we've won so far.

Yes. And just on the economics, it's a really good question, and I'm not going to be evasive with you. But the reality is, it's really complicated. So it's deal to deal; every deal is different in terms of where they want to go from and to, and how much capacity they need. Inevitably, you will end up with a combination of existing fiber, new fiber, existing conduit, new conduit. It really does vary deal to deal. Now, on that, we'll never disclose it because these are called private connectivity fabric for a reason. Our customers want to keep it private because it's a competitive secret that they have as is it a competitive secret for us. So, it will vary deal to deal, but the video that we released, I think, gives a good flavor on average.

Thank you.

Next question.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I have a quick inquiry regarding the free cash flow guidance. Could you clarify whether it is primarily driven by customer deposits from the private connectivity fabric AI, or if it also includes the gain on the sale that you mentioned, Chris? Additionally, can you explain if the free cash flow increase you're observing is expected to remain on the balance sheet in 2024, or will it likely be used to support the increase in CapEx that you discussed today? I'm trying to understand the timing of the build-out process. Thank you.

I'll give you credit because you asked one of the great questions on the call early. So the cash flow guidance for this year is driven by both some of the upfront cash received. We haven't received all of it, obviously, for the PCF deals, and it is also related to the asset sale that we did. So both of those things contributed to the free cash flow. As it relates to where we go from here, and again, I want to be very careful because we're not giving 2025 guidance yet. But we haven't received all the cash yet. That will be received some this year, some next year, some the following year, because again, these are massive construction projects. They take time. We will start to spend the CapEx as evidenced by our guidance this year and have more next year. But the point is, on these deals, we're not financing the build. So we get paid in advance of the construction. The only thing that is kind of hanging as you go out 12 months is, we pay tax on the cash received. So even though the revenue is amortized, the IRS likes to get paid on a cash basis for these deals. So that will be something that we deal with, and we'll get more color on that as we move through. But high level, I would say that next year free cash flow looks good.

Thank you.

Next question.

Great. Thank you. Looking at the EBITDA guidance change for the year, is that purely related to the incremental OpEx for getting ready for these network initiatives? Is there any change in terms of the underlying trend? And can you just go over the $1 billion cost savings you expect over the next three years, the pacing of that? I think you mentioned some of the expenses will be pulled forward. And then, is there any incremental cost to achieve that savings through the next three years? Thank you.

Yes. This year, the majority of factors affecting EBITDA are driven by the TCF deals and the operational expenditures we must invest in to scale up our construction factory. We have a core team in place, but it needs to grow significantly to handle the volume of deals. This is the main driver. Regarding the $1 billion cost reduction, I want to avoid discussing guidance for 2025 too much. We don't expect to see those savings begin until next year, which will involve some investment that we will outline during our guidance for next year. My comments on our future direction focus on taking advantage of opportunities this year and in 2025 to accelerate investments initially planned for 2026 and 2027. This will help us achieve a more consolidated and simplified IT system, improving customer experience. The key focus here is to transition from our current four enterprise networks to a single network. This legacy structure needs to be addressed to create a more seamless customer experience moving forward.

Got it. Thank you.

Next question please.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Chris, I have a hypothesis I'd like to present, and I would appreciate your feedback on it. We have this $5 billion deal, but most of the cash inflow is expected in the next three to four years, and a significant portion of that cash will also be spent during that same timeframe. Therefore, any cash we receive now is primarily timing-related compared to the capital expenditures needed for the contract. If we assume that about $3 billion of the $5 billion deal is linked to construction, that leaves approximately $2 billion for actual sales. As you noted in your video, the sales revenue will only begin after the construction is completed, likely around years four or five. Over a 20-year span, this $2 billion translates to about $100 million in annual revenue, which is very high margin—perhaps around $85 million in EBITDA. Considering taxes, as you mentioned in your video, we can estimate around $65 million in tax-affected cash flow over the 20-year period. So, a $5 billion deal announcement could lead to $65 million in cash flow five years from now. What do you think about this assessment?

I'd say most of it is wrong. Yes, I think, David, here's where we go. So again, it's multiple deals that added up to the $5 billion, not just one. In the video, we discussed a cash contribution margin, which is essentially the EBITDA less the CapEx, pretax, that's roughly in line with our existing EBITDA margin. So if you do the math on that, it will provide the pretax free cash flow associated with these deals. And that cash flow, to your point, does mainly come at the front end. Now there are ongoing payments for space and power for operating and maintenance if they want us to manage the networks for them, which provides us with solid cash flow over the years. However, the tax impact would also be front-end loaded. The key point here is that in one segment of the $5 billion deals, the net after-tax cash generated fully covers the liquidity gap we've discussed for so long on these calls. It's over; it's behind us. We're not finished, though. There’s another $7 billion of discussions happening right now, and this trend will continue. The demand isn't a one-time event. So that's the key difference. There's more cash in the deal than you’ve outlined, and there's more to come.

And additionally, it's not one deal. The $5 billion represents multiple customers, and each contract is very different. I think that's important to stress.

Thank you. I would like to follow up on that, Chris, if I may. To clarify, if most of the cash is expected to come in over the next three to four years, and it will also be going out in that same timeframe, then we are left with a small portion of the $5 billion that will be realized over the next 20 years. Does that mean there is a net zero effect, and then there is this additional income? How does this not align with what was stated in the press release?

I'm not quite following your question; we can discuss it after the call. The net amount is important and fully addresses the liquidity gap that you and others have predicted for the upcoming years. That issue is now resolved. You're correct that the renewable aspect will play out over a much longer period. However, this cash will enable us to fund our transformation, reduce our debt, and begin restructuring it. This is just with the initial set of deals that amounts to $5 billion, and more deals are on the way.

In my final follow-up, you mentioned in the press release that most of the cash is expected within the next three to four years, with a similarly sized amount of disbursements. This indicates that the capital expenditures related to the deal are less than what I would calculate by adding the deficit to the capital expenditures needed to secure these deals, which brings us to the breakeven point you discussed regarding liquidity.

That's right. So said another way, David, the cash contribution, the $5 billion, less the OpEx to support it, less the CapEx to support it, leaves us with an amount of cash. We pay tax on that cash. The after-tax impact of that fully funds the liquidity gap that we have modeled over the next few years, from these first kind of deals.

Okay. Thank you, Chris.

Operator, next question please.

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I was curious if you could provide some insight on the diversity of customers within the $5 billion of closed deals. Are there a few large hyperscale customers, or is it a broader range that includes corporate clients? Additionally, could you give us a similar perspective on the additional $7 billion you are currently pursuing?

The first $5 billion represents the initial tranche I mentioned, which includes hyperscalers, social platforms, and major technology companies in the cloud sector. As these companies build and train their AI models, they are realizing that current networks are inadequate for the growth they're experiencing. Consequently, they are expanding their data centers to meet their computing needs. This situation creates demands for us to help them transition effectively and ensure they maintain connectivity to the main Internet highways to serve their customers. The second tranche is just beginning, focusing on enterprises that are utilizing AI models. We are also among these enterprises, applying AI to transform our business through partnerships aimed at reducing costs, enhancing efficiency, and providing more intelligent services. The leading enterprises in this area primarily belong to the healthcare, retail, and financial services sectors. Their approach may not involve a fully custom private network but rather a combination of fiber and advanced services to significantly boost bandwidth and performance requirements.

Thanks. Regarding the network build-out, I recall you mentioned at your Analyst Day last year that you had 6 million inner city fiber route miles in your network and were planning to double that, which aligns with your earlier announcements. With the pre-funding and revenue associated with these deals, are you simply accelerating the build-out you had already planned, or is there any change to the profile or details of that build plan?

I find it challenging to identify the starting point of your question. However, I can share that we are enhancing connectivity in both urban centers and long-haul networks. This involves introducing new routes and expanding fiber on current routes. Overall, we are seeing a doubling of capacity in metro areas and a substantial growth in long-haul connectivity.

I would just add to that, the fiber that we put in the ground already and the fiber that we're adding today supports 400 gig waves. Over the next two years, that will scale to 800 and 1.6 terabytes. So the fiber that's going in the ground has enormous expandability. I don't think, at least I'm not aware of anyone else who's investing at that rate to meet the needs of customers.

Thank you very much.

Next question please.

Thank you for the question. To follow up on David's inquiry, could you clarify how the recurring revenue aspect relates to the significant transactions you're undertaking? How should we view these deals as a catalyst for growth in the growth segment? I assume these are primarily large enterprise transactions at this time. Additionally, although I feel a bit out of place asking about mass markets, you've seen impressive net additions in that sector this quarter. There has been a noticeable acceleration over the past two quarters. Could you provide some insight into what is fueling that growth? Also, could you elaborate on your strategy regarding ARPU? It appears to be lower than that of your competitors, which I assume is a strategic choice aimed at increasing market penetration. Is there a plan in place to close that gap in the future? Thank you.

Yes. There's a lot in there. I'll try to remember. As it relates to the PCF deals, we did say in the video that once you get to scale, and again, as David pointed out, it's anywhere between that three and five-year window. In some cases, not all, customers will ask us to run the networks; we will also provide space and power. So again, if you're powering a signal from San Francisco to New York, along the way, you're going to need huts where you can put rats; you can put the equipment that powers those signals. We said that on average, think about that as roughly 10% of the total contract value. That revenue and cash will be earned in the year the services are provided. I think that's a good broad guideline. As it relates to mass markets, yes, I could not be more proud of the team. They're killing it. There's an intense focus on driving marketing execution and really focus on both enablement and penetration. They kept the enablement machine chugging along, but we're super pleased with the growth in penetration. They're executing flawlessly right now. On ARPU, that's part of the strategy, yes. I mean, we're not trying to over or under-price. In fact, we have raised prices where we see the opportunity to do so, and we'll continue to do that. But we're pleased with the way everything is working in combination: ARPU, penetration, et cetera. So more to come.

Thanks, guys.

Next question, please.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. First, Chris, the comments you've made around the cash contribution margins associated with these deals seem to apply mostly to the $5 billion in signed deals. As we think about future deals, like the $7 billion you have in negotiation, would you expect those to have more favorable cash economics by leveraging some of the fiber being put in the ground for these earlier deals, or should they be kind of in the same ballpark?

Yes. I believe the guidance we provided is generally solid. However, it's difficult to draw definitive conclusions at this stage. We have made specific decisions to invest incrementally in routes where we currently have somewhat less capacity, which may benefit us in the future. We still do not fully understand the complete demand from our customers, which might necessitate additional actions that we haven't taken yet. Given the scale of the deals and their complexity, it's challenging to provide a definitive answer right now. Still, I think the guidance we offered serves as a good framework for consideration.

Okay. So not trying to get too far ahead of signed deals in terms of capital commitments and whatnot?

We will continue to invest in our network, as we have for many years, seeing it as a fundamental responsibility. When it comes to significant capital expenditures, we will approach that cautiously. This is not a gamble. If we identify a route with expected future demand and are already pulling fiber, we may extend our efforts there. Conversely, if there is already substantial capacity on a route, we will not expand. Our analysis is done route by route and mile by mile, and the team's modeling is quite impressive. This expertise is essential, and I believe it's one of the reasons customers choose Lumen, alongside the digital services we provide.

Okay. Okay. And then Chris, you quickly alluded to it in your prepared remarks, but I was hoping you could expand a bit on how you're thinking about cannibalization risk, whether current revenue or revenue that you otherwise might have generated. So for example, if you're selling someone dark fiber, I'm guessing you're not selling them waves on that route going forward?

Private connectivity fabric encompasses a range of services, from dark fiber to wave to IP. It’s tailored to fit your network needs. The initial agreements are primarily focused on large infrastructure and dark fiber projects, with some additional elements included. Over time, I anticipate this mix will continue to change. Ultimately, it depends on the customer’s requirements and their desired outcomes, which may mean we already have some fiber installed or need to install more.

I'd also like to add as a person coming from the tech world into telecom, there's this proclivity to worry about cannibalization instead of the evolution of the portfolio. I think that we got to a place of being quite overbuilt. As I look at the demand for these services and our strategy moving forward, we are going to prioritize penetration of our assets to deliver return to our shareholders. I think that's going to be very accretive long term.

Yes. This is not to be very clear. We haven't even talked about cannibalization. This isn't cannibalization of legacy at all. This is about net new and where we're going. This is why we see the upside that we see in our ability to drive returns for shareholders.

Next question please.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. We're all trying to size the total addressable market of AI, and you did a good job articulating those three phases. Maybe we'll start just with that first phase and all these deals are more dark fiber, as Christ said. I think the addressable market would be how many new data centers are they creating? We were talking a stab at it earlier this week in some reports. Really the better way of asking you guys how many new data centers are you feeding roughly $4 billion to $5 billion of deals? Is it like 10? Is it 30? I'm just trying to get a sense of that, and it helps us with our scope? Thanks.

I mean, we're not tracking that really. What we're tracking is across the group of technology companies that we're speaking to, which is at this point in the dozens, what do their needs look like? What are the synergies between the requests that we can drive economies of scale, and how can we drive to closure as fast as possible so we can group them in those ways by route, and by how operationally we can deliver upon these. The one thing we do look at when we model it out is where is the power? Data centers need power, space, cooling and fiber. I think the energy piece of the equation is where can you build a data center that you can deliver a green footprint because there's also that piece of it as well, and so it's pretty complex.

Next question please.

Great. Thank you. Maybe you can give us a little more color within this sort of $5 billion group. Can you give us an idea of the largest deal as a percentage of revenue? And then as it relates to the $5 billion in bookings here, what's an average annual bookings? How much is it up this year, including the PCF deals?

Yes, regarding your question about the largest deal, I can't disclose specific customer information as it would lead to speculation about their identity, which wouldn't be fair to them. It's also sensitive information for us, so we won't provide that. As for the bookings, I want to clarify if you are asking how our scaling relates to what we are currently selling. Is that your question?

It seems like you've achieved $5 billion in sales, which appears to be a bookings figure rather than a revenue amount reflected in the income statement. I'm trying to understand the potential increase in bookings for 2024 compared to 2023, taking into account the impact of the PCF deal.

Yes, I would say from a modeling standpoint, I would think about that as largely all incremental. We always sell dark fiber. I think the dark fiber run rate I'd have to go back and check because I don't know off the top of my head, but excluding these deals, dark fiber is obviously in the grow bucket, and we continue to grow that segment. Yes, we had the state of California in the fall that we mentioned, right, so that was a big deal. Again, we've done those in the past, and we'll do other deals like that going forward. This shift that we're seeing right now, which, quite frankly, I don't think comes as a surprise, right? There's been so much research and communication around the amount of investment required to support AI. Everybody forgot about the fact that the data doesn't originate in the data center and stay in the data center, right? It's got to get in; it's got to get out. So what we're really seeing is that now finally being realized, and I'd say that's largely incremental.

Okay. And one quick thing. Can you clarify the split and the increase in free cash flow between the asset sale and the upfront cash?

The asset sale was, I think, after tax, $190 million.

Okay. Thank you.

Next question, please.

Appreciate you taking the questions. Thank you. So you talked about getting back to EBITDA growth in 2026 after a step down next year. How should we think about the visibility of getting back to revenue growth, given the trajectory of bookings you've had? And it sounds like these PCF deals since they'll be amortized over a very long contract duration. They'll certainly help revenues, but I don't know if there are enough to really get you back to revenue growth by 2026 as well? If you could kind of talk through the moving parts there? Thanks.

Yes, I want to be cautious about providing specifics on our guidance. As we've mentioned, revenue will naturally lag behind the EBITDA recovery because we are focusing on significant cost reductions as we address ongoing issues. Moving from four networks to one is a part of that strategy. Currently, we believe the revenue will lag by at least a year, and I still think that assessment is accurate. However, I want to clarify my previous comments regarding the outlook for 2025 and 2026. It's important to note that this does not include the ongoing discussions concerning the $7 billion, which we will not consider until it is finalized because, similar to the initial set of deals, there are uncertainties regarding what is necessary to deliver them and the timing involved.

Yes, I understand. I have a follow-up question. Regarding the new data center deals that you’ve announced and those in your pipeline, you've linked them to the intercity fiber investments where you plan to double your fiber capacity in the coming years. We've noticed a trend of data center deals moving to more rural areas due to power limitations in many markets. Can you discuss the breakdown between middle mile, long-haul fiber and metro fiber in your pipeline to support these deals, considering that data centers are increasingly being located in more remote areas based on current trends? Thank you.

What I'll say is this: our network, one of the reasons why it's so attractive. And by the way, when I say network, it's fiber, and in some cases, it's conduit. It's this vision that was built 25 years ago. Now because of the advances in fiber technology, we have the ability to monetize it. It's both; it's both of those things. I would say the strength of both the inner city and the metro that customers, broadly speaking, are wanting to access. As we continue to invest in things like waves, it will be to deliver against both of those. Wave customers want two things: they want to get where they want to get and they want to get there quickly. I don't know if anyone else in the space who is investing the kind of money that we are to make sure that happens.

Next question please.

To wrap, it's an exciting time for Lumen as AI charts the course for our pivoted growth, and our future is very, very bright. Thanks for joining today. We look forward to meeting you at the upcoming conferences and updating you on the significant progress we're making in transforming our company. Have a great night.

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