Earnings Call Transcript - TMUS Q4 2020

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon. After the opening remarks, we will open the call for questions. I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Jud Henry, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations for T-Mobile U.S. Please proceed, sir.

Jud Henry, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Welcome to T-Mobile's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. On the call today are Mike Sievert, our President and CEO; Peter Osvaldik, our CFO; Neville Ray, our President of Technology; Matt Staneff, our Chief Marketing Officer, as well as other members of the senior leadership team. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. We provide a comprehensive list of risk factors in our SEC filings, which I encourage you to review. Our earnings release, investor tax book, and other documents related to our Q4 and full year 2020 results, as well as reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results, we discuss on this call, can be found on the quarterly results section of the Investor Relations website. Please note that we expect to file our annual report on Form 10-K later this month, final completion of our first year-end audit following our merger with Sprint. Results prior to the second quarter earnings materials represent the historical results of standalone T-Mobile. Prior to our merger with Sprint, I will also note that we will not comment directly or indirectly on the SEC's ongoing C-band auction, C-band spectrum or the post-auction market structure. Likewise, we look forward to having a great discussion with you around our merger synergies and future business trends at our upcoming Analyst Day, and we focus today's Q&A on our 2020 results and guidance for 2021. With that, let me turn it over to Mike.

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

Thanks Jud. Hi, everybody. We are coming to you live from our Bellevue, Washington offices today, and we have some amazing results to cover, and we're going to jump right in. I did plan this call to be a little bit shorter than usual to respect your time, mindful that we're going to be seeing you for a much more in-depth discussion at our Analyst Day coming up just next month. Our whole team is really looking forward to being with you. But today, we are so excited to share our Q4 and full year 2020 results. With results like these, I never get tired of hosting these calls and talking about our business because as it turns out, 2020 was T-Mobile's best year ever across our major customer and financial metrics, not just because we're bigger now after our merger but because of how our team delivered, and we kept up this year with a very strong Q4, beating expectations and showing that we have momentum on our side. Our business is well positioned for success in 2021 and more importantly beyond. From network to synergies to operations and new investment areas, T-Mobile showed again this quarter that we're positioned to win. Those of you that follow us know that we are focused on three core ambitions. First, continuing to profitably outgrow the competition. Second, delivering bigger than expected merger synergies, faster than anticipated to drive scale and enterprise value. And third, making the decisions and investments to drive the long-term growth and the exciting cash generation potential of this company. As you look at our full year and Q4 results, it's clear that we're doing exactly that. The thesis for our company has never been more clear. We're very rapidly leaping ahead of the pack on network, with the best assets, the best team, and the most loved brand in our space. If we play our cards right, T-Mobile is positioned to stay ahead in the 5G race for years to come. This quarter showcased a few key points that are important to understand when you look at T-Mobile and when you look at the whole competitive landscape. First, we delivered the highest postpaid customer growth in our history in 2020, finishing on top of the pack again in Q4 while delivering strong service revenue, EBITDA, and cash flow. Look across the major players in this industry, and you'll note that only T-Mobile delivered significant growth in customers and profitability. Second point, T-Mobile delivered the industry's best churn on our flagship T-Mobile brand, and we did it by delivering the best-in-class experiences across network, value, and customer service. Just let that sink in for a second—the best churn in the industry. Although we don't normally report on T-Mobile brand specific churn, I did want to make that point clear. T-Mobile went from worst to first on churn with our winning formula, and that formula is only getting better as we pull away from the pack on 5G and more customers begin to care about that. Here’s the point: we know how to apply that same formula to our much higher churning Sprint branded customers, creating a big potential tailwind on future performance once this integration is substantially complete. Third key point, our growth and profitability are fueled by the rapid unlocking of synergies, which we are achieving faster than expected, as today's numbers made very clear. Finally, these synergies have helped us deliver the nation's fastest, biggest, and most available 5G network, which is going to inform the competitive landscape for years to come. So let's dive into these just a little bit. As you saw in January, when we shared our early customer results, we ended 2020 as the clear growth leader in wireless, profitably taking share again, despite all the complexities of our merger. In fact, we delivered our highest ever total postpaid net adds of 5.5 million, and we grew our postpaid phone base by an estimated 2.2 million—an industry best. We did all that and still delivered strong financials building upon our improved scale from the merger, with over $50 billion in service revenue growing year-over-year, when our peers were relatively flat, and growing to $24.6 billion of adjusted EBITDA. In a quarter when Verizon sacrificed growth for profitability and AT&T sacrificed profit growth for customer growth, only T-Mobile delivered customer growth and profitability growth, beating consensus on both. With our guidance that Peter will share in a moment, it looks like only T-Mobile is expected to deliver both again in meaningful ways this year. Churn, as I mentioned, we also didn't miss a beat on churn. Our total postpaid phone churn across all brands was essentially flat year-over-year for both the full year and the fourth quarter compared to standalone T-Mobile a year ago. This includes the legacy Sprint customers that were churning at over 2% this time a year ago in Q4. Postpaid phone churn for our branded T-Mobile base was the lowest of all national carriers, and a company record low for Q4—a reflection of genuine customer loyalty that's earned by giving customers the best network and the best value with great customer experiences, something that the Un-carrier is truly famous for. As we continue to integrate, we're bringing more of that same T-Mobile experience directly to our Sprint customers. As we saw in Q4, others may try to buy customer loyalty because they see what we see—we're pulling ahead of the pack on network, and we're about to take all their customers. Unfortunately, their results show that it's painfully expensive and ultimately just a band-aid to mask the real drivers of why customers eventually leave. The fact is, there are no shortcuts to creating genuine loyalty and sustainably low churn, and I'm confident we'll see all of this play out down the road. While we're talking about great customer experiences, just today, J.D. Power recognized T-Mobile for the Best Customer Care in wireless for the 21st time and the 7th time in a row. This means we've earned more top honors than any other wireless provider in the history of their study. As you've heard me say before, T-Mobile now has the scale and the resources to do something that’s never truly been done before—offer customers the best value and the best network. Perceived network quality was the moat around the Verizon and AT&T castles that allowed them to overcharge customers for years. But T-Mobile is freeing customers across the country from having to compromise. This evolution creates a path to penetrate further into prime customers and businesses that require the highest quality network experience and it creates compelling reasons for them to adopt more premium plans. One of the reasons all of this works is that only T-Mobile is operating in a synergy backed model, which allows us to simultaneously deliver customer and profit growth while also investing big in the business. Let me say this: our national capital plan may be ambitious, but it's known, and it's supported by our massive synergies. We'll talk about this more next month, I expect. Let's talk about those synergies for a minute. We delivered $1.3 billion in run-rate synergies in 2020. That's more than we guided last quarter and well ahead of our plan. This progress includes the start of our customer migration work, something that's key to unlocking synergies, and we already have over 4 million Sprint customers moved over to the T-Mobile network. I also told you that we expected synergies in 2021 to be more than double what they were in 2020. While we still expect it to double over time, we now expect to realize $2.7 billion to $3.0 billion in run-rate synergies in 2021. These synergies allow us to make smart investments in the future. That starts with the network. Only T-Mobile offers the fastest, biggest, and most available 5G network in America. The country has never seen anything like this network build. We're tracking ahead of schedule and the results are clearly beginning to differentiate—not just on 5G but on network performance overall. To have the best network, you have to win across both coverage and capacity. T-Mobile's extended range 5G now delivers 5G coverage across 1.6 million square miles reaching 280 million people, offering nearly 2.5 times more geographic coverage than AT&T and nearly four times that of Verizon's so-called nationwide 5G. We're also expanding our Ultra Capacity 5G at an unprecedented pace. This is where you see truly game-changing speeds and capabilities enabled by the bigger channels of spectrum found in mid-band and millimeter wave. We brought Ultra Capacity 5G to 106 million people last year, 50 times more than Verizon's Ultra Wideband, just crushing our goals. Now we're on to our next audacious goal to cover 200 million people nationwide by the end of this year. For a number of reasons, getting to 200 million is a much taller challenge, but we plan to create the biggest network factory this country has ever seen. And we're up to the test. This is important—we're now running a huge deployment machine at pace with a proven rollout model, something that takes a long time to ramp, a process we started way back in early 2018. I expect we'll be talking more about this advantage next month also. Third parties are seeing the results. Just last week, new independent data from Open Signal was released, based on billions of measurements from real customers, proving T-Mobile customers get the fastest 5G download speeds, fastest 5G upload speeds, and a 5G signal more often than anyone else. Of course, you'll see these advantages in our marketing and messaging, including with our latest Super Bowl message this weekend. Actually, I think the perception battle is the biggest one. Our team operates and executes, and our goal is to not miss opportunities. For example, we're increasing our specialized sales force and building tailored products for large enterprise and government—we see room to run here. We've competed mostly on price in the past if we're honest. Now we have a premium product that's increasingly the catalyst for our wins. On the consumer side, we're planning to add significantly more points of distribution and thousands of sales and service agents to reach beyond urban areas where we have historically had our big success. We have a multi-year expansion plan to bring real competition and quality service to 50 million U.S. households in smaller markets where our market share is currently only half of what our national market share is. This is a huge opportunity to bring our Un-carrier story to more of America. We'll soon roll out our 5G home broadband offerings to bring critical connectivity to rural parts of this country and actual competition to the cable operator. All of these opportunities are built on our game-changing Ultra Capacity 5G that we are rapidly expanding across the country, further distancing ourselves from the competition every day. These are just a few things to whet your appetite. We'll dive deeper into each of these opportunities next month when you can hear directly from the leaders who are driving these growth areas. Hopefully, you get the idea that this team believes T-Mobile is well-positioned. We will expand our front in Un-carrier strategy and capitalize on our emerging network leadership, our customer-loving brand, and our new scale as we tackle the challenges and opportunities that are ahead. As I said earlier, this wasn't just another great year for T-Mobile. It was our best year yet. We delivered the highest postpaid customer growth in our history, while simultaneously delivering strong revenue, EBITDA, and cash flow growth. Only T-Mobile delivered significant growth in customers and profitability, fueled by the rapid and faster than expected unlocking of synergies. Only T-Mobile can say that we offer the nation's fastest, biggest, and most available 5G network. And we did all this while navigating a pandemic that made us rethink how to best serve our customers and protect our employees—in only the first nine months after the merger. Great work by an amazing team. And you know what? We're just getting started. So, let me turn it over to Peter to take us through the financials and our guidance. Peter, take it away.

Peter Osvaldik, CFO

Thanks, Mike. As you can tell we're fired up, we finished the year with exceptionally strong results and there is no doubt we're entering 2021 with great momentum. After writing our second half guidance on our Q3 earnings call, we executed on our winning playbook and beat expectations yet again in Q4, so let's jump right in. Service revenues grew to $14.2 billion driven primarily by our continued growth in postpaid customers. Cost of services of $3.8 billion reflects the accelerated volume of site uprights to support the rapid deployment of our 5G network, as well as over $500 million in merger-related costs as we continue our network integration. SG&A expenses of $4.8 billion included over $150 million in merger-related costs as we advanced our integration efforts and included benefits from increased synergy realization. Net income of $750 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.60 were both better than consensus expectations and included merger-related costs of $506 million or $0.40 per share in Q4 on an after-tax basis. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to over $6.7 billion ahead of our guidance and consensus expectations and included lease revenues of $1.2 billion. Our pretax merger-related costs, which are excluded from adjusted EBITDA, were $686 million. Net cash provided by operating activities totaled $3.5 billion driven by our strong operating performance while cash purchases of property and equipment, including satellite interest, amounted to $3.8 billion as we accelerated the build-out of our nationwide 5G network. Free cash flow, which was fully burdened by merger-related costs of $583 million, amounted to $476 million—an increase over Q3 even while funding our accelerated network investments. Postpaid ARPA, or average revenue per account, amounted to $133.08 while postpaid phone ARPU was $47.86 as we continue to grow the number of customers per account, and ARPU was in line with our Q2 ARPU as we had previously guided. A big shout out to our teams for great execution all around to deliver strong results in a very challenging year. Okay, let's talk about how this momentum carries into 2021, which is a peak investment year from an OpEx and EBITDA perspective while simultaneously delivering on our promise of continued profitable growth. We expect total postpaid net additions to be between 4.0 million and 4.7 million reflecting our continued focus on profitable growth despite the ongoing COVID-19 impact on the switching environment. Going forward, we will focus our guidance and discussion of results on core adjusted EBITDA for improved clarity and transparency, given that we have deemphasized leasing as part of our value proposition. We expect core adjusted EBITDA in 2021 to be between $22.6 billion and $23.1 billion. This is based on adjusted EBITDA that is expected to be in the range of $26.5 billion to $27.0 billion and includes leasing revenues of $3.8 billion to $4.0 billion. A strong year-over-year increase in core adjusted EBITDA reflects the expected growth in customers and service revenue as well as an expected increase in synergies, partially offset by our investments to unlock profitable growth factors and an expectation of decreased switching activity driving higher customer acquisition expenses compared to 2020. Core adjusted EBITDA for 2021 also includes the full-year impact of the non-cash expense from our master lease agreement with American Tower. We call this the straight-line accounting impact resulting from the long-term nature of the agreement, which generates cash savings from day one while allowing for full flexibility for network deployments. Merger-related costs not included in adjusted or core adjusted EBITDA are expected to be between $2.5 billion and $3.0 billion before taxes, primarily driven by network activities. Cash purchases of property and equipment, including capitalized interest, are expected to be between $11.7 billion and $12.0 billion as we continue the robust pace of our 5G deployment and network integration, while also realizing procurement savings from our increased scale, enabling our investment dollars to go further. Net cash provided by operating activities, including payments for merger-related costs, is expected to be in the range of $13.0 billion to $13.5 billion. Importantly, this figure excludes proceeds related to the beneficial interest in securitization transactions, which is expected to be approximately $3.7 billion to $3.9 billion and as classified and investing activities for accounting purposes. Together, this results in expected free cash flow, including payments for merger-related costs to be in the range of $4.9 billion to $5.4 billion, reflecting its growth in the strong cash flow generation capabilities of this business, even with higher levels of investments. This does not assume any material net cash inflows from securitization. We also expect our full-year effective tax rate to be between 24% and 26%. Lastly, we delivered $1.3 billion in synergies in 2020 and we should expect synergies in 2021 to be between $2.7 billion and $3.0 billion. Breaking down 2020, we realized approximately $700 million in network synergies primarily from avoided new site builds and early decommissioning. At the same time, we realized about $600 million from streamlined marketing efforts under one flagship brand, expedited retail rationalization, and moved quickly to evolve our organizational structure. As we look to 2021, synergies are likely to be fairly evenly split between network-related and SG&A-related savings, with roughly two-thirds coming from cost reductions and roughly one-third from avoided costs that are not reflected in run rate, P&L trends, similar to 2020. Altogether, we expect 2021 to be another year of profitable growth and free cash flow expansion while continuing to invest in our network and the business to unlock significant expansion and future free cash flow that is so exciting. I must mention the ongoing work done to significantly improve our capital structure and strengthen the balance sheet. Last month, we issued $3 billion of unsecured notes that set a record low yields for five-year, eight year and 10-year tranches in the high yield market, including issuing 10-year secured notes below 3%. We will provide updated color around synergies, mid- and long-term guidance, as well as a strategic overview of the business at our Analyst Day next month. We can't wait to have a great discussion. Before we open it up for questions about our 2020 results and our 2021 guidance, just a reminder that we're currently in a quiet period for Auction 107 and will therefore not make any comments related to that. All right, let's get to your questions. You can ask questions via phone or via Twitter. Operator, first question please?

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question will come from Philip Cusick with JP Morgan.

Philip Cusick, Analyst

Hey guys, thanks a lot. One for Mike, one for Pete. Mike, can you talk about your customer strategy this year, I see aggressive two-year free line offers in the market and that should help units. How should we think about that going after accounts as well? And then second for Pete. Maybe dig into the EBITDA guide with double the synergies and a similar mix of cost reductions year-over-year versus avoidance. I think people wonder why it can't be better. Thank you.

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

Hey Phil, thanks. You were a little muddled there. I think the first part of your question was about the competitive environment and customer growth and account growth. We really like what we see. We probably aren't surprised to hear that, because our model has proven over and over again to be flexible. In times when there's incredibly intense competitive pressure, we find a way. And at times when there's a more muted switching environment, we find a way. That's what we're doing. That's what you see in the very ambitious guidance that we put in front of people today, with all the normal and usual caveats. So, we're really excited. What we expect to see will be the 2021 year that hopefully transitions us back out by the end, some of the dynamics that have dominated the competitive landscape in 2020 due to COVID-19, muted switching, challenged payment environments, recessionary circumstances, etc. We'll have to see how it goes. But the thing you should take confidence in is that our plan is nimble and flexible. We're able to call the audibles as we see them. As you saw with three quarters of very, very strong performance that we just capped off since the pandemic began. Now I think you were going to turn to Peter as well for the second piece. I'll switch over to Peter.

Peter Osvaldik, CFO

Yeah, thank you, Mike. Phil, you were a little muffled there. I think you were asking about EBITDA, as well as synergy capture, and whether both could be better, is that hopefully that's right. So, let's start with synergy. We're targeting $2.7 billion to $3.0 billion. Remember, just nine months ago is when we closed this merger, and to already be delivering much faster than we anticipated $1.3 billion in 2020 alone and the guidance of $2.7 billion to $3.0 billion in 2021 shows the rapid pace of what's happening here. It's a multi-phased approach. The vast majority of the synergies still come from the network and decommissioning the cell sites, some of the associated backhaul leases, etc. The first step in that is to build the anchor network. You see the rapid pace that Neville and his team are just dominating the delivery, the ramp up of the machine that's going to flow all the way through 2021. I've got to tell you, I'm fundamentally extremely excited about the $2.7 billion to $3.0 billion in synergies for 2021 as well as the rapid pace on the network piece, which really sets us up for the back end there. In regards to EBITDA, again, let me give you a little more color. First, as you know, we were the only major carrier to show meaningful growth when comparing 2020 to pro forma 2019. Our '21 guide highlights our commitment to the three priorities of profitably acquiring the competition, unlocking synergies bigger and faster, and investing in our business to set us up for long-term growth and free cash flow generation. A couple of things that we want to highlight when thinking about 2020 and 2021. First, as you know, 2020 saw slightly over $500 million of COVID-related costs, which were excluded from adjusted EBITDA, with the majority of those now being part of the run rate of the business. 2021 also has a higher non-cash straight-line lease expense associated with that agreement with American Tower—an agreement that has significant positive NPV cash savings from day one and operational flexibility for Neville and his team to continue the rapid pace that he’s deployed. We also anticipate, as Mike said, a gradual return to higher switching in 2021. That comes with higher upfront sales expenses, of course, as the share taker in the industry, but also sets us up for that customer lifetime value benefit to the enterprise value of this business. We're growing core EBITDA year-over-year while we make investments in 2021 to enable the long-term success of the company. You heard about it from the network perspective, and you heard Mike talk about an enterprise as well as distribution expansion to capitalize on the network. So, if you consider all of those factors, it makes the guided core adjusted EBITDA that much more compelling, highlights the success of a profitable growth and synergy-backed model we are executing on, which is also beginning to deliver on the free cash flow unlock promise of the business, as you can see from that element of our guidance. Hopefully, I captured all your questions and got that right.

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

That's a new strategy. If you come in muddled and we can't hear you, we just start talking about whatever we want to say.

Philip Cusick, Analyst

Thanks for all that. All right.

Operator, Operator

Certainly. Our next question comes from John Hodulik with UBS.

John Hodulik, Analyst

Great. Thanks. Hopefully you guys can hear me better than before. Hey. I guess first follow-up, any way you can sort of size each one of those categories that Peter gave? So, call it the $500 million for the COVID cost. Just give us some sort of relative important spend on each one of those items, I think will help a lot. And maybe Matt you can talk about how it sets you guys up for maybe better growth in '22? And what we can expect in terms of benefits from that? And then secondly, separate questions. Just can you talk a little bit about the competitive environment and what you expect in '21, especially in the last week we heard Comcast talk about moving into the wireless market. Just how do you expect to see the competitive markets evolve as we go through '21?

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

That sounds great. I'm going to get Peter in a minute to second to unpack that. So, Peter, think about that EBITDA question and I'm going to go straight to Matt there because I think, John, this competitive environment is something we really should double click into. There are some things to say about Sprint churn as a tailwind, there's also some things to say about looking at the totality of our competitive environment across Verizon and AT&T. So, Matt, why don't you pick up here?

Matt Staneff, Chief Marketing Officer

Yeah, I'll take that. Thanks Mike and John. It's interesting you asked about 2021. I think the important thing to do is go back a year and look at the competitive environment a year ago in Q4. You had a competitive environment where one competitor was taking a lot of nets, and one competitor was taking not that many nets. Fast forward to a year in Q4, and you saw them flipped. But in totality, the number of nets being produced in the competitive environment is more or less the same. What we anticipated is a robust competitive environment that is evolving and changing, with certain carriers taking more or less share, and that's continuing to lead growth through that as we navigate the flexible model to really lead it. The other piece of the question when you look at where we've guided in '21, the next phase of our integration with Sprint is really churn. It's a churn story. We've yet to start to get to work to really do what we did on the T-Mobile branded business, going from worst to first on churn with our Sprint business. That's in front of us. We’ve got something taken care of with the brand transition, stores and sales and gross adds, and we're starting to get into the space followed by the work on the network—delivering the entire value proposition in the Sprint base—and so we see that as we start to move forward. It's not going to happen overnight, so we're really going to get to work, and I feel great about our recipe to deliver great churn into this front base. So that's where you're going to see some of that as well.

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

It's really important to hear that message. People have asked, what's going on? Isn't somebody moving? Isn't AT&T producing more nets now? What you just heard from Matt is that the totality of phone net adds from AT&T and Verizon was the same this past Q4 as the prior year. Those two tend to go back and forth. At any given quarter, there are just dynamics. AT&T is putting in a surprising amount of money into some short-term customer loyalty things—if you want to call them that—to be generous. Verizon on the other hand, they didn't spend as much and therefore didn't have the same kind of nets. We don't know what they are doing. I don't know where that money went. It wasn't being put into net adds to the same extent as before—they beat on earnings, but missed on net. This doesn't change our game plan at all. Our game plan is to continue driving genuine loyalty, as you see in our T-Mobile brand being the lowest churning brand in the industry and then reapply that same playbook on the Sprint customers. This is a really exciting tailwind for our business. Before we move on, I know you asked a question about EBITDA from Peter, so let's switch over to him.

Peter Osvaldik, CFO

Yeah, thanks John. I'm not going to be able to guide to every one of those elements quantitatively, but we did highlight a couple of them. Again, the $500 million of COVID-related costs, the vast majority of those are now run rate costs in the business. We talked a little bit about some incremental debt from the key premier connect the pledge in Q2 that was a very small component to lead, so the vast majority of those $500 million are run-rate costs in the business now. Regarding American Tower, I think we talked about at least a couple hundred million drag from 2020 to 2021. It depends on how quickly and variability builds and what the priorities are there that could create some variability. But that’s how I think about the conceptual magnitude there. The other elements, the switching costs, the selling cost, as well as the investments depend on what the environment looks like in front of us, and of course what we do every quarter—what we do best is deliver profitable growth and meet or exceed our expectations that we put out, therefore you and we adjust, and that's what we're going to do here.

John Hodulik, Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

All right, let's go back to the phones, and then I'll ask my team here for one or two that if you feel like we need to hit will be widely appreciated to be heard by others on the call. I'll go to Twitter as well. So, take a look at those and see if you want to see one of those. Janice, I'll assign that to you if you want. Operator?

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Chaplin with New Street.

Jonathan Chaplin, Analyst

Thanks. One for Peter and one for Neville. For Peter, I'm wondering if you could characterize your approach to setting guidance and how it might be different from Braxton since this is our first guidance under the Osvaldik regime. I’m particularly interested in the net add guidance, which is about double the average guidance that you guys have set for net adds for the last five years. Did you seem to beat that by sort of 50% to 100%? Look at the net add guidance and think if this is a back-stream guide, the real number could be a little crazy. Then for Neville, are we still looking at 200 million pops covered by the end of the year with fast 5G on 2.5 gigahertz or does it look like things moved a little bit faster than expected in Q4 with CapEx deployment? Could you exceed that? Thanks.

Neville Ray, President of Technology

Let's start with Peter.

Peter Osvaldik, CFO

Well, let me tell you this, Jonathan. It actually isn't the first time you're hearing it. You heard me give guidance on Q3 as well as Q2, actually second half guidance and then updated that in Q3. Look where we came in—again, what our commitment always is, is to profitably outgrow the competition and deliver against what we put out there. I love how you're asking me about 4.0 million to 4.7 million postpaid net add guidance next year and getting excited about it. Because if you look at 2020, that guy did midpoint is over twice what AT&T did in total postpaid and almost three times what Verizon did. So that's the guidance. That's the excitement here. There are a couple of factors to play out in front of us, as we said. One of those is what is that return to in the switching environment? We obviously are still impacted by COVID. The question is, how fast does that come in? That will change the playbook for us, as we said. You saw us deliver in Q3; you saw us deliver in Q4. That’s our commitment in the future.

Neville Ray, President of Technology

So, let me pick up Jonathan. I love the question. Before we go to 200 million this year, just got to celebrate the 100 million that we secured in 2020—106 million people covered with Ultra Capacity mid-band 5G. To do a competitive comparison, it's about 50 times the Verizon high-capacity footprint, which is pretty stunning. It’s almost embarrassing when you think about it. It’s exciting that we have a huge lead. You're asking if we can get even further in front of our competition and do more than we said we would do in '21. Obviously, we’re going to push on every target, Jonathan. But I’ll tell you this: the most exciting thing for me in '20, which Mike referenced, is the fact that we built an incredible network machine in 2020. We have to build and upgrade a lot more sites in '21 to get to that 200 million covered people with Ultra Capacity. We have the machine, we have the resources, the supply chain, the commitments; we have the processes. This machine is moving at real pace. Getting to 200 million is going to be a huge lead against what our competition has talked about or said they can do. We’ll keep pushing on it, but I’m super excited to be able to sit here with high confidence and talk about delivering a nationwide high-capacity network in the coming 11 months on top of a coverage network, which just blows the competition away. Our extended range 5G capability gives us more coverage on 5G than AT&T and Verizon combined. You have to let that sink in a little bit to really understand the position that we’re in. We made incredible progress in 2020, but we’re just getting started on this thing.

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

I talked about this a little bit in my remarks, but I just want to underscore how remarkable the rate and pace that we’re operating at right now because it's a real competitive differentiator. This isn't something Neville and the team are, they're doing something that's never been done before operating at this scale. It was many, many thousands of sites that had to be touched and upgraded with advanced 5G technology to get us to 106 million, let alone the 280 million people that are covered by extended range 5G. Now that's moving to tens of thousands of sites in 2021. It's a massive undertaking. We started it way back in 2018, planning, citing, permitting, design, in order to create a contiguous leading network. It’s not something that can be created overnight, and as I said, it’s a real advantage. I think we're going to have an opportunity to talk a lot more about this. So, terrific! Let’s go back to the phones.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next phone question will come from Craig Moffett with MoffettNathanson.

Craig Moffett, Analyst

Two questions if I could. First Peter, I'm going to steal a little thunder probably from your Analyst Day. But as I think about longer-term margins, there are some differences between your business and say Verizon’s or AT&T’s in that you tend to lease more backhaul rather than own it. You have lower retail prices. How do you think about the long-term margin potential of the business relative to your peers? And then, Mike, I wonder if you could just update us a bit on your progress in the areas where you have traditionally under-indexed the business services market or business wireless market, and then rural markets? And where you've been growing? Can you give us some progress metrics in those areas?

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

Yeah, sounds good. You’re right, Craig, we'll double click into both of those at Analyst Day next month. I’ll give Peter a chance to respond if he wants to steal his own thunder from next month. We've said for a long time we see fantastic cash production from this model at the margin rates that we already communicated we aspire to. We don't have to achieve the margin rates that Verizon has. In fact, your question is premised on the idea that they’ll be able to hang on to that, and I don't know that that's the case either. I don't know where theirs is going. I know ours is going up. The cash production that we're able to produce in this business model with the margin rates that we've aspired to are just phenomenal and exciting, creating a very valuable enterprise. There are differences in our model, and one of them is the internal growth rate. When you think about our faster growth and the investments in present periods to get there, there will be differences between how we pursue our business plan versus theirs. It shows that we're more bullish because we have better assets and, therefore, are willing to invest in a longer tail and a better terminal value. That's going to be experienced in this five-year planning horizon as one of the big differences. But Peter, why don't we go to you and then Matt, I'll turn to you about how we're doing on things like prime and small-town rural businesses.

Peter Osvaldik, CFO

Well thanks, Mike. I don’t want to steal all my own thunder from Analyst Day because Craig, I want you to come and attend, so I can’t do that right this moment. Everything that Matt and Mike talked about earlier and what Mike just expressed now from a margin perspective, is exactly that. Our plan doesn’t predicated that we need to get through a Verizon-level margin, one could question whether they will be able to maintain it when you have the combination of the premium product in the form of our network and the premium value, how they’ll be able to justify that with their customers? That’s not what we’re here to do. We’re here to continue to profitably outgrow. There are some incremental costs in the short run that come with that, particularly on the sales side, as you accrue much higher terminal value for doing that. We talked about some of those structural differences, which are absolutely key, they come out in CapEx versus OpEx as you see it. That’s why it’s so important and exciting to think about what the ultimate free cash flow generation of this business is, which really takes out some of those differentials and focuses on the cash productivity. I’m really excited to highlight and update some of these figures for you next month. I’m looking forward to doing that.

Matt Staneff, Chief Marketing Officer

Yeah. Craig, that’s a great question. We’re going to dive deeper into it at Analyst Day, but just a couple of things: one is an overlooked part of our record results we had this year was success in business, in particular, in education and the public sector. One thing you should know about our business is that we are nimble and flexible and show up to solve needs when people have it. That's why we're able to do things through project in million—delivering solutions for kids to deal with the pandemic. That opened up a lot of doors, but today we're answering our call, in part because of the network perception is still lagging reality. But now we’re in the door proving how fast and agile we can be in serving businesses in the public sector. We are seeing great progress here. When you talk about rural, on the heels of what Neville built out with extended range 5G, one of the big things that’s going to be a paradigm shift this year is bringing the performance we’re seeing from the Ultra Capacity network to rural areas, as we move up market into prime customers who require the best of the best network. To date, we have not had that. We’ll get that very quickly on the heels of this build, so we see a lot of upside going forward in these areas.

Mike Sievert, President and CEO

Hopefully, Craig, that answers your question. Can you give us more insights on consumer versus business? Both are killing it. Our big opportunity in consumer right now is that ahead of us is small town rural—where I said, we have half our national market share. This is a huge swath of the country. A big, big potential tailwind there. In business, we posted double-digit growth, which shows we’re winning share. Everybody’s got a smartphone already, so when you have a business posting double-digit growth, it’s because you’re winning share. As I said in my remarks, we’re winning share not just as a price cut, please throw us a little piece so you can reply to your AT&T deal. We’re winning strategic accounts, the whole account, and we’re winning it based on our quality, which is a game changer. Very excited about the potential.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the T-Mobile U.S. fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. If you have any further questions, you may contact the Investor Relations or media departments. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a pleasant day.