Uniti Group Inc. Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call

Good morning, and welcome to today's conference call to discuss Uniti's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Results. My name is Gigi, and I will be your operator for today. Today's call is being recorded, and a webcast will be available on the company's Investor Relations website, investor.uniti.com, beginning today and will remain available for 365 days. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Participants on the call will have the opportunity to ask questions following the company's prepared comments. It is now my pleasure to introduce Bill DiTullio, Uniti's Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's conference call to discuss Uniti's fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. Speaking on the call today will be Kenny Gunderman, our CEO, and Paul Bullington, Uniti's CFO. Before we get started, I would like to quickly cover our Safe Harbor statement. Please note that today's remarks may contain forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about our 2025 outlook, expectations regarding the lease of our network, demand trends, business strategies, growth prospects, the benefits of the proposed transaction between Uniti and Windstream, including future financial and operating results of either company or the combined company, statements related to the expected timing of the completion of the transaction and combined company plans, and other statements that are not historical facts. Please also note that Uniti and Windstream, through the entity that will be the combined parent company following the merger, have filed a Form S-4 registration statement with the SEC, which was declared effective by the SEC on February 12, 2025, and includes a definitive proxy statement and prospectus that was mailed to Uniti stockholders on or about February 18, 2025, seeking their approval of the transaction-related proposals. Investors are urged to read the definitive proxy statement and prospectus as it contains important information about the transaction. You may find information on how to request these documents in the presentation that accompanies this call. Numerous factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. For more information on those factors, please see the section titled forward-looking statements in the accompanying presentation and the Risk Factors section of the filed Form S-4. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Kenny.

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. 2024 was the most consequential year in Uniti's history. We delivered on our promises and executed exceptionally well. The strategic and balance sheet moves we made during the year have future-proofed our business and positioned us to create real shareholder value. Our strategic recurring revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and consolidated bookings growth of approximately 5%, 8%, and 27%, respectively, not only underscore our strong execution but also the continued strength in the demand for mission-critical communications fiber. Our balance sheet and liquidity remain strong, and we are proud to be the first commercial fiber provider to access the ABS market with resounding success. We believe the ABS market will be a terrific value-accretive financing tool for us going forward. In addition, our current business plan is fully funded. In 2025, we expect Uniti will generate positive free cash flow. And, of course, we achieved our goal of positioning ourselves strategically to control our own destiny with our announced merger with Windstream. Our often misunderstood MLA relationship will be simplified, and with nine months of hindsight, the approximately five times EBITDA valuation paid looks increasingly attractive for our shareholders. The new Uniti will be extremely well-positioned to benefit from the increasing demand from generative AI and, of course, the convergence team driving strategic value for fiber to home. Priorities for 2025 will not change materially. We will continue to focus on best-in-class execution and disciplined top-line growth of mid-single digits and high single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth. As Paul will discuss later, we also expect to fully fund the business plan of new Uniti using ABS and other tools. Lastly, we will have a substantial focus on building new fiber, especially in the Connecticut footprint. For example, Windstream announced yesterday that they expect to roughly double the number of targeted homes passed with fiber for 2025 over 2024. As you might recall, when we announced our merger with Windstream, we guided to an initial target of approximately 2.9 million homes. By the end of 2025, we expect to reach 2 million homes, which is two years earlier than originally expected. Regarding the pending merger with Windstream, we received PUC approval from 16 of the 18 jurisdictions requiring them, including Washington, D.C., and the shareholder vote to approve the merger has been set for April 2. We encourage all shareholders to vote at the upcoming special meeting. Based on where things stand today, we remain on track to close the transaction in the second half of this year and are optimistic we could close as early as July. Moving to slide six, I could not be more pleased with our growth trajectory and strategy of being a pure-play fiber provider in Tier 2 and 3 markets. In the past several years, we have demonstrated predictable solid mid-single-digit revenue growth and accelerated EBITDA growth. As we have real leverage in the business with a heavy focus on the lease-up of our existing infrastructure, all the while achieving this growth, our capital intensity continues to come down. Slides seven and eight highlight that in order for capital intensity to come down, we need to continue showing steady predictable new sales. While we strive to grow bookings in correlation with our ever-expanding TAM, even with flat bookings and our industry-leading monthly churn of 0.2%, we are still able to achieve mid-single-digit top-line growth. In addition to steady bookings, capital intensity has continued to decline for other reasons. First, in 2018 and 2019, we undertook a heavy build cycle of new fiber largely in metro markets throughout the Southeast. Our capital intensity peaked at over 50%. However, we assured investors that once past that build phase, we began leasing up those assets with attractive incremental cash flow yields and that capital intensity would drop. We have delivered on that promise. Average paybacks on capital deployed have declined, and that theme should continue especially as we remain disciplined in our approach of targeting a 5% to 10% anchored cash flow yield with a lease-up strategy that is currently targeting 27% on a blended basis. As an aside, we expect to have a similar robust three to four-year build cycle at Kinetic, but will likewise see capital intensity decline materially after the build is complete. Finally, we expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future. As I mentioned earlier, we had another strong quarter of new bookings. We previously stated that 2024 was expected to be a down year for wireless. However, we actually ended the year flattish compared to 2023 and are encouraged by the activity we have seen so far in early 2025. Flat wireless bookings were more than offset, however, by demand from other carriers including fiber to home carriers. The number of bookings Uniti saw relating to fiber to home carriers increased threefold in 2023 versus 2022, and we saw further growth in 2024. As we previously mentioned, demand from hyperscalers continues to represent a meaningful part of bookings. While hyperscaler bookings were very small in 2023, in just a year's time, they now represent about 20% of our full-year bookings. We are confident this demand will continue. In fact, in addition to new deals, we are now seeing hyperscalers come back and lease more fiber from us on the same routes they leased from us originally. Despite the year and big activity, only two of our top twenty customers in 2024 were hyperscalers. This demonstrates that we have a well-diversified customer base and our business plan is not reliant on targeting hyperscalers or any one particular type of customer for that matter. Moving to slide nine, hyperscalers are spending approximately $300 billion annually, and a meaningful percentage of that is being spent on digital infrastructure. We estimate the digital infrastructure TAM today to be around $40 billion, with roughly $15 billion being spent on fiber and network investments. In five years, we see the TAM for both of these areas growing by three to five times, creating an attractive opportunity for Uniti. We also estimate that about 80% of the generative AI spend today is related to building large learning models for AI training purposes. We are pursuing and have won fiber infrastructure deals related to training, but only where the transactions strategically expand our network at attractive economics. Said differently, we are approaching hyperscaler deals during the learning phase as anchor deals with the expectation for material lease-up in the future. In fact, although it is still early, we are very pleased with the progress we have made to date as the combined yields of our hyperscaler deals inclusive of lease-up are already close to 20%. As I have said numerous times before, we are most excited about the future, and in a few years, it is expected to be approximately 80% of the TAM. During the inference phase, users of AI will need distributed low latency high bandwidth connectivity, and our network is well-positioned to benefit. During this phase, we expect to see increasing MRR associated with all high bandwidth users and continued lease-up on the builds we are undertaking during the learning phase. As mentioned earlier, we are already starting to see hyperscalers come back to us for additional fiber on initial bills. In short, Uniti is executing well on our core strategy of providing mission-critical fiber, and we are well-positioned for the future. With that, I'll turn the call over to Paul.

Thanks, Kenny. I'd like to begin by reviewing our fourth quarter performance followed by an overview of our 2025 outlook. Uniti had another year of strong performance in 2024. With our core recurring strategic fiber business growing approximately 5% while consolidated net success-based capital intensive. This all resulted in our full-year 2024 consolidated revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and AFFO being in line with our prior outlook. As I'll cover in more detail in just a bit, our 2025 outlook reflects the strong tailwinds we continue to see in our recurring business and partial redemption of the 10.5% secured notes. Finally, I'll end with additional commentary on our current balance sheet and capital structure. We've also provided Windstream's fourth quarter financial information in an 8-K filed with the SEC earlier this morning. Please turn to slide ten, and I'll start with comments on our fourth quarter. We reported consolidated revenues of $293 million, consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $239 million, AFFO attributed to common shareholders of $92 million, and AFFO per diluted common share of $0.35. Combined gross capital expenditures for both Uniti Fiber and Uniti Leasing were $24.3 million during the fourth quarter, which was offset by upfront customer payments totaling $23.6 million resulting in net success-based CapEx of only $0.7 million for the quarter. As I mentioned last quarter, there continued to be a number of encouraging trends in bookings that are driving this capital efficiency, including our continued focus on lease-up and a higher mix of hyperscaler deals that generally come with higher NRCs. At Uniti Leasing, we reported segment revenues of $222 million and adjusted EBITDA of $214 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 97% for the quarter. At Uniti Fiber, we reported revenues of $72 million and adjusted EBITDA of $31 million during the fourth quarter, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 43%. As I alluded to earlier, slide eleven shows that our 2024 results were in line with our original 2024 guidance range provided early last year. Reported AFFO per share was lower than our original guidance due to the incremental interest from the $300 million add-on to our secured notes that was completed back in May and was not contemplated in our original outlook for 2024. Turning to slide twelve. Our growth capital investment program continues to provide positive results for Uniti. And given our pending merger with Windstream, I wanted to highlight a key point, which I believe the market is underappreciating. Connecticut and Uniti have invested a substantial amount of capital in the network with almost $2.5 billion invested since 2015. These historical investments play a critical role in enabling Kinetic. We estimate that backhaul equates to roughly 20% of the total cost of building fiber to the home for others. Connecticut has previously absorbed much of this cost having already built fiber to roughly 95% of its DSAM nodes. Please turn to slide thirteen, and I'll now cover our 2025 guidance. Our 2025 outlook includes the estimated impact from the recent ABS finance. Our outlook excludes any impact from the expected merger with Windstream, future acquisitions, capital market transactions, and future transaction-related and other costs not mentioned herein. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Beginning with Uniti Leasing, we expect revenues and adjusted EBITDA to be $902 million and $872 million, respectively, at the midpoint. We expect to deploy $185 million of success-based CapEx at the midpoint of our guidance, of which $175 million relates to Windstream GCI investments. We also expect the full $175 million of investments for 2025 will be made in the first quarter. At Uniti Fiber, we expect revenues and adjusted EBITDA to be $304 million and $125 million, respectively, at the midpoint for full-year 2025, representing an EBITDA margin of approximately 41%. Net success-based CapEx for Uniti Fiber this year is expected to be $85 million at the midpoint of our guidance and represents a capital intensity of 28%. As a result of the strong financial performance and declining capital intensity, standalone Uniti is expected to be free cash flow positive on a consolidated basis in 2025. We expect full-year AFFO to range between $1.40 and $1.47 per diluted common share, with a midpoint of $1.43 per diluted share representing a 6% increase from the prior year. Slide fourteen provides a comparison of our 2025 outlook ranges to 2024 appendix to our earnings presentation. At year-end, we had approximately $606 million of combined unrestricted cash and cash equivalents and undrawn revolver capacity. Our leverage ratio was 5.8 times based on net debt to fourth quarter 2024 annualized adjusted EBITDA excluding the debt and net contributions from the ABS loan facility. Slide fifteen illustrates how Uniti's cost of capital has improved significantly when you go back to this time two years ago when we launched our 10.5% secured notes offering; our secured and unsecured debt was yielding over 12%. Fast forward to today, and our debt is currently yielding around 7.5%. A 500 basis point improvement in just two years. As a result, we've taken an opportunistic approach to strengthening our combined balance sheet and we'll continue to look for opportunities across all of the debt markets to which we have access. Most recently, as Kenny mentioned, we successfully completed our inaugural ABS transaction at a blended coupon of less than 6.5%. This transaction provided additional capital that we used to redeem a portion of those 10.5% notes at an attractive premium. This redemption, along with financing activities conducted by Windstream last year successfully retires or extends a meaningful portion of our combined debt that was set to mature in 2028. Regarding ABS, we continue to view that market as an attractive source of financing that complements our existing capital structure well. And we will continue to evaluate further opportunities to expand our current program. To that end, we believe that the potential incremental ABS capacity on our fiber assets at Uniti and the potential for ABS on the Kinetic assets represents a $1 billion plus near-term opportunity for the combined company with considerable incremental capacity potential above that over time. Pro forma view on slide sixteen, we provided a 2025 revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the new Uniti by each segment we expect to report on post-close. Both Kinetic and fiber infrastructure consist of a highly predictable core recurring revenue base that continues to grow and yield attractive margins. As a reminder, our fiber to home platform will continue to be branded as Kinetic, while fiber infrastructure will include our current Uniti Fiber and Uniti Leasing segments, along with the Windstream wholesale segment, all of which are highly complementary and will combine to create a premier fiber infrastructure company with both national and deep regional capabilities as well as a fiber network that is predominantly owned. Going forward, as we continue to transition away from legacy services, such as Windstream TDM services, we continue to expect Kinetic and Fiber to improve the margin profile. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Kenny.

Thanks, Paul. Slide eighteen showcases the reach of the new Uniti's insurgent fiber network. Extending our successful strategy of targeting Tier 2 and 3 markets for wholesale and enterprise now into residential fiber to the home. Our true north is building fiber first in less competitive markets giving us the right to win for many years into the future. Including connected buildings, fiber to the tower, and small cell connections connected pops and data centers, and the 4.4 million total homes within Kinetic's current footprint, Uniti will have the potential to reach over 5 million connected on ramps in largely unique locations, each driving increasing amounts of bandwidth onto our owned wholesale network. Slide nineteen highlights some of the benefits of bringing Uniti and Windstream together. At Uniti, we've been able to drive attractive financial results in large part due to our fully owned fiber network and associated owner's economics. Our combination with Windstream not only extends our fiber network materially, but will bring large parts of Windstream's business on net immediately with a four-year plan to achieve virtually 100% on net. As such, with owner economics and our same disciplined growth strategy, we will eventually see similar economic trends in Windstream's business, including mid-single-digit revenue growth, growing EBITDA, and declining capital intensity. A big part of moving Windstream on net is transitioning Kinetic off of legacy copper systems and onto fiber. As mentioned earlier, by the end of 2025, we expect to have converted about 2 million of Kinetic's 4.4 million homes to fiber. By 2029, we expect to have built fiber to between 3 to 3.5 million homes. Lastly, we've aggressively managed out of legacy services at Uniti and plan to continue that strategy and to combine with new Uniti. Our ability to address the burgeoning hyperscaler opportunities is expected to be enhanced as well. Windstream's wholesale network is highly complementary to ours on key routes and Windstream's largely lit waves product capabilities are additive to our strong dark fiber portfolio. On a combined basis, we'll be able to sell a full product suite immediately and begin selling into an expanded customer base given that Windstream has an incremental forty different MLAs with hyperscalers to complement Uniti's current count of only four. Finally, as we mentioned previously, we believe the real opportunity with generative AI is when the inference phase begins in earnest. With a dramatic increase in distributed endpoints anticipated with our Windstream combination, our ability to provide enhanced broadband connectivity with low latency increases materially. We remain committed to making progress on numerous key initiatives between signing and closing of our transaction. First, both companies continue to execute well, and we continue to provide a unified investor relations outreach to help investors understand the new Uniti. Next, we're excited to have completed the simplification of our new pro forma balance sheet at closing, thus paving the way to roll out our accelerated and expanded fiber to home plan. We're also actively working with Kinetic on an integration plan to achieve our synergy goals. We expect to receive shareholder approval in April, and after that, we anticipate providing greater clarity on our ongoing plan focusing primarily on the holistic Kinetic build plan but also on other key strategic initiatives. Let me close by restating how excited we are for our pending merger with Windstream. The new Uniti is at the epicenter of the growing convergence theme, highlighting the substantial strategic value of Kinetic and its scaled fiber to the home platform. Our fiber infrastructure business is uniquely positioned to benefit from the explosion in broadband demand in general, including the demand being fueled by hyperscalers. With that, we would be happy to take your questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Greg Williams from TD Cowen.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Kenny, I was just wondering on slide nine, I was super helpful about your excitement for the inference phase. Just kind of curious about the timing of that and the opportunity of inference in tier two and tier three markets. Because there's a thought that inference is really going to be in the availability zones in major metro markets. Just trying to gauge how you're going to win in the smaller tier two and three markets for inference. You did mention if Windstream's in forty markets, and maybe the opportunity's there. Second question is on just the AI bidding environment. How rational is the bidding environment with your competitors at the RFP table? I mean, you have disciplined healthy yield, but for the deals you don't win, do you suspect competitors are taking lower yields? Thanks.

Good morning, Greg. All good questions. Let me make sure I hit them all. On the inference phase, yeah, I think it's already started. Honestly, as we said, roughly 20% to 25% of the spend today is related to that, and we think that's going to grow. We're saying in our slide that by 2030, that'll flip to 80% inference, and we think that'll just gradually increase to that number over time. I think there’s a tremendous amount of dollars being spent on innovation, whether it’s from the big tech companies in the U.S. or frankly around the world. There are just billions of dollars being invested by nation-states and various technology companies. Obviously, deep-sea projects being an example of that, all of which we think just accelerates the proliferation of AI. So, I don't think it's going to take five years for us to get to that 80% spend on inference, but that's what we're putting on the paper. To your question about tier two and three markets versus tier one, it's a recurring theme that our markets tend to be fast followers on some of these themes. Whether it’s going back to the wireless days of getting good cellular coverage, which then eventually transitioned to 4G and 5G, they started in the major metros and then hit our markets. I don’t think that’s going to be any different for inference. There has to be more investment made to push AI out to those regions. But the flip side is true for us as well— we’re getting there first to those markets and regions with our fiber. So that when the demand does come, we’re there, and we’ve generally been able to build moats around those markets, capturing our fair share or a disproportionate amount of that demand when the time comes. So we’re excited about that. Regarding the forty Windstream markets mentioned in our prepared remarks, I actually referred to forty different customer relationships supported by existing MLAs with hyperscalers, which is significantly important. At Uniti, we only have four, and we’re developing more. But even with those four MLAs driving substantial demand as discussed earlier, on a combined basis, when you take that four and expand it to forty-four, having those existing relationships and agreements in place cuts off a lot of negotiating time. Those MLAs typically take six to nine, sometimes twelve months to get established. This greatly helps accelerate our sales cycle. So, that's a side note independent of your inference point, but I just wanted to put that out there because perhaps my prepared remarks weren't clear enough on that front. We’re very excited about the synergy with Windstream Wholesale. As for your question about the rational spending, it’s a great question because we've definitely seen periods of time in the fiber business where irrational capital has pushed yields down. We've always stayed true to our 5% to 10% anchor yields with a clear plan to lease up on top of that. In the last twelve to eighteen months of building these new hyperscaler deals, while we haven't specified the exact yield for anchor deals, we mentioned they tend to be at the high end of that anchor range or above. Regardless, on a blended basis with those initial economics plus the lease-up we are already seeing, we’re close to 20% yields on those deals. We're excited about the future and the potential to build more of these significant infrastructure deals for hyperscalers, positioning ourselves well for the inference phase. As for the competitive environment, to the heart of your question, Greg, we think it has been rational thus far. I can probably count on one hand the number of deals we’ve lost at Uniti that we actually bid for, possibly due to price undercuts. But in reality, where we’re pursuing new business, we’ve established good customer relationships and have the right network in place. We have a strong track record of execution with various hyperscalers, and we tend to win what we go after while achieving beneficial economics for both us and our hyperscaler customers. So, all that to say, so far, so good on the rationality of the market in our arena.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan from Raymond James and Associates.

Alright. Great. Thank you. So a couple of quick things. So you said you're going to rely on ABS funding largely going forward. Can you give what's an optimal mix that we can expect for the combined business for ABS versus other, you know, debt instruments? And then you mentioned I think you mentioned the GCI build is compressed, and you're going to reach 2 million homes this year. Can you frame that in terms of, you know, the number of homes you expect to build and then where will that end up with, as far as the subscribers? Are you focusing more on the construction a little less on the marketing this year, or will that go in lockstep and should we see an equivalent, you know, lift in the subs and for the year? Thanks.

Hey, Frank. This is Paul. I'll take your first question on ABS, and then maybe Kenny will take your second question on the Kinetic strategy for the year. But you know, Frank, I think it’s hard to box us into what I think is the optimal mix of ABS versus other more traditional debt that is at least in terms of Uniti’s capital structure historically. We do think that we have an appetite for more ABS. We think that the cost of that capital, the leverage profile of that in terms of the assets we move into an ABS-type facility, enhances our cost of capital and the overall healthiness of our balance sheet. I expect it to grow over time. The optimal mix is hard to define, but we’ll stay open to adjusting based on market dynamics. If ABS proves to be a lower-cost capital source with a large market appetite, we’ll do more. However, there are times when the high-yield markets and other markets have also been highly attractive, especially the unsecured side— which has not been open for many high-yield providers for the past few years but is now starting to reopen, and we’d like to maintain a healthy mix of that in our capital structure. So, not really giving you an exact percentage, but we’re eager to add more ABS and will continue to strategize based on our capital structure to manage it.

Okay. Right. Frank, good morning. On your second question, so 2024, Windstream built about 170,000 new homes. That seems like a low number, but in reality, it was due to the construction of several subsidized homes with RDOF and PPP, and those are longer builds. Thus, the number is lower. But it sets us up for a substantially higher number in 2025 as we focus on more strategic builds, which are the non-subsidized builds. So, in anticipation of our transaction closing, we’re excited. Windstream announced yesterday, and we have it in our materials today, that Kinetic is going to build around 325,000 homes this year—almost doubling what was built last year. We think that number can grow over time, and as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we think we can ultimately get to 3 million to 3.5 million homes economically in the footprint. By the end of 2025, we aim to reach around 2 million homes, which exceeds the original build target that Windstream had set prior to our combination by two years early. The footprint has tremendous opportunity, being a relatively less urban area with tier two and tier three markets. Over-builders have continued to stay at bay within this footprint. We want to get strategic markets built as soon as possible. There is also a potential to reach areas in the footprint that wouldn't be economical without some sort of subsidy. So there is a strategic opportunity mixed with the subsidized one around the edges that could provide significant fiber coverage. Regarding fiber subscribers, conversions depend on obviously building fiber to the homes—those are highly correlated. Regarding the marketing approach, we will prioritize both building new fiber infrastructure and marketing simultaneously; they won't be disassociated from each other. Our recent enhancements in local market presence and digital marketing have substantially improved initial penetration levels in previous cohorts, which ranged between 25% and 30%. We are excited about our current abilities and plans to enhance penetration levels.

And, Frank, I'll just add that the timing of the GCI being compressed into the first quarter of this year is more a function of just the mechanics of GCI than necessarily correlated to the Windstream 2025 accelerated build plan. If you recall back to last year, we maxed out GCI around mid-year, about July, and haven't been able to submit GCI reimbursements since then. Therefore, there’s a backlog that becomes eligible in the first quarter, more a function of the declining GCI investment coming down from $250 plus to now $170 million in 2025.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Bora Lee from RBC Capital Markets.

Morning. Thanks for taking the questions. So I guess first of all, I was wondering how have the more recent needs of the hyperscalers changed the way you think about how and where you build fiber in terms of the amount of fiber you deploy, geography, the number of IOAs required, and so on. Just curious. High level. Your thoughts there.

Morning, Bora. Yes, in short, it certainly has changed the way we've approached new builds. And in a nutshell, the amount of capacity needed from a strand count perspective, empty conduits, and excess conduits has all increased dramatically. I think I mentioned in a previous meeting that we were selling six to twelve strands to hyperscalers as recently as a couple of years ago, and now we're selling four sixty-four strand counts or well north of that. As I mentioned in our prepared remarks, we're already seeing hyperscalers come back to us for additional fiber beyond those already large initial purchases. Again, not every transaction is the same, so I'm generalizing a little bit. Ultimately, we are seeing substantial increases in strand count and excessive conduit capacity. This also means we are looking at ILA implications because as a result of the tremendous increase in strand count, we need to consider providing for space, power, and cooling in ILA facilities. We’ve got an active workstream going on now to upgrade our standard ILA facility to accommodate those enhanced needs. We are excited to be doing this, as it translates to incremental bandwidth, usage, and ultimately revenue for us. We are staying disciplined with respect to the deals that we pursue and focusing our new fiber builds in areas that enhance the strategic value of our network. We're not going off into remote areas without a second or third use of that fiber and corresponding lease-up potential. We're focused on routes and areas we've wanted to build before, where the economic case worked. We are expanding into areas we hadn't anticipated but see incremental lease-up demand. Plus, we’re considering the increased maintenance requirements due to significantly higher strand counts. For instance, the complexity of splicing an 864-strand cable is much greater than splicing a six or twelve-strand cable. Overall, these changes represent excellent growth opportunities as the hyperscalers prefer not to deal with these complexities. Companies like us, with boots on the ground around our network, can provide that service, which fosters stickier customer relationships, especially if we continue to deliver.

Alright. And for my second question, regarding wireless bookings, there were a bit soft last year due to the carry of industry activity. Just wondering how that closed out if there was that pickup toward the end of the year that you thought might happen, and your outlook for the vertical in 2025.

Yeah. Good question, Bora, and good recall on our early comments about wireless bookings expectations for 2024. We expected a downturn compared to 2023 due to industry activity, but the year ended up being somewhat flat relative to 2023. So, we are still seeing muted numbers but flattish instead of down. Secondly, rather than observing the anticipated pickup in the second half of 2024, we’re really starting to notice it at the beginning of this year. We’re optimistic about the prospects for 2025. We are not providing specific guidance on bookings categories, but since you asked, I’ll share that we expect wireless bookings to increase this year compared to last. The early activity we’re noticing provides us with confidence in this projection.

Great. Thanks, Kenny.

You’re welcome.

Thank you. At this time, I will now turn the conference back over to Kenny Gunderman for closing remarks.

We appreciate your interest in Uniti Group and look forward to updating you further on future calls. Thank you for joining us today.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.