Earnings Call Transcript - UNIT Q1 2025

Operator, Operator

Good morning and welcome to today's Conference Call to discuss Uniti's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Results. My name is Latif 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 Treasury. Please begin.

Bill DiTullio, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining today’s conference call to discuss Uniti’s first quarter 2025 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 lease-up 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. 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, and our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Kenny.

Kenny Gunderman, CEO

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here. Uniti had another strong quarter, and we’re making good progress toward our 2025 goals. We are committed to outstanding execution and maintaining a disciplined approach to growing our revenue in the mid-single digits and achieving high single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth. Consequently, we are reaffirming our full-year guidance for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and AFFO. Our current business plan is fully funded, and we are on track to meet our goal of funding new Uniti. Despite the volatility in the broader capital markets, the ABS market has remained strong and will be a vital tool for us moving forward. Additionally, we are focused on expanding our fiber network, particularly within the Kinetic area. Last quarter, we announced that Kinetic plans to nearly double the number of homes targeted for fiber access in 2025 compared to 2024. By the end of this year, Kinetic is expected to reach 2 million homes, two years ahead of our original expectations when we announced the merger. I will discuss further details later, but we anticipate an acceleration in our progress. Before diving into the quarterly results, I’d like to touch on some macroeconomic factors and specific matters related to Uniti. First, while we assess the potential impacts of proposed tariff changes, we expect limited to no effect on our business, even following our merger with Windstream. Our direct material imports are minimal, so we anticipate that any higher tariffs will impact less than 1% of our total combined CapEx. The possibility of sustained higher tariffs has introduced greater volatility into the capital markets and increased recession risks. While we recognize these challenges, we remain confident in the resilience of our fiber infrastructure. Historically, during severe economic downturns, including the COVID pandemic, we experienced minimal disruption to our performance. Moreover, despite recent fluctuations in our cost of capital, it remains significantly better compared to levels prior to the merger announcement with Windstream. The ABS market's endurance can be attributed to the investment-grade nature of the securities and our critical infrastructure. Consequently, our strategy to invest in new fiber remains unchanged. We are also encouraged by recent developments at the FCC and NTIA and their potential benefits for our business. Specifically, the perceived leniency toward retiring aging copper networks and related regulatory obligations is promising. We are optimistic about discussions surrounding the use of government subsidies, like BEAD, for economically deploying fiber and alternative technologies. Lastly, we appreciate the renewed emphasis on streamlining industry permitting processes. Together, these regulatory changes create a favorable environment and additional support for our business model. As for our pending merger, we have received shareholder approval to move forward, with about 97% of voting shareholders in favor. We’ve obtained PUC approvals from 16 out of the 18 jurisdictions required, including Washington, D.C. Therefore, we expect to finalize the transaction in the second half of this year, with the potential to do so as early as July or August. I would also like to welcome two new members to the Uniti team; John Harrobin has been appointed President of Kinetic, and Harold Zeitz is joining as a new board member. Both are industry veterans with significant Fiber-to-the-Home experience from Frontier and Ziply, respectively, enhancing our prospects for success. In particular, John will play a vital role in driving our competitive fiber approach at Kinetic, and we look forward to introducing him to analysts and investors soon. Now, focusing on our growth and strategic direction as a dedicated fiber provider in Tier-2 and 3 markets, I am pleased with our progress. We continue to see strong bookings with an appropriate mix of customers, leading industry churn rates, and decreasing capital intensity. Consequently, our cumulative cash yields are nearing 30%. Demand for our services remains robust, with increased activity from wireless carriers this year, nearly doubling last year's bookings for the same quarter. Amid ongoing discussions regarding hyperscaler spending in the industry during this quarter, our confidence in future opportunities has been strengthened due to the significant activity we've witnessed. In summary, Uniti is effectively executing our core strategy of delivering essential fiber, positioning us favorably for the future. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Paul.

Paul Bullington, CFO

Thank you, Kenny. I’d like to begin by reviewing our first quarter performance followed by an overview of our current 2025 outlook. We once again delivered solid results during the quarter with our core recurring strategic revenue growing approximately 4%, and the capital intensity of our fiber business, excluding the impact of GCI, declining over 50% year-over-year. We continue to see strong tailwinds in our recurring business and are executing well on our lease-up strategy at both, Uniti Leasing and Uniti Fiber. As I’ll cover in more detail in just a bit, our 2025 outlook for consolidated revenue, adjusted EBITDA and AFFO remains unchanged as we expect to end the year within the previous guidance ranges provided. Finally, I’ll end with some commentary on our current balance sheet and capital structure. We also recently provided Windstream’s first quarter financial information in an 8-K filed with the SEC on May 1. Please turn to Slide 8 and I’ll start with comments on our first quarter. We reported consolidated revenues of $294 million, consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $238 million, AFFO attributed to common shareholders of $92 million, and AFFO per diluted common share of $0.35. At Uniti Leasing, we reported segment revenues of $222 million and adjusted EBITDA of $215 million representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 97% for the quarter. Both revenue and adjusted EBITDA were in line with our expectations for the quarter. During the first quarter, Uniti Leasing net success-based CapEx was approximately $170 million, including $175 million of investment relating to the Windstream GCI program. Taking into account this funding amount during the quarter, Windstream has reached its GCI funding limit for 2025, and there will be no further GCI payments for the remainder of the year. At Uniti Fiber, we reported revenues of $72 million and adjusted EBITDA of $29 million during the first quarter, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%. Non-recurring revenue during the quarter was lower than expected, primarily due to the timing of delivery on a $4 million one-time sale of fiber to a government customer that was originally expected to be realized in the first quarter and is now expected later this month. The delay was requested by the customer to allow for the completion of an unrelated customer project prior to the completion of our work. Uniti Fiber net success-based CapEx was $18 million in the first quarter which represents an approximate 25% decline from prior year’s levels. We also incurred about $1.5 million of maintenance CapEx during the quarter. As I’ve mentioned previously, there continue 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 dark fiber deals, primarily from hyperscalers that generally come with higher NRCs. Please turn to Slide 9 and I’ll now cover our updated 2025 guidance. We are revising our 2025 outlook for business unit level revisions, the impact from the partial redemption of the 10.5% senior secured notes due 2028, and the impact of transaction-related and other costs incurred to date. 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 continue to expect revenues and adjusted EBITDA to be $902 million and $872 million respectively at the midpoint. We still expect to deploy $185 million of success-based CapEx at the midpoint of our guidance, of which $175 million relates to Windstream GCI investments. 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%. Our outlook for net success-based CapEx at Uniti Fiber this year remains $85 million at the midpoint of our guidance, and represents a capital intensity of 28%. As a reminder, given 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 continue to 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. As a reminder, guidance ranges for key components of our outlook are included in the Appendix to our earnings presentation. At quarter end, we had $592 million of combined unrestricted cash and cash equivalents and undrawn revolver capacity. Our leverage ratio was 6.09x based on net debt to first quarter 2025 annualized adjusted EBITDA, excluding the debt and net contributions from the ABS loan facility. Slide 10 illustrates how Uniti’s cost of capital has improved significantly over the past 2 years. If you go back to this time 2 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% on a blended basis, a 500 basis point improvement in just 2 years. As a result, we have 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. In regard to ABS specifically, we continue to view that market as an attractive source of financing that complements our existing capital structure well by providing an investment-grade financing tool. And we will continue to evaluate further opportunities to expand our current program. To that end, we believe that the combined potential for incremental ABS capacity on our commercial fiber assets at Uniti and Fiber-to-the-Home assets at Kinetic represents a $1 billion plus near-term opportunity with considerable upside to that over time. On Slide 11, we have provided a 2025 pro forma view of revenue and adjusted EBITDA for 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-the-Home platform will continue to be branded as Kinetic. 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 and operated. Going forward, as we continue to transition away from legacy services such as Windstream TDM services, we continue to expect the Kinetic and Fiber Infrastructure segments to realize low-to-mid single digit topline growth with an improving margin profile. With that, I’ll now turn the call back over to Kenny.

Kenny Gunderman, CEO

Thanks, Paul. Slide 13 showcases the reach of new Uniti’s insurgent fiber network, extending our successful strategy of targeting less competitive 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. Slide 14 highlights some of the benefits of bringing Uniti and Windstream together. At Uniti, we have been able to drive attractive financial results in large part because of our fully-owned fiber network and associated owners’ 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 4-year plan to achieve virtually 100% on net. As such, with owners 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 based 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. And by 2029, we expect to have built fiber to approximately 3.5 million homes. I’m excited to share more details in the coming months when we have the plan fully locked in. Lastly, we’ve aggressively managed out of legacy services at Uniti and plan to continue that strategy at the combined new Uniti. Turning to Slide 15; our ability to address the burgeoning hyperscaler opportunity is going 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 and immediately begin selling into an expanded customer base, given that Windstream has an incremental 40 different MLAs with hyperscalers to complement Uniti’s current count of only 4. 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 of distributed endpoints coming with our Windstream combination, our ability to provide enhanced broadband connectivity with low latency increases materially. Moving to Slide 16, we remain committed to making progress on numerous key initiatives between signing and closing of our transaction. First, both companies continue to execute well operationally, and we continue to provide a unified investor relations outreach to help investors understand the new company. Next, we’re very excited to have completed the simplification of our new pro forma balance sheet at closing, thus paving the way to rollout our accelerated and expanded Fiber-to-the-Home plan. We’re also actively working with Kinetic on an integration plan to achieve our synergy goals. In the coming months, we plan to provide more details on our longer-term goals for the combined company, with a primary focus on the holistic Kinetic build plan and 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 trend, highlighting substantial strategic value on 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’d be happy to take your questions.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from Greg Williams of TD Cowen.

Greg Williams, Analyst

Kenny, I appreciate the color on the tariffs and recessionary insulation but I have that sort of same concern around the M&A environment. Are we penciled down at the moment or are deals moving forward in this environment? Second question is just on the high mix of lease-ups, 72%; I think that’s at or near a company record. I understand it’s lumpy with that mix, but are we seeing a shift away from the new builds towards training data centers, and maybe eventually towards inference? Any insights there would be great. Thanks.

Kenny Gunderman, CEO

Good questions. Regarding mergers and acquisitions, I can confirm that we do not see any slowdown in activity. In fact, it's quite the opposite, as conversations continue without any interruptions to progress on various strategic initiatives. We are focused on integrating our plans, closing transactions smoothly, and launching our legal operations effectively, while also accelerating our fiber market strategy and expanding the Kinetic build. M&A remains a priority for us, and we are actively engaged with strategic and financial entities. There is substantial interest in the fiber sector, driven by industry convergence and hyperscaler activities, and our assets align well with these trends. We are involved in several promising discussions and look forward to ongoing developments. Regarding lease-up, you've highlighted an important point. The trends do fluctuate with our quarterly reviews, but we have not observed any decrease in investments from hyperscalers for large language models. This trend is likely to continue over the next couple of years, and we anticipate significant greenfield opportunities emerging later this year, particularly with Windstream wholesale. We are excited about the prospects in our pipeline. You'll see large opportunities come around, and I believe the inference phase will occur sooner than we initially anticipated. This is the phase we are most enthusiastic about, as it will likely drive significant recurring revenue for fiber businesses as large language models enhance AI usage through various endpoints. Hyperscalers publicly acknowledge the challenges of differentiating between AI and traditional cloud-based workflows, indicating a blending of these streams, which suggests that we are already witnessing the onset of inference. We have not seen any reduction in hyperscaler engagement; in fact, much of the lease-up activity this quarter has been driven by them. We've experienced a resurgence in high-strand count transactions, which is exciting since it reflects their previous infrastructure investments, and now they are seeking to expand their capacity beyond initial requests. We can expect a healthy mix of lease-up in our model going forward, which is a deliberate strategy that supports our free cash flow yields in the range of 25% to 30%.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Frank Louthan of Raymond James & Associates.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

This is Roblin for Frank. Congratulations on the strong bookings this quarter. I’m curious if you could explain the nature of those bookings, including roughly how much of them are AI related. Additionally, can you characterize the returns on these AI-driven projects compared to some of the other projects you've seen historically?

Kenny Gunderman, CEO

On the bookings, the percentage related to hyperscalers is likely around 20%, depending on how you measure it. It falls within the 15% to 20% range, which has been quite consistent over the past 12 to 18 months, and even though it's been growing, it has remained in that range for the last couple of quarters. One of the advantages of our wholesale fiber business is that we are not dependent on any particular use case of fiber. Currently, AI is a major focus, but in reality, we are seeing an acceleration in various fiber use cases. Last year and so far this year, our largest customer segment has been Fiber-to-the-Home providers across the nation acquiring backhaul to support their buildouts, and we continue to see that growth this year. We are also enthusiastic about the AI trends. As I noted in my prepared remarks, wireless carriers are starting to increase their spending, with bookings for wireless doubling in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, which we anticipated at the end of last year. Therefore, while AI bookings are on the rise, overall bookings are also increasing, remaining in that 15% to 20% range. Additionally, regarding AI, we have previously mentioned that during this significant investment phase for the learning models, many deals do not appear in bookings in the usual way because they are greenfield projects with high non-recurring costs, often categorized as IRUs or strategic fiber sales. Consequently, the activity with hyperscalers is slightly understated in our bookings, while in reality, the impact is likely much larger. I believe this will change once we enter the inference phase later on. Concerning the returns on these deals, we handle them similarly to how we manage all our anchor lease-up models. Generally, hyperscaler deals serve as anchor deals for us. Our strategy targets yields of 5% to 10% for these anchors, with a clear path to exceed 10% once we reach beyond the anchor deal. We track and report quarterly, showing that our portfolio is nearing 30% blended yields on our initial anchor deals. When we view hyperscaler opportunities through this lens, we see that we are approaching 20% yields on these deals. Including anchor yields and lease-ups over the past couple of years, we are nearing 20% yields. While we do not disclose specifics on customers and deals, our blended hyperscaler deals are performing ahead of our traditional anchor lease-up model.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. That ends the Q&A session and concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.