ATN International, Inc.

you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Justin Benicasa, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Today we will review our first quarter of 2023 results. With me here is Michael Pryor, ATN's Chief Executive Officer. Michael will provide an update on our business and strategy, as well as a high-level overview of our quarterly results. I'll then cover our financials and provide additional color where necessary. As a reminder, we released our first quarter press release last night after market closed. Investors can find the release and results presented for this call on our investor relations website. Before I turn the call over to Michael, I'd like to point out that this call, our press release, and the presentation contain forward-looking statements concerning our current expectations, objectives, and underlying assumptions regarding our future operating results. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Also, in an effort to provide useful information to investors, our comments today include non-GAAP financial measures. For details on these measures and reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures, and for further information regarding the factors that may affect our future operating results, please refer to our earnings release on our website at atni.com or to the 8-K filing provided to the SEC. I'll now turn the call over to Michael for his prepared remarks. Thank you, Justin.

and thank you for joining us, everyone. I would like to start the call today with three key takeaways from our Q1 performance. One, our strategy is working and is driving growth in subscribers and footprint or addressable market. Two, adjusted EBITDA performance is improving in line with subscriber and revenue growth. And three, our three-year outlook, as announced at the beginning of 2022, is tracking to plan. We expect revenue and EBITDA growth to ramp to bring us in line with the three-year CAGRs we have forecast. At ETN, our central purpose is to provide connectivity for all. In doing so, we improve lives and communities and deliver lasting value for all our stakeholders. We go where the need is and where most of the larger telecommunications companies prefer not to go. To date, that includes the Caribbean, the rural and tribal lands of the U.S. Southwest, and Alaska. Today, we are in the process of advancing initiatives to secure our vision and long-term growth. We call these strategic initiatives class and steel and first to fiber. They are core to our strategic three-year plan, as I first outlined in the beginning of 2022. It is a plan with the intention to build a highly resilient customer base and average revenue per user, or ARPU, on the tail of relatively short-term increases in capital expenditures. To accomplish our goals, we are currently investing in quality assets to expand our strong market position, which should bode well for the consistency of future cash flows. Internationally, we are investing in our first fiber strategic initiative to expand our market leadership. Through this strategy, we are bringing fiber-rich digital infrastructure to the Caribbean, expanding our network reach and growing markets like Cayman and Guyana, and continually improving and strengthening our network and services in places like Bermuda and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These actions are providing us with several new growth levers and cash flow generators, while at the same time, reducing the risk of customer churn. Domestically, in Alaska, our fiber expansion continued to all segments, business, carrier, wholesale, and retail. And the team is accomplishing that while also working to improve operating efficiency and margin. In the lower 48, our glass and steel strategic initiative is capitalizing on the changing needs of our wholesale mobile carrier customers to complement an effort to fill in the fiber and other connectivity gaps in the rural areas of the southwestern and western United States. The first net contract with AT&T was the first pillar of this strategy, and we expect to enter into a similar arrangement with another national carrier in the current core. These partnerships with the national mobile carriers are a testament to our strong and reliable offerings, scalability, deep and broad local operating capabilities, and brand reputation. As important, we are expanding our business and retail broadband operations in the region using government grants and anchor tenants wholesale or government customers to expand our high-speed network and fixed-line revenue. And, as we discussed last quarter, the addition of sacred wind was intended to boost this effort. The early evidence is very positive, with the team meshing well with their new colleagues and hitting the ground running with some key early wins on new subsidized fiber builds and customer growth. The first quarter of 2023 marks the start of the second year of our three-year investment plan. We are already seeing the benefits of our expanded network and its associated customer additions. ATN's first quarter revenue reached the highest level in more than a decade. This quarter, we showed consistency of execution and were again rewarded with high levels of customer retention and progress on our key operational and financial metrics. We expect our customer revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth trends to continue throughout 2023. We're also working on augmenting this growth through improvements to the cost structure of several operations, such as by accelerating the removal of legacy network and operating costs. In total, we are enthusiastic about the durability of our revenue, our financial flexibility, and our long-term growth prospects. We continue to track to our three-year plan. And to illustrate our progress in the quarter, We drew the homes passed by our broadband networks to about 736,000 at the end of the quarter, which was 21% higher than a year ago. This includes an additional 108,000 passed by fiber or other higher speed solutions. Our ongoing network investments also are reflected in our subscriber load. As of March 31, 2023, 55% of our more than 216,000 broadband subscribers were connected to our fiber or other higher-speed networks, representing growth of nearly 18% year-over-year in high-speed data subscribers. We ended the quarter with more than 328,000 mobile subscribers in our international segment, and this is up 13% from a year ago. reflecting the success of our sales and marketing efforts and investments. As Justin will discuss, we saw positive results across both of our operating segments, including a strong performance in Alaska, fiber and broadband customer additions that I've just mentioned, and of course, the mobile subscriber growth. Both in the Caribbean and in the U.S., most of our expansion work is in markets that we believe will continue to benefit from growing demand and positive secular tailwinds. putting us in an excellent position to benefit from this growth as we provide these communities with the connectivity capabilities that will help them thrive. An example of this work is our VIA subsidiary in the U.S. Virgin Islands. We were just awarded a contract to bring high-speed fiber-based connectivity to all public schools in the territory. The project is 100% fiber-based, delivering the fastest speeds and including an inter-island fiber link between the two Department of Education network operation centers, providing a critical additional layer of resilience for the school's connections. Notably, this public-private initiative ensures that the territory benefits from a more digitized teaching and learning experience as it helps schools and libraries in obtaining affordable internet access and telecommunications services. In summary, we remain committed to providing connectivity for all. We are working to be first to fiber in those markets that are aligned with our established criteria and where we believe we can also develop strong first mover advantages. In addition, we continue to prioritize building and owning modern core digital communications infrastructure consistent with our glass and steel strategies. Most importantly, as we execute towards these two strategic objectives underpinning our three-year plan, we also are steadily expanding our overall broadband network and subscriber count. In turn, this should generate revenue growth with higher incremental operating margins, giving us confidence in our long-term growth targets as well as our core financial objectives for this year. As Justin will expand upon momentarily, our financial position enables us to be flexible in the execution of our strategies as we look to maximize value for stakeholders. And with that, I'll hand the call back over to you, Justin.