Charter Communications, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to Charter Communications' first quarter Investor Call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you'll be given instructions for the question and answer session. Also, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Stephan Anninger.

Thanks, Operator, and welcome, everyone. The presentation that accompanies this call can be found on our website, ir.charter.com. I would like to remind you that there are a number of risk factors and other cautionary statements contained in our SEC filings, which we encourage you to read carefully. Various remarks that we make on this call concerning expectations, predictions, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from historical or anticipated results. Any forward-looking statements reflect management's current view only, and Charter undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements. On today's call, we have Chris Winfrey, our President and CEO, and Jessica Fisher, our CFO. With that, let's turn the call over to Chris.

Thanks, Stephan. During the first quarter, we lost 72,000 Internet customers. Despite lower Internet sales, we added nearly 500,000 Spectrum mobile lines and close to 2.3 million lines year over year. We now have more than 8.2 million total mobile lines with still low mobile penetration of internet customers and passings. We have a long runway for customer and financial growth with the nation's fastest mobile service at incredible value. Revenue was relatively flat in the quarter while adjusted EBITDA grew by 2.8%. And during the first quarter, our internet customer growth remained challenged by a low move and generally low activity environment coupled with continued elevated competition, at least in the short term, and a small impact from fewer low-income connects due to discontinued ACP availability. Churn remains at historically low levels. Cell phone Internet continues to compete for gross additions and has expanded its addressable market within our footprint. And we've remained confident in our ability to return to healthy, long-term growth. Our Internet product is faster and it's more reliable. Our pricing is lower when similarly bundled with mobile. and the cell phone companies will face capacity challenges as customer bandwidth grows. In the first quarter, wireline overbuild activity continued at a similar pace. Given the value of our converged products, we resisted chasing some less rational promotional offers from overbuilders. As we move forward with our key strategic initiatives, we believe that our differentiated converged connectivity products with superior speeds that save customers money and a video product with increasing value and utility to customers provide us with significant competitive advantages, and a platform to grow customers, penetration, EBITDA, and free cash flow over time. In internet, data usage continues to grow, and demand for faster speeds will grow with it. During the first quarter, internet customers who do not buy traditional video from us use nearly 800 gigabytes per month. And we now offer 300 meg, 500 meg, and 1 gig symmetrical speeds in our first high split markets. Later this year, we'll begin launching the next wave of markets with distributed access architecture technology. When completed, we'll be capable of offering 5 by 1 gigabit per second speeds in these markets with even better network performance. The next phase of markets will be upgraded to 10 by 1 gigabit per second speed and the ability to offer fiber on demand. And ultimately, we'll see lower contact rates and truck rolls across these upgraded markets, achieving both lower cost and a superior product. We expect to complete our network evolution initiative in 2026, all at an incremental cost of just $100 per passing, excluding the benefit of operating in capital savings that result from the project. Our mobile offering also continues to evolve and improve. Earlier this month, we began offering anytime upgrade to customers within our unlimited plus offering. Anytime upgrade allows new and existing unlimited plus customers to upgrade their phones whenever they want, eliminating traditional wait times, upgrade fees, and condition requirements. We are the first mobile provider to include this level of freedom within a rate plan. We also recently launched a new repair and replacement plan for just $5 per month. Anytime upgrade, part of Unlimited Plus, and our repair and replacement plan are each profitable. Spectrum One continues to perform well beyond its first anniversary and offers the fastest connectivity with differentiated features like mobile speed boost, and seamless connectivity to the Spectrum mobile network across Android and iOS devices. We still have a lot of room to grow our mobile business. Today, less than 8% of our total passings take our converged offering of internet and mobile. We remain under-penetrated, despite having a differentiated and superior offering, with market-leading pricing at promotion and retail. And from a dollars perspective, we capture less than 30% share of residential mobile and internet dollars spent in our footprint today. Mobile will be a meaningful driver of EBITDA and cash flow going forward, with what is still an untapped ability to drive overall customer relationship growth. Finally, turning to the evolution of our video product, we now offer a unique, modern user experience with Zumo, which offers both linear and direct-to-consumer content on one device, combined with packaging and pricing options that offer choice, value, and utility across fast, SVOD, direct-to-consumer apps, and linear video services. In January, Disney Plus became available to all Spectrum TV Select customers nationwide at no additional cost, with ESPN Plus launched to Select Plus customers in March. VIX, a Spanish language DTC product, and regional sports DTC products will also be available to customers at no extra cost within their respective packages. We expect our hybrid DTC linear model to be fully deployed next year. and we'll be able to deliver value for our customers and programming partners through fully bundled hybrid services, genre-based packages, selling DTC a la carte, and potentially bundled DTC services to our broadband customers. In late January, we launched our Spectrum TV Stream package, a 90-channel non-sports general entertainment package priced at $40 per month. TV Stream provides a compelling content offering at an attractive price from programmers like Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Fox, and A&E. And so while the video business is clearly under pressure, we believe that flexible and attractively priced packaging options across all forms of video, channels really, integrated within a modern user interface in a more frictionless environment can recreate value in the ecosystem for our customers, programmers, and distributors. So when we step back, we clearly recognize some short-term market challenges. And we've embraced the opportunity to become an even better operator. We're leaving no stone unturned in our go-to-market and our efficiency initiatives. And in the meantime, we're growing a unique, converged product at a rapid pace. We can grow EBITDA through a competitive investment cycle. And long-term, our network and customer demand, products, pricing, and packaging capabilities, our service infrastructure, and the associated investments we're making today position charter for sustainable growth and value creation. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jessica.