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spk13: Good day, and welcome to the DISH Network Q1 2022 conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Messner. Please go ahead, sir.
spk21: All right. Thanks, Justin. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. We're joined on the call today by Charlie Ergen, our chairman, Eric Carlson, our CEO, and Paul Rubin, our CFO. On the wireless side, we've got Tom Cullen, EVP of Corporate Development. Stephen By, our Chief Commercial Officer, and we have John Soringa, President and COO of Wireless. And as always, before we start, I need to remind you of our safe harbors. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ from historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. For more information on factors that may affect future results, please refer to our SEC filings. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Eric for opening remarks.
spk02: Thank you, Tim, and welcome, everyone, and thanks for being here today. As many of you are aware, we have an analyst day on Tuesday, May 10th, where we're going to go into more depth on our wireless plans, and a link to watch the live webcast will be on our investor relations website. As for today, we're going to try to keep it short, but I'm going to begin with a few brief comments before opening it up to your questions. In regard to subscribers for all of our brands, we simply didn't execute according to our expectations. However, we did exercise good financial discipline. We continue to make progress on other fronts, and I'm pleased to report that our wireless network build is on track. In the first quarter, DISH TV lost roughly 228,000 subscribers. This is driven by several factors, including our local programming dispute with Tegna. As I discussed during our earnings call last quarter, we signed a new agreement with them in the first quarter and now have that largely behind us. In addition, our price increase is now in effect for customers impacted by that dispute, which will make a positive impact on our bottom line this year. You know, DISH TV continues to be profitable. It generates significant free cash flow thanks to our financial discipline and strategic marketing investments. We do remain focused on acquiring and retaining long-term profitable customers, and we continue to play where we're strongest in rural America with higher credit quality subscribers. Turning to Sling for a minute, in the quarter we lost approximately 234,000 subscribers. We had higher than expected customer attrition following the football season, but the bottom line is we simply didn't execute to the level we expected. In the second half of the year, we did finalize the reengineering of the platform and user interface. Look, we had a tough quarter, but we're optimistic that we can leverage the platform, our messaging, high-value products, and great experience to reach customers who overall video content bills are too high but still want the excitement of live TV. We also strengthened our leadership team in Sling. We hired Gary Shandman as our new EVP and group president of Sling TV. Gary's got an excellent track record, not only in the pay TV industry, but streaming. He, along with new and existing Sling leaders, will be focused on increasing market share and driving profitable growth for the business. Switching gears a bit, our wireless business continues to make progress. Our retail wireless business has lost approximately 343,000 subs in the quarter. We're still committed to our disciplined operational approach and driving profitable growth in the segment. It's important to note that our retail wireless results have been impacted by our acceleration of the CDMA shutdown, which continues into Q2, albeit to a lesser extent. However, during the first quarter of 2022, we and T-Mobile reached a proposed settlement and amendment, which, among other things, settled all open disputes, including CDMA matters, and contained favorable terms to us. Before we and T-Mobile can enter into this proposed settlement and amendment, we're required to obtain the approval of the Department of Justice, which has been reviewing it since February 22nd of 2022. The CDMA shutdown, along with the delay in approval, has materially negatively impacted our ability to compete. This includes our acquisition and retention efforts and our results of operations. We hope to hear from the DOJ soon and are optimistic that the settlement and amendment with T-Mobile will be approved. Our wireless network team has made significant progress, and we're well on our way to meeting our commitments, including our upcoming deadline of covering 20% of the population by June 14th. Our build-out shows in our free cash flow for the quarter. For the first time in many years, we're in the negative, but that's because of the investment we're making in our network. For some context, CapEx was $597 million in Q1 for that wireless segment. We expect our quarterly wireless network, OpEx and CapEx, to be consistent with Q1 for the remainder of 2022. It's important to note that we have the necessary capital fund portions of the bill happening this year. We are excited to be entering the next phase of our deployment. On Wednesday of this week, we commercially launched Project Genesis in Las Vegas. I want to take a moment to congratulate the entire team. This is a major accomplishment, but look, it's just the beginning as we prepare to launch in additional markets as discussed on our last earnings call. We also just announced a new partnership with Samsung that will help our network expansion. and provide greater flexibility to deploy our cloud-native network. Look, it's going to be a remarkable year as we execute our vision to change the way the world communicates. Our best days are certainly ahead of us here. We'll share more details regarding our wireless plans next Tuesday in Las Vegas at our analyst day, and we'll look forward to seeing many of you there. Now I'd like to open it up to Q&A.
spk13: Thank you. If you would like to signal with questions, please press star 1 on your touchtone telephone. If you're joining us today using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that is star 1 if you would like to signal with questions. Our first question comes from Michael Rawlins with Citi.
spk11: Thanks, and good morning. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more about the experience that customers should receive in Vegas and as more markets open up in terms of average speeds, performance. And then on the pricing front, the early pricing, do you view this as a promotion to get customers, something where you see pricing sustaining over a longer period of time for DISH, or something maybe that moves up as the network becomes more robust over time? Thanks.
spk17: Yeah, this is John Swearingen. Thanks for the question. I'll take that one. Obviously, a a big step forward with us bringing commercial users onto the network earlier this week. With respect to Project Genesys, it's important not to read too deeply into that in terms of our longer term retail strategy. With Project Genesys, we've been in beta user mode for most of the first quarter. We're looking to attract sort of grassroots users, early access users who can give us feedback on the network and are doing that quite regularly. So as we've transitioned from beta users to commercial, the focus again is to attract early users. We've got an engagement app, other things where users are giving us feedback. The goal is to have a very robust network in Vegas, sort of nail it there, and then we can scale it out across all the other markets. And we're learning quite a lot with the early access users, and we'd expect ultimately to transition Project Genesis into really our retail brands where we compete across the various segments of the market. Speeds are good. Feedback is generally good. We'll be showcasing some of that next week for people who'd like to see it. But we're generally happy with where we are. And obviously with anything, it's just the start of the race, so there's a lot more work to do.
spk06: Thanks.
spk13: Thank you. And our next question will come from Rick Prentice with Raymond James.
spk02: Thanks. Good morning. I've got two areas of question. First, on the CDMA shutdown, 3G CDMA shutdown, obviously painful experience.
spk18: Glad to see this. So with that, the DOJ, could there be any reversals to your financial results, benefits, retroactively apply? And the second part of that first question is, what about the 4G LTE network? Are we expecting any further impacts? on that side.
spk15: Paul, you want to take? Yeah, I'll take the first. I didn't understand the second part. You can take the first part.
spk19: Yeah, this is Paul. I'll take the first one. Yes, once we actually do sign that agreement, we'll retroactively, it'll fall into Q2, but we'll take any benefit of the contract that related to Q1 in the Q2 financial results.
spk17: And this is John. I'll take the second part. which I think was with respect to the pending LTE shutdown, which is slated for later this quarter. There's not really a big impact there for Boost Mobile. Some of our other brands, including Ting Mobile, which is the post-paid brand we have, as well as Republic Wireless, do have some customers on the LTE network, and we've been working to certainly migrate those subscribers. The customer profile is a little different there, so it's been... a little smoother than working with the Boost Mobile subscriber base. But no significant sort of large event there for us. We've been managing that certainly throughout the last several quarters.
spk02: That's good to hear. And then obviously the 10Q points out now you will need to raise capital, plan to raise capital. Can you help us understand just framework about sizing it, timing it, what type capital you might be interested in, does the spectrum purchase of the low-band and 3Q23 option, the debt maturity 1Q23, and how any wholesale or private network contracts might fit into your timing also. But just a question kind of on the sizing, timing, and type as you're thinking about it.
spk15: Yeah. This is Charlie. I'll take that. I want to make just one comment on the CDMA. Shut up. The biggest problem is that the delay is we don't get back any kind of competitive – advantage that we have in the marketplace by having a new deal. That will never get back. So every day that goes by that they're not able to get some feedback from Justice. They clearly didn't like, for whatever reason, didn't like the amendment that was presented to them by S&T Mobile. So we expect that they have some changes in mind. Otherwise, obviously, it wouldn't have taken this long. There must be some changes. So we do have some concerns there. I do think it – I guess my biggest concern is I hope that Justice still wants four players in the marketplace. I mean, I think that's the biggest thing because it has been – it certainly has had a material negative effect. We got kind of the negative benefit – we kind of executed on the negative benefits of that deal with the CDMA shutoff by accelerating that and taking some losses on customers and costs. that perhaps could have been, that maybe never took place. But to T-Mobile's credit, we worked out a more fair arrangement in terms of how to work together on that. And unfortunately, we haven't got the benefit of that. So I know that justice has a lot of things on their plate, and maybe this isn't the most important thing that they're looking at. But for us, obviously, you know, it's a very important thing. And And we'll never get back to square one regardless of when they rule, and there's no guarantee they're going to rule. So I do think that's a risk that everybody should be concerned about. As far as that exasperated problem that, you know, in terms of raising money, I think you can look at it. We have, you know, capital on hand and cash flow to continue our build-out, but we get to March of next year with the next, I think it's a billion and a half bond repayment. we'll need to refinance or we'll need to raise capital or refinance part of that in that time frame. That gives you an order of the magnitude of what might look at. As we've always answered, we think there's a number of opportunities available for us in the marketplace, and we look at those and say, what's the best one for our capital structure? We've been a good steward of capital. We're pretty conservative. You can get a feel for We'll look at those options. Obviously, the market's very choppy right now, so we'll see where the market stabilizes and go from there.
spk06: Thanks. We'll see you on Tuesday.
spk13: And our next question will come from Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse.
spk20: Thanks so much. I guess two questions. As the launch of the network in Vegas started, change the nature of the partnership discussions you've been having over the last few years. I think, Charlie, you've mentioned in the past that you thought those would get more productive as you proved out the technology and now you've launched the network. And I think, secondly, I'm just curious, when will we start to see the band and 70 supported handsets, and is that a prerequisite at all for anything you want to do in terms of starting to go along the device subsidy path? Obviously, you just have the $900 Motorola phone to start, but I assume that's going to, you know, the number of handsets is going to, you know, expand dramatically, but, you know, when's N70 going to be in those handsets? Thanks.
spk15: Yeah, I'll let John take the second part on Band 70. But, I mean, obviously we felt like, you know, proven that to do an open RAN, cloud-native, virtualized network, 5G, standalone, you know, hasn't been done in the world. So we're the first people to do it. So we've always felt that. And, you know, it's obviously a very difficult task, otherwise other people would have done it. and they've been in the business a lot longer than we have. So we're very proud of it, and obviously we think that we've taken a lot of risk out of the technology with great support from our vendors. We obviously couldn't have done this alone without a lot of help. And so I think that's one thing. I think the other big overhang is the first milestone for the FCC, which, you know, we're still on track for. You know, we're not spiking the football, you know, yet, but we're still on track for that. So, um, you know, we think those are too big. Uh, look, there's any good business plan can raise capital, uh, just about regardless of times. And, and we think we really, really have something special and, you know, we're, we're excited to talk about it and show people.
spk17: John, you want to take the, yeah, I'll take the second part. Uh, this is John Swarring again, uh, with respect to handsets, um, So we're out of the gate with Project Genesys with devices that do not have band 70. The devices that we're deploying under Genesys and in the early days of our network are X65 Flockcom devices where we're aggregating band 66 and 71. We do have band 70 devices in the labs now, working with all of our major OEMs on that. We expect to be able to start launching commercially with band 70 devices in late Q3. And that's really when we can start hitting the gas in terms of loading retail subscribers on the network, those sorts of things. One of the things we need to focus on is making sure that Band 70, as well as some of the software required to run the network, makes it from sort of the highest tier of devices sort of all the way through the portfolio. And our team is working to make that happen. And we're confident we'll have Band 70 devices coming into the portfolio soon.
spk20: Great. Thank you.
spk13: Thank you. And our next question will come from David Barden with Bank of America.
spk08: Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking the questions. I guess my first would be if you could kind of update us on where the AT&T relationship currently stands on both the wholesale and the network sharing side of things and where you expect maybe that could trend forward. over the course of the year, specifically on the network sharing side. And then second, a bigger picture question, Charlie, I think as we get further and further into the wireless build, the investment side becomes very apparent. The return side remains a black box, I think, for most of us on the outside of the DISH organization. When we look at Las Vegas from the outside, DISH looks like a last-to-market organization single-device consumer wireless broadband player, which doesn't really seem to be as novel an approach to return as the approach you're trying to take towards investment. And maybe this is something that's going to come out on Tuesday, but I think we ask this every quarter, which is, you know, what does the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow look like? Thanks.
spk15: Yeah, I think I'll take the retail wireless part and then maybe on the network side, it would be Stephen, and if there's something left over for John. On the retail side, I mean, we'll talk more about this in Vegas, but obviously as a fourth player, we certainly have historical data where we think that goes, and it certainly should be a very profitable business for us. Obviously, as a fourth player, you're going to, you're going to have to be innovative to get people. You certainly are going to look at price. You certainly are going to look at innovation in terms. Our network allows us to be more innovative, so it's interesting stuff. As John mentioned, the time to do that is when you've got a fully loaded bag of tricks, which we knew didn't ban 70. We do need lower-cost phones. You wouldn't hit the gas on that today with one phone that's $899, right? So on the other hand, so we – But we have FCC obligations that are focused on retail wireless, and they're not focused as much on maybe some of the other things that we think our network does. So we didn't make the rules. And so we would probably approach it a little bit different way if it was all P&L. But we have things in place to make sure that we can kind of walk and chew gum at the same time, which is meet the FCC obligations and also make that a profitable business. I think we'll go a little bit more detail on this in Vegas.
spk16: So maybe just in terms of the question around network sharing as it relates to AT&T, we have a very strong collaboration with AT&T. Network sharing can take on many different flavors. I would say that at this point in time, we continue to work very closely with them on how we utilize their network as a complement to our network, both in market as well as out of market. But, you know, we're looking at different options there, but we don't have anything to announce as relates to network sharing with them. And then in terms of the overall relationship, you know, obviously we have a relationship on the MB&O side as well. And they've been very good partners for us as we continue to load customers on AT&T in addition to T-Mobile as it relates to the MVNO.
spk08: And I was just going to follow up on that real quick, if I could, please. With respect to the DOJ settlement, at the beginning of this dispute, you made this agreement with AT&T and made some commitments to AT&T in terms of longer-term 10-year revenue commitments with the expectation that it would happen very rapidly. If the DOJ settlement happens Does that change your mind about how aggressively you want to migrate off the T-Mobile platform to AT&T?
spk15: Yeah, this is Charlie. So what we had hoped was that we would only have to upgrade customers one time, right? So in the early termination of CDMA, and it's taken some time to get our systems tied into AT&T systems. Obviously, their systems are different than ours, so it's taken both parties a little bit longer than we thought. Unfortunately, with CDMA shutoff being accelerated, we had to convert people to T-Mobile, as our network obviously wasn't up with handsets available. So ideally, we would have waited until our network was up, and we could have just converted people to our network. So by the accelerated timeframe, we then had to change people over to T-Mobile. And to the extent that the Just Department does not approve, or we don't get this agreement done with T-Mobile, then yes, we would revert back to AT&T, but that would require another upgrade to an AT&T phone for the most part or to wait until such time as we have, for example, Band 70 in our phones in the fall. There's just a lot of expense that we didn't expect there and a lot of focus and operational things that our management team has had to deal with that we didn't Maybe our fault for not foreseeing, but we didn't think there would be an issue with the proposed settlement. I'm sure they have good reasons and so forth. It's just that it would be nicer if we get a little bit more communication, a little bit more focus on it. But there's already damage done. We hope that we'll get that back under control. So the timing's been really bad for us. But like anything else, when you run a business, you have speed bumps and you have to overcome it and We're a company that looks at what we can control and try to focus on what we can control and things we don't control, like the government. We have to deal with what the cards that are getting dealt to us.
spk08: Got it. Thank you guys for the question.
spk15: Thank you. On the network sharing stuff, I do think that if there are four players in the marketplace who are allowed to compete, there are going to be opportunities for people to share networks. Whichever whichever company's shared networks will have some cost advantage. And so, you know, I think we're always open to that because obviously we're coming in with something new, and so there's things we don't have to build if somebody else has it. To some degree, we're doing a little bit of that with AT&T today on the MV&O deal. But I think there's going to be other opportunities in the future. Thanks, Charlie.
spk13: And our next question will come from Phil Cusick. with JP Morgan.
spk07: Hi, thanks. So hitting 20% of the country in five weeks seems pretty fast. How developed does that commercial offer need to be and meet the requirement? And why not ask for an extension, given COVID you've been dealing with for the last two years, almost since you signed the deal?
spk15: Yeah, this is Charlie. I mean, the we don't think we need to ask for an extension at this point. I mean, we were fortunate that we ordered radios before kind of the supply chain kind of thing hit, so we actually, while we had some ups and downs, Fujitsu did an incredible job of making sure we got our radios. The thing that we don't control, the thing that would maybe give us a little bit of, you know, is your backhaul and your power. The utility companies and backhaul providers are a little bit different kind of animal because, and they have experienced some of those kind of things, but But we don't think we need to ask for an extension, and we want to keep our nose to the grindstone and do what we said we're going to do. And so, you know, we're just going to get it done. I mean, we have a can-do attitude. This is a great project. We've been through it before. This isn't our first rodeo, and we just have our head down. I know you guys are a bit frustrated because we don't talk a lot about what we're doing, but every minute that we're not – Every day we're not at a trade show. At a conference, talking about what we're doing and actually doing what we're doing gets us farther down the path where we don't have to ask for an extension.
spk07: We're all excited to hear you talk about it on Tuesday.
spk15: Any preview? The other part of the question was it's not going to be robust offering. The commitment that we have to make is we have to do data. We have to do data to 20% of the population of the United States. So it's not going to be a robust offering as robust as we'd like. A, we're still waiting on justice. Two, we have some roaming things that were part of the justice settlement that without justice approving makes it a little bit more difficult for us to have a robust offering in the marketplace. Obviously, we don't have Band 70 and we have high-priced phones. So the main thing is to get the network up and operating, start to put water through the pipes, making sure that we see how it works, learn. We haven't done this before, so it's new to our company, although most of our team has done it before. Ultimately, our ability to compete is going to be the quality of the network. You'll see more next week, but it's just not the quality. It's the architecture of the network. It's materially different than the legacy networks that are out there today. It's a modern network in a modern world. And we still have a lot of legacy in current networks. I'm very impressed with how well they work. And the incumbents are to be commended for how well they work. But, man, they're complicated and they're expensive and they're sluggish in terms of change. So we're going to be different.
spk07: Any preview, Charlie, you can give us in terms of, you know, should we look for multi-year forecasts in terms of revenue and cash flow? Should we expect other speakers aside from the DISH executives who've been announced?
spk15: I think it'll be just DISH executives. You're not going to get a lot of guidance. We don't normally give guidance. I think we'll give you some high-level things to work off of. It's not the last time we're going to talk to you. We're cognizant of the fact that we need to do a better job of communicating, and we're now to the point where we've got some things to talk about. because some of the heavy lifting is done. But you're not going to walk away with a perfect model. I think you're going to walk away with where we think things are likely to go over the next several years. And you'll be able to build a model from that, but you're not going to have the kind of guidance you get from others. Because we're a startup in that sense, right? And you know what? I don't want to take you back. We launched our first satellite and We didn't give any guidance. We had our own internal plans of where we thought we were going to go. Some of the plans, we didn't have all the tools that we needed when we first started, but we got better every day. In some cases, we blew by. We certainly long-term blew by any forecast that we had internally. Actually, my recollection was it was probably a little slower for six months than we thought it was going to be, and then it was like five times more than we ever thought it was going to be for five years. you know, we're going to be prepared for the case.
spk18: Thanks, Charlie.
spk13: And our next question will come from Craig Moffitt with Moffitt Nathanson.
spk09: Thanks. So I guess since we're going to hear a lot more about the wireless business, let me think about the legacy business for a second. You talked about your rural strategy. How much of your base today in the satellite TV business is is still in rural markets, or markets that I guess I would define rural, meaning that they don't have access to a wired broadband connection. And as you see sort of all of the fiber overbuild plans from the frontiers and lumens and everybody that are sort of increasingly targeting rural areas, how much do you think that's going to shrink over the next, say, five years or so? Thank you.
spk15: Eric will give you a little more detail, Craig. The majority of our customers do have broadband. They just prefer the user experience, I think, on what we have, and maybe Eric will go into more detail. I think your observation or your theory there is with $65 billion of RDOF funding, that's enough money to wire every remaining household in the country or get broadband to every house in the country as long as you're not trying to put fiber, you know, 50 miles, you know, 20 miles or 10 miles or five miles out to every home. So I would expect that if the government spends that money wisely, you know, most people in the next, you know, two or three years are going to have broadband. So we have to make that user experience better than what you can get from OTT and those kind of things. And You know, I think there's going to be more competition for what we do, for sure. But, you know, we also have some things that we think that we have that just make it a better experience for our customers. So, Eric, maybe you want to – you're much closer to that than I am.
spk02: Yeah, Craig, this is Eric. Maybe just a bit more context. I mean, obviously, you know, we've been talking about this specific strategy probably since, you know, early 2016 and really focused on redefining our target markets for the Dish TV product and focusing in on a more rural customer. You're asking a question with a level of detail that we're not going to disclose. However, what I would say is the majority of our customers are in rural America. As Charlie, you know, pointed out, obviously we think all customers are past. It may not be a wire, but obviously with satellite broadband, they can achieve connectivity. It's really up to us to, you know, make that experience great. And I think, you know, as look at you're seeing and writing about and others, you know, the direct-to-consumer marketplace, you know, is kind of exploding. However, you know, we'll probably see some consolidation and, you know, you know, some aggregation of that content. We feel like the Hopper platform, we've been talking about it for many years where, you know, we have the ability to have Netflix on the box along with Amazon Prime and YouTube Today. Our launch of our Android TV Hopper Plus platform really allows folks to download a lot of other apps. And so, you know, the great thing about the Hopper is, you know, not only can you skip those commercials, but you also have a whole home experience versus maybe a Roku in one room and a Chromecast in another and, you know, a Fire OS TV set. So, you know, I think Charlie's right. I mean, look, we're eyes wide open on what's happening with broadband and competition. But, you know, we're just going to do our best to target the right customer, make sure they're profitable, and continue to build those customer relationships, whether it's just TV or Sling TV or some of our retail wireless products. Hope to see you next week, Greg.
spk09: Could I just squeeze in a follow-up then, Charlie? Because what you both described actually is as fiber gets broader, how does that inform your thinking about the fixed wireless broadband opportunity, a lot of which would logically sort of target rural America? I guess we'll probably hear more about that on Tuesday, but how do you think about using your spectrum for fixed wireless in that context?
spk15: Yeah, so I think that's the good news, Craig, is that let's assume that if you took it extreme, that everybody who had broadband didn't want satellite TV anymore. Now with our Spectrum portfolio and our rural America routes, we think that there is certainly opportunity for fixed wireless in rural America. We're watching closely. you know, what T-Mobile and Verizon are doing. I think it's very creative in terms of what they're doing. I think there's maybe other ways to do it depending on where you are and the densities that you have. Obviously, one of the things that is now with the FCC and the rulemaking is 12 gigahertz, which we think is an ideal frequency for that. You could get millions of customers in fixed wireless, particularly in rural America. So, And we're hopeful the FCC will make some rulings on that in near order. But, you know, I think there's opportunity there. And I think, you know, in a funny sort of way, I think there's greater upside in fixed wireless than the loss we might have, you know, the bleed that you have in linear TV.
spk06: All right.
spk09: Thank you.
spk06: I look forward to hearing more about it next week.
spk13: Thank you. And our next question will come from Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley.
spk12: Thanks. Good morning. Just maybe focusing in on two questions on the quarter. You know, you guys have had really low churn in pay TV really through the pandemic. It popped up this morning in the first quarter. I think some of that was Tegna, maybe the price increase. But could you talk about your expectations for churn as sort of, you know, we can hopefully finish coming out of COVID and what's normal for that business as you look ahead. And then on the wireless side, your service gross margins were down quite a bit. I think you talked about the CDMA migration pressuring both ARPU and data costs, but just some help in thinking about how much of that gets resolved as you guys hopefully get approval from the DOJ. Thanks.
spk02: Yeah, Ben, this is Eric. I'll take the churn question and initially give you a little context around that. Obviously, we've been on a run rate of not only improving the customer experience, but lowering customer churn probably since 2014, 15, 16. And I just talked on the previous question about you know, our focus on the Dish TV side regarding, you know, really acquiring the right customer and making sure they're profitable and we're given a great experience. You know, I would say a couple things. Like the last two years with COVID is a factor. And obviously, I would say that, you know, churn rates and the desire to switch has been depressed slightly. And you're seeing that kind of a bit throughout the industry. But there's also, you know, you've got stimulus, you've got inflation, you have a lot of factors that are happening. What I would tell you is there's no doubt there was a bit of a bump, you know, at Q1 because of TECNA and obviously price increase. But I would look for our run rate to be, you know, closer to traditionally where we had been pre-COVID. Okay.
spk18: Paul, do you have anything else to say?
spk19: No, no, I agree with that. And then as it relates to the margins on retail wireless, you had three items that are giving you pressure. You clearly have significant CDMA migration costs that are hitting there. We are seeing higher data usage, and the favorable terms that we hope to get on the T-Mobile deal should also help that going forward. So you should see that degradation reverse in future periods.
spk18: Thanks, Paul.
spk05: Operator, we have time for one more before moving to the media.
spk13: Thank you. We will now take our final question from the analyst community. Members of the media on the call, please press star 1 now to enter the queue to ask a question. We will begin the media portion of this call following the answer to this final analyst question. Our final analyst question will come from Walter Pycheck with LightShed.
spk04: Man, that was a lot of buildup for this last question.
spk18: Come on.
spk04: Jesus. I want to go back to Craig's question, you know, talking about broadband with the pay TV customers. You said that majority already have it and obviously more getting it with broadband or with fiber and fixed wireless. And then Charlie, you know, similarly back when you talked about shared networks, you're like, Oh, that makes sense over time. So like, yeah, It just seems obvious that a merger of DirecTV and Dish's pay TV business should be happening given those market dynamics. And similarly, that you should do a shared network bill with AT&T. So you yourself have control of doing this to a certain extent by pursuing it with these companies. So rather than – it feels like – it's almost like, yes, that may happen if they come to us, but why not pursue it yourself?
spk15: You have good insights, Walt. I mean, you know, I think we're comfortable running our company in private, not in the press. And I think we're comfortable that we have a great business and a great future, and I think we're comfortable that we're going to figure things out. I don't know else how to say it. I mean, you gain a lot of confidence over the years. You work as a team as long as, you know, some of us in this room have. You just get confidence that you can get to some of those places. Now, not everybody works that way. Not every logical thing happens. But look, any time you can do something that both companies or multiple companies can all benefit from, then it's easy to have a conversation. You can't always get something done, but it's easy to have a conversation. What doesn't work is where one company gets all the benefit and one company loses. That doesn't work. Well, believe it or not, there's still people trying to do those deals out there. We just don't spend a lot of time on them. Look, I've said that Dish and DirecTV is inevitable, and I think there's opportunity with a number of companies, not just AT&T, where you can share spectrum assets or networks. It is a little bit more complicated because our network is standalone 5G, and it doesn't have all the legacy hooks in it. So it's not – we don't – you know, it would be difficult for us to share legacy when you've got a more modern network. That's a little bit more difficult. But there are things, as Craig talked about, in fixed wireless and things where that wouldn't be an issue because that's kind of a new build kind of thing. So – You know, we're looking at all those things, all I can say.
spk04: I think Rich wants to sneak one in again on his favorite topic.
spk02: We'll give Rich the last word. Pressure on Rich now.
spk14: Yeah, always. He always gets the last word. Charlie, obviously the video sub loss is not just from you, but the whole industry. Video sub losses are accelerating rapidly. and streaming sub growth appears to be slowing pretty dramatically. I just, I guess from a high level, it'd be just great to get sort of your views on like what happens next.
spk15: Well, I think the video, I think the video, just the video content providers, we need to make, they need to help us help them make the product better. Right. If, if, if I'm, if I'm, this is a trend in the younger generation that they're watching, if you're watching YouTube, two hours of TikTok, you're not watching two hours of Discovery, which you used to do. I prefer my kids watching Discovery than TikTok, maybe. We just got to make the product better. The commercial load is still heavy. We just do things that make it frustrating for customers, maybe for the bottom line, and I think maybe we need a bit more of the We need a little more T-Mobile's un-carrier approach to consumers than the video business. We have a lot of ideas about that. Some people have engaged on that. Some people have not. But obviously, as those trends continue for companies, which I think they will, just because I see younger generations spending time on something other than traditional content, people will get innovative. Nothing makes people innovative more than having their trends reverse on them.
spk14: Is there anything you've seen that is innovative to date?
spk15: Yeah, I think there's a lot of innovation out there. I think what happens is it boils down to customer experience, the user interface, how do you get to the content that you want and is it a fair price, and how... And I think the biggest complaint we get, Eric would be closer to that to me, but the biggest complaint we get certainly on Leonard TV, for example, is 15, 16 minutes of commercials. So, you know, you get a little bit of history in between the commercials. So that's difficult to watch. And so I think we've just got to improve the product. But they make money from commercials, but at some point enough people aren't watching that the commercials become less valuable, in which case people start to change. I always like to get out ahead of that. and maybe get there a year or two in advance of where I think things are going. So I'm optimistic about content. We've never had better content, I think, in the United States than we do now, and I'm optimistic that people will pay for it, and I think you give people good user experience. I think that the companies can be very profitable, but I think there's a transition there, and we're all going to have to feel our way around, but we're We're problem solvers. We think we can make our product better with the help of our content providers. All right. We're taking media.
spk13: Thank you. We will now take questions from members of the media. Again, if you are a member of the media and would like to ask questions, please press star 1 now to enter the queue to ask a question. And our first media question comes from David Lum with CNET.
spk03: Hi, guys. A little two-parter here. First, can you just give some example at how this network is going to be different for the users and customers, the mobile network, than the legacy networks you're describing again? And the second one is... Your Project Genesys $30 a month tier, is that going to be the rate going forward? Is that just promotional? And when would you expect to raise it, if ever?
spk17: Thanks, Dave, for the question. This is John . A few things. I'll start on the Genesys side. So it's a project to bring on early users. By definition, it's going to be short-lived. as we transition to full commercial operations with our brands. There may be a role for Project Genesis longer term as it relates to our innovation programs, but it's not our sort of full-scale launch of a brand and offers to compete with the large incumbents. As it relates to how we'll go about competing, I don't think this is the right place for me to talk about what our strategy is. Obviously, we don't want to... sort of telegraph what we're going to do to the competition. But generally, you know, we're preparing to scale up operations, be competitive in the market, and having our own network will be transformative for our retail business as well as as we enter an enterprise.
spk06: And, sir, did you have any additional questions?
spk03: No, just if there was anything about the network, the network itself that was different than legacy that you could sort of point out right now.
spk16: Yeah, so just adding to what John said, clearly we're going to be competitive on the consumer side, but a lot of the capabilities that we have within the network unlock a whole new set of opportunities on the enterprise side of the business. And as we've talked about in the past, we think that there's significant potential for with the enterprise business and the capabilities of our network actually enable that as we go forward.
spk06: All right, thank you.
spk05: Operator, I think there's only one more in queue.
spk13: Thank you. And that question will come from John Silentano with Inside Towers.
spk10: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the call. You've put together a pretty impressive list of vendors to put together your network. And you've acknowledged that it's a different network from the legacy networks. But, you know, looking at the list of vendors, and frankly, I've kind of lost track of how many there actually are. But we keep asking, who's got the point? And I know in the last quarter call, you acknowledged that DISH had to become its own systems integrator. And I'm wondering if this deal announced with Samsung, who has both RAN and core elements to it that might help streamline that execution on setting up and delivering a network by having a large vendor with those kind of skills to help this through. Is that a fair assessment?
spk17: Thanks for the question, John. I'll start off and then I'll kick it to Stephen for some additional context. We do view ourselves as a systems integrator. We're working with many of the biggest names in tech and certainly in the wireless space to bring this network together. We're going to continue to be the core integrator, but we're always looking at opportunities to improve our position. Certainly the opportunity to bring in Samsung as an additional RAN and radio partner on top of our existing robust relationship on the device side was a really good opportunity for us. Obviously, we're getting better every day at serving in the integrator capacity, working with the partners, and we expect to be able to plug Samsung into our delivery machine. Big focus on execution across the board with the names that you've read in the press, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, VMware, Maveni, or others. One of the things that's great about our architecture is that we can bring in different pieces and when we see those opportunities because the entire architecture is open by definition. So a big focus on not boxing ourselves in. Stephen, anything you want to add there?
spk16: Yeah, and I think just picking up on what John said is we have an open architecture, and so we are the systems integrator, and we have an ability to bring in vendors that fit within our ecosystem. And I think it's very important to emphasize the fact that it is an open ecosystem and by definition allows us to do that. And as we've talked about in the past, it is an O-RAN architecture, And what was important is every partner we have understands that they're coming into this architecture and they fit within that framework. And Samsung is no exception. And I think what's great about the relationship with Samsung is that they've embraced O-RAN. And that was really important for us. They've embraced our architecture. And they're yet another partner that can bring capabilities to complement what we're doing. I think another important factor in the timing for Samsung is is the CBRS spectrum as well as the TDD spectrum we recently acquired in the last auction. And that's really important and valuable spectrum for us. Their ability to bring massive MIMO into our network and be able to tie TDD and FTD together is another important consideration. And just to clarify, they're coming in as a RAN vendor, not a core vendor. So they're coming in to bring in radio software as well as radios that will complement what we're doing with Fujitsu on the radio side as well. And perhaps one more point to add is We've already completed some initial interoperability testing with the Samsung infrastructure and software with our existing ecosystem partners, be it VMware and be it Fujitsu as well. So we're already down that path, and we're looking to deploy them later in the year in our network and going into 2023.
spk05: Operator, thank you, and thanks, everybody, for joining. We'll see you next week. Thank you.
spk13: That does conclude today's conference call. We do thank you for your participation. Have an excellent day.
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