Shenandoah Telecommunications Co

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator. Today's conference is scheduled to begin momentarily. Until that time, your lines will again be placed on music hold. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Shenandoah Telecommunications Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kirk Andrews, Director of Financial Planning and Analysis for Shentel.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. The purpose of today's call is to review Shentel's results for the fourth quarter and full year 2020. Our results were announced in a press release distributed this morning, and the presentation we'll be reviewing is included on the investor page at our website, www.gentel.com. Please note that an audio replay of this call will be made available later today. The details are set forth in the press release announcing this call. With us on the call today are Chris French, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dave Heimbach, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Jim Bolt, Senior Vice President of Finance and TFO. After our prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. As always, let me refer you to slide two of the presentation, which contains our safe harbor disclaimer, and remind you that this conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. These may cause our actual results to differ materially from the statements. Therefore, we have provided a detailed discussion of various risk factors in our SEC filings, which you are encouraged to review. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Chris. Go ahead, Chris.

Thanks, Kirk. We appreciate everyone joining us this morning, and I hope everyone is staying healthy and safe. As reflected on slide four, we had a record year of broadband results with about 18,800 high-speed data net additions, more than two and a half times higher than 2018 and 19. Our success was driven by excellent execution of our growth strategy that we accelerated over two years ago when Dave joined the company. We now have three last mile broadband networks tied together by over 6,700 route miles of fiber. Our largest and most developed network, the incumbent cable business, added over 14,600 net additions due to strong demand for faster data speeds at a fair value from our customers who are increasingly working and learning from home. Glow Fiber contributed 4,000 net additions in its first full year of operations, exceeding our expectations for construction pace, penetration rates, and churn. Glow has validated our investment thesis, and we plan to accelerate the pace of expansion. Our Beam fixed wireless broadband service was launched in late October and contributed approximately 100 net additions. Dave will provide more detail on these outstanding results later on the call. Turning to slide five, we now have product offerings to serve a variety of market dynamics, with our Glow Fiber service targeting higher density urban markets and Beam Fixed Wireless service targeting lower density rural areas. We now reach approximately 247,000 homes passed, an increase of over 38,000 from the end of 2019. We plan to accelerate our investments in both Glow and Beam and expect to reach approximately 730,000 homes passed over the next five years. The common denominator in all of our offerings is to provide the leading high-speed internet service available in each market, combined with superior local customer service. With projected glow and beam terminal penetration rates in the low to mid 30% range and incumbent cable penetration in the mid 50% range, we expect our broadband business to have industry leading sustainable growth for the next several years. Moving to slide six, I'd like to transition now to provide a brief update on the pending sale and expected use of proceeds that we announced earlier in February. With the T-Mobile exercise of the purchase option of our PCS assets in operation and the termination of the sales price behind us, we're now focused on executing the asset purchase agreement in the first quarter and obtaining required regulatory approvals and closing the transaction in the second quarter. After the sale is completed, we of course will have to pay taxes and will need to pay off our existing credit agreements. Our board of directors will then meet to consider the special dividend and set the record and payable dates. The first full year of Glow Fiber's operations and the launch of Beam were significant accomplishments for 2020, as was the work leading up to the successful outcome to the appraisal process for the PCS sale. But I'm most proud of how our entire organization addressed the impact of the pandemic. They quickly took steps to protect our employees while continuing to provide service and support for our customers. The year was perhaps one of the most challenging in our company's history, but the team not only met the challenge but became stronger in the process. I'm very pleased with how our organization responded and how well Chantel is positioned for a very bright future. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jim to review the details of our financial results.