Shenandoah Telecommunications Co

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Shenandoah Telecommunications' first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Lucas Binder, VP of Corporate Finance for Shentel.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. The purpose of today's call is to review Shentel's results for the first quarter 2026. Our results were announced in a press release distributed this morning. We filed our Form 10-Q with the SEC. The presentation we will be reviewing is included on the investor page on our investor.chentel.com website. 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 Ed McKay, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Volk, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After the prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. I 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 and may cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Additionally, we have provided a detailed discussion of various risk factors in our FCC filings, which you are encouraged to review. your caution 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. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ed. Go ahead, Ed.

Thanks, Lucas. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Starting on slide four, I'll share some of our first quarter highlights. During the quarter, we released 22,000 passives to sales, bringing our total Glowfiber expansion markets passives to 449,000. We added approximately 6,000 Glowfiber net customers in the first quarter and 9% improvement over the prior year period. And we now serve a total of 94,000 customers. Our commercial fiber business also delivered a strong quarter with 196,000 in sales bookings and revenue growth of 4.7% year over year. Collectively, these results demonstrate the excellent momentum we continue to see in our fiber businesses. We were also pleased with our first quarter financial results. Consolidated revenues and adjusted EBITDA grew 4.8% and 15% year over year respectively, and we remain on track to deliver positive free cash flow in 2027. Turning to slide five, we highlight our integrated broadband network that spans more than 19,000 fiber route miles across eight states with over 700,000 total broadband passings. As shown on the map, all planned glow fiber markets have now been launched, and our primary focus is adding passings in our existing Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio markets. We remain on track to complete our glow fiber expansion in 2026, reaching 510,000 passings. On slide six, our sales and marketing team continues to drive strong growth across our Glowfiber expansion markets. And during the first quarter, we added approximately 6,000 new customers and nearly 7,000 total video, voice, and data revenue generating units. Our five-year price guarantee rate card introduced in the second half of 2025 is gaining traction, supported by the expansion of our door-to-door sales channel. Over the past 12 months, we have added more than 23,000 new data customers, more than 26,000 total RGUs as well. Total Glow Fiber revenue generating units surpassed 110,000 in the first quarter, up 31% compared to the prior year. Moving to slide seven, first quarter construction was strong with over 22,000 passings added, bringing the total to more than 449,000. Coupled with the continued increase in homes passed, penetration rose to 20.9%, a 30 basis point increase over the fourth quarter, and 150 basis point increase year over year. Penetration trends across our Glowfiber cohorts are shown on slide eight and reflect blended penetration rates for both residential and small and medium business passings. We are expecting data penetration rates of approximately 37% five to seven years after launching a market, and our most mature cohorts launched in 2019 and 2020 have now exceeded this with an average penetration rate of 37.5%. In addition to providing the fastest speeds in our markets, we continue to focus on providing outstanding local customer service. As shown on slide nine, our average monthly return was 0.92% in the first quarter, which continues to be among the best in the industry. Broadband data average revenue per user for the first quarter was stable sequentially and year over year at more than $77. We continue to have success selling up the rate card with nearly 82% of our new residential customers in the first quarter selecting speeds of one gig or higher, including 18% choosing two gig service and 5% choosing five gig service. Our commercial fiber business is highlighted on slide 10. In the first quarter, incremental monthly sales bookings exceeded 196,000, driven by strong demand from wireless carriers, wholesale customers, and school systems. Our service delivery team installed 167,000 in new monthly revenue during the quarter, and the acquired Horizon backlog that drove elevated installation activity in 2025 is now substantially complete. Average monthly compression and disconnect churn remained very low at 0.4% in the first quarter, reflecting exceptional support from both our network operations center and sales team. Turning to slide 11, we show our operating results for our incumbent broadband markets. At the end of the first quarter, we served more than 111,000 broadband data customers. Data, voice, and video RGUs totaled more than 156,000 at year end, down 4% year over year, primarily due to video customers moving to online streaming services. Total broadband passings in our incumbent markets stayed steady compared to the fourth quarter, and we expect to complete 1,800 additional government-subsidized incumbent grant passings in 2026, primarily in West Virginia. As shown on slide 12, the recently constructed subsidized passings represent a strong growth segment for incumbent markets, with data penetration exceeding 40% within six quarters of a neighborhood launch. Average penetration in our 2023 cohorts is over 52%, with the oldest cohort reaching 71%. We've already achieved an aggregate penetration of 37% across 23,000 subsidized passings. Moving to slide 13, monthly broadband data churn was stable sequentially and up modestly year over year at 1.46% for the first quarter. The slight uptick in churn was due to promotional activity from satellite competition in some of our most rural markets without a fixed wireline competitor. In these markets, we implemented a speed increase late in the first quarter, providing customers with higher speeds at the same price to better differentiate our service from satellite offerings. Across approximately a third of our passings where we face another fixed broadband competitor, our rate card strategy of offering greater value with higher speeds at the same price continues to be effective at mitigating churn. As expected, broadband data ARPU declined 1.6% from a year ago to $82, driven by the addition of new customers with more aggressive pricing in our competitive markets. I'll now turn the call over to Jim to walk you through our first quarter financial results.