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T-Mobile US, Inc.
7/27/2023
Following opening remarks, the earnings call will be open for questions via the conference line by pressing 1 followed by 4 and via Twitter by sending a tweet to at T-Mobile IR or at Mike Sievert using cash tag TMUS. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Judd Henry, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations for T-Mobile US. Please go ahead, sir.
Welcome to T-Mobile's second quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Mike Sievert, our president and CEO, Peter Oswaldek, our CSFO, as well as other members of the senior leadership team. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. We provide a comprehensive list of risk factors in our SEC filings, which I encourage you to review. Our earnings release, investor factbook, and other documents related to our results, as well as reconciliations between GAAP and the non-GAAP results discussed on this call, can be found in the Quarter of the Results section of the Investor Relations website. With that, let me turn it over to Mike.
Okay. Thanks, Judd. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the call. As you can see, we're here with several members of our senior management team. We're coming to you live from Bellevue, Washington, and we're ready to take your questions. But first, let me share just a few comments. If you'll recall, at our analyst day in early 2021, we shared our strategy to build the best network, couple it with a leading un-carrier value proposition and customer experience, and grow our share in areas where T-Mobile was massively under-penetrated relative to our peers. That strategy and our approach has remained remarkably consistent, and our Q2 results continue to show that it's working better than ever. In fact, T-Mobile delivered our highest Q2 postpaid phone net ads in eight years, fueled by both industry-leading gross ads and the lowest postpaid phone churn in company history. And importantly, we did this while industry growth normalized proving that the growth opportunities and durable advantages we've been sharing with you really are unique to T-Mobile. We also told you that if we delivered the best product and the best value and the best experiences, there was no reason we couldn't get to the lowest churn in the industry. Remember that? And in Q2, we did it. For the first time in our history, T-Mobile reported the lowest churn post-paid phone churn in the industry. That is a remarkable statement, and it's a testament to the work our team has done to build the best network and to further our value proposition to deliver even better experiences to customers. Now, I'm sure there's still going to be some back and forth between us and the other guys before we consistently put them in the rearview mirror for good on churn, but all the same, it is great to get this first win. We also continue to run the business in a smart and sustainable manner, translating our industry-leading customer growth in Q2 into industry-leading service revenue growth and core adjusted EBITDA growth, while growing free cash flow by more than 60% year over year. This industry-leading customer and financial growth led us to raise guidance for the year again. And we're fortunate to deliver these industry-leading results within the context of a vibrant wireless industry with growing industry service revenues and industry cash flows and healthy competition that continues to deliver more value and better networks to customers. In fact, on network, we not only defended but extended our leadership in both overall and 5G performance with the latest third-party reports showing that T-Mobile's lead is widening. Looking at Ookla data, T-Mobile once again swept every category for overall network performance with median download speeds more than double our closest competitor. We've long talked about how our dedicated 5G spectrum assets with superior propagation would result in a demonstrable advantage in customers' everyday lived experiences. even as the competitors try to catch us. T-Mobile's Head Start, our dedicated 5G spectrum assets, and our technology leadership are the things that allow us to stay meaningfully ahead, as in like two years or more ahead in 5G reach and overall network performance, and to stay ahead for years to come. And the most exciting part is that many prospective customers are only just beginning to notice, which means lots of the benefit from this is in front of us. And importantly, these things also allow it to do it all with the best capital efficiency in the industry. Now, we also continue to build on our fame for providing the best value. Our latest un-carrier move, phone freedom, frees customers locked up into those three-year contracts at the carriers. And our new Go 5G Plus rate plan delivers the best value in wireless. The response from customers has been really amazing. In fact, Go 5G Plus instantly became our most popular plan. And we're seeing improved porting ratios against every competitor, including yet another quarter of year-over-year improvement against cable. In fact, total postpaid porting ratios for us have improved every month since we launched Phone Freedom, including in July, as more and more customers learn that they can break free from those three-year contracts, come to a better network, and get a better value at T-Mobile. All of these catalysts, coupled with our unique growth opportunities in under-penetrated markets, are what enable a differentiated and profitable growth strategy that separates us from the competition. And you're seeing it again in these Q2 results. We added 299,000 postpaid account net ads, the highest reported in the industry, showing that we continue to win the switching decisions in the market. And we had postpaid net additions of 1.6 million, again leading the industry by a wide margin. This included postpaid phone net ads of 760,000, our highest Q2 in eight years, even as the industry sees more normalized levels of growth. our increased share was driven by our industry best phone gross ads, which grew over last year's Q2 as well as the lowest postpaid phone churn in our history and, as I mentioned, the lowest in the industry for the first time ever at just 0.77%. In T-Mobile for Business, we had a record quarter with best ever phone net ads and our lowest ever phone churn. Enterprise and government customers buy based on their own rigorous testing of the networks, not just price. And our network leadership, innovative solutions, and customer experiences are driving major wins and fueling our momentum in these segments. We're attracting profitable customers with CLVs in the hundreds of dollars each and still growing. As I mentioned, consumers are beginning to take notice of our network strides as well, as we're winning prime network seekers in the top 100 markets who increasingly recognize that T-Mobile offers the best combination of network coverage and capacity to meet their needs. We saw our share of switchers in the top 100 markets increase both sequentially and year over year. in smaller markets in rural areas, where we continue to bring the first and in many places only 5G network, we're seeing an incredible response. We're capturing a wind share of switchers in these areas in the upper 30s, which shows we're not only on track to meet our goal of 20% share in 2025, but it gives us confidence we have room to run in the years beyond. In addition to mobile wireless, we added 509,000 high-speed internet customers. Notably, we've continued to grow our gross ads every quarter since we launched over two years ago as demand for the product just continues to grow. And we saw sequential improvement in churn again this quarter and net promoter scores that remain multiples higher than cable, demonstrating how our high-speed internet resonates with and satisfies an important target audience within this larger broadband market. We also celebrated another major milestone in our Sprint merger integration, as we are now substantially complete with both the billing migration and retail rationalization, well ahead of our year-end target. At every step of our integration journey, the customer has been our primary focus. As you know, this has allowed us to not only unlock synergies bigger and faster than expected, but also to deliver industry-leading growth and record low churn at the same time. I could not be more proud of what our team has accomplished in this area. Okay, I'm going to wrap it up. We are pulling into the station halfway 2023 with great momentum. Our postpaid phone net ads year to date are right on track with last year, which was a growth record year for us. We continue to extend our durable network and value leadership over the competition, which fuels our growth opportunities. And our profitable growth strategy continues to translate into the highest core adjusted EBITDA growth and year to date cash flow conversion in the industry. Listen, in our industry, change is a constant, but our team navigates it deftly with the customer as our North Star. And because of that, there has never been a more exciting time to be at T-Mobile. Okay, Peter, over to you to talk about our key financial highlights and an update on our guidance for 2023.
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