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spk07: Businesses across our footprint gave Sparklight top marks in overall satisfaction, cost, reliability, and support, to name a few. These awards would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of our associates, who remain dedicated to supporting our customers and our community. In keeping with our commitment to supporting our communities, not only through our products and services, but through philanthropic initiatives and partnerships, We are pleased to share that we recently awarded more than $100,000 in grants to 30 nonprofit organizations across our 24-state footprint through the company's Charitable Giving Fund, which was launched in January 2021. The Charitable Giving Fund, which will annually award $200,000 in grants to local nonprofit organizations in our markets, concentrates support in the areas of education and digital literacy, hunger relief, and community development. Finally, I'd like to welcome Todd Cucci, who will join the company as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Finance in September. Todd comes to us from Truist Securities, where he most recently served as Managing Director of Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Leverage Finance Team. He brings more than 20 years of relevant capital markets, telecom industry, and financial leadership experience, making him a valuable addition to the Cable One leadership team. And now, Steven.
spk06: Thanks, Julie. The second quarter of 2021 generated exceptional financial results. Revenues for the second quarter were $401.7 million compared to $328.3 million in the prior year quarter, a 22.4% increase. This increase, which included $50.6 million of revenues from Hargrave operations, was fueled by a residential HSD revenue increase of 26.6% and a business services revenue increase of 31%. When we exclude second quarter 2021 Hargrave results, we would have seen second quarter total revenue increase by 7%, residential HSD revenues increase by 15.7%, and business service revenue increase by 5.6%. Residential HSD customers grew by approximately 165,000 or 21.7% year-over-year. Approximately 110,000 residential data PSUs came to Cable 1 in the Hargrave acquisition, of which approximately 19,000 were contributed to Hargrave in the Anniston Exchange in October 2020. Excluding Hargrave customers, we added over 12,000 residential HSD customers on a sequential basis. Operating expenses were $112.4 million or 28% of revenues in the second quarter compared to $106 million or 32.3% of revenues in the prior year quarter. A 430 basis point improvement driven largely by a decrease in programming and compensation expenses. Selling general and administrative expenses were $88 million for the second quarter of 2021 compared to $65 million in the prior year quarter. These expenses were 21.9% of revenues in the second quarter of 2021 compared to 19.8% of revenues in the prior year quarter. Net income in the second quarter was $106.2 million. Net income included a $33.4 million non-cash gain on fair value adjustments associated with the company's existing investment in hard gray, partially offset by a $21.4 million non-cash loss on fair value adjustments associated with the call and put options to acquire the remaining equity interest in mega broadband investments. As a reminder, the MBI options are subject to mark-to-market accounting on a quarterly basis. Until these options are exercised or expire, any changes in the assumption used to determine their fair values could increase or decrease the resulting valuation, which in turn could cause significant non-operating fluctuations in our GAAP financial results from one quarter to the next. Net income per share on a fully diluted basis was $16.68 per share, inclusive of the non-cash gains and losses just mentioned. Adjusted EBITDA was $213.2 million for the second quarter and increased 30.7% from the prior year quarter. For reference, Hargrave's two months of operating results contributed $22.3 million of adjusted EBITDA this quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA margin increased 340 basis points year-over-year, going from 49.7% to 53.1%. Capital expenditures totaled $89.3 million for the second quarter of 2021, which equates to 41.9% of adjusted EBITDA. During the quarter, we invested $19.4 million of CapEx for network expansion and $2.4 million for integration activities. bringing our totals for the years to $26.5 million and $6.4 million, respectively. Adjusted EBITDA left capital expenditures was $123.9 million for the second quarter and increased 46.6% from the prior year quarter. In the second quarter of 2021, we paid $15.1 million in dividends to shareholders. On May 3rd, 2021, we closed our purchase of the remaining approximately 85% equity interest in Hargrave that we didn't already own. The transaction implied a $2.2 billion total enterprise value for 100% of Hargrave on a cash-free, debt-free basis. Additionally, on May 3, 2021, to partially finance the Hargrave acquisition, we obtained an $800 million term loan, which matures in 2028. The net proceeds of the offering were $789.8 million after deducting issuance costs. From a liquidity standpoint, we had $449 million of cash and cash equivalents on hand as of June 30th, and we continue to generate significant free cash flow. At quarter end, our debt balance was approximately $3.9 billion, consisting of approximately $2.3 billion in term loans, $920 million in convertible notes, and $650 million in unsecured notes, and $5.6 million of finance lease liabilities. We also had $459 million available for additional borrowings under our revolver as of June 30th. Overall, our debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA after netting cash on hand against debt was at 4.1 times as of June 30th. Cole, we are now ready for questions.
spk05: Thank you. And we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. And at this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question today will come from Phil Cusick with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hi, guys. Thanks. Two questions, if I can. The pace of the residential broadband as through the quarter, 12,000 is a great result on an organic basis. How sustainable is that? and especially when you think about the EVB programs and potential further federal support going in the future?
spk07: Phil, it's Julie. I'll start out with that. I mean, I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what's going to happen with the pandemic or with schools, and certainly the impacts of those things going forward as planned versus not would probably impact our business. But I feel pretty confident. I mean, we sort of pointed to thinking that – and it's just thinking. It's not knowing, because none of us know with the crazy world that we're living in. But thinking that the back half of this year is likely going to look like 2019. Now, having said that, we said that at the beginning of this year, too. And clearly, we're outpacing that by a long shot. The real answer is we don't know, but we're prepared to handle the growth that we can still capture. The EBB is pretty interesting. As I noted, just a little bit under 10 percent of the customers that have come on are new customers, and likely part of that is getting the word out and, quite honestly, the process to enroll is a bit onerous right now. So it will be interesting to see as we pivot to a longer-term program to see what we can bring on with that. It is pretty interesting to note that those same EBB customers, the majority of which were existing customers, they are upgrading at three times the rate of a non-EBB customer. So these are people that are taking this opportunity to get more speeds, more throughput, more data, but with the government footing a portion of that bill.
spk03: Okay. And then second, if I can, debt to LQA EBITDA 4.1 times. How do you think about that coming down over time? The rates you're raising money are amazingly low. I think it's all Devens doing. And does that make you more comfortable with taking a little more leverage on than you were in the past?
spk06: Well, I think doing what we did probably took us to a leverage level that we hadn't anticipated before that. And I think a big part of that was just where we were able to borrow and what we're able to put in place. And clearly, I think we probably look at the converts as, you know, quasi leverage, you know, just from the standpoint of, you know, we clearly anticipate that those will convert over time and, They're not debt. Unfortunately, the very low cost of them means that there's not much debt service associated with them either. And so I think all of that allows us to. That being said, I think we continue to grow very quickly. Keep in mind that that leverage number I gave did not include a full quarter of hard gray. So, you know, you add that in alone and it will drop the leverage on top of our continued growth. So I think we'll delever, you know, relatively quickly anyway. That being said, you know, as opportunities present themselves, I think we definitely are more comfortable with a higher leverage than we probably were, you know, two years ago before we kind of put this structure in place.
spk03: Yeah, I didn't want to make it too complicated, but, yeah, that was my question. Thank you very much.
spk05: And our next question will come from Frank Laughlin with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk00: Great. Thank you. Walk us through a little bit more about what you're getting with Hargrave and what can we expect, kind of the trends with those subs. In particular, talk to us a little bit about the extensive fiber network that you get with that and how that fits into your mix and what you think the opportunity is to drive business there. Thanks.
spk06: Sure, Frank. I'll start off and Julie can add in. I think first and foremost we get a company that looks very similar to ours in a lot of ways from the standpoint of the type of markets they serve, the type of associates that they have, and kind of their focus on associates first and then customers in the communities we serve. And so that piece of it, which is kind of foundational to the things that we generally look at, is there. You know, they have slightly higher penetration. They probably have markets that have slightly higher demos than us. And so, that being said, they also have 40% of their network that's already fiber. And so, you know, some of that, I think, a competitive standpoint and others, you know, puts them well positioned. Keep in mind, too, I think some of the higher penetration actually ties to the higher demos and to the the nature, especially at Hilton Head and the area around Hilton Head, to, you know, what is kind of a more resort-type town. And so, yeah, so I think from a growth opportunity standpoint, when we look at, you know, what is our real focus, which is, you know, HSD, business services, revenue growth, and then letting that flow through to EBITDA, we think we have a lot of opportunity there, both from a growth on the top end, as well as just the ability to drive margins higher over time that will be more aligned with with our overall margins, which will, you know, allow for accelerated growth.
spk04: All right, great.
spk07: Yeah, no, I mean, I think you nailed it. The people, the leadership, the know-how, the growth markets, actually the footprint to grow, too, not just organically, but their footprint gives us another footprint to edge out from if we so choose in the future.
spk06: Edge out and M&A. I think, you know, as we think about tuck-in acquisitions in the future, there's, you know, four or five more states that now fit into that profile for us that didn't beforehand.
spk00: All right, that's helpful. And then just to follow up with the mega broadband investment that you have, can you walk us through sort of the, again, remind us the timeline of the optionality you have and what's the soonest that you could potentially take a larger stake in that business?
spk06: Yeah, so we have a year-and-a-half time window that begins – at the end of the first quarter of 2023. So starting in 2023 through kind of the, you know, towards the end of the third quarter of 2024, we have the option, you know, there's a time period within each of those quarters that we can notify them that we're exercising it. And then obviously there's still approvals and stuff that have to go through. So just you wouldn't you would have to announce it and then go through the process to get it closed, which shouldn't be a long process, but nonetheless. So, you know, I think, you know, there'll be a lot of factors that play into that, everything from where we are on hardware integration at the time, as well as capital markets and where we are from the ability to raise the incremental capital we'll need to close that part of the transaction. So, and that was one of the reasons we structured the deal the way we did was we You know, the going in thought is that we'll want it as soon as we can get it, but we needed some level of optionality in case just conditions don't allow that to happen.
spk00: Okay, great. Thank you.
spk05: And our next question will come from Craig Moffitt with Moffitt Nathanson. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hi. Thank you for taking the question. I wonder if you could just talk about the competitive dynamics that you're seeing in your markets, particularly sort of growth markets like Boise, Idaho, for example. There's been so much talk about fiber expansion and people like T-Mobile doing fixed wireless broadband. What are you seeing in those markets in terms of new competitive entry? And if maybe you could just quantify what percent of your footprint today do you see fiber, and what is your best estimate for where you think you're going to be overlapped with fiber in the next couple of years?
spk07: Oh, that's a big one, Craig. So right now, 24 percent of our footprint has a provider that is offering at least 100 megs. About 14 percent of our footprint has a fiber provider in it, so relatively small. What do we see? We do see some encroachment of smaller, not usually bigger, but smaller mom and pop folks wanting to get into the broadband business because they hear it's a growing, happening thing. But we also have some pretty clear insight into how each one of our markets is performing vis-à-vis any competitor that we might have. So we might have AT&T or CenturyLink DSL. In some of our markets, we actually have AT&T Fiber. And what we know about what's occurring in those markets is that we are winning share, not them. At this point in time, we are winning share. And it does not matter what type of technology that competitor has, whether it's DSL or or fiber, we are coming out the winner at this point in time. That being said, we're incredibly diligent about boots on the ground. We are in our local communities. We don't have operations like call centers overseas or aggregated in big cities. Our associates are located in our local markets. So there's booths on the ground so that we know if anybody is talking to city officials or if there are locates going on so that we can make sure that we are more than ready to meet the competition. Competition will make us better in the long run. We're not seeing anything from T-Mobile at this point in time. Again, I think as long as we're focused on taking care of our customers, I really don't see them coming out with something that meets our customers' needs better than what we already provide for them.
spk06: Yeah, and I would just add, I think if you think about 78% of our customers are at 200 megs or taking 200 megs or higher and average usage is approaching 500 gigs, that's not what the customer base at T-Mobile is going after. It doesn't mean they won't be successful in our markets because there's still another, you know, 60% of people and some of them are taking DSL and They may be successful there. I don't think we're targeting the same customers, though. And because of that, I think that we obviously are paying attention to, but we don't see as a big competitive threat to us.
spk04: That's helpful. Thank you.
spk05: And our next question will come from Brandon Nispel with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk01: Great. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to follow up on Craig's questions for Julie. So, Julie, in markets where you have fiber competition, can you talk about the sophistication of your pricing construct where you're able to price services on a market-by-market or even street-by-street basis? How common is that today? Secondly, can you talk about the ARPU, the data ARPU for hard grid? It seems as if it's pretty close to legacy cable one, but just wanted to confirm that. Thanks.
spk07: All right. Sure. So fiber competition, there's AT&T in the southeast, and then there is, well, they have a teeny bit in Texas as well. And we have a provider called Allo in Norfolk, Nebraska, which is one of our smaller markets in the Midwest, and TDS starting up in Boise. We do have, in the past, in order to drive efficiency, we had this mentality that one size fits all. And as we have grown and increased our footprint and have seen some competition into our markets, we rapidly changed that mindset. And so now we offer pricing that can go literally, as you mentioned, street by street. And we can offer that pricing just in time. We don't, you know, we don't, have to open up different pricing. Our competitive pricing is called Freedom Connects. We don't have to open that pricing months in advance. We can open it just in time. And we've found so far that strategy to work well for us in terms of maintaining the balance between market share and ARPU. ARPU and Hargrey, I mean, I could talk more to ARPU and Fidelity, quite honestly.
spk06: Well, honestly, the ARPU and Hargrey is very similar to the Cable 1 ARPU, except for on the commercial side, where their commercial ARPU is quite a bit higher. I guess our commercial ARPU is quite a bit higher in the Hargrey markets than what it was in Cable 1. So you'll see that pull up the total there. But from a residential standpoint, we were pretty close to the same.
spk01: Okay. Thanks for taking the questions.
spk06: I would just add on the competitive side, I think I joined here three years ago, and at the time it was Julie's focus to develop a competitive mindset. And I would say the change over three years has been pretty dramatic, and I think we have an intense focus on it now where I would say that, as you said, that wasn't the focus. It kind of didn't have to be, and it wasn't, and it was very much focused on efficiency. So I think we've done a really good job of continuing to focus on margin but also on you know, drive this competitive mindset throughout the organization.
spk01: Great. Thank you.
spk05: And our next question will come from Stephen Cahill with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you. Julie, last quarter I think you talked about on the call that subscriber trends had continued to be pretty strong in April. I'm just curious, you had a good subscriber result for the quarter. Was that kind of consistent through that? And any commentary on how things feel kind of coming out of it into this period of kind of fresh uncertainty? And maybe you could talk about how Hargraves and your other minority investment companies are performing from a broadband net ad basis as well. And then a quick follow-up.
spk07: So subtrends, like in the discussion with Phil, I would say for 2021, the year started out very strong. I mean, the first quarter was very strong. April was very strong. May and June were better, as you heard. I mean, I think we were 31% better in this quarter than we were in 2019 in this quarter. So obviously not as high as 2020, the height of the pandemic, but higher than 2019. continues to be unbelievably low. Like, we were on a track of driving churn down before the pandemic. Then the pandemic hit, and of course, during the core of the year, we expected that to be low, especially when we were doing the Keeping America Connected pledge. But even in 2021, our churn continues to drive lower, which, I mean, we really believe people have found a, they have choice They have choices of providers, they have choices of plans, and they have found a plan that works for them and gives them value. But it's summer, and so we're seeing typical summer trends start to set in. So we'll see what the fall brings. Are the kids going back to school? Are the kids not going back to school? That does have an effect on how we do, I think. And heartbreak is no longer... there to be an investment, their numbers are, as of this quarter, included. Now, they weren't in for a full quarter. They were in for two months.
spk06: Right. And the one thing, we mentioned the $12,000, which was excluding Hargrave. They did have $2,000 kind of organic in the quarter that wasn't technically part of that $12,000. So, if you include that as organic, then we truly had $14,000 as organic. But our other investments continue to, as we mentioned, in a 1.7% sequential growth in The other businesses, I think they continue to see similar trends to us, which is not as fast as it was this time last year, but still kind of better than what has been historic.
spk02: Great. And then maybe just if we could take that into penetration, you know, I've historically thought about penetration as maybe being a little bit lower in your markets than some of your peers. But as you're seeing these strong trends in the sell-in at 100 megabits, the gig sell-in, the impact of EVB, do you have a little bit more headroom on, do you see there being more headroom on penetration than what you thought historically? The churn dynamic might inform that as well. So just curious your thoughts there.
spk07: Yeah, I do think that is the case. I mean, as we look at customers that are coming on now, who are they? They have a credit profile that's very similar to our current customers. So again, I mean, these are good quality customers. Many of them are making a choice to come to us from other providers. Could be DSL, could be fiber to the home. Many of them were cell only or wireless only. That group, the people who have come to us during COVID, so from, say, March of 2020, are stickier than customers prior to them. So that is to say the retention curve on anyone that has joined us since the pandemic is better than it's been in the past. And in the past, those customers, that cohort, had very low churn. This new cohort is even stickier. In terms of penetration and where we can go, the pandemic accelerated the need for a reliable, robust HSD service. And so now that innovators can see that this network exists, there's going to continue to be, you know, innovation and just great products and services that can ride over our network. So, sure. I don't really see at this point in time. We've got a lot of work in front of us in terms of capturing penetration and continuing, quite honestly, to drive our margins.
spk06: Yeah, and I would say that the competitive mindset piece, I think, also positively impacts that because I think the one-size-fits-all also has you marketing to a pretty narrow base, and I think with what we've done on that, we've definitely been able to become much more targeted to different groups, not just kind of that main group we were focused on. I think for all of those reasons, we feel we've got continued penetration upside. We probably aren't catching the industry averages anytime soon, but I think we've got a lot of upside, maybe a lot more upside than what the industry does.
spk05: Thanks. And this will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Julie for any closing remarks.
spk07: Thank you, Cole. We appreciate everyone joining us for today's call and look forward to speaking with you all again next quarter. Be well.
spk05: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time and have a great day.
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