Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Jake, and I'll be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would now like to welcome everyone to the TDS and U.S. Cellular Second Quarter 2020 Operating Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. During that time, to ask a telephone question, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, star followed by the number 1 to ask a question. To withdraw your question, simply press the pound key. Thank you. At this time, I will turn the call over to our host, Jane McCann. Ma'am, please go ahead.

Jane McCann Thank you, Jake. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. We want to send out our very best wishes that you and your families are well. We've worked hard to prepare our materials and remarks for today to share with you the strength of our businesses and provide insight into what we believe will be some of the most significant opportunities and challenges we'll face in the coming months. Please let us know if we can do anything to provide more timely and important information. I want to make you all aware of the presentation we have prepared to accompany our comments this morning, which you can find on the investor relations sections of the TDS and U.S. cellular websites. With me today and offering prepared comments are from TDS, Pete Cerreta, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. From U.S. Cellular, LT Therivel, President and Chief Executive Officer. Ken Myers, Senior Advisor to the CEO. Doug Chambers, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And Mike Irizarry, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. From TDF Telecom, Vicki Villacrez, Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer. This call is being simultaneously webcast on the U.S. Cellular and TDS Investor Relations website. Please see those websites for slides referred to on this call, including non-GAAP reconciliations. We provide guidance for both adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization, or OIDDA, and adjusted earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or EBITDA, to highlight the contributions of U.S. Cellular's wireless partnerships. TDS and U.S. Cellular filed their SEC Forms 8-K, including the press releases, and Forms 10-Q yesterday. As shown on slide two, the information set forth in the presentation and discussed during this call contains statements about expected future events and financial results that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. please review the Safe Harbor paragraphs in our press releases and the extended version included in our SEC filing. We have updated our Safe Harbor statements to include specific risks related to COVID-19 and its impacts on our businesses and provided that here specifically on slide three. In terms of our upcoming IR schedule, slide four, we'll be virtually attending Morgan Stanley's Corporate Access Day on August 13th and then doing a virtual Morgan Stanley non-deal roadshow on August 20th, which will include a fireside chat. And our open door policy is now more of an open phone or open video policy, so please reach out to us and we can arrange them. Before turning the call over, I'd like to remind everyone that due to the FCC's anti-collusion rules, we will not be responding to any questions related to the FCC auctions and spectrum strategy. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Pete Cereta. Pete?

Thanks, Jane, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to make some brief comments about the balance sheet and actions we've taken during the COVID-19 crisis to protect ourselves financially. But before doing so, I'd like to highlight the strong operational and financial results of both business units during the quarter. The pandemic has highlighted the criticality of our products to our customers, and the teams have stepped up and continued to deliver on their typically outstanding service levels. Now to the balance sheet. As we've talked about before, maintaining financial flexibility is one of the pillars of our corporate strategy. Over the years, we have worked to retain relatively low leverage levels, long-dated debt maturities, sufficient undrawn revolving credit facilities, and significant cash balances, while at the same time making sure we have the financial resources we need to fund our businesses. As you can see on slide five, at June 30th, TDS had $1.7 billion in available funding sources, including cash and cash equivalents, available credit facilities, undrawn term loans, and undrawn portions of our EIP securitization. We took a number of steps earlier this year to solidify our overall liquidity and feel confident we are in a stable and sound position for the rest of the year. We also repurchased a little over 500,000 TDS common shares at favorable prices during the quarter, Balancing the Need to Retain Liquidity with the Pricing Opportunity Offered by the Market As is our practice, we will look to take advantage of favorable market conditions to augment our balance sheet going forward. We believe we have additional access to the debt capital markets, both retail and institutional, as well as other conventional debt sources. If it were necessary, we believe we would also have a number of potential additional funding sources, including some related to our own towers and wireless partnerships. although we would view such financings less favorably than straight debt for cost and operational reasons. Finally, as you can see from the chart on the right side of the page, most of our existing debt is very long-dated with essentially no near-term maturities pressuring our liquidity position. I will now turn the call over to Ken.