WideOpenWest, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the WOW! Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Andrew Posen, Vice President, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2020 earnings call. With me today is Theresa Elder, Weill's Chief Executive Officer, and John Rego, Weill's Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that during the call, we will make some forward-looking statements about our expected operating results. our business strategy, and other matters relating to our business. These forward-looking statements are made in reliance on the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities law and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, including most recently the economic uncertainty relating to the COVID-19 pandemic that may cause our actual operating results, financial position, or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. We disclaim any obligation to update such forward-looking statements. For additional information concerning factors that could affect our financial results or cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including the risk factor section of our Form 10-K filed with the SEC. In addition, Please note that in today's call and in our earnings release, we refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Such measures include adjusted EBITDA, transaction adjusted capital expenditures, and capital expenditures excluding expansion capital expenditures. While the company believes these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Now I'd like to turn the call over to WOW's Chief Executive Officer, Teresa Elder.

Thanks, Andrew. I'm so glad you recently joined WOW as our new Head of Investor Relations. Welcome to WOW's third quarter earnings call. In addition to our news release and quarterly trending schedule that are available on the investor relations page on our website, this afternoon, we have also added a presentation that we're using to compliment our prepared remarks. I'm really pleased with the results that we reported today, which reflect continued progress and execution of our broadband first strategy. Our third quarter achievements are a testament to the focus and hard work of WOW's employees as we all continue to adjust to new challenges. John will walk you through the financials and key operating statistics after I provide an update on our strategy and why we continue to be excited about our progress. In the third quarter, our revenue increased 1% from the same period last year, as our high-speed data subscription revenue increased nearly 10%, offsetting a decline in our video and telephony business during the quarter. Our third quarter adjusted EBITDA was 113.5 million. During the quarter, we added 1,800 subscribers, including approximately 3,300 high-speed data net additions. While still growing, these additions were negatively affected by nearly 2,500 disconnects resulting from the discontinuation of the FCC pledge on June 30th and therefore our reintroduction of normal collections processes for those customers in Q3. Therefore, we think it is more accurate to look at the numbers on a year-to-date basis where our high-speed data net ads are up 92% from last year, totaling 27,369. This is the highest number of HSV net ads through nine months in WOW's history. Our results this quarter reaffirm our belief that consumers will continue to shift away from the traditional video business toward an ever-growing number of streaming alternatives while becoming more reliant on high-speed data to support the plethora of daily activities that are now at their fingertips. from IP-based video solutions to supporting the vast amount of people now working and learning from home to IoT products and gaming. All of these depend on fast and reliable access to the internet. We are specifically seeing this trend with respect to our new customers who continue to move toward being broadband-centric. In the third quarter, customers buying our high-speed data only product represented 87% of total new subscribers. This is a significant increase from the same period last year when 60% of new subscribers purchased our high-speed data only service. This statistic has continued to improve each successive quarter from 66% in Q1 77% in Q2, and 87% of new subscribers in Q3. Another way of measuring our success in this transition is to look at the increasing proportion of our customers that are connecting with higher speeds. At the end of the third quarter last year, 52% of new connects purchased 200 make speeds or higher. In the third quarter this year, nearly 80% of new customers purchased high-speed tiers greater than 200 meg. And we don't see this trend abating this quarter. Edge-outs continue to be part of our strategy, and in the third quarter, added more than 1,100 subscribers. While it continues to be important, we are now more focused on increasing the penetration rates in current markets rather than spending additional capital to push new ones, especially during the pandemic. The penetration rates of both the 2018 and 2019 edge-out vintages validates this approach as both vintages increased in the third quarter. The 2018 vintages increased to 19.6%, up from 18.5% last quarter. And penetration in the 2019 vintage increased to 14.8%, up from 13.6% last quarter. Overall, we continue to see momentum in our broadband-first strategy. In addition to these strong operating statistics, We announced new initiatives and met some key milestones during the quarter. We continue to launch WOW TV Plus in markets across our footprint. The IP-based video offering is now available in 80% of our homes past. We're excited about this product with its intuitive, easy to navigate access to content, which provides customers with an improved video experience and gets them to their favorite shows quickly. Wow TV Plus is a solid step in our broadband-first strategy, allowing us to better leverage our network, enable fast and easy contactless installs, and support IoT devices that more consumers are bringing into their homes. As many businesses now have numerous employees working remotely, they need to ensure those employees have access to fast and reliable broadband in their homes. In response to this growing need, we introduced our WOW Business Internet Service in speed tiers and packages designed to address this. WOW's business home office solution provides bundles that include add-ons such as WOW's whole business Wi-Fi, static IP, and hosted VoIP. All of these services give customers a business class level of service at an affordable price. This is another great example of how we are positioning WOW to expand our presence and work with new and existing customers to help them adapt and succeed in our ever-changing environment. And as we are well into the fall and students across the country have returned to their classes, albeit many of them learning remotely, I'm very pleased to share that WOW recently joined the ACA Connects and Education Superhighways K-12 Bridge to Broadband Program that launched last month. The program is designed to help states and school districts provide internet access for students in low-income households. We're proud to make WOW's award-winning customer service and broadband connections available to our communities, schools, and students. Our employees are another source of pride for us. In September, we were once again named one of Detroit's best and brightest companies to work for. This is the eighth consecutive year and the 10th time overall that WOW has been recognized with this award in Detroit. These awards mean so much to us because they are determined by surveying our employees. Knowing that our employees say WOW is one of the best places to work tells me our focus on employee safety, professional development, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and employment engagement is what is valued by our people. As we continue to evolve our broadband first strategy, Engaged teams will continue to be critical to our success in launching other initiatives and meeting key milestones in the future. I would like to reinforce how pleased I am with our results today that reflect the continued execution of our strategy and the incredible commitment from all of our WOW employees who consistently demonstrate their passion and adaptability to the challenges of our current operating environment. Now, I'll turn the call over to John, who will go over our financials in more detail.