WideOpenWest, Inc.

Conference Operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Wide Open West First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrew Posa, Vice President, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. With me today is Teresa Elder, WOW's Chief Executive Officer, and John Rego, WOW's Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that during our 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 laws that are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors 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 factors section of our Form 10-K filed with the SEC as well as the forward-looking statement section of our press release. In addition, please note that on today's call and in the press release we issued this morning, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. 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. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for our historical recorded results can be found in our earnings releases and on our trending schedules, which can be found on our website. We have also included a presentation this afternoon to complement our prepared remarks. Now, I'll turn the call over to WOW's Chief Executive Officer, Theresa Elder.

Thanks, Andrew. Welcome to WOW's first quarter earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the recent news regarding the unsolicited non-binding preliminary acquisition proposal from Digital Bridge and Crestview Partners. A special committee of independent directors will evaluate the proposal. WOW stockholders do not need to take any action at this time, and we do not have any updates to share today. Under the circumstances, We will not be taking any questions at the end of our remarks. Now I would like to turn to our first quarter results. Our results this quarter reflect momentum in our greenfield expansion and significant improvements in our legacy markets. Our first quarter results included high-speed data revenue of $106.2 million, up 1% year-over-year. adjusted EBITDA of $67.4 million, which increased 3.4% year-over-year, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 41.7%. HSD ARPU also increased more than 5% from the same period last year, which represents another positive indicator and reinforces the confidence we have in our strategy. the foundation of which includes adding new homes and new customers in Greenfield markets and stabilizing the subscriber losses in our legacy footprint and returning to overall growth. During the first quarter, we passed an additional 15,100 new homes in our Greenfield markets, bringing our total number of homes passed in Greenfield to 45,500. We also added 3,000 new homes through Edge Out. I am extremely proud of the effort that our teams, from engineering to construction to marketing, sales, and installation, are demonstrating in launching these new markets. Our efforts so far this year, similar to last year, included a significant amount of upfront spending, which keeps us in a strong position to pass a substantial amount of new homes in these markets. We continue to be particularly pleased with this response that we are seeing to our exceptional service and competitive offers. The penetration rates in our greenfield markets remain strong at 12.5% at quarter end, up from just under 10% last quarter, which is especially positive given the addition of 15,100 new homes this quarter. Even more impressive, though, is that we are averaging about 20% penetration within the first six months after activation. Our edge-outs are also performing extremely well. The 2024 vintage of edge-outs reported a 32% penetration rate, albeit off the low base. Our 2023 edge-out vintage increased to a penetration rate of 27%, while the 2022 vintage also remained strong at 31%. I am pleased with the progress we made during the first quarter with respect to our subscriber numbers, exceeding our expectations and making substantial improvements, stabilizing the reduction in HSD subscribers. Through March 31st, we reported a net loss of just 400 HSD subscribers, materially better than we reported last quarter. The improvement reflects the ongoing success of the measures that we launched during the quarter, including increasing our minimum speeds for existing customers to 300 meg, as well as increasing the 500 meg customers to 600 meg. we continue to see an extremely positive response to our simplified pricing plan which includes an optional price lock modem included no data caps and no contracts which launched on february 1st the continued success of these steps has given us additional confidence in the progress that we are making to strengthen our subscriber numbers in our legacy footprint the chart on the lower left quadrant of the slide shows an increase in the proportion of new customers buying in the lower tiers. The shift resulted in a slight decrease in HSD ARPU during the quarter, but increased more than 5% from the same period last year. Due to last year's rate increase, as well as a majority of new customers across our legacy markets, edge outs, and especially in greenfield markets, continue to buy 500 meg and above. we expect HSD ARPU will increase gradually throughout the year. As of the end of the first quarter, we have now nearly 490,000 HSD subscribers. As expected, our traditional video business declined further during the quarter, which will continue as we transition to YouTube TV. As mentioned, this new partnership provides a fantastic opportunity to provide more content at a much better value and to capitalize on the shift to video streaming, which we believe also contributes to our great success and strong results this year. To conclude before handing the call to John, I want to reiterate the key points that I made at the outset of this call. First, we continue to make great progress in our expansion markets, passing 18,100 new homes in Greenfield, and edge-out markets through the end of March. And we are seeing significant progress with regard to stabilizing our numbers and our legacy footprint. Lastly, I would like to thank Tom McMillan, who is resigning from our board, for his dedication, support, and counsel over the past several years through our asset sales and expansion strategy as we continue to execute our growth strategy and new markets. I would also like to welcome Jose Segreira to our board, where I know his experience as a CFO at multiple public companies, his public accounting experience, and his operating expertise will be an asset to the Audit Committee and to our board in general. I will now turn the call over to John, who will go over our financial results in more detail.