Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.
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| Greg, on churn, in particular, we're really proud of the 12 basis point improvement we made year-over-year in fiber broadband churn |
| And we plan to improve our customer service and streamline operations to deliver benefits to our customers and to our bottom line |
| So just on Business and Wholesale, I mean the fact is, we significantly outperformed the industry last year in our Business and Wholesale segment |
| We also expect full year revenue growth as accelerating consumer growth combines with roughly stable Business and Wholesale performance of plus or minus 2% |
| In addition to our strong liquidity and access to capital, our balance sheet remains healthy with approximately 87% of our debt at fixed rates |
| Once we are through the investment phase, our business will generate significant growing free cash flows |
| It's the culmination of the strong operational results we've achieved quarter-after-quarter, and it's the most compelling evidence yet that our fiber-first strategy is working |
| We continue to have high confidence that our fiber build will deliver IRRs in the mid to high-teens, well above our cost of capital |
| We're really proud of the $500 million that we've captured so far |
| That's a key reason that we expect margins to improve this year, which is a key component of our 5% EBITDA growth at the midpoint |
| So how do we build this leadership position? Well, if we turn to Slide 5, we can see that the answer is in the consistent execution of our strategy: build fiber, sell fiber, improve customer service for all customers and increase our operational efficiency |
| So we've reached a good operating rhythm in terms of being disciplined capital allocators as it relates to subsidy programs |
| And importantly, our growth accelerated throughout the year |
| In customer care, we've made phenomenal progress reducing call volumes down roughly 65%, but we still have more work ahead to digitize our customer experience and then we have big cost opportunities ahead of us in self-install capabilities and copper decommissioning |
| Our customer and revenue trends led to an important acceleration in EBITDA growth |
| As this dynamic continues, we expect consumer revenue growth to further accelerate in the coming quarters |
| And I'm proud to share that last year, we gained market share against every competitor in every market we serve, and we did so whilst also growing ARPU |
| Consumer fiber revenue grew 11% in Q4, and we are confident that this trend will continue to accelerate in 2024 |
| We ended the year on a high note with strong fiber revenue growth, driven by our consumer performance |
| And yet, we are still able to grow our penetration by over 4 percentage points in the last few years up to very, very close now to our ambition of 45% on average and as I said, higher in some other places is a great and very strong indicator for what we believe is possible to achieve in the expansion markets where we're building fiber |
| Even more impressively, we did so whilst growing our broadband customer base by nearly 20% over the same period |
| Our success gaining customers is translating into fiber revenue growth |
| We expect year-over-year growth in every quarter and we also expect the rate of growth to accelerate throughout the year as we get momentum behind the consumer business as well as continued momentum in our cost savings program |
| Our EBITDA growth has been driven by accelerated customer growth, healthy ARPU growth and a significant cost reduction program |
| So it's been a good -- we made good progress in the last few years getting the advantages of scale |
| Look, on NPS, we are extremely pleased that by some external measures, we've now become the market leader in NPS in a phenomenally short period of time |
| In the fourth quarter, revenue was $1.43 billion, strong consumer fiber revenue growth of 11% drove total consumer revenue growth of 1% |
| And then secondly, I'd reiterate, this is kind of, our procurement team has done an incredible job renegotiating with suppliers to get more favorable payment terms for the company |
| Let's turn to Slide 10 to show how our strong operational results drove improved financial performance |
| You can see here that our strong execution drove fiber EBITDA growth of 14% in 2023, which lifted total company EBITDA growth into positive territory for the first time in a decade |
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| Our Business and Wholesale revenue was down about 1.5% in 2023 versus the industry, which pretty consistently saw mid- to high-single digit declines |
| Business and Wholesale fiber revenue declined 2% year-over-year as growth in SMB and enterprise was offset by declines in wholesale |
| Q4 was a difficult comparison for wholesale because of several one-time benefits in the fourth quarter of 2022, as the wholesale business tends to be lumpy |
| So whilst Business and Wholesale did decline modestly in the fourth quarter, as we've already said, it is a lumpy business with timing of large contracts and payments and so on |
| And again, the Business and Wholesale business is lumpy |
| But then once we scale self-install more broadly, it should come down to even below $600 million |
| We are in a low move environment, and we all recognize that and that perhaps is one reason that churn has been lower |
| And that's one of the reasons we started discussing overall capital investment payment terms with suppliers are really a secondary issue |
| First, I'd say we're not done with cost savings |
| First, our fiber build spend will actually be lower with the same number of passings because we will consume inventory and pre-work |
| Overall, we expect capital investment in 2024 to be lower than 2023 |
| And that really is the result of a huge company-wide effort to understand all the reasons for customer dissatisfaction |
| The outcome, churn is down to near record levels and MPS has skyrocketed |
| I guess that's still the right target? Are you more optimistic than you may have been in the past? And if you did hit that target, should we think about you shifting strategy at all and may be a bit less aggressive on net ads and you could redeploy that elsewhere |
| On the Business and Wholesale, what can you do to drive that higher? Is it more of a sales issue focusing on that or just having to flush out some bad contracts, what will it take to see that kind of get a bounce back |
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