T-Mobile US - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon. Following opening remarks, the earnings call will be open for questions via the conference line by pressing one followed by the four and via Twitter by sending a tweet to @T-MobileIR or @MikeSievert using hashtag TMUS. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jud Henry, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations for T-Mobile US. Please go ahead, sir.

Jud Henry (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Welcome to T-Mobile's first quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Mike Sievert, our President and CEO, Peter Osvaldik, our CFO, as well as other members of the senior leadership team. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. We provide a comprehensive list of risk factors in our SEC filings, which I encourage you to review. Our earnings release, investor fact book, and other documents related to our results, as well as reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP results discussed on this call, can be found in the quarterly results section of the investor relations website. I'll turn it over to Mike.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Okay. Thanks, Jud. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the call. As you can see, we're coming to you live from Bellevue, Washington, at our headquarters. I'm here gathered with a great group of our senior leadership team as we share with you some terrific results that we are posting today to kick off 2023. I'll start by saying our results for Q1 continue to demonstrate that no matter the competitive environment, our unique formula of offering the best network and the best value continues to produce best-in-class outcomes. We again led the industry in postpaid and broadband customer net adds while continuing to deliver the best profitability growth.

Our consistent focus on reliably translating customer growth into industry-leading postpaid service revenue growth and unlocking substantial cash flow gives us the confidence to raise our full year guidance just one quarter into the new year. I'll also say Q1 was a quarter of celebration at T-Mobile. I am so proud of how our now 10-year history of more than 20 Un-carrier moves have transformed this wireless industry, and more recently, broadband for the benefit of customers. As you often hear us say, we won't stop. We announced last week our latest Un-carrier move with Phone Freedom, a move aimed to free customers at other wireless providers locked into those three-year contracts while they're subjected to relentless pricing changes and gotchas.

We continue to make it easier for customers to come to T-Mobile and switch to T-Mobile for peace of mind, knowing that with Price Lock, we won't raise their price for talk, text, and data. Now, with New in Two, a part of Phone Freedom, they'll be upgrade ready in two years because three years is too long to force customers to wait. Here's kind of a crazy sort of fact to get your head around. AT&T reported the lowest postpaid phone churn in the industry this quarter, and yet quantitative research data says that their customers have the highest self-reported likelihood of switching away. Their customers report being almost 50% more likely to switch than Verizon's or T-Mobile's customers. The lowest churn, but the highest apparent dissatisfaction. To me, that means one thing, their customers are trapped, and we're here to solve it.

That's what our latest Un-carrier move is all about. That's what Phone Freedom is all about. It's the way we've been designing our groundbreaking Un-carrier moves for a full decade now. As you know, we hit another milestone this month, the three-year anniversary of our merger. We're wrapping up an integration that many have deemed, and I think we'll conclude that it is the most successful merger in telecom history. Most of all, we're celebrating what it was always about, the dream we had of leapfrogging from last place in the 4G era to leadership in the 5G era, smashing the biggest pain point of all by finally giving customers in this industry both the best network and the best value from the same provider. You know what?

We did it, and we did it ahead of schedule, meeting our commitments and unlocking massive value in the process. Yeah, we brought about a new level of competition to this market and a 5G network to America that would not have been possible without this merger. That makes customers and businesses everywhere the real winners. Speaking of network, another round of results are in, and our team is again celebrating wins as the largest, fastest, and most awarded 5G network, as well as the best overall network for the second quarter in a row, according to Ookla. This is not just a snapshot in time. It is a durable network lead. I'm confident that Ulf Ewaldsson in his new role as President of Technology, congratulations and thank you for stepping in to lead us-

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

will continue to keep us ahead in this race over the next years with our great spectrum assets in both depth and breadth deployed rapidly, and our rapid execution of our unique process called Customer-Driven Coverage, and finally, continued leadership in implementing advanced technologies such as standalone 5G and multi-carrier aggregation. All of these things, importantly, are contributing to the best capital efficiency in our sector. All of these strengths, coupled with our unique opportunity in under-penetrated markets, are what enables a differentiated and profitable growth strategy that separates us from the competition. You know what? We showed that again in Q1. We added 287,000 postpaid account net additions, the highest reported in the industry once again. That means we're winning the switching decisions in the market because this looks at it at the account level.

We had postpaid net additions of $1.3 million, more than AT&T and Verizon combined. This included postpaid phone net adds of $538,000. We won a higher share of net adds year-over-year, even as the industry continues to moderate, just like we predicted we would in previous calls. Our increased share was driven by our strong phone gross adds, as well as being the only national wireless provider to improve postpaid phone churn year-over-year. Our consistent approach to profitable growth continues to deliver right on and sometimes even above our ambitious plans, and that's even as the competitive landscape continues to shift and evolve. In recent quarters, we've seen cable giving away free first lines that don't, by the way, appear to be incrementally pulling from existing customers and incumbent providers, but definitely are driving their ARPUs down.

We've seen AT&T and Verizon significantly outspend us in media advertising. I mean, Verizon alone spent almost 60% more than T-Mobile in Q1. We continue to see, as I mentioned earlier, others lean into expensive long-term device contract offers to lock up their customers. While T-Mobile was the only one to improve churn year-over-year and have the lowest upgrade rate. Improving churn, with the lowest upgrades. That's because our approach is not to slam customers with expensive, unwanted upgrade contracts to tie them down for three years. Customers genuinely choose to stay with T-Mobile for the network, for the value proposition, and for the experiences. You know what? That's how we want it to be.

You've heard us say before, our strategy is differentiated and durable because it's driven by taking share in the places where we continue to be under-penetrated relative to the market, but where we now have new permission to win. This profitable growth playbook and the momentum we saw in Q1 is exactly what gives us the confidence to raise our postpaid net add and financial guidance for the year. Perfect example of this, T-Mobile for Business, where we just posted one of our highest ever phone net add quarters in Q1 with the lowest business phone churn in our history. We're profitably taking share with more business account net adds and more business phone net adds than Verizon in the quarter.

On the consumer side, we're winning with prime network seekers in the top 100 markets who increasingly recognize that T-Mobile offers the best combination of network coverage and capacity for their needs. In fact, our prime customer base hit an all-time high again this quarter. In smaller markets in rural areas, we're now capturing a win share of switchers in the upper 30s, and that's in the roughly 2/3 of this geography where we're competing. This is great news because it's showing that our strategy here is very much on track. In addition, we added 523,000 high-speed internet customers as we have continued to grow our gross adds every quarter since we launched two years ago. I would expect that we added more broadband customers than AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Charter combined for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Not only did we have the highest net adds, our focus on profitable growth translated into strong financial performance with Core Adjusted EBITDA up 9% year-over-year and free cash flow up over 45%. Our Q1 results were just the latest example of how we have lots of room to run at T-Mobile, I'm confident in our ambitions for this year and beyond. One thing you've come to expect from this management team is that we are never satisfied, you saw that again with our latest Un-carrier move to free customers from three-year contracts and introduce new Go5G plans that offer even more value than before.

As proud as I am of what we've accomplished in our 10 years as the Un-carrier and in Q1 most recently, I am even more excited about what's ahead for T-Mobile, and I'm so thankful that all of you are on this journey with us. Okay, Peter, over to you to talk about the key financial highlights and our updated guidance for 2023.

Peter Osvaldik (CFO)

Absolutely. Thank you, Mike. 2023 is positioned to be another year of best-in-class profitable growth based on our Q1 results and the updated guidance I'll share with you in a moment. Our continued increases in postpaid accounts and postpaid ARPA resulted in the best postpaid service revenue growth in the industry, up 6% year-over-year. Our disciplined focus on profitability resulted in a 9% year-over-year increase in Core Adjusted EBITDA, and we grew our Core Adjusted EBITDA margin by 270 basis points year-over-year, while AT&T and Verizon were flat to down. In addition, as Mike mentioned, free cash flow was up over 45% and unlocked the highest free cash flow margin relative to our peers. We expect our industry-leading free cash flow margin to be a durable and differentiated unlock of shareholder value going forward.

This strong financial performance also supported our share buybacks as we repurchased 33 million shares for $4.8 billion in Q1, with a cumulative total of 59.4 million shares repurchased for $8.5 billion as of April 21st. It was also great to see our continued execution on profitable growth reflected in the recent rating upgrades from both Moody's to Baa2, and Fitch, who recently upgraded us two notches to BBB+. These rating increases further strengthen our access to lower cost capital in the deep investment grade market. All right, let's jump into the details of our increased guidance for 2023. We now expect total postpaid net customer additions to be between 5.3 million and 5.7 million, up 250,000 at the midpoint, reflecting growth across all of our market opportunities.

We continue to expect nearly half of postpaid net adds coming from phones for the full year. Our focus on profitable growth allows us to fund those higher customer net adds and still increase our Core Adjusted EBITDA expectations, which are now expected to be between $28.8 billion and $29.2 billion. This is up 10% year-over-year at the midpoint, based on higher service revenues and merger synergies. Of course, excludes leasing revenues of approximately $300 million, as we transition substantially all remaining customers off device leasing by year-end. Our merger synergies are expected to be between $7.3 billion to $7.5 billion in 2023, approaching the full run rate synergy target from our Analyst Day a year ahead of schedule, as we build towards the recently raised run rate synergy target of $8 billion in 2024.

We continue to expect merger-related costs, which are not included in adjusted or Core Adjusted EBITDA, to be $1 billion before taxes. We also continue to expect cash merger-related costs of $1.5 billion$2 billion for 2023, as they have underrun the P&L recognition to date. Net cash provided by operating activities, which includes payments for merger-related costs, is now expected to be in the range of $17.9 billion to $18.3 billion. We continue to expect cash CapEx to be between $9.4 billion and $9.7 billion, driven by a capital efficiency unmatched in our industry on the back of our network integration and 5G leadership. We expect Q2 to remain elevated, just slightly lower than Q1, then moderating in the back half of the year.

Together, this results in higher free cash flow, including payments for merger-related costs, which is now expected to be in the range of $13.2 billion to $13.6 billion. This is up approximately 75% over last year, thanks to our margin expansion and capital efficiency, Does not assume any material net cash inflows from securitization. As I mentioned, this also represents a free cash flow to service revenue margin, which is multiple percentage points higher than peers. Based on the cadence of CapEx, I would expect free cash flow in Q2 to be slightly higher than Q1 and then ramp in the back half of the year. We continue to expect our full-year effective tax rate to be between 24% and 26%.

Finally, as we execute our strategy of winning and expanding account relationships, we continue to expect full-year postpaid ARPA to be up approximately 1% in 2023. All right. Before I wrap up, I want to give a quick update on the sale of our wireline assets to Cogent. The process is progressing very smoothly, led by Dave and the team at Cogent, and we now expect the transaction to close in early May. On a quarterly basis, this will lead to approximately $125 million lower wholesale and other service revenue and approximately $175 million lower cost of service expenses with a nominal impact to SG&A. With the mid-quarter closing, we expect a partial impact in Q2 with the full quarter impact beginning in Q3.

In closing, we expect 2023 to be another year of profitable growth and even greater free cash flow expansion as we continue to extend our network leadership and further scale our differentiated profitable growth opportunities. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Jud to begin the Q&A. Jud?

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Thanks, Peter. All right. To ask a question, press one followed by four. Operator, let's take our first question, please.

Operator (participant)

Our first question comes from Phil Cusick with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed.

Phil Cusick (Managing Director)

Hi, guys. Thanks very much. Maybe we can start with the revenue per user. I think you said the same thing about ARPA this quarter that you did last, approximately up 1% in 2023. We've been looking at the Go5G plans, which were launched recently. Can you remind us of the path of customers moving to Magenta MAX, how long that took, and sort of the... Is that a good guide for the pace of the Go5G upgrades and how that drives that ARPA lift? Thank you.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Hey, Phil. I'll start and maybe turn to Mike and Peter. First of all, we're really excited about this new lineup. I want to point out a couple of things. One, Magenta MAX continues to be in the lineup, this is being added to Magenta MAX. As we think about the price point represented by these kind of mainstream popular plans, we're going to be kind of thinking of it as Magenta MAX and higher. That would include Magenta MAX, it would include the new Go5G Plus plan, kind of as a category. What you see is, you know, our expectation is that that run rate we've been seeing in that $60s will carry forward. You know, we've certainly seen that since the launch, and it was true for Magenta MAX all through Q1.

Really great to see that our popular plans are also our highest value plans, packed with the things T-Mobile customers are looking for. And maybe Mike, you can talk about, you know, unpack that a little bit.

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

Yeah. I mean, I think like Mike said, it's a great representation of the differentiation in our strategy, particularly as it comes to the way that we construct rate plans and do pricing.

With Go5G and Go5G Plus, you see new plans that are incremental to our portfolio that really give customers choice. With these plans, we packed in the most benefits that we've ever done in a plan with increased roaming in Mexico and Canada, which is the most popular destination for our customers, increased hotspot, which we're seeing utilized more, especially in a post-pandemic world where people are moving around and working everywhere. With Go5G Plus, the first plan, we're guaranteed in the plan, new and existing customers get the same deal on phones. Not a promotion like you see from other folks. We're really bullish on these plans. The early response to them has been really good. One of the things I'll say about ARPU is ARPU is a mix-driven metric.

One of the things that you see with us, particularly with the success in some of the segments that we've talked about as being opportunities for us, whether it's business, or 55 plus, you know, the mix of our success in those segments is reflected in our ARPU. It's one of the reasons why we look a lot at ARPA, and we focus a lot on opportunities where we can attract customers and retain customers that demonstrate a really high CLV, like we see with business customers and like we see with 55 plus customers. You'll see us continue to focus on those kinds of accretive, value-creating opportunities in our portfolio.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Anything to add?

Peter Osvaldik (CFO)

I think the only thing I'd add, and Mike said it really well, is it's such a mix-driven metric. For example, on the segments that Mike spoke about, 55+ brings in customers with CLVs that are actually above the average CLV, right? They may have lower ARPUs, but very high accretive CLVs because that's how we really model everything, and the growth that we're trying to drive, as you know, is profitable growth for us. On an ARPU-based metric, because of that mix shift, I'd probably expect it to be sequentially relatively flat. Yes, as you pick up some more mix of potentially 5G and Go5G Plus, excuse me, 5G everywhere here, you could see some opportunity in the latter half of the year.

ARPA and accounts is really where the focus is to create that value expansion in the company.

Phil Cusick (Managing Director)

That helps. Thanks, guys.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Cool. Thanks, Phil. Yeah.

Operator, next question, please.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Hey, Simon.

Landon Park (Analyst)

Hi. This is Landon on for Simon. Thanks for taking the questions. I'm wondering if we could start on the home broadband side. Maybe can you talk about how you're seeing churn in the different cohorts there and what your latest thoughts are on some of the fiber trials you've been running, as well as the latest thoughts on a potential millimeter wave overlay on that front?

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

I'll start. Then, you know, we'll see who wants to jump in. There's a bunch there. First of all, you're asking about our fiber trials. I don't have a lot new to report there other than this is a team that obviously, through our leadership in high-speed internet on 5G, is very committed to being winners in broadband. For us, being able to get involved, learn, understand what drives CLV, understand the service models, the technology models, et cetera, is something that's very important. You see us continuing to do that. We haven't taken any decisions beyond that other than that anything we learn there is accretive to us being in this business. You see that we are already in this business as a major player in the 5G variant.

As it relates to what we're seeing in the business itself, I'm very pleased. I mean, net promoter scores for this business continue to be higher than average cable and higher than average fiber in the country. People love what T-Mobile's serving up to them, and that's important, and it informs the churn models, as you're saying. We have a very young base, and so to your point, we look at it on a cohorted view, and some of those aging customers from earlier, we really like what we're seeing in terms of their retention. Really pleased, and you can see net promoter score as kind of an indicator of that. Mike, why don't you jump in and anything else you want to share on that?

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

I would just say as to Mike's point is the customer base is growing as, and we're seeing more cohorts in the longer tenures. We are seeing sequential decreases in churn. It really does start with what Mike said. This is a great product. It's a product that really doesn't require any trade-offs from customers. It's got a great NPS, and you're seeing it pull, you know, heavily from cable. You know, cable is the biggest contributor to our customer base in this business.

We've built a model and a go-to-market process that now is reliably delivering, you know, ±500,000 customers a quarter, which gives us a lot of confidence in this number that we talked about a couple of years ago of us getting to 7 million or 8 million customers at the end of this planning period.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Okay. Landon, the last part of your question was about where do we go beyond our current model? I want to remind everybody what the current model is before answering that because it kind of speaks to the opportunity here. Others have side-eyed what we're doing and said, "Well, you know, there's a limited opportunity to that, what they're doing over there." We're like, "Well, right." I mean, we've said that all along. We expect this to be a 7 million to 8 million unit opportunity the way we're doing it right now, which is essentially selling excess capacity on our network.

Remember the way this works is we have created a nationwide mapping of every household in this country, mapped them to every sector on every tower, and determined which sectors no normal amount of mobile wireless use will take up our rapidly expanding capacity. That is where we approve applicants for high-speed internet on 5G. We're essentially selling our excess capacity. We see that takes us into those high single-digit millions of households in the planning period. The question that you asked about millimeter wave is really part of a broader question that says whether for millimeter wave or not, would we entertain the idea of a capital-burdened 5G home internet plan? Yeah, we would entertain that. It would have to be smart. We'd have to have a way to make it capital efficient.

You know, we haven't taken any decisions on that. I don't know if you want to share a little bit of our thinking or, you know, kind of what we see as the opportunity, Ulf. You know, the short answer of it is we haven't taken a decision on it, but of course, we're interested in it.

Neville Ray (President of Technology)

Thanks, Mike, great question, Simon. I would say that our 2.5 spectrum that we're using today is serving us so well because we have so much access capacity. We are moving now this quarter, we're reporting 275 million POPs covered with this mid-band spectrum, we're moving towards 300 coverage by the end of the year, giving us new opportunities also to serve other HSI opportunities. I would say that we're always looking at millimeter wave, we are doing trials and testing, it's limited in reach, we have to remember that it's limited in reach, we will put it into an economic formula over time to see if it makes sense to pursue it.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Terrific. Thanks for joining the call.

Neville Ray (President of Technology)

Thank you very much.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Thank you very much. All right. Operator, next question, please.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from John Hodulik with UBS. Please proceed.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Hey, John.

John Hodulik (Telecom and Cable Analyst)

Great. Hey, Mike. maybe a couple questions. First, just on the, on the competitive environment, you mentioned Verizon's been a little bit sort of louder from an advertising standpoint, I think from a promotion standpoint, too. and Comcast, we heard, had some success with their sort of, free line offer, similar with what Charter's been doing. Just how would you characterize the competitive environment in wireless as it stands today and sort of, you know, what gives you the confidence to sort of raise the postpaid numbers as we look into the rest of the year? Then on the buyback, you know, a bit higher than we thought, and you're sort of, you know, pretty far along on the authorization.

Should we expect the buyback to slow through the year as you bump up against that existing authorization? Thanks.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Great. Competition and buyback. I'll start on competition, then turn to Jon Freier. you know, I would say it's competitive out there. That being said, you know, I've probably done 50 of these calls for T-Mobile, and that's been the case for all 50 of them. it's competitive out there, and we've made it more competitive through the creation of this version of T-Mobile. what I said in my prepared remarks is that we have demonstrated time and time again that regardless of the competitive milieu, we find our way through to accretive profitable growth, and that's because our strategy is so differentiated. I'm not going to repeat all that here other than to say, of course, it's really competitive. I find the industry, a rational level of competition.

Even the competitors you talked about have been pulsing in and out. Some of the offers have been eyebrow-raising, but they pulse in and out. I think to me, it feels competitive and rational, and we look at our differentiated strategy and what we have within our control, and we see our way through to increasing our overall guidance for the year. Maybe tell us on the ground, Jon, what your team is seeing as we compete, you know, last quarter and this quarter.

Jon Freier (President of US Consumer Group)

Yeah, you bet. Yeah, like Mike said, it is a competitive environment, but that's nothing really new for us. We're continuing to see, you know, real solid demand out there. When you look at our overall traffic, when you look at the interest, we're seeing incredible demand, that you can see obviously manifested in our Q1 numbers. Even so far in Q2, we're seeing really strong demand. Like, we said earlier in our prepared comments, not only strong demand as a whole, but strong demand around prime customers and the fact that we had our highest mix of prime customers. We're continuing to see a very healthy activating, you know, revenue number in terms of new accounts switching to Magenta MAX and now Go5G Plus.

Since we even launched that on Sunday, we're seeing really good numbers, kind of an early peek into what's happening there. I would just tell you, too, from what's happening in the marketplace is, again, our differentiated position of what we're doing in smaller markets and rural areas. One of the things that we talked to you about in 2021 at Analyst Day is we had this ambition to move from 13% share of households to 20% by the end of 2025. What we're really excited about is that we're already halfway there. We're now at 16.5% in terms of our share of household position. More than halfway there or at halfway there, but in less than half the time over that planning horizon.

When you look at what we're doing relative to others, it's really coming down to four things in smaller markets, rural areas. One is we're building out this, the markets out there with network and distribution. We're now playing in 2/3 of smaller markets in rural areas, 140 million people, 50 million households, 40% of the U.S. Two, we're really unlocking switching and getting switching moving. Last quarter, I told you that switching was up 350 basis points on a year-over-year basis. We're sustaining that with now postpaid win share in the upper 30s. Three is when you look at what's happening with high-speed internet, and we talked about that just a few moments ago, but that's a new front door for us that gets...

Even before people are thinking about switching mobile, we can get into the household as a catalyst for customers to be thinking about moving their mobile services into T-Mobile from AT&T, Verizon, et cetera. Lastly, what we have that's different in those particular markets is we have a dedicated and focused team where we're building out hundreds of stores, about, you know, a little bit more than 400 stores since we've started this venture out in the smaller markets and rural areas. When you look what's happening under the ground, strong demand, really getting after it in 40% of the U.S. from smaller markets and rural areas. When you look at the overall health and the quality of the customer that we're talking to, it's never been better.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

It's been two years, and we've made our way halfway from 13% to 16.5% market share, and we're only really competing in 2/3 of the space. It's just been this rapid fire deployment, and it's, you should be so proud of what's happening there. John, at the risk of filibustering your competition question, I have one more thing. I feel like we shouldn't answer a question about competition unless we talk about cable, you know? We're a very competitive company. One thing I'll give our team a little bit of credit on is that we have pretty good diagnostics and telemetry on what's going on in the marketplace. We're able to kind of see what happens with each of the competitors as the quarter unfolds. I can make a couple predictions for you.

You saw it in Comcast numbers this morning, very strong. Charter had a blockbuster quarter, we think, in phone net additions, and we saw that unfolding through the quarter. One of the things we try to do, and we sort of make at least for us, when we make our operating decisions, is we try to figure out, well, what's behind it and double-click into it. What we see going on is that, for example, in this big number they're about to report, about 75%, we think, of the uptick from prior normal levels, let's say a year ago, are in non-ports, sort of printed net ads, like drop you a free line in the bag or, you know, kind of low-calorie net ads.

We try to kind of adjust for that when we make our operating decisions as to how fast to run and where and how to compete, because it's kind of a quantitative easing happening in the marketplace. It's just new ads being printed that don't appear to be coming from any of the incumbent players. It's kind of important to adjust for all that, at least for us, as we make our operating decisions. It looks to us about 75% of the uptick has been those kinds of nets. You actually asked two questions.

John Hodulik (Telecom and Cable Analyst)

Yeah.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Your second question was about the buyback.

John Hodulik (Telecom and Cable Analyst)

Right.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Let me say a couple things, turn it over to Peter. I wouldn't read too much into how fast we're going, and I cannot make any predictions for you as to how that will play out in the future. I can just tell you that generally speaking, we're going fast because we think we're getting a relative great deal on the stock. You know, it's not normal for management to talk a lot about valuation, but since, you know, you've hired us to conduct this buyback on your behalf, we have to make operating decisions with an idea in mind about whether or not we're getting a relative value. Our team thinks and our board thinks it is.

We have authorized moving quickly because we look at this rapidly developing cash flow picture, and a lot of people are increasingly valuing T-Mobile on our value relative to cash production, and we see a lot of potential ahead for a diminishing opportunity for us to be able to grab shares at these share prices. We're moving really fast. I cannot predict for you, though, what that means going forward. Obviously, we're going to take it one step at a time.

Peter Osvaldik (CFO)

Yeah. The only thing I'd add, Mike, is of course we're I'm personally very excited about how it's gone. While we can't speak about anything more than the $14 billion target, that's been approved by the board, remember, what allows all of that is the cash flow generation of this business, as you've mentioned. Frankly, both with regards to the longer term, you know, the underpinning of that opportunity for up to $60 billion in share buybacks through just the end of 2025. You know, here we are in 2023 already. Remember, this machine and this free cash flow production continues into 2026 and beyond. The one thing I look at is that is the underpinnings that allows the shareholder return machine to go.

You just saw us once again raise what was already ambitious guidance for the year based on our confidence, just a quarter in. With that regard and how the share buybacks are progressing, I'm very pleased.

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

Okay, we better keep moving.

John Hodulik (Telecom and Cable Analyst)

Good.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

We gave you quite an answer there, John.

Operator (participant)

Operator, next-

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

All right. Operator, next question.

You bet.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Jonathan Chaplin with New Street Research. Please proceed.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Hey, Jonathan.

Jonathan Chaplin (Managing Partner)

Hey, guys, I'm gonna ask two questions as well, if that's okay. The color you just gave us on small markets and the progress you're making on market shares was super helpful. I'm wondering if you can give us exactly the same context for business in terms of where you are in share. Any color you can give us around sort of the number of business accounts or business lines you have would be super helpful. Then on the Phone Freedom plan, which looks like it really has the potential to unlock trapped customers, as you suggest. Can you help us understand what the impact of that is on EBITDA expectations for the rest of the year?

You've got on the positive side, obviously, you're pushing people into hierarchy plans, but then presumably you trigger a higher upgrade rate, and so that's a cost against it. How do those two things net together in the guidance?

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Okay, sounds great. Well, let's go first to Callie. I'll just say, she's gonna give you exactly what you asked for, which is some color on what's going on, but probably not what was behind what you asked for, which is lots of racking and stacking of market share numbers and things like that. We're moving really fast here, and we wanna keep it competitive, as to some of the details. Maybe tell us what you're seeing in the marketplace, Callie.

Callie Field (President of T-Mobile Business Group)

Yeah. Thanks, Mike. Thanks Jon for the question. you know we have a long-standing goal to be the growth leader in business, and I'm really pleased to see that we're making very nice progress towards doubling our market share. We're growing in customers and in revenue, and we're taking share from AT&T and Verizon. In fact, in Q1, as Mike mentioned in his opening remarks, our business account growth, our phone net adds, and our phone churn were all better than Verizon. While AT&T reported declines in FirstNet quarter-over-quarter, we saw two and a half times growth in Connecting Heroes. We're winning, and we're winning across every segment. In enterprise, we were selected to be the exclusive partner nationwide for AAA, to develop roadside connectivity using partners like Dialpad with a collaboration tool and in our phone solutions.

Siemens Energy, selected T-Mobile as their exclusive partner, UPS, Oracle, Vail Resorts. These are all companies that are choosing T-Mobile because of the quality, the value, and the performance of our network. In the government space, I'll add, I'm actually really proud of the team for the work that we've been doing with Veterans Affairs. The VA just selected T-Mobile as their primary partner for nine years, with over 50,000 phone lines, as well as partnering to create healthcare 5G solutions in the vertical. We're very excited about that. In SMB, what I can say in SMB is that we've seen net positive port trends versus Verizon for four quarters straight in a row. it's great-

Profitable rates, great CLVs, competing not only, like I said, on the best value, but also a superior product and experience. You know, businesses buy because they've tested the product, and we've surpassed the competition.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

It could be a little bit of a canary in the coal mine for us too because of that fact, that last fact that you just shared, Callie, that businesses aren't going so much on brand reputation. They actually check out the phones, like sometimes hundreds of them, before making these decisions and compare us head-to-head. Businesses, through their testing, know that we now have the best network. We do get questions about, "Well, how are you gonna keep competing if the incumbent guys just keep slashing their prices to hang on to those customers?" What is missed in that dialogue is that that's not actually the only factor going into this decision process.

I mean, businesses have corporate liable lines for a reason. They want to take responsibility for this connection because it's mission critical, and we can save them some money. I mean, we're the Un-carrier.

They're picking us because we're the best network, and that's been a breakthrough that I would say was not the case the same way a couple years ago. You're hearing a lot of optimism there. One thing we did hear as we listened in were some in the industry kind of saying, "Hey, there's a sort of a sector decline happening, lots of layoffs. Companies aren't interested in business lines anymore. There's sort of a pause going on." That is not our experience, and you can hear that in the optimism of what Callie's saying. Your second question was about Phone Freedom and what's going on there. Maybe we'll start with Mike, and then there was a particular EBITDA output question associated with it.

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

Yeah, you know, like I mentioned before, Phone Freedom kind of had two big components to it. One was the rate plan Go 5G, Go 5G Plus, you know, which, you know, Jonathan, as you indicated, has this benefit of upgrade built into it. The second thing, which I think is also an important input to the second part of the question you asked is we launched a promotional program called the Easy Unlock. With the Easy Unlock, you know, the insight it's really going off of is both what Mike talked about in terms of the dissatisfaction that AT&T customers have. 50% more report that they want to leave their current carrier than Verizon and T-Mobile.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

When they want to leave, it's incredibly difficult, both because of long-term contracts, but also because they have the most customer-unfriendly unlock process in the entire industry. What we wanted to do is make switching incredibly easy, and that, and that's what we did with that program. I think that's one of the things that will really help us, you know, unlock the switcher pool a little bit, which when we know happens, T-Mobile is the disproportionate winner.

Peter Osvaldik (CFO)

With regards, Jonathan, to the EBITDA guidance, I mean, frankly, even at year-end, we had already assumed a certain level of opportunity here. Customers were clearly telling us, especially through the back half of last year, that they are looking for what this best value, best network combination can provide in the form of Magenta MAX at the time. That was an inspiration that we said we were gonna pack an even more fully featured plan out there. I'd say all of the revenue assumptions around this, as well as customer acquisition leading to high CLVs is all packed into core EBITDA, the guide that we provided you. I know there was also a question on social around, well, how does that impact the contract asset? Frankly, to say that was...

The contract asset went up sequentially from Q4, but that was really some of the promotions that we had in place and continued into Q1, as well as some of the business promotions. In the current core EBITDA guidance that we put out there's an assumption actually that the contract asset will decrease to quite an immaterial net impact for the year and again, in the current guide that we gave.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Good stuff. Okay.

Jonathan Chaplin (Managing Partner)

Great. Thanks, guys.

Jud Henry (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

How about we go over to the ones coming in on Twitter. Ulf, get ready. There's you're always popular, and your topic's always popular online. Let's see. I'll go to Bill Ho wants to talk about the network. This is really about, he's giving some stats here, but I think the question is really about, can you tell us about depth and breadth? You know, we have 275 million people covered by Ultra Capacity 5G mid-band, we're going to 300. How easy or hard is it in these last 25, or how easy or hard is it in the last 100? That's kind of interesting if you compare to where the competitors are right now and what's still ahead of them.

In that, can you also talk about depth? How much spectrum is where we're going?

Ulf Ewaldsson (President of Technology)

Right. I mean, we start with the breadth. We continue to build out, we are now reporting the 275 as you catch here, and we have about 25 to go. We're very confident that we're gonna reach the 300 million by the end of the year. It gets harder and harder. As a rule of thumb, I would say that it's about 3x harder for every 10 that you add. That's about how hard it gets. The reason is, of course, the geography of the U.S., where it's a very vast geography with a very high population density in some communities. It's very easy when you start out, and it gets harder and harder to do it. We are very confident that we're gonna reach that with the build plan that we have today.

When it comes to the depth of the network, it's just amazing how we continue to just move more and more frequency assets over from LTE to 5G. We today have 150 MHz dedicated on our mid-band, which is giving us tremendous speeds. We've increased our speed advantage on the downlink speeds compared to competition in this last quarter, we are actually gonna end up the year with 200 MHz of dedicated spectrum just on the mid-band. It's just fantastic to see that journey moving forward with our tech team.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Which means with each passing day, the overall capacity of this network is rapidly expanding. It's a fascinating thing when you listen to what Ulf says too, about how the easy part is that 100 and something million POPs, right? Which generally corresponds to where our competitors are. We get questions a lot about, "Hey, you guys jumped out with a two year lead in 5G. Aren't they catching you?" Hopefully you can understand when you see where we already are and where we are at the end of the year. No, they're still years behind us because that last part is really difficult, and it's really important for the overall perception that a customer has about the brand. You have to be great outside the core urbans with a high capacity offering for somebody to believe you have a high capacity offering.

That matters to them, even if they don't live, you know, leave that space all the time. It's really important, and it's one of the many reasons why we have a durable lead. Okay. Should we go back to the calls?

Jud Henry (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Let's do it. Operator, next question, please.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Brett Feldman with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Brett Feldman (Managing Director)

Yeah. Thanks for taking the question.

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

Hey, Brett.

Brett Feldman (Managing Director)

Hey, Mike. You made an interesting observation when you were talking about churn. You pointed out that you had the best year-over-year improvement in churn, but you also noted that you don't yet have the lowest churn in this category. That's interesting because you also noted that you have very large cohorts in your customer base that as a group exhibit a lower churn profile than comparable cohorts at your peers. It certainly seems like there's an opportunity to keep driving churn down across the base. When you look at the pockets of your customers where the churn profile is still elevated, you know, why is that? You know, how do you think about how much of an opportunity that is?

Is it actually part of your underlying business plan to continue driving churn lower, or do you think you've hit some sort of plateau? Thanks.

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

Yeah. Thanks, Brett. listen, I think we're at a fascinating sort of historical moment in the history of our company. If you think about it, we have spent 6 years on the chapter of our company comprised of dreaming about and then completing and then integrating the merger that would allow us to leapfrog AT&T and Verizon from being last place in the LTE era to first place in the 5G era. Now we've generally gotten that done. We have the best network in the country. We have the best values, and we've generally completed that merger. So now, you know, we have work to do to convince the American public that it's true.

You know, to me, I'm inspired a little bit by the journey of standalone T-Mobile that did achieve the lowest churn rates in the industry, even without the advantages of the network strength. Now you see us really focused on prime customers. We have the highest prime rate in the history of our company right now. You see us focusing on business customers. You see us focusing on travelers. Some of the best customers in the industry now waking up more and more to the fact that T-Mobile is the best choice for them. That's a journey. You know, convincing the country that what's true is true will take some time. Let me tell you this, our goal. You know, the answer to your question is yes. Our goal is to have the lowest churn in the industry on postpaid phones.

We already have it on prepaid. We're going to have it on postpaid phones. Of course, we should. I mean, we have the best network and the best prices. That means we should have the lowest churn. We've been through this worst to first journey before with standalone T-Mobile. We're kind of midway through it with the new version of the company and full of optimism about where it can finally land. You know, those big sort of quarter by quarter kind of merger-driven lurches forward are mostly behind us, right? Because the integration is behind us. Now it's that hard slog, just like we showed you we could do when we were standalone T-Mobile.

Brett Feldman (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

Okay. You bet.

Jud Henry (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Great. Next question, please.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Michael Rollins with Citigroup. Please proceed.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Hey, Mike.

Michael Rollins (Managing Director)

Thanks. Good afternoon. Hi. Two questions. You know, first, going back to the customer unlock opportunities, where is the industry and T-Mobile on eSIM capabilities? Is this a topic that's important to helping you propel unlocks and switching opportunities? Just secondly, do you have visibility on whether or not Dish will exercise its option to buy your 800 MHz spectrum? If they don't, what is the next steps for T-Mobile with respect to that spectrum band?

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Great. I'll start with the Dish one, and then that gives Mike a chance to think up an answer on the eSIM one. No, we don't have visibility into it yet. Dish asked for an extension in the decision, we didn't object to that, of about 60 days. The way our consent decree works is it's entirely up to them. You know, we're here to support them, we'll wait to hear what they decide. I'm in touch with Charlie. You know, as I learn more, you know, we may engage and be able to be helpful in that. But the way it works is it's entirely up to them. If they want the spectrum under the terms of the consent decree, it's theirs.

If not, the way it works is that it would go to auction, you know, it would maybe be in the hands of someone else. We'll wait and see how it all unfolds and, you know, we're here to support whatever decision that they make. On eSIM, you know, this is fascinating how this has all happened across the industry, and there hasn't been that much discussion about it. One of the limiters has been this phone locking phenomenon that, you know, we're talking about with Phone Freedom. Because what happens with an eSIM is on a locked phone, even though that second SIM is available, if the phone is locked, you still can't use that second SIM very easily. There's been some barriers to the friction coming out of this system, the way eSIM maybe promised.

We're big fans of it. You saw us a few months ago, introduce great switching capabilities for you to actually try our network on the second SIM, if your phone allows that. That's been a lot of fun for people to be able to test drive our network. Mike, maybe you can give some color on what we're seeing.

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

Yeah, like I was gonna say something really similar. We're big fans of eSIM, really for two big reasons. One, we think it's a much better customer experience. You don't have to deal with plastic and switching in and out of your phones every, you know, every couple years when people are upgrading. For a company that wins when switching happens, eSIM does make switching easier.

We've, you know, tried to take advantage of that with the technology that Mike mentioned earlier, where we launched an app where you can easily test, the T-Mobile network side by side with your incumbent network on the same phone, and when you're ready to switch, you can just do it in a couple of clicks. Yeah, we're fans of eSIM. We're really supportive of it, and we're optimistic that it will help accelerate even programs that we talked about today with that Phone Freedom.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

And just a quick on Twitter, Roger Entner wants to talk about T-Mobile for Business. I think we hit most of that unless you wanna provide any color on what we're seeing with HSI and T-Mobile for Business. Then separate question about with our new Go5G plans, they are raised prices. Do we think that'll impact our subscriber growth? I'm glad you asked that because no. In fact, the way we kind of did this is we added these plans, and that won't be immediately obvious to everybody, but we added them. So if you present at retailer online, you can still get Magenta and Magenta MAX. These new plans, in the early days, now that we've put them out there, they're really turning out to be very popular. So I'm not worried.

You know, even notwithstanding the fact that they're being added, I'm not worried at all. These are gonna be really popular plans 'cause we designed them right to the needs that we're hearing customers want in the marketplace. This is really an interesting thing because we called it Go5G for a reason. Our 5G customers are using massive amounts of data on our network. You know, people say, "Well, what's the killer app of 5G?" There are a lot of killer apps of 5G, one of them is usage on your smartphone, which if you have T-Mobile and Magenta MAX or now Go5G Plus, you have massive connectivity, customers are soaking it up. That's a real differentiator for us.

We want to play into that advantage and encourage that kind of usage because once they see what their phone can do, they're not gonna want to live without it. We're already seeing that now at scale with millions of customers at Magenta MAX or above. Let's go back to the phone, Jud. Let's do it. Operator, next question, please.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Craig Moffett with MoffettNathanson. Please proceed.

Craig Moffett (Partner and Senior Analyst)

Yeah. Hi. Three questions if I could. One is I want to stay with the Dish theme for a minute. It's becoming more and more openly discussed that Dish may eventually be a liquidation story. If that were to happen, and if the FCC were willing, how much appetite do you have for more spectrum? It sort of leads into my second question, which is just with respect to 5G. The new applications have been somewhat slower to develop than might have been expected. I wonder if you'd just update us on 5G usage growth and how quickly the consumption of network resources is proceeding with 5G and if that is the differentiator you had hoped and expected it to be given your spectrum and network advantage.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Yeah. Well, on the first one, I'll turn to Mike for the second one. On the first one, Craig, I'm not gonna answer it, because my friend John Stankey kind of did answer it, and I think he was very unfairly misquoted. You know, he gave an innocent answer to a hypothetical kind of along the lines of, "Anytime there's spectrum, of course we're interested." There were all kinds of headlines that he wants to buy Dish's spectrum. Listen, first of all, I'll say I think it's a little premature a question too. I don't count Dish or Charlie out very easily. You know, I've known him for a long time. I think it's a premature question. Finally it raises a larger issue. If the...

if you reframe it this way, which is, does this wireless industry have enough spectrum over the long haul for American competitiveness? I'd say never. You know, always there's an opportunity for more. You know, and that speaks to public policy. You know, the FCC lost its auction authority this year, and T-Mobile and others have been urging Congress to restore that because we need our strong regulatory body to be able to work with other agencies, create an ongoing long-term pipeline of spectrum for all the players in this industry, so that we can continue to have connectivity in this country that's the best in the world. I know the FCC feels that way. I presume my competitors feel that way.

I think it's very important that, you know, we get back on track with this and that auctions that are completed, get put to use for the American consumer because there's work that's pending there, and that the FCC regains its authority quickly to be able to lead in this, in this space going forward, the way they've done so well in the past. I think that's very important for our company, for our competitors, but also for American competitiveness. Your second question is about apps and 5G. You know, 5G, it was sort of...

it kind of came out, you know, I will say our competitors kind of led the way on this with a lot of hype and euphoria around, you know, 20 gigabit connectivity and millimeter wave, and it's gonna change the world, you know, we're all gonna be kind of human cyborgs and stuff like that. we kind of never felt that way. I mean, early on, we went right to 5G is a much better, like 10 times better at least, 4G, and that the killer apps are gonna be smartphones at first, and they're gonna be our ability to get after home broadband. we focused on the mid-band asset, and eventually the rest of the industry followed. We were right.

you know, the average T-Mobile customer is getting 10x the connectivity that they got in 2018. Ten times faster. That's amazing. what they're doing with it is amazing. That obviously is unfolding. there's still the kind of side-eye questions people get, which is where's all this augmented reality you said would come? I'd say, well, first of all, you know, our job is to create a great network, and we have the best in the country. hardware and software developers look to a network to create innovations around, I think they will choose T-Mobile. Whether they're moving faster or slower than predicted doesn't directly affect our business that much.

We need to be the network that they choose as they get inspired with massive connectivity, not just in fits and starts in parts of the country, but all across this country, the way T-Mobile can uniquely provide. That's why we work with developers the way we do. The rate and pace they go, that's up to them. Anything to add?

Mike Katz (President of Marketing)

The only other thing I'd add is that let's not forget about HSI. HSI, I do think is still one of the big killer apps for 5G that you're seeing play out right now. 3.2 million customers running their home internet in their house over our 5G wireless network and using hundreds of gigs a month on average. Both in the big top 100 markets, also importantly, many customers in rural areas, some of which this is the first high-speed option that existed, and it only happened because of 5G. I don't think we can forget about HSI being one of those big killer 5G applications.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Terrific. That's great.

Craig Moffett (Partner and Senior Analyst)

That's helpful. Thanks.

Jud Henry (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Operator, we've got time for one more question. Oh, it's the last one already? Oh, we're just getting warmed up. All right, great.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from David Barden with Bank of America. Please proceed.

David Barden (Managing Director)

Thanks so much, guys. Yeah. Hey, Mike. Thanks for taking the questions. I'm glad you're warm. I guess the first question would be, you know, with the stock, you know, the performance of the business has been great, and the stock kind of just keeps bumping up against this 150 level. I wanna come back to this notion of the SoftBank, you know, top up shares, 48.8 million. Has there been any evolution in your thinking or conversations between yourselves and DT and SoftBank about using the remaining buyback authorization to simply clean that whole, you know, that whole exercise up? It seems like it would be the most elegant and non-disruptive way to do it, and I'd love your comments on that.

The second question is, I kind of know what your answer is, but I just kinda wanna hear how you frame it, which is that you originally, for most of the states, not every state, pledged that you would not raise prices in T-Mobile for three years, and that expired April 1, 2023. You came out with your new, you know, Un-carrier plan. It's within your toolkit now to be able to raise prices if inflation or other things happened. Could you kinda give us a sense as to how you think about that relative to kinda T-Mobile's brand positioning in the market? Thanks.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

Yeah, sure. you know, we maintain and have for the entire decade-long journey of the Un-carrier, an envelope of superior pricing versus our benchmark competitors, and we intend for that to continue. Now, as things shift and move, we maintain that envelope. you know, it's not a matter of sort of a static price or being dogmatic about a price has always gotta be static, but we always wanna be a relative value. We can do that sustainably because we have a great balance sheet, we have the right capital structure, we have the right spectrum structure and other advantages that allow us to continue to profitably have a pricing envelope superiority versus our benchmark competitors.

As things move in the market, with inflation or otherwise, of course, you know, there's an opportunity for us to move along with those things. We have, you know, the customer as our North Star and our brand value proposition to take care of. That's why you have seen us so focused on offering higher value offers that customers self-select up to. It really shows their love for our brand, that when we put something out there like Magenta MAX or now Go5G Plus, they flock to it. You know, Our customers are buying up our rate card voluntarily in an era of inflation because they appreciate the value of what we're putting in front of them. That speaks a lot about the brand and about the covenant between us and our customers on this brand.

Okay, your first question was about the SoftBank true up shares. Just to kind of remind everybody, you know, there is this 48 million some shares that would trigger upon a $150 stock price being at an average 45-day VWAP. The short answer to your question is of course. I mean, of course, we talk to them. They're a close partner of ours. We talk to DT all the time. We're aware of this question and this issue, but we have nothing to report. You know, I mean, it's of interest, and it's, you know, it's not lost on us why you're asking the question.

If there ever was to be a transaction, it has to be something that would, you know, that would work for everyone. I will say this: You know, in the earlier question about our buyback pace, you know, we've already bought back more shares than this potential dilution event, and we intend to buy back a lot more shares going forward, you know, should our capital program continue to support that as we've outlooked it would. You know, this is actually a fairly small potential event in the grand scheme of the shareholder remuneration that our cash flow production supports. With that, anything to add to all that?

Perfectly said. Anything to add to the whole show?

Peter Osvaldik (CFO)

The show must go on.

Mike Sievert (President and CEO)

All right. Well, we appreciate you guys. Thanks for tuning in and for asking all those questions. I am so proud of our team. You know, it's a fascinating year. It was fascinating for us to watch how it all started and the different perceptions people have. One thing I hope that you take away from us is that we are a team maniacally focused on delivering for you what we promised you we would do. That's what we show up and try to do every single time, and I'm so proud this was one more quarter where we were able to put down great results and outlook for you in 2023 that we're gonna be proud of. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. See you later.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the T-Mobile first quarter earnings call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a pleasant day, everyone.