An exciting time in the Cable Business with Cable One Julia Laulis (NYSE: $CABO)

Great, thank you so much, Andrew.

Yeah, thank you. I thought I would just highlight that I don't consider Cable One one of the largest cable companies in the US, certainly not the world. We don't even consider ourselves a cable company, even though that's in our parent name. We're branded to our consumers as Sparklight because we focus on broadband, on internet service to our consumers. But starting out with what are my thoughts about the cable industry, I think about how the cable industry — and that's, you know, some people call it the connectivity industry now, some might even think we're infrastructure — but it started out originally to get television signals to these rural areas that could not get it, like they were missing out because the signals wouldn't go that far. So in the beginning, cable started to serve the needs of people and communities, and I think that's what these businesses are doing today, now albeit with different products, which had really big ramifications during the pandemic. But that is what companies are doing today, and Cable One specifically, Sparklight specifically, that is what we are doing. We have really tremendous assets, so that's our hybrid fiber cable networks that are either in the ground or on poles in the air, and our people. The job of those assets is to bring the world essentially to our communities, whether that's entertainment, education, medicine, or opportunities for businesses. That is what the cable industry is doing now. The outside world seems to think it is somehow different than it was even eight months ago, but that is what the industry started doing and that is what the industry is still doing, in my view.

Beautiful context, but it — you know, we're in this industry so we're lumped into cable, but we do kind of consider ourselves contrarians, starting with our different strategy back in 2013, 2014. Let's talk about where we operate, that Safe Harbor that you talked about: these small cities, large towns, rural America. We have been doing this since we were born, back in '86, so for decades. Rural is kind of cool now; we were loving these communities decades ago. And if you look at, we're incredibly dispersed. We don't have consolidated markets in large areas, and it's definitely not urban NFL cities. So our average market is about 58,000 homes passed and about 20,000 customers. What that means is whatever is affecting one market isn't likely to affect another because of that geographic disbursement. It also means that these are markets that tend to be smaller in size, and so you're not going to get a lot of density, and the rural nature of them necessarily means at least probably for both, quite honestly, fixed wireless and fiber, it is going to be more expensive to build into our market. So let's figure this out: it's going to be more expensive to build, you're going to have less density, less access to consumers, your ROI is going to be less than it is in other areas. So where do you want to put your money?

I think you're right, Andrew. That is the concern, and I find that a little bit interesting too. First of all, let me be clear: I want every home in America to have access to the opportunities that the internet affords them. Right? I mean, that is — we've been working on that way before it was cool, so that is what we want. So whether you're going to get your access from Starlink or Project Kuiper or from fixed wireless, fiber, traditional cable, we want you to have access. But when I think about fixed wireless specifically, let's take T-Mobile because they're the most aggressive. They have less than 35% of our footprint covered by their unlimited service, so 65% of our people can't even get it. And I can tell you, I just drove through one of our towns — there's not service available. I mean, there's literally nothing there. The vast majority of the West — doesn't mean it's always going to stay that way, but right now there's very little overlap. I do think that fixed wireless for the time being offers some consumers a way into the product. It is at a very low price, and if they have coverage, they can take it. But I don't see it as a long-term play unless they change their strategy. And let's talk about this: I mean, there you've got a couple of players, and they're doing things very differently. Right? Think about AT&T, and they're talking over and over again about this isn't profitable, we're not going to do it, we're not going to lose focus, our end game is on something else. And so I wonder about sustainability or even what the purpose of it is. You said it's sort of like a side thing, like, 'Hey, we have this here, let's get some money for it for a period of time.' I hope that's not the strategy, because as a consumer, I would feel incredibly let down when, you know, three months from now, you have so many — I mean, what's your primary purpose? Is it wireless? Is it cellular customers? Well, you've gotten more cellular customers, and now my fixed wireless has buckets.

Right. So we have said that what we want to do is reach these rural communities and connect them to the world via broadband, and we started walking down the path of doing fixed wireless because of its lower cost to serve in super rural areas. Then we found other folks that were doing the same thing, so we sort of have this filter for either M&A or for investments: rural broadband, best-in-class. Like, they couldn't just be offering broadband at 10 megs or something like that; they had to be the best in that marketplace. And that is what you have with Wisper and Nextlink. Even Nextlink, they will serve rural areas with fixed wireless, but once they get a certain amount of density, they go in and build fiber, and then they can move that fixed wireless equipment to another area. So we do have a bird's-eye view, and that's what's really wonderful about our investments. I mean, we have fiber companies, we have fixed wireless companies. We can talk to them about a myriad of metrics, whether it's churn or service calls or SAC costs, and compare it to what we're doing. I think one thing that we have to talk about when we're talking about fixed wireless is data usage.

Well, so data usage, it popped a bit during the pandemic, but if we look over a five-year period, it's at a 26% CAGR, and it is not stopping. I mean, we have about a fifth of our people that are using over a terabyte of data right now, and that sort of throughput is not available with fixed wireless. And I guarantee you, there are — I was gonna say young people, that sounds ageist, and I'm old, so I'm not ageist — but there are people in their garages, like some founders that we can think of, that are inventing things that are going to take more data throughput. They know that pipe exists, and they saw that it was incredibly reliable during the pandemic. I mean, there wasn't Zoom; we weren't using Zoom for everyday life before the pandemic. What is next? What are my grandkids going to be teaching me how to use that is coming, you know, in my world, to a pipe outside of my home and then wirelessly throughout my home?

I don't think it's too simple. I think about my kids, and they don't call it broadband, they don't call it internet, they don't say they have an ISP. They say, 'My Wi-Fi provider.' That's what they call it. And so it is the way people access — I mean, it's what they're doing with their cell phones in their home too. Who's writing over Wi-Fi that comes to them from their broadband provider? More than likely, the vast majority anyway.

No, I think that is exactly the case. I think it could be a collapse in local areas based on cell sites that they have or don't have, as well as increasing demand. I mean, you need a reliable service. I mean, you couldn't be doing your value broadcasts, your podcast, if you didn't have a reliable connection. And it is based on data. I mean, people are using it now. Now, a lot of times, especially consumers get confused about speed versus data, and so both have a value component, right? So my guess is that there will be innovations that require more speed down and up, but at this point in time, at this point in our network, we have utilization that hangs around 23% for both. In other words, there's plenty of capacity for both up and down. A lot of times you hear about symmetrical speeds, fiber. They're not using the 20 gigs up that we're giving them right now, let alone symmetrical gig by gig. But our network can do that too, and we'll talk more about that later, I'm sure, about IPTV and how that is.

I mean, it is — there's a bunch of pieces related to where we go with potential of selling a wireless service to our customers. Number one: do customers want it? Do they need it? Can we provide a better value? Will it provide something to us in terms of profitability or lower churn leading to profitability, customer satisfaction, those sorts of things? Again, I was driving through a market, and I was talking to someone, and my call dropped repeatedly. And it is a somewhat mountainous area of Arizona, so it makes some sense — it's hard to build there. I mean, it was hard for us to build there, so I get why none of the major providers — in one of these markets, I had to switch my daughter from her provider, which I would love to say who it was because they had absolutely no coverage, to another provider who did have some coverage, otherwise I would never be able to talk to her while she was away at school. So that is what I think it was Todd that brought it up. That's what he was talking about: 'Okay, if I partner with Brand X, but they don't have coverage for our towns, how does that reflect on us?'

Well, I mean, we're definitely seeing conversions, right? But we've seen things — call them in hindsight — flash in the pan things that were going to be really good. Let's take an example like video on demand. 'Oh, here's what you need to do. You need to buy this equipment for your headend, you have to do all these complicated contracts, then you're going to be able to offer this, you're gonna have to do some software work, and you're gonna be able to offer customers this, and we think we're gonna make money out of it.' And I was like, 'Well, okay, we're not making money out of it, but it's reducing churn, customers are happier because they have it.' I don't know. I mean, I personally looked at the business model for us — not other people, we don't have the scale of other people — but for us to get into the business, and if our focus being on our customers and our communities, if we believe they need this as a connection point, we could do it in about six to eight months. But there has to be a reason. Either it's a really customer-centric reason, which will end up being profitability related as well, or not. Right now, the signs are pointing to it's not our time. We have a focus: it is providing broadband to our communities. We have a ways to go in increasing penetration in the majority of our markets. Not all — markets are different, they're not monolithic. So we're going to stay focused on that for the time being. I think Comcast and Charter have a lot of scale. By the way, we talked to them: 'Hey, what are you seeing?' They do say, you know, they give us information, and they say it's early on, but we think this. We talk to the others, the smaller and mid-sized folks that are trying it through a different method, through a different partner, and get information from them. And we'll do the right thing for our customers, for the business, when the time is right. Right now, it's not right. We don't get into one more thing when we're spending our time with heads down running the business and executing well.

Yeah, I don't know if it's the exact same thing. I've been in the business for 39 years, and I can remember my father calling me up agitated. He's like, 'There's this thing, they're launching these satellites, and I think it's going to put your guys' business just on a downward trajectory. Are you sure you're okay?' And he was talking about DirecTV and DBS. So certainly, people — and I actually remember from a very practical standpoint, being in Alexandria, Virginia, when then Bell Atlantic said they were going to come overbuild us with fiber. We upgraded our plant and launched switched telephony and internet service in the mid to late 90s before anyone else in the country did it, and ended up doing just fine. So you're right, competition from any sort of technology related to either the video business or now the internet business is not new. We have been dealing with it for decades. Again, when you have markets as dispersed as ours are, I mean, I can think of one where AT&T built fiber and Grande came in and overbuilt us decades ago. So there's three of us there, and we grow in that market every month. Every month we grow. Now, when it first happened, there was disruption, and then it normalized, and then we went back to getting our share. So that's one example. I can think of two of our markets that are overbuilt with fiber. One super small — we've lost no customers there. There's been no — I mean, the people that came in, they came, they're stepping out of their footprint, and they just didn't know what they were doing. And so, God bless them, we do just fine there. There's another larger market that has a fiber overbuilder. We have grown penetration by almost six points since they came in. The thing about competition is, if they're doing advertising, we can end up — if we're the better operator — we can end up growing in terms of units and our PSU. At the year-end at our last earnings call, I talked about our PSU, our ARPU grew in competitive and non-competitive markets. So it's not just like, 'Oh, Cable One, you're not taking good care of your customers, you're jacking up your rates in your non-competitive markets.' No, the advertising that's being done by the fiber folks, because they're usually their pricing is focused on a gig, which by the way costs more, means that people are like, 'Well, I can get a gig from Cable One,' and so our PSU gets selected. So is your ARPU lifted? I mean, I think another thing I'd say — and I apologize for interrupting — is that 65% of our footprint, well, it's more than that for fiber. We have 25% overlap with fiber, so 75% of our people do not have access to fiber. I think 30-35% is our total competitive, so they have a competitor, it could be an HFC competitor. And again, the fixed wireless is less than 35% too, so the vast majority have — and Blick who's doing DSL potentially — and us. That will change over time, but again, if you have a chance to invest your money in something, are you going to go to less dense, hard to build, expensive to build places, or others? So I expect there to be more competition over time. That's fine. Competition makes us better, and things normalize. I mean, do you drink Coke or do you drink Pepsi? Do you wear Levi's or do you wear Seven for All Mankind? Do you have T-Mobile or do you have AT&T? There's the American way to have choice. But that doesn't mean that there can only be one provider of service, especially if you're someone who has been in the market for decades and you have a local workforce. 80% of our workforce is local. It's resident in these markets. We are neighbors to our customers. We see our customers at baseball games, at church, in the grocery store. I mean, I myself am wearing a Sparklight shirt, and I'm going into a grocery store when I'm in market. Someone may talk to me about an offer, maybe even about a problem. I talked to a customer yesterday who had moved into one of our markets from Michigan, and I called her back to follow up on an issue that she had with our new Sparklight TV, and she was like, 'I am blown away that you called me.' And I'm like, but she wrote me a letter, you had a problem, we needed to fix it, I needed to make sure you're okay. I mean, that is what you get from someone who's been in these communities for decades and isn't just being drawn in now for the money.

Yeah, you know, I honestly would have to go look, otherwise I'd be telling you something that I don't know. Absolutely fine. But that's a good question. I can go look and follow up with you. But the fact that it's growing in both — like, I think what people are afraid of is, 'Oh, there's going to be competition, and you're going to lose customers, and because they're going to come in with lower price, you're going to have to lower your price, and it's going to be just a melee of chaos.' And I think that's potential in some places. I can't, I don't know what things competitors may or may not do, but I have seen people come into our markets either in the past or more recently, and I found them to be relatively rational. And they love the idea of doing things simply, and so they basically advertise high-end service prices, and we have the same thing or something very similar. Like, we don't always have symmetrical speeds, right?

Exactly. And you've seen recently, every single fiber provider — and I say that because I cannot think of one that hasn't said, 'We plan to go more slowly until 2023' for a variety of reasons, right? Whether it's supply chain, whether it's the markets and access to capital, whether it's access to labor, whether it's what they're seeing in their penetration rates that it's making them go, 'Hmm, the model said we would get this, but real life is different than the model.' Because let me tell you, it is very different to build a network versus run a network with customers. Maybe we'll ask Google about that. You know, we're going to go build this thing called Google Fiber. And I think — I don't know, I don't work there — but my bet is that they found that, 'Wow, this dealing with customers on a day-in and day-out basis, that takes a lot of work.' And building it was one thing, running it and operating it for the long term for the good of those communities is another. That's another thing related to ARPU which sort of sticks in my craw, where people are like, 'Oh my gosh, of course your ARPU is high, your markets are moated.' You know, we can't have it both ways. Some people say, 'Oh, you're moated, you have the Safe Harbor,' and others are like, 'Oh, that means things are gonna be terrible for you.' Which is it, by the way? But um, gosh, now I forgot where I was going because I got myself all riled up.

I was like, that's where my rant started. 'Oh my gosh, they must be taking advantage of these poor customers in these rural towns because their ARPU is so high.' And I'm like, okay, that is not our purpose. We are an incredibly purpose-driven organization. We start with our associates, who need to be happy in order to take care of our customers, in order to get to a long-term profitable business. And yes, we are profitable, but that is put third as part of a natural chain. So our pricing is actually — likely, I mean, again, I'd have to do a statistical study — but the lowest, definitely the big operators. Up until last year, our entry price was $55 for 100 megs. We sunset the 100 meg product, and now 200 megs is our entry product, and it's $65. And that is a great value. I am not paying that in Phoenix, I can tell you that. So what's happening is customers are choosing to have things that they value. It might be faster speeds, it might be more data throughput, it might be other value-added items that we offer. And because they're adding that on, it is a pull — they are coming to it. We aren't pushing them to it. They get to choose. Our ARPU is higher. We haven't done — I mean, I think from 2015 was a rate adjustment year. We didn't do another one for like seven years. We recently increased the price of our modem this fall because we're launching a new Wi-Fi modem that we think is going to bring a better in-home experience for our customers. So that went up. Now, not everyone owns or releases a modem from us; they can own their own modem too. So they have a choice: do you want to buy your own modem, or do you want to lease one from us? So again, we're not trying to create a monopoly-like situation. What we're simply doing is creating choice for customers. We have — actually, recent selling rates, which I won't give because they're not — I haven't made them public in other ways — but a third, based on our last earnings call, a third of our people are taking a gig service. That costs more than the entry-level 200 meg service.

I think Mediacom does it as well. They're not public, so to me they're basically — but yeah, they do it as well. And we say data guidelines, not data caps. But yes, there are data guidelines to many of our plans. And the way we viewed it was this was the fair and appropriate way. There are — and I can look it up right now — how many customers use less than say 300 gigs a month? And if I use 300 gigs a month, maybe that's like my parents, I shouldn't have to pay more because you're using a terabyte a month. So that was the reason why we started it at the beginning. And less than 10% of our customers went over their data guidelines, so 90-plus percent of people were not paying extra for any data guidelines. A percentage were. We have launched different options, like an unlimited option, so you could have a really low speed service but with high data throughput, because again, what do you value? And at a gig, we thought, let's make it easy. If you want a gig, we have it, and we're going to include unlimited data as part of that.

So we do have a portion of our ARPU, but it's really small, that comes from that usage-based billing, which is what we call it. But the majority of it is coming through selling to higher tiers and upgrades to higher tiers, or people buying unlimited data.

Quite honestly, we're looking at our pricing and packaging right now because we've learned a lot. We've learned a lot from our investment partners, who again have different arrays of technology that they get to consumers, and we've learned a lot from watching competitors in our markets and others. And so I think it's time for us to revisit that. There was a point in time — I'm trying to think, it was probably around 2018 — where our ARPU growth was just far outpacing our unit growth. And so I think we're there again, and it's time to sort of right-size to get those both in balance. So we need to make sure that what we're offering the consumers is a value, because they are going to vote with their wallet.

Yeah, well, we definitely were the first, and I think other people are still having a hard time. It's like, we look, people want to be entertained and informed, and you get that through video programming. But we could see that there were other choices and opportunities that were very customer-driven that were coming on the scene, AKA streaming services. And we were a size of a company that did not have the ability to get really great pricing from these programmers. And so you know, double-digit, triple-digit increases. And we were like, 'All our poor customers, we don't want to pass these increases on to them.' We ended up subsidizing our other products and not passing that along. And we're like, 'Wait a minute, that, coupled with doing a really simple analysis of here's what video brings in, here's the direct cost, wait, we have all these indirect costs, this is ridiculous. This is bringing no value to us.' And we have the negative halo thing going on too, because every time we got an increase from programmer X or Y, we passed it along to the consumers, and the consumers hated us, not understanding we were simply taking the money and giving it to someone else, keeping a dime. So that started our path. The next thing that led to this idea that IPTV would free up spectrum in a very capital-efficient way was us remembering how we launched gig. Now, we launched a gig across the majority of our footprint before any of the majors did it, and we did it as a defensive move back in 2016. Having a gig everywhere, so like, 'Hey, we have a gig everywhere, why should anyone come into our markets?' What we did is we found bonded 30 channels together, we dropped video programming so that we could use that frequency for internet, and we launched a gig quickly. We didn't have to upgrade our networks to 1.2 gigs. I mean, it was an incredibly capital-efficient and fast way to get a gig out to our customers. We think IPTV is kind of like that. I mean, IPTV just takes — and I am not a technologist, our CTO is probably rolling around on the floor as I discuss technology — but if we take the spectrum that video is taking right now and use that for internet, so internet-based video, IPTV, we call it Sparklight TV, we can take that bandwidth and allocate it back to broadband for downstream or downstream and more upstream. And we're doing that in a couple of our markets, and we'll continue to do so throughout the year and throughout the future in order to free up space. It doesn't mean that we're never going to put fiber in the ground. We will, we have been doing that for decades as well. But it gets rid of us buying boxes, which was a huge capital outlay and tracking that inventory. Consumers are by and large used to that — not all of them, believe me, I've talked to some. So streaming is a way of life for people, and it gives us access to more capacity for internet in a relatively quick manner.

Yeah, so first of all, I think about Altice, who says, 'You know, we're not going to follow the DOCSIS 4.0 path.' Well, they're not CableLabs members, I guess that doesn't surprise me all that much. But they've walked that back a little bit recently, while they're saying, 'Look, we're going to do it in old Cablevision areas, right? But we're not going to do it in the old Suddenlink areas.' Okay, Suddenlink areas are like our areas. They're more rural. They're likely seeing that, 'Oh, it costs a lot of money to do this, and the density isn't so high.' We have a recurring story — again, I don't know, I'm not Altice — but we've revisited them to make sure that the data isn't stale. But we've done the models too. Like, what should we be doing if we have a network that has lower capacity than what we want? Should we rebuild it with classic architecture, HFC architecture, which is a mix of fiber and cable, or all fiber to the home? And all fiber — we've been doing fiber for new build for like two decades. It's the way we build anything new. But if we're going to look at our existing networks, and this is a beautiful thing, we've built them years ago. We already had that there. Anything we do to that is going to cost us less than our competitors. We've looked at what DOCSIS 4.0 provides us. We've looked at what fiber provides us. And DOCSIS 4.0 has a more capital-efficient runway to get to essentially the same thing. I mean, we need reliability, redundancy, we need speeds, we need symmetricity, if that's even a word. And we get that with DOCSIS 4.0. So why would we spend more money? And by the way, again, we have investment companies that are fiber to the home, 100%. By the way, we have markets that are 100% fiber to the home too. So we know what it costs to operate them. We know what their trouble calls look like. We know what their churn looks like. And so if there was a better way of skinning a cat, we'd be doing it. And what we're doing is DOCSIS 4.0.

Yeah, we actually are. And the vast majority — over 90%, again, our CTO will be able to give you the exact number — of our data runs over fiber. Yesterday too, I noticed several fiber cuts. One was down south in Arizona, an operator that owns that fiber. The other one was through Windstream. So two operators, not us, supplying us with fiber to our market, and there were fiber cuts. Just because it's fiber doesn't mean that you're never going to see an issue. That isn't the case. If you're AT&T fiber, if you're Lumen fiber, if you're fill-in-the-blank fiber, your fiber is going to get cut just like anybody else's. Just saying that we're all constrained by the same real physical factors.

I don't know if I would say pick up. We definitely have had some of the smaller family-owned folks come to us and say, 'Uncle.' So we are looking at those right now. We believe that the melee that's going on with 'I'm going to build fiber, I'm going to build fixed wireless, I'm going to fill in the blank to get to consumers across America' is going to create opportunities for people who do know how to take care of customers. So we think that, over some sort of time horizon to be determined, we think more opportunities are going to come from that than not. But yes, there are smaller operators that are finding this market very hard to navigate through.

Well, we got their book. But we quite honestly, those markets would have loved to have owned them when Altice got them. But at this point in time, quite honestly, it'd be easier for us to overbuild them than buy them and then put the capital into them. But they require — that's my opinion.

Yeah, you actually sound like Tom Gayner, who's our lead independent director and also CEO of Markel. Well, you know, the Markel days while we're talking. So yeah, he's like, 'Hey, you know, the price is high, we sell some stock. The price is low, we buy some stock.' We definitely think investing in ourselves at the price point that we are these days makes sense. You've seen us do it throughout '22. We still have authorization available to us. And I guess that's about all that I will guide to at this point in time.

Andrew, you couldn't build the network we have. The value — it's mind-boggling to me. My kid, what's in the ground and in the air is worth more. But the last I've looked — I mean, you guys do have the JV investments, which I don't want to get too hung up on the book value to the JV and everything — but the last time I looked, you guys are trading for like under $2.5k per home pass. It's like, 'Hey, you want to go do a rollover build?' You're talking — I mean, Charter's doing rollover, but this is probably more rural than you, but they're talking $4.5k for home pass. So you're buying this cash flow and cable company that's already got the customers for $2.5k per home pass. Like, you want to talk about buying more replacement cost?

You're taking notes. First off, on losses: the big folks started their losses in the second quarter. We lost for the first time that I can remember in the fourth quarter, and it was a very small loss. It was barely — it was like 2,000, if I remember correctly. It was less than 2,000. It was very heartfelt by our entire team. Net gain is a byproduct of connects minus churn, right? So you can see what our net gain is. The pieces and parts you might not get, but we talk about it. We say, 'Wow, our connects are really down.' And we believe that is a byproduct of the housing starts and the lack of moves. Right? You know, it's 7% now, 6.5% for a mortgage, so moves are down. Starts, housing starts, like new build, you know, folks are pulling back on doing construction is starting to slow. Now, it came to us more slowly than the big guys, and that's the way it always happens. Like, whatever happens in the NFL cities usually ends up coming to our markets but later, and we have time to see it and adjust. It also, I think, has to do with fixed wireless taking connects. I mean, fixed wireless is just like DSL. Where do we get most of our connects from? Either a DSL provider or potentially a competitor in the marketplace who isn't operating as well. So both of those things depressed our connects. But our connects are depressed in markets that don't have any fixed wireless access. So I believe that it is more a general environment. So that's just talking about what is going on. And I think — I can't speak for like Comcast and Charter — but at the beginning, they may have said that they felt like it was only the housing start issue, it wasn't fixed wireless. Well, it's really hard to measure something you're not getting, Andrew. Like, I mean, it's like a false negative. Like, 'Yep, this is slowed down,' and it takes a while to figure out what goes into that recipe, what is causing that. I mean, for us, we actually went in and changed our disconnect codes for our people so that we could track it. Like, 'Oh, there never was this thing before, now there is.' Instead of saying it's competition, we're going to know what kind of competition. So that, and we also now have a third-party company who's tracking that sort of movement for us. Now, coming to churn: I mean, I've seen cable churn used to be video. For us, since at least 2014, we only talk HSD. This is the lowest I've seen churn. And I'm talking about Cable One as a monolith. And we know that we have competition in about a third of our marketplaces. So even with competition likely driving higher churn in those markets than in others, our overall average churn is the lowest that I've ever seen it. Why don't we give it? You know, we're still relatively an immature public company. So I'm going to say, I'm sure I don't know all the ins and outs of what we should be disclosing and what we shouldn't. What I do know is that our peer companies don't. Yep, so we don't. And when I think about it at a deeper level, it's almost like the difference between a board director and management, same with investors and management. Like, do you want to run the business? Do you want to know every — do you want to know what our salary is for field tech? Do you want to know how much information do we need to give versus you're entrusting us to run the business? And the bottom line, which for us is free cash flow, is where you want it to be. That is what we are driving for. We are driving that free cash flow conversion. We're driving high return on invested capital. If those aren't the metrics that an investor cares about, we would want to hear about that. And by the way, we talk to them. I mean, I just went through our top 25 having conversations, and they might bring up things related to ESG, they might bring up things related to compensation. I mean, we listen to that, and we take their suggestions to heart. That quite honestly, you'll get to spare abuse, but I guess the question is how much do you need to disclose? Because once you do it, you're going to get doing it, and then be like, 'Okay, that's not enough. Now I want to know the churn by market. Now I want to know churn by voluntary versus involuntary.' Sure, but yeah, no, I certainly hear you, buddy. I'm not trying to hide it, but I'm telling you honestly, I think in most cases, like in the case of business solutions, there is no right or wrong, there's a whole continuum. But when it comes to morality and ethics, there is a right or wrong. I have no reason to lie about churn, because if I did it for a quarter, by the time you got to the next quarter or the quarter after, the numbers would show whether I was being truthful or not. So we have no reason to — no, look, I 100% agree with you. I just know it is like there are people who think cable is a terminal zero, everybody's going to be getting their internet from Starlink. I think if that happened, actually, there would be people getting like vaporized on the street by satellite rays. But, you know, there some of the bear cases have been, 'Hey, they're not disclosing churn, and maybe it was kind of astute, especially in like Q2 when Charter and Comcast were saying, 'No, fixed wireless isn't hurting us,' but we just lost subs. And like, it really went negative after that, and they were saying, 'You know, T-Mobile added 200,000 broadband fixed wireless subs, it was all bodegas on the corner or something.' You know, but I 100% hear you on that. It's just a frequent bear case. I think that Frontier needs to be disclosing that.

Yeah, let's just be real. And by the way, it's not really helping me to see what they're disclosing, because again, I can go to point broadband or I could go to Clearwave Fiber to see what their churn is vis-a-vis, and I can tell you very similar. Not head and shoulders above us at all. The other thing is, we have to be careful about the majority of our competitors are not public. I don't know if that's true — I should be careful about what I say. There are some competitors of ours that are not public, and so any way they can get information about us — and I mean, I'm very competitive, ask anyone who works with me — if they can find out information about us and we're making it easy, I don't like that. On the other hand, I do love the idea of being transparent with the people that put their money into our company. So if they want to know what's going on, here's what's going on: fixed wireless is taking some of our connects in certain mid-America, not West, where we have the majority of our customers, and moves and housing starts are down. Our churn is really low. Our job is to go get connects, and it's not to get connects at any price. It's not to go out there with a $10 per month home broadband internet. Yep, I mean, you see some of our peers saying, 'Oh, for $40 you can get a 300 meg internet and a cellular line.' Like, oh, I know what things cost. Not a lot of profit there. Yeah, I'm not going to do that. We're not going to do that. Now, we might do it, we might consider it for a test and try it out in a small area to see what it gets us. But ultimately, we have been very focused on cash flow and free cash flow, and not just units for unit's sake.

It is, which is really kind of amazing, because again, 65% no competition, but 35% does have competition. And in some of those markets, it means nothing. Like again, the one I told you about that's growing that has three — it's also in two other competitors — we're growing. I look at it, 'Oh, don't markets up again, that's great.' Some have people coming in, and when they first come in, there's a power grab, right? You lose the 10% of customers who, no matter what you do, you're never going to be good enough for them. Yep, even with that, our churn is really low. And it's actually — that might make our jobs harder, in that it is incumbent upon us to maintain the trust of the consumers that we are serving. I mean, our ambition is to be the most trusted broadband provider. And that means that we are there when they need us, that we respond quickly, that we treat them with empathy. And it is — maybe it's fun to do offers and go get customers, but keeping them over the long term, that's the really hard work. And that's the work that we are up for.

I said I love to fly below the radar. I mean, really, I love our people. Our people are our secret sauce, and they take care of our customers, and that's where I love spending my time. Of course, I speak to investors and banks and have fun with them too. But if I can do it while I'm not on camera, I think this is great. I look forward to seeing you at Markel Day in May, and we'll chat before then. I will see you in Richmond. Thanks so much. Have a great day.