AT&T Inc at Barclays Communications and Content Symposium Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : And so maybe a good place to start is what changes did you make operations change course on execution? What innings are we in with respect to these changes?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : We get an opportunity based on each of these. I mean, obviously, every one of these areas you've outlined is a big theme in itself, so we'll --

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : We'll come to that for sure. Before we get into some of the details, maybe one of the big uncertainties right now is just the macro environment and some of the policy changes and so on. So what would be helpful is to understand -- from a guidance perspective, you've obviously provided us some long-term guidance. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. FEBRUARY 25, 2025 / 1:05PM, T.N - AT&T Inc at Barclays Communications and Content Symposium What kind of market level assumptions are you incorporating into your guidance? And how you're thinking about unit and pricing growth, just given the backdrop with respect to immigration and so on?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : And I guess one of the other sources of uncertainty more broadly is just the regulatory framework. The tax parts of it are a bit of, I guess, known unknowns in a way. And I know you're not incorporating any benefit from that in your guidance, but there's other stuff for things like spectrum policy, for instance, or satellites suddenly are in prominence for various reasons, and then BEAD rules, FirstNet. I mean, I think there's a whole set of things from a regulatory perspective that might change. So how are you thinking about the regulatory environment right now and how it might impact you?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : And the other big topic from a regulatory perspective is just the M&A environment. And there's this anticipation that there's this window for larger deals that we might be in the middle of right now. You mentioned your fiber ambitions. Is there an opportunity here to maybe bootstrap into fiber a lot faster through M&A? And you talked about peak CapEx this year, and you, of course, have service revenue growth guidance, which is pretty positive. So would you approach your balance sheet differently if there was a scaled opportunity to get into fiber and accelerate that business much faster?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : Digging in a bit deeper into some of the underlying operating trends, so it looks like -- last quarter, growth has picked up a little bit. Upgrade rates went up a little bit. Have you seen a trough on these metrics, and do these trends continue through the year? And from a growth mix perspective, how much of your growth is now coming from execution on things like bundling and consequent churn benefits potentially versus maybe a business mix changing?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : I thought DISH was going to be a competitor. It looks like it's contributed to your growth, so that's great. But I mean, I guess one area that doesn't come up often enough is just prepaid. And I think it turned negative for the first time in a while recently. Could you talk about, I mean, why that's the case? Is it more prepaid migration to postpaid? Is it something else that's maybe going on behind the scenes in terms of macro or something?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : Another business that's obviously -- you mentioned this earlier -- as a big focus is your consumer broadband business. Your EBITDA growth there is trailing revenue growth to some extent, and part of it is, of course, the legacy copper business. So when should we expect this gap to close? Because it's a pretty substantial gap, and that business has a big flow-through margin. At some point, we should start seeing an inflection.

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : Then in fiber, I mean, you've talked about 50% share in converged markets. And John's talked about potentially partnerships and non-converged markets or potentially other models that you guys could look at in fiber. So could you maybe expand on that as to what the plan is in some of these non-converged markets? And could you license capacity, for instance?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : Then in terms of capital intensity, I guess you have other initiatives in the works, such as the transition to ORAN, for instance, which should save a lot of CapEx over time. How should we understand the scale of this impact in terms of capital intensity or how it progresses over time?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : And one of the narratives in AT&T which always held back valuation to some extent, as you know well, is all the puts and takes of the free cash flow side. There always used to be something we had to adjust out and look at organic growth. And you've cleaned this up quite a bit since you took over in your role. So when we go forward, given you've laid out a relatively clear CapEx path going forward, should we now expect EBITDA growth and free cash flow growth to be more or less proportionate? Or is there a little bit more work to be done?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : Got it. I think we're out of time. Thank you, Pascal. Thanks for being here.