T-Mobile US Inc Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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

Question: Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : I guess two questions. Maybe I'd love to hear from Srini. I know it's been a short period of time, but you know the company well. Now that you've been in the seat, what do you think is the biggest opportunity ahead of T-Mobile? Anything you think the market, in particular doesn't fully appreciate. And I don't know if I can get more out of you guys on T-Fiber, but now that you closed Lumos and you're going to start selling the product a little bit more about sort of the go-to-market and expectations for kind of driving that business into the base, especially the fixed wireless waiting list in your existing wireless customer base. It seems like a pretty big opportunity out of the gate here and how you closed that. So I would love some more color on Lumos now that it's done.

Question: Samuel McHugh - BNP Paribas Exane - Analyst : Sorry, I was on mute. I was saying Srini as well. A couple of questions. One is just on the price up. You managed them incredibly well last year in terms of churn, but some of your peers have struggled more recently, I think, with price ups. So as we're looking into Q2, should we think about a pretty decent step-up in churn rates? I guess that's question one. And two, it looks like you could have gone a bit heavier on kind of marketing and promos and trying to win customers in Q1 as we can see the strong EBITDA result. Did you hold back in the first quarter? I'd love to hear your views on kind of industry dynamics.

Question: Peter Supino - Wolfe Research - Analyst : Two, if I may, one on Lumos and Metronet and UScellular. You have a lot of future EBITDA that is coming over the next several years and not in your long-term guidance. You've budgeted the cash for those excluded from your buybacks in your long-term guidance and I wondered when and how you might incorporate those acquisitions in your EBITDA guidance? And then kind of on a parallel M&A track wondering if you could talk a little more about cable assets as theoretical strategic assets for T-Mobile, especially as the number of fiber assets dwindles?

Question: John Hodulik - UBS Equities - Analyst : Mike, it seems like churn is up sort of across the board from the wireless carriers here. It seems like the is driven by price actions. So two questions. So first of all, in the past, you've said a bigger switching pool is good for T-Mobile because it allows you to take share. Do you still believe that's the case, number one. And number two, do you think we push a little hard on pricing because it does seem like you're seeing a little bit more than I would have thought for the entire industry. Have we pushed as far as you think we can go? And then one quick follow-up. Are you guys seeing any macro pressure in the prepaid market or on the wholesale market that is starting to emerge from what we're seeing in the economy?

Question: James Schneider - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : I was wondering if you could maybe contextualize the contribution you're expecting in broadband in your overall postpaid net additions for the year, do you think you have maintained this pace of high-speed Internet fixed wireless additions above Forland? Maybe give us a little bit of on REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies.

Question: Craig Moffett - MoffettNathanson - Analyst : Let me ask the obligatory question about tariffs. Since it's likely that we'll see fairly significant tariffs on handsets coming in. How do you think that plays out in your business? Do you think that we are likely to see higher handset prices? And if so, will that dampen upgrade rates? Or is it likely that those will be absorbed by the promotions that you and your competitors offer? And so I'm just wondering how you think about how that plays competitively?

Question: Timothy Horan - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. - Analyst : Comcast said, today, they're seeing more and more subscribers using their mobile devices to replace their home broad. Are you seeing much of that? And I know you have a new price plan out there with 250 gigabit hotspot that intended to maybe help that process? And I guess related to that, are there other things you can do to create almost quad-play like services, so people cut their wireline or broadband?

Question: Gregory Williams - TD Cowen - Analyst : You spoke a little bit about cable M&A, you mentioned pure-play fiber and you being a growth company, and that would be your focus. But there's media reports out there that's saying, you could be presumably passing on the Lumen fiber-to-home assets that could be a fairly attractive price. So you guys have that $20 billion disposal capital envelope. Just curious to hear your thoughts on that type of M&A and that sort of size of a deal to augment your key fiber business?

Question: Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays - Analyst : So Mike, just in terms of the fiber question, I think all of us have kind to basically figure out why $12 million to $15 million is the right number. And I think in the past, you've described this as more of a funding mechanism, wireless being top panel and now funneling people are upgrading people to fiber at some point. But if you end up with 12 million, 15 million fiber passings just seems inadequate broadly, just from a long-term perspective. So it would be great to get your thoughts on why 15 million is the right number for fiber? And then Peter, when we filed the fiber business and the impact on the P&L longer term, I appreciate that you may not want to give us the details right now. But directionally, if we think about the business, initially, there might be some fixed payments you have to accrue to the JVs even before revenues start kicking in. So directionally, do these businesses become a drag initially and then over time, they essentially start contributing and become accretive? How should we think about the framework over the next two or three years?

Question: Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research - Analyst : Just one for me, following up on the fiber discussion. Does it matter where the fiber locations are to you? Is it a matter of sort of building fiber in markets that don't have fiber today? Or is it more important for you to have markets in big growing cities, which might also be markets where you need mobile capacity at some point in the future? And I would love your thoughts, given that you can get better returns on these assets, been disinterested independent operators, would love your thoughts on market structure? Does it make sense for you guys to deploy fiber in markets that might have two players already or would you stick to two player markets?

Question: Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research - Analyst : It was about geographic. Are we going to go into places with two existing fiber parters -- two broadband player?