AT&T Inc Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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

Question: Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Thank you. Two questions, John. The AT&T Internet Air momentum is pretty clear in your results. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit, as the company expands your footprint, you mentioned parts of 47 states, how are you making sure you're sort of segmenting the market the right way between fiber and fixed wireless and being efficient with your marketing, etc.? And maybe you could comment on how you're approaching SMB as well. And then for Pascal, you've mentioned the competitive environment in wireless this year has led to some higher equipment costs and subscriber acquisition costs, which we can see in Mobility EBITDA margins being a little pressured this year. Your three-year guidance assumes that gets better, that margins expand next couple of years. Just wanted to talk a little bit about how you deliver that, if we think that the competitive environment maybe stays this elevated over the period. Thank you.

Question: John Hodulik - UBS AG - Analyst : Great, thanks. Good morning, guys. Two, if I may. Maybe first on wireless. John, how would you say that the company is positioned if we see higher promotional activity in the fourth quarter, given the changes at Verizon and T-Mobile actually? And maybe touch on the sort of cohorts coming off plan if you could, given what you've seen in the last couple of quarters. And then for Pascal, the comments on ARPU, and actually the follow-up comment from John in your recent response. I mean, it sounds like you guys are down -- the pressure on ARPU is a little bit stronger than we expected, both in wireless and in broadband. With most of the growth coming from converged services going forward and your comments, should we expect continued pressure on ARPU on both wireless and broadband as we look at over the next several quarters?

Question: David Barden - New Street Research LLP - Analyst : Thank you so much for taking the questions. I appreciate it. So John, just if I put all the pieces together, the Lumen deal, the Spectrum deal, the desire to get leverage back down to 2.5 times, the desire to maintain a dividend and an equity stock buyback return recognized in the upper C-band auctions coming. Is it fair to say that when you say that you wouldn't trade assets with anybody that you don't need any more assets that AT&T is out of the M&A acquisition game, the inorganic game and now it's time to build on what you have organically at the margin? And then I have a follow-up.

Question: David Barden - New Street Research LLP - Analyst : And so John, thank you so much for that. And so to key off that comment, I feel like I have to ask, outside the four walls of AT&T, there's been a lot of change in the C-suite. That's obviously what people don't know what they don't know. What is your or AT&T Board's succession plan? How would that look? When might it happen? Would you become Chairman and give up the CEO title to Jeff and then watch that happen? And could you just kind of elaborate a little bit because everybody is talking about it.

Question: Michael Ng - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Good morning. Thank you for the questions. Following up on the comment related to boosting the long-term organic revenue growth and EBITDA outlook early next year, has your confidence around accretion from the Lumen fiber assets and the EchoStar spectrum licenses, has that confidence increased? Have you spent more time strategizing and looking at those assets? And maybe you could spend a little bit of time also talking about kind of the key buckets in terms of the EchoStar spectrum accretion, whether that's AT&T Internet Air, passing acceleration, some of the kind of infrastructure deployment, cash tax savings, the Boost Hybrid MNO, that would be very helpful.

Question: Sebastiano Petti - JPMorgan Chase & Co - Analyst : Thanks for taking the question. Maybe Pascal or John, just a clarification question on FWA. You talked about the seasonality within the fiber business, typically in the fourth quarter, as you get towards the holidays, you see a little bit of a step down and 4Q '24 had a little bit of a onetimer because of the work stoppage. In FWA, I mean, have you noticed a similar pattern on an underlying basis because obviously, you will see an acceleration? I think, John, you talked about lighting up some of the 3, 4, 5 or 2/3, I think, of PoPs by mid-November. Just any help on how we think about the pacing of FWA underlying subscriber results and then as we kind of think about the broader expansion from the EchoStar spectrum coming on? And then I guess also sticking with the broadband, I mean, any update on Gigapower and how that's perhaps going? I think there was a press report in the third quarter about Gigapower perhaps bringing on a new ISP onto their network. Just any way to kind of think about that and the risk that your wholesale partners within the, I think piggybacking on Peter's question about getting to the $60 million. Within that, obviously, a decent portion of that would come from open access wholesale partners, how do you assess the risk of your partners meeting that target over time?

Question: Michael Rollins - Citibank Cameroon SA - Analyst : Thanks and good morning. John, there's some questions about whether or not LEO satellites pose competitive threats to your mobile service as direct-to-device LEO's get access to spectrum and improve their technology. And also whether these constellations will impact the future competitive landscape for broadband to the home and business locations. So just curious if you can give us an update on your views with respect to these constellations as competitors to your strategic wireless and broadband services. And if you could also give us an update on how you're planning to offer your own direct-to-device satellite offering to customers?