T-Mobile US Inc at Wells Fargo TMT Summit Transcript

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

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Great. So maybe we'll start out high level with the recent CEO transition. The recent change in CEO to Srini Gopalan you've obviously had some very strong charismatic leaders in the past at T-Mobile. So how should we think about the path forward for the Un-carrier under Srini? How that might differ from some of the previous CEOs that we've seen in the public market?

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Yes. Fair enough. Fair enough. Given that we're kind of in the heart of Q4, we're nearing a very promotional time period. We've got Black Friday coming up. We've got holiday promotions. There have been new phone launches in the market a couple of months ago, and you've had some recent offers in the market like 4 for $100 with no trade-in requirements. Maybe you could just kind of characterize how this Q4 is stacking up from a promotional standpoint, from an activity standpoint versus previous fourth quarters, realizing that, of course, there's still a lot of activity to come in the last 1.5 months of the year?

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : And obviously, there's been a lot of news and chatter in the hallways around the CEO change at one of your large competitors recently. And they've expressed the desire to at least improve their customer growth through some retention efforts to try to keep more of their customers that have churned off. So early days I realize with the CEO change there, but any changes in behavior, marketing, retention offers that you've seen or expect when competing against them? 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: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I guess we'll all be waiting to see how that happen in February. So as we think about upgrade rates this year, they've picked up quite a bit. We've seen industry churn pick up a lot of customers that came out of two- or three-year device payment plans. So maybe you could talk about from T-Mobile's perspective, do you prefer this kind of higher switching environment, more jump balls to go prosecute against? Or do you prefer an environment in which switching activity is a little lower like we've had in the past few years. What do you think is kind of the best environment for T-Mobile to win share in? Or are both environments in which you can do really well?

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : And this question, you've probably gotten in many different forms over the last couple of years, but it's really around kind of fiber and mobile convergence, which has obviously been talked about quite a lot at your 2 competitors. And with the construct that a bundled fiber and mobile solution will help lower churn, it will help extend customer lifetime value. Of course, it also comes at the expense of an upfront cost benefit that the customer gets. But it doesn't appear that you really have the aspiration to be more meaningful fiber provider above and beyond the 12 million to 15 million homes that you laid out. So I know today, you claim you really don't see it as a competitive disadvantage. I think people are trying to project into the future 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: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : And I think you've talked about in the past, how we've -- the majority of the industry has been converged for quite some time, like north of 80% of it for three years? 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: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Yeah. Fair enough. Just to flip the fixed wireless, while we're on the broadband topic, you have the -- obviously, you have your aspirations to get to 12 million customers. Maybe you could talk a little bit about where you're winning share? You put up really good numbers year-to-date. Could you talk about the geographic distribution between urban, suburban and rural and maybe how that's changed since you first launched this product a few years ago? And when you look at who you're competing with, is this price still primarily coming at the expense of cable or are you seeing some success going up against other technologies, whether that's DSL, fiber in some cases, satellite?

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : And when you look at -- I know you have a smaller fiber T-Fiber platform today. But when you look at the type of customers selecting fiber versus fixed wireless, is there a lot of overlap? Or is it just kind of a different segmentation of the market? 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: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Yeah. Maybe just to switch to like the overall outlook for postpaid phone growth. This has been something that for the last few years, investors seemingly have been bracing for this big slowdown, which hasn't really come or if it's been very moderate. And there have been worries about immigration, government cost cutting, free lines and prepaid to postpaid migrations, inflating numbers and things of that sort. So maybe you could kind of give your view of how -- what the postpaid phone growth environment looks like, not just this year, but out the next couple of years? And obviously, as the big market share taker in the space, can you continue to succeed even if we do see a slowing gross add environment?

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Yes. And just touching on that best network concept. I mean you were very vocal earlier this year that you're now finally getting recognized by third parties for actually having the best network. And I think you've also stated in the past that there's sometimes a lagging kind of customer perception of who has the best network. But maybe you could talk about how you're getting that message out there, how much more room you have to run in terms of convincing the many subscribers who are not on T-Mobile that you truly have the best network. And then how do you ensure that you remain the best network, especially with Verizon and AT&T, in particular, acquiring some spectrum assets recently to try to bolster their mid-band holdings, how do you think about all of that and kind of maintaining or extending this leadership you have? 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: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : And related to that, I know years ago, you talked about how you were significantly underpenetrated in smaller markets, not necessarily rural, but outside of kind of the top 50 or 100. And you recently closed on the UScellular transaction that gives you a little bit more footprint there. Where are we in terms of your rural expansion, customer penetration and distribution? And is there really any reason why longer term, you shouldn't have kind of a market-leading position in rural America, I mean not putting an exact time line on it, but just based on all the dynamics you've expressed? 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: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : And just touching on UScellular briefly. I mean you closed on that August 1. So a few months under your belt. Maybe are there any opportunities within that footprint that we may not be aware of? And maybe just talk about the steps of the integration, making sure you get that right. It sounds like you're accelerating some of the synergy realization, the cost to achieve relative to your original plan. It seems like things are going well so far.

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Okay. That's helpful color. We touched on this a little bit earlier in one of the one-on-one meetings, but T-Life has been a big priority for you. Important part of the customer experience. Obviously, helping improve customer experience, reduce customer inbound volumes and obviously, it could help you manage your cost base over time, whether that's through your partner stores or other distribution channels. So maybe you could just talk about where we are in terms of the T-Life evolution and what kind of the next step is to really help that drive customer experience but also financial profitability for the company?

Question: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : All right. That's a very good overview. And maybe before we finish up, I wanted to ask you about satellite and direct-to-cell that's been very topical recently. So you've been a close partner with Starlink in direct-to-cell connectivity. Could you talk about how important that future is to today's customers for edge connectivity and more remote markets? 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: Eric Luebchow - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : All right. Great. Well, we're out of time. So Jon, thank you for joining us today. Appreciate it and thank you all for coming.