Verizon Communications Inc to Acquire Frontier Communications Parent Inc Call Transcript

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

Question: John Hodulik - UBS - Analyst : Congrats on the deal. Two questions, if I could. First, can you talk about any penetration upside you guys forecast in the fiber region given the ability now to sell wireless bundles plus the distribution of the Verizon stores and the branding? So that's number one. And then number two, you guys have sort of suggested this in the past, Sampath was talking about yesterday, 400,000 to 500,000 homes passed per year in region with fiber. Any possibility that given the bigger platform and the bigger scale that you guys could go faster than you're currently doing in region at this point?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Hans, I wonder if you could answer the question why now. In the past, you've talked about a national broadband strategy, but it generally involves fiber in region and fixed wireless out of region. Has there been any change in your perspective on the role of fixed wireless and it's plays there? Or is it just your success in the convergence that has led you to make this move here today? And then Tony, thanks for the synergy information. Could you get a little bit more specific on some of the big buckets within that $500 million number? And any cost to achieve on that as well?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And then just one follow-up on BEAD. Does anything change with Frontier's BEAD strategy as a result of this?

Question: James Schneider - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : I was wondering if you could comment first on, ultimately, once you have the combined footprint of 25 million fiber passings, what do you think is your ultimate ambition in terms of overall fiber front, how big can you make that footprint over the long term, say, by 2030? And then separately, if you look forward and think about the balancing of your CapEx priorities between fixed wireless or overall wireless and fiber, would you provide -- basically lend any more weight to fiber investment relative to wireless on a go-forward basis?

Question: Bryan Kraft - Deutsche Bank - Analyst : I guess I just wanted to ask what this means from a broader strategy around fiber. And I don't mean to ask the question in quite this way, but I don't know how else to do it, but could you envision additional acquisitions of fiber broadband operators? Is the goal here to continue to gain scale in this area? And then secondly, for Tony, can you just give us a sense for what the integration and the cost to achieve might look like?

Question: Frank Louthan - Raymond James - Analyst : Great. Just a follow-up on the last question. Given the synergies there, it seems a pretty good deal to pursue more of these types of acquisitions. From a balance sheet perspective, where would you be comfortable if there were other assets for sale? And then secondly, on the integration, one of the challenges for these were systems. How much of those [overall] systems' completely off? And how challenging will it be to get back on your systems from those assets to put it back on?

Question: Craig Moffett - MoffettNathanson - Analyst : I wonder if you could just talk about how this changes your strategy in wireless in the areas where you don't have access to fiber. And if you kind of envision a world where it seems like not just you, but also your wireless peers are moving toward more of a converged strategy. Does that kind of lead to a world where each of you has a relatively sort of small sets of islands where you're competitively advantaged, but that you are, therefore, competitively disadvantaged in other parts of the country?

Question: Timothy Horan - Oppenheimer - Analyst : Can you give us the number of total homes or POPs passed now with wireline infrastructure for both companies, both copper and fiber? And you're basically on a 2.5 million fiber home build per year. I mean, post transaction, what would close that to kind of go up or down?

Question: Timothy Horan - Oppenheimer - Analyst : Got it. And what would cause the trajectory of builds to change? I mean, would more subsidies accelerate or keep it at that pace? Or just any more color around that.