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DATE

Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

  • Chief Executive Officer — James Holanda
  • Chief Financial Officer — Todd Koetje
  • Vice President, Investor Relations — Jordan Morkert

TAKEAWAYS

  • Total Revenues -- $353 million, a decrease from $380.6 million, driven mainly by lower residential data and video revenues.
  • Residential Data Revenues -- Decreased $11.6 million or 5.1%, attributed to a 6.1% subscriber decline.
  • Residential Broadband Net Customer Losses -- 12,600 lost sequentially, indicating continued retention challenges.
  • Business Data Revenues -- Decreased $1 million or 1.8%.
  • Operating Expenses -- $93.9 million, down 6%, primarily from a reduction in video programming costs.
  • Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses -- $87.2 million (24.7% of revenues), declining from $95.4 million (25.1%).
  • Adjusted EBITDA -- $183.3 million or 51.9% of revenues versus $202.7 million or 53.3% last year.
  • Capital Expenditures -- $68.4 million, down 3.8%; includes $5.1 million for new market expansion.
  • Free Cash Flow -- Approximately $115 million in the quarter and $500 million over the past four quarters.
  • Net Leverage Ratio -- 4x on a last quarter annualized basis.
  • Total Debt Balance -- $3.1 billion at March 31, including $1.7 billion in term loans, $550 million in revolver draws, $548 million in unsecured notes, $345 million in convertible notes, and $3 million in finance leases.
  • Cash and Equivalents -- $165.6 million as of quarter-end.
  • Undrawn Revolving Credit -- $700 million of $1.25 billion total capacity available.
  • Debt Repayment -- $90.6 million paid down in the quarter, $86.1 million voluntary, including $33.7 million of senior notes, $27.4 million of term loans, and $25 million on the revolver.
  • Convertible Notes Repayment -- $575 million maturity repaid in March via revolver draw.
  • Unconsolidated Investments (Q4 2025) -- Generated $542 million LQA revenue and $262 million LQA adjusted EBITDA, growing broadband customers by approximately 22,900 (7.9%) and adding over 80,000 new fiber passings.
  • Fiber-to-the-Tower Contract Sale -- Completed sale for $42 million, recognizing a $26.6 million gain; related contracts produced $9 million revenue in 2025 and $2.1 million in Q1 but reduced Q1 business data revenue by $300,000.
  • ARPU Pressure -- Management described downward pressure on ARPU due to "more aggressive go-to-market offers" and targeted retention pricing in competitive markets.
  • Go-to-Market Channel Performance -- Year-over-year improvement noted in e-commerce and direct sales channels for new connects.
  • MSO-Wide Mobile Launch -- Approximately two months since launch; initial customer response described as “encouraging,” though no quantified impact yet.
  • Multi-Gig Market Capability -- 53% of markets currently multi-gig capable; expansion to most markets targeted by year-end.
  • MBI Acquisition -- Purchase consideration locked at $480 million, with anticipated debt at closing now expected between $895 million and $925 million.
  • Point Broadband and Clearwave Fiber Merger -- Expected to close in Q2, subject to standard conditions.
  • MBI Q1 Subscriber Trend -- MBI reported net declines with "net adds were south of 2,000," but performance improved from last year.
  • Competitive Landscape -- Management stated 80% of the footprint faces one or more fixed wireless access (FWA) competitors, especially impacting customer retention and ARPU.
  • Targeted Retention Measures -- Initiatives include speed upgrades, stepped promotional roll-offs, AI-driven tools, and a CRM platform rollout planned for later in the year.
  • Back Book ARPU Adjustments -- Management projected a $2 to $5 decrease over time may occur to maintain competitive parity.
  • Investments Monetization -- CTI Towers, Ziply, and Metronet exited following monetization, stated to have generated attractive returns.

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RISKS

  • CEO Holanda said, "First, churn was elevated in the quarter, but remained primarily concentrated within our more competitive markets, which allow us to concentrate our retention efforts where they can have the greatest impact."
  • CFO Koetje reported "year-over-year decrease" in total revenues, primarily from declining residential data and video revenues.
  • CEO Holanda said, "we're not yet seeing the full benefit of the changes we are making in the business," indicating strategic actions have yet to offset operational pressure.
  • Downward ARPU pressure continues due to acquisition efforts at lower promotional rates and increased retention discounts, as stated by management.

SUMMARY

Cable One (CABO 8.86%) reported total revenues of $353 million, down $27.6 million, driven by ongoing subscriber and ARPU pressure in core residential data and video businesses. Management confirmed continued sequential net customer losses, elevated churn, and challenges in maintaining ARPU, which remain concentrated in competitive markets. Despite these headwinds, free cash flow generation remained solid at $115 million for the quarter and $500 million for the trailing year, allowing for voluntary debt repayments across several tranches. The company made a $42 million sale of fiber-to-the-tower contract rights and provided further updates on strategic investment monetizations, while reiterating expectations for completion of both the MBI acquisition and Point Broadband–Clearwave Fiber merger in the coming quarters.

  • Management specified that the MBI acquisition purchase consideration remains fixed at $480 million, with a now-elevated expected closing debt range of $895 million to $925 million.
  • As of March 31, the company held $165.6 million in cash and equivalents, $3.1 billion in total debt, and undrawn revolver capacity of $700 million, with a stated net leverage ratio of 4x.
  • Operational focus areas include balancing subscriber growth with stable ARPU, leveraging improved go-to-market channels, and strategic cost reductions in OpEx and SG&A.
  • Management disclosed that 80% of the footprint now overlaps at least one fixed wireless access competitor, intensifying retention and ARPU challenges, especially in 15% of markets deemed hypercompetitive.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

  • ARPU: Average Revenue Per User — a metric indicating the average monthly revenue generated per subscriber.
  • Back Book: Existing customer base under previously set pricing, as opposed to new customers ("front book") acquired under current pricing strategies.
  • Connects: Net new customer connections or additions for broadband, voice, or video services.
  • FWA: Fixed Wireless Access — wireless broadband delivered via radio signals rather than wired connections.
  • Multi-Gig: Service capability offering Internet speeds of two gigabits per second or higher.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Jordan Morkert: Good afternoon, and welcome to Cable One's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. We're glad to have you join us as we review our results.

Before we proceed, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements relating to future events that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding future revenue, customer growth, connects, churn rates and ARPU, the future competitive structure of our markets, the anticipated benefits of our mobile service offering, new product rollouts, future customer retention trends, anticipated cost savings and other benefits to be derived from our billing system migration and our other investments in growth enablement platforms, our plans to expand our multi-gig capabilities in more markets, future cash flow and capital expenditures, potential uses for our cash flow, the upcoming MBI transaction, including the purchase price, MBI's future debt levels, integration timing, anticipated cost and tax efficiencies, combined leverage ratios and closing date, the anticipated timing for closing of the merger of Point Broadband with Clearwave Fiber and expected benefits from that transaction, future tax savings and our future financial performance, capital allocation policy, leverage ratios and financing plans.

You can find factors that could cause Cable One's actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements discussed during today's call in today's earnings release and in our SEC filings, including our 2025 annual report on Form 10-K and our forthcoming first quarter 2026 quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Cable One is under no obligation and expressly disclaims any obligation, except as required by law, to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additionally, today's remarks will include a discussion of certain financial measures that are not presented in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP.

When we refer to free cash flow during today's call, we mean adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures as defined in our earnings release. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release or on our website at ir.cableone.net. Joining me on today's call is our CEO, Jim Holanda; and CFO, Todd Koetje. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jim.

James Holanda: Thanks, Jordan, and good afternoon, everyone. We really appreciate you joining us today. I've now been in the role for a little over 70 days, which has given me the opportunity to spend meaningful time with our teams, get closer to our markets and develop a clear view of where we are performing well and where we need to improve. At a high level, I'd say the work underway across the business is moving in the right direction, but those efforts are not yet showing up consistently in the results.

Today, I want to spend my time on 3 things: what we're seeing in the business, what I've learned since stepping into the role and our focus and priorities going forward. Starting with the quarter, we're not yet seeing the full benefit of the changes we are making in the business. Results reflect the broader economic backdrop and continued pressure in our more competitive markets, particularly in customer retention. While we have already begun to make changes in these areas, it remains early and those efforts are not yet meaningfully reflected in our results. At the same time, first quarter connects improved year-over-year, which we view as an early indication that elements of our strategy are beginning to gain traction.

In addition, we are roughly 2 months into our MSO-wide mobile launch. And while it is too early to draw conclusions around retention or lifetime value, initial customer response has been encouraging. We continue to believe mobile can become an important component of the broader relationship over time. Even with these challenges, the business is generating substantial free cash flow, reinforcing both the durability of the model and our ability to continue to execute on our debt reduction, strengthen the balance sheet and create long-term shareholder value. In the first quarter, we generated approximately $115 million of free cash flow and $500 million over the past 4 quarters, providing meaningful flexibility to allocate capital in a disciplined manner.

Turning to residential services. I want to spend a bit more time on what we're seeing in the business. In the first quarter, we reported 12,600 net residential broadband customer losses on a sequential basis. While this reflects continued pressure in certain areas of the business, there are several underlying dynamics that help frame how we are thinking about the trajectory going forward. Over the course of my career, I've seen firsthand what has and has not worked in operating environments like this, and those lessons are shaping how we are approaching the business today.

First, churn was elevated in the quarter, but remained primarily concentrated within our more competitive markets, which allow us to concentrate our retention efforts where they can have the greatest impact. At the same time, new connects improved year-over-year, driven in part by value-conscious customer segments. These customers represent an important part of our segmentation strategy and remain focused on adding them in an accretive way. We also saw year-over-year improvement across certain go-to-market channels, including e-commerce and direct sales, reinforcing our focus on meeting customers where they prefer to engage and expanding on our connect opportunities. From a retention standpoint, we are implementing targeted initiatives to better identify and engage at-risk customers.

These include speed upgrades, more gradual stepped promotional roll-offs, AI-driven tools and a new CRM platform expected to go live later this year. We are also deepening multiproduct customer relationships through offerings such as mobile, Whole-Home WiFi, enhanced online security and comprehensive technical support for the connected home, all while continuing to invest in the network to further strengthen the consistent, reliable experience our customers expect. While still early, these are the types of operational actions we believe can improve retention trends over time. Looking at ARPU, results in the quarter reflected downward pressure from go-to-market initiatives and targeted retention offers, partially offset by continued selling to higher speed tiers and the broader multiproduct offerings just mentioned.

While we may see some variability from quarter-to-quarter, we continue to expect ARPU trends to remain broadly stable for the year. Taken together, while retention remains the primary challenge, we believe the underlying trends in connects and multiproduct offerings provide a constructive foundation as we work to improve customer outcomes and drive more consistent performance. Turning to business services. Overall performance showed improvements through the back half of the quarter. Under Edwin Butler's leadership since early January of this year, the business services organization has moved quickly from assessment into execution. Targeted investments in sales enablement, go-to-market discipline and a new sales training program drove improved results across our fiber, carrier and enterprise channels.

While still early, these trends are encouraging and reinforce our confidence in the actions underway. Todd will address some discrete items in the quarter in more detail. Clearly, competitive intensity persists. However, we believe our network capacity, reliability and local operating presence position us well, and we continue to invest for improved performance. Today, approximately 53% of our markets are multi-gig capable, and we expect to expand that capability to most markets by year-end, reinforcing our ability to meet growing customer demand across the footprint. Against that backdrop, over the past several weeks, it has become clear that our biggest opportunity is improving the consistency of execution across the footprint.

Many of the underlying dynamics are consistent with patterns I've seen in prior operating environments. As a leadership team, we've aligned around a focused set of priorities where disciplined execution can drive the most meaningful improvement. These priorities center on strengthening retention and conversion, simplifying our product set and ensuring greater consistency in how we go to market across the footprint. We've already begun to take action in each of these areas with the objectives of improving the customer experience, the price value equation and therefore, the customer trends and the financial performance over time.

The work we're doing today will still take some time to show up in our results, and we would not expect it to fully translate into the numbers within a single quarter. Our focus right now is on improving overall execution of the array of operating strategies at our disposal and continuing to strengthen the balance sheet. Stepping back, I remain confident in our long-term opportunity. The durability of our cash flow allows us to continue prioritizing debt reduction while maintaining the flexibility to invest in the business and support long-term shareholder value creation.

That confidence is grounded in the strength and the capacity of our network as well as the clear opportunity we see to improve execution within our existing footprint. And with that, I'll turn it over to Todd, who will provide a recap of our financial performance.

Todd Koetje: Thanks, Jim. Starting with the top line. Total revenues for the first quarter of 2026 were $353 million versus $380.6 million in the first quarter of 2025, with the year-over-year decrease driven primarily by lower residential video and residential data revenues. Residential video accounted for approximately $10 million of the decrease. Residential data revenues decreased $11.6 million or 5.1% year-over-year due primarily to a 6.1% decline in subscribers. Business data revenues decreased $1 million or 1.8% year-over-year. Operating expenses of $93.9 million for the first quarter of 2026 decreased 6% compared to the first quarter of last year, due primarily to a reduction in programming costs associated with our video business.

OpEx was 26.6% and 26.2% of revenues in Q1 of 2026 and Q1 of 2025, respectively. Selling, general and administrative expenses totaled $87.2 million or 24.7% of revenues in the first quarter of 2026 compared to $95.4 million or 25.1% in the first quarter last year. The decrease in SG&A was driven by lower labor costs and a reduction in billing system conversion costs. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 of 2026 was $183.3 million or 51.9% of revenues compared to $202.7 million or 53.3% of revenues in Q1 of 2025. Capital expenditures were $68.4 million in the first quarter, a decrease of 3.8% year-over-year. During the quarter, we invested $5.1 million of CapEx for new market expansion projects.

We continue to track towards 2025 levels for full year CapEx. Adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures totaled $114.9 million for Q1 of 2026 compared to $131.6 million in Q1 of last year. In March, our $575 million convertible notes matured and were repaid in full with a $575 million revolver draw. Throughout the quarter, we paid down a total of $90.6 million of debt, of which $86.1 million was voluntary. We opportunistically paid down our senior notes by $33.7 million and term loans by $27.4 million at very attractive discounts, along with a $25 million repayment under our revolver at quarter end. Such payments demonstrate our continued commitment to debt reduction.

As of March 31, we had $165.6 million of cash and equivalents on hand, and our total debt balance was approximately $3.1 billion, consisting of approximately $1.7 billion of term loans, $550 million of revolver draws, $548 million of unsecured notes, $345 million of convertible notes and $3 million of finance lease liabilities. We also had $700 million of undrawn capacity under our $1.25 billion revolving credit facility at quarter end, providing us additional committed capital. Our net leverage ratio on a last quarter annualized basis was 4x. As Jim mentioned, we are focused on strengthening our balance sheet.

While we have the committed capital in place and sufficient excess operating liquidity to affect the MBI acquisition at closing in Q4 2026, as we have stated before, we will remain proactive in our balance sheet management initiatives and continue to evaluate the markets with a focus on optimizing our longer-term capital solutions. Turning to our investment partnerships. We posted updated information about our unconsolidated investments on our Investor Relations website. For the fourth quarter of 2025, these businesses generated approximately $542 million of LQA revenue and $262 million of LQA adjusted EBITDA, representing year-over-year growth of roughly 17% and 36%, respectively.

These businesses also grew broadband customers by approximately 22,900 or 7.9% and added over 80,000 new fiber passings during the year. This summary excludes the financial results of MBI as we provide additional detail within our quarterly filings. Additionally, CTI Towers, Ziply and Metronet are no longer reflected in this table following the monetization of those investments, each of which generated attractive returns. We believe these outcomes, including both the operating performance of these businesses and the monetization of certain investments reflect the strength of these assets and the value created over time. And finally, I'll touch on a couple of items related to a recent transaction, along with an update on a pending one.

In mid-March, we completed the sale of certain fiber-to-the-tower contract rights for $42 million in cash. We recognized a $26.6 million gain on the sale. Such contracts generated $9 million of business data revenues in 2025 and $2.1 million in Q1, and the sale reduced first quarter business data revenue by approximately $300,000. Results were also modestly impacted by lower revenue from EchoStar as they continue to decommission portions of their 5G network build-out, representing approximately $50,000 in the quarter and roughly $200,000 on an annualized basis, which we believe represents substantially all of our remaining exposure to this activity.

Meanwhile, the merger of our Point Broadband and Clearwave Fiber strategic investments remains on track to close during Q2, subject to customary closing conditions. And we continue to work proactively on our pending acquisition of MBI. The Cable One and MBI teams are preparing for an efficient integration of MBI's operations when the transaction closes, which is expected at the beginning of Q4. Before we open it up for questions, I'd reiterate that while the current environment remains competitive, the business continues to generate strong cash flow, and we remain focused on disciplined execution and capital allocation.

We are continuing to prioritize debt repayment while investing thoughtfully in the business, and we believe the changes underway position us to deliver improved performance over time. With that, we are ready to take your questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

Sebastiano Petti: And real quick, I guess just trying to think about the connects being up year-over-year. I think, Jim, you talked about contribution from the value-conscious segment. Maybe help us think about how much of that -- I mean, maybe a little bit of a difficult question to answer, but how much of that is from just improved offer strategy or maybe improvements or expansion of your distribution channels?

And then relatedly, as you, I think, talked about defending the base last quarter, help us think about maybe how much ARPU or was there perhaps some dilution in the quarter relative to win back retention efforts that I think, yes, other -- some of your peers are also kind of enacting to try to defend the base?

James Holanda: Sebastiano, thank you for the questions. Appreciate it. This is Jim Holanda, everyone. And yes, connects, I think it's kind of twofold, both to your points. The expansion of the direct sales channel and the improvement in the e-commerce channel results, I think, certainly contributed to that, along with, again, our now very targeted segmented offers across how we've chosen to segment the base and being more aggressive and not afraid to be doing price locks in especially those hypercompetitive markets that we find ourselves in, in 15% of the footprint. So I think all of that helped contribute to it.

And I think there's still a lot of meaningful room for improvement in regards to executing across all of those channels and all of those strategies. And yes, certainly, on the ARPU side, along with more aggressive go-to-market offers as certain areas get more competitive. Certainly, being more aggressive on the retention side where we feel those competitive pressures has been a focus. Again, I think we're still early on. We saw a little bit of those results then impacting the ARPU numbers in Q1.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan with Raymond James.

Frank Louthan: As you're looking for -- to save customers and so forth and that kind of activity, what kind of pressure do you expect on ARPU in your back book? And then can you give us some color on how MBI is tracking from subscribers and a financial perspective? And I assume there's -- that might impact the price. Do you expect that to be any materially different from what you've kind of signaled is going to be the cost when you close?

James Holanda: Well, I'll let Todd go ahead and answer the MBI question real quick.

Todd Koetje: Frank, on MBI, so their first quarter, which we put in the Q, net adds were south of 2,000. So they lost 2,000, but that's a meaningful improvement from the run rate at which they were last year. And there are some timing-related adjustments in the first quarter for MBI. But I think if I understood your question correctly, there are not adjustments in the purchase consideration. That is a locked in and disclosed number at $480 as we talked about last quarter. And so that's currently the plan.

We did adjust just to address it, the anticipated debt that we will assume or be looking to refinance in conjunction with it into a new range of $895 million to $925 million. So it's slightly higher than what we had as a range before just due to the impacts of their performance last year and slightly lower free cash flow between now and closing.

James Holanda: And then on the ARPU pressure piece, Frank, yes, clearly, bringing in customers at lower promotional rates and seeing continued kind of elevated churn in the back book continues to put pressure on ARPU. Certainly, my read of the analyst community from our last earnings call is such that, that's a good thing. In terms of that, again, we do have targeted retention offers in our more competitive markets at lower rates, but we're also simultaneously focused, as we've talked about on adding a ton of value in terms of those higher ARPU existing customers.

And again, whether that's with TechAssist, whether that's been with eero's, whether that's been with security product, we now have mobile in our arsenal as it relates to that as well as continuing to give people more speed at no incremental cost in terms of the network capabilities. So those are all things we continue to be very focused on and get out there, quite frankly, as quickly as possible.

Frank Louthan: How much of your back book do you think you're going to need to adjust and kind of lower the pricing when it's all said and done?

James Holanda: Well, all said and done is a very wide question. I don't know if you're meaning by the end of this year, the end of a 3- or 5-year cycle.

Frank Louthan: Well, multiyear. I mean, ultimately, to get kind of competitive parity, your back book is pretty high. What would you expect that to have to adjust to?

James Holanda: I think overall, in the $2 to $5 range over time. And I think is realistic and doable given the value adds that we have at our disposal for our existing customer base.

Todd Koetje: And Frank, it's Todd, I'll jump in just real quick, too. Keep in mind, if you think about the history of CABO, it was very one size fits all. It wasn't this deeply discounted promo with a high step-up that would result in a wide variation of front book, back book as you're referring to it. So when you think about -- I think you said the back book is really high, which we don't disclose that. It's not a major delta to what we're looking at from new selling.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Greg Williams with TD Cowen.

Gregory Williams: First one is just on satellite broadband. We're hearing a couple of big announcements in the last few weeks. I'm just curious how you view the satellite competition, particularly in your rural areas. And second question, Todd, you mentioned a little bit about refis and you just paid down the converts. I'm curious about next steps on the balance sheet and when you'd be looking to the debt markets and eventually turn that out.

James Holanda: Yes. I'll go ahead and take the satellite and then turn it over to Todd. Obviously, we're an avid user of OpenSignal and have pretty accurate and telling data in regards to the competitive landscape of our footprint across the United States. And while satellite shows up in very low circumstances and quantities, it certainly continues to go up. We keep our eye on it very closely. We're not going to let what happened kind of with FWA happen on the satellite front or even going back to my Dish and DIRECTV days back in the early '90s. I think they are formidable competitors that could flush out over time, yet to be determined.

And there is no consistency from at least the 2.5 months that I've been here in terms of their offers and their installation costs and their monthly pricing is widely varied territory to territory, market to market. And we have not seen any consistency yet across our footprint in terms of their go-to-market strategy, which I think they will figure out a technological way to overcome at some point in the future, should they choose to allocate their resources and bandwidth there. So we'll continue to keep an eye on it.

But at the same time, as you're fighting off 1, 2 or 3 FWA carriers and fiberized LECs and in 15% of the footprint, fiber overbuilders, we feel we have a good playbook to run in order to defend the base that we have and to figure out how we continue to grow the connect side of our business simultaneously.

Todd Koetje: And then, Greg, on the balance sheet side, as Jim alluded to, and I commented also in my prepared remarks, meaningful repayments have continued as we attack the numerator. That was over $400 million in 2025, $90 million here this last quarter. Most of those were voluntary and repurchases at attractive discounts on both our term loans and our unsecured notes. And that's an intentional approach as it relates to how we want to think about the balance of the capital structure.

As I've mentioned several times, diversity of duration because we are actively evaluating longer-term capital solutions and optimizing the balance sheet to ensure we have the flexibility to continue to reinvest in the business, but also the flexibility to continue to repay debt at attractive levels going forward. But we're also very focused on the diversity of the structure and ensuring that we have both secured that's more attractively prepayable as well as more foundational capital on the unsecured side. And then as it relates to preparation, I think you even asked about timing. I've kind of been pretty consistent for the last few quarters, but we do have our contingency plan in place, but that's not a primary plan.

And so we actively evaluate the markets. We're looking at it through the lens of ensuring we have the right disclosures in place. So we started putting more disclosures on MBI as that acquisition will be affected in early Q4 of this year. And we are aware of, obviously, the refinancing that we need to do over the course of the next 2 to 3 years and very actively planning around how we address that.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Nispel with KeyBanc.

Brandon Nispel: A couple, if I could. It seems like a pretty consistent theme we're seeing across the space is that there's an inverse correlation between ARPUs and subscriber growth. So I'm curious how you guys are expecting to get better performance on the subscriber side while keeping ARPU flat this year. And then if I remember right, historically, your guys' footprint tends to perform best seasonally in the first quarter from a connect standpoint in the third quarter, and if we're looking at trends getting worse in the first quarter here, how should we be thinking about sort of second quarter from a net add standpoint?

James Holanda: I'll start, and I'm new, so I can't speak to historical Q1s. I know my experience in my other locations is nothing historical patterns upheld through the pandemic and going forward in a new competitive environment, generally speaking. So that one is probably harder to gauge. Having said that, I think we were pretty clear on last quarter's earnings call that in the third quarter of '25, we saw the spike associated with some very large work done in the back office and with our systems in terms of a billing system consolidation across the family brands that made up Cable One that really put pressure there. We're not going to have those pressures at all this year.

And so I think that becomes an opportunity. And like I say, I think the opportunities in terms of all the go-to-market strategies that we've been talking about on these last 2 calls are really the things that can help start to change what have been otherwise historical trends there. And as we think about kind of ARPU versus sub growth, the interesting thing about Cable One and one of the reasons I came here is 40% of our footprint, we're still the only gig provider. And there's not a lot of cable operators out there that can say that.

And while we certainly expect that intensity to grow over time and have modeled that out and are thinking in those terms, we also have clear visibility in terms of as ILECs start to fiberize or third-party overbuilders start to come in with a fiber build. We see that coming well in advance, and we think we've built a pretty good playbook in terms of how to defend against that. And so I don't think as you compare us to others, I think we have just a little bit more flexibility in terms of our timing.

And I think we have a little bit more opportunity in terms of, again, getting higher speeds and getting a whole host of value-added services into our customers' kitchens and living room to help us as we go forward across those retention pressures.

Brandon Nispel: Got it. Todd, if I could just follow up with one for you. I don't think you provided it or an update here, but with the higher debt that you guys are planning to take on with Mega, the trends there and then the EBITDA trends that you guys are seeing, is there an updated thoughts on your closing leverage target once you do close Mega?

Todd Koetje: Yes, Brandon, yes, the range is pretty modest relative to the overall debt stack. So that doesn't move that much. But obviously, with the trends from 2025 for both CABO and MBI on a customer basis and how those translate into the effective denominator of that leverage ratio and EBITDA that will be higher than what we previously stated, which was in and around 4x, but still very manageable in our opinion, as it relates to where we close and how quickly we can get that down relative to the ongoing initiatives to focus on debt repayment as well as, of course, stabilize and change the trajectory of the EBITDA base.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Sam McHugh with BNP Paribas.

Samuel McHugh: Two questions, if I can. One on the gross add connect side. Do you have a sense of how many of your gross adds are coming from DSL? And then as DSL kind of just disappears in the next few years, kind of what's the plan to make up that gap? And then secondly, on the tower divestment, Todd, you've given us the revenue number. I wonder if you could give us an EBITDA number of how much that might just take out EBITDA for this year.

James Holanda: Yes. Thank you for those questions. On the -- in terms of the connect side, how many are coming from DSL, again, with only 40% of the footprint left that -- where the ILECs are unupgraded, you'll over-index slightly in terms of that connect performance. So if it's 40% of the potential and 50% of the connects, I think that's a pretty consistent rule in terms of the OpenSignal data that helps us kind of support that structure and thought. And having said that, it's interesting, you brought that up because I think that is an opportunity for us to exploit that even further.

And given these bigger announced acquisitions by the ILECs and the integration work that they have to do and so forth, I think that gives us a window to hopefully potentially take advantage of that in a bigger way going forward.

Todd Koetje: And Sam, I'll just say, of course, as we've talked about in the past, where the LEC has not upgraded to fiber and especially where that LEC has a fixed wireless access product for home broadband. They've been very aggressive on attempting to keep the customers they already have as their initiatives are not only focused on the customer side, but decommissioning that high-cost copper. So that has moved that DSL population down at a more accelerated pace than what it was naturally because of those fixed wireless saves.

As it relates to the fiber-to-the-tower contract sale that we affected in the first quarter, it was $42 million of gross proceeds, pretty comparable because of the tax efficiencies that we had from a net proceeds perspective. We used those proceeds to accelerate our debt reduction. The revenue, we did disclose, as you alluded to, that's a high single-digit multiple and margins that are slightly higher than what you see from an enterprise side of the equation. So that should get you to a pretty directionally accurate cash flow number as that rolls through on a GAAP basis throughout this year.

Operator: Your final question comes from the line of Julie Zhu with MoffettNathanson.

Julie Zhu: Team, last quarter, you had mentioned approaching an equilibrium on fixed wireless competition. I was wondering if you could comment on any updated thoughts there. I know that we saw that Verizon's fixed wireless net adds sharply slowed, but T-Mobile stopped reporting yet and given they're your largest overlap, would love any insight into year-to-date activity and view into the future. And then if I can squeeze a follow-up in about the satellite LEO competitors. Jim, I think you had mentioned that it's sort of a hazard strategy on go-to-market for them. How does that affect how you and the team think about competing in more rural areas?

And do you have an updated point of view in terms of the structural market share of satellite connectivity and fixed wireless across your footprint?

James Holanda: Wow, that's a lot for 2 questions, Julian. I wouldn't expect anything less, by the way. Thank you. On the satellite piece, and they're somewhat intertwined given the fact that roughly 80% of our footprint now has one or more FWA competitor, which is the latest and greatest information we have from OpenSignal. So we're already in a mode where we are competing fiercely in terms of retaining customers that we have and going after the low end where those product sets are more appealing. And so even as they might have the capacity to come to a more consistent go-to-market strategy.

At some point, if you're competing against 2 or 3 FWAs and 1 or 2 other wireline competitors doesn't matter whether there's 6 or 7 in a particular market, we're focused on the things that we can control and the value and the customer experience differentators that we can bring to market and the localism that our network and our people bring to communities in the way that we support them day-to-day throughout the year. So we'll continue to try and take advantage of all of those opportunities to the best of our ability and see how that develops and unfolds. I think your narrative is accurate.

I think we haven't seen according to our data, a whole lot of incremental expansion out of the Verizon FWA product, but we do continue to see and expect T-Mobile and AT&T deployment within the market. And I would call theirs slow and steady, but not -- they're not turning on huge additional sloughs from the information we've gotten so far.

Todd Koetje: And then, Julie, on the structural market share, we did discuss last quarter, it's an estimate. It's a view, a thesis as it relates to what the future looks like. And when you think about wired broadband, we believe that longer term from an equilibrium perspective, wired broadband based on the capacity needs, the speed needs and the utilization that you see constantly increasing across our both residential and business customer base that, that will be in more of that 80% area.

And then I would view the 20% is whether it's wireless only, whether it's mobile fixed wireless access or it's satellite that really comprises that other 20% factor when you think about an adoption being nearly ubiquitous for Internet connectivity.

Julie Zhu: Got you. I appreciate the fulsome answers. I think maybe just a quick follow-up. Is it fair to characterize the rate of change for T-Mobile and AT&T fixed wireless as slowing when you say slow and steady?

Todd Koetje: No. Consistent.

Julie Zhu: Okay, got it.

Todd Koetje: Thanks, Julie.

Operator: That's all we have time for today. I will now turn the call back to Jim for closing remarks.

James Holanda: Thank you, Alexandra. Before we wrap up, I just want to thank all of our associates across the country for welcoming me into the Cable One family and for their continued focus on our customers and each other. And over my first roughly 70 days, I've had the opportunity to meet many of our associates, customers and investors, and I look forward to continuing to engage with our key stakeholders in the quarters ahead. And thank you, everyone, on the call today for your time and your continued interest in Cable One.

Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.