We're gonna keep going. Good morning. I'm Ben Swinburne, Morgan Stanley's media and telecom analyst. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. I'm really excited to welcome back to the conference Chris Winfrey, President and CEO of Charter Communications. Chris, thanks for being here.
Good to be back.
Absolutely. Why don't we, level set for the audience here and talk to us about Charter's focus for 2026 to drive customer growth and ultimately sustainable EBITDA and free cash flow growth?
Sure. Look, no surprise, our priority one, two, and three is to return the company to broadband growth over time. In 2026, we're really on the cusp of, you know, nearly finishing some generational long-term investment programs. The rural build and extension of the footprint will be largely complete at the end of this year. The network evolution will be done about 50% with the remaining, you know, very much in flight to be completed next year. Those investments really set us up for the long term of protecting the superior assets, products, and infrastructure that, you know, we have today. In the meantime, in 2026, you know, our real focus is on two things.
One is improving our message around value and utility, and the second is, you know, earning the service reputation that we've really invested in from a quality of service perspective. You know, the thinking is that, you know, those are the two missing pieces. We had the best network, we had the best product, we had the best pricing, but really getting our messaging to flow through and getting the service reputation that we've invested for, you know, those are the things that are going to put us back on track.
On your earnings call back in January, Chris, you framed Spectrum as America's Connectivity Company.
We did.
I know you're into branding.
Uh.
What does that mean? What does that tell us about the product set and sort of the go-to-market that the company has to try to really drive a better customer relationship, customer profile?
I think it picks up on the fact that we're 100% U.S.-based sales and service. That's unique. None of our competitors have that. It was really focused on three different commitments. We guarantee your service, which is your internet, reliability, your product reliability, and if we're not perfect, we stand behind it with credits. We guarantee your service, and we'll be there, you know, the same day, if you call us for a professional install or service. Then we guarantee you savings, you know, $1,000 if you take internet plus two mobile lines. You know, our biggest challenge really has been around messaging that. It's comes about from the cable industry of not having the best service reputation.
For the entire industry, I think our focus is finding new ways to communicate that and deliver on that service proposition in a way. I think the being America's Connectivity Company is because we are.
Yeah.
We can provide these things in a way that our competitors can't. Finding new ways to not only communicate, but deliver on the service that we're committed to.
Great. Maybe one other kind of high level question, and we'll get more into the business. You just recently announced the hiring of a new COO, Nick Jeffery, who folks certainly in the telecom and cable space know from Frontier. Talk about this hire and sort of what investors should take from bringing Nick onto the team.
I'm looking forward to Nick starting with us in September. I think the hiring of Nick as our Chief Operating Officer represented a unique opportunity. We have a tremendous amount of talent. We have a deep bench both at Spectrum as well as at Cox. But there was a unique opportunity to go get talent from the outside, in Nick that had operated in a highly competitive wireless space in the U.K., had run global B2B for Vodafone, and in addition to that, had been in a competitive overbuilder situation. You know, bring some of those skill sets from the outside into Spectrum.
You know, the two things that Nick, if, you know, that from my perspective that I saw that was really unique was he has a proven track record on both sides of the pond and the ability to cut through on messaging value and utility in the marketplace. Secondly, a radical transformation of the Net Promoter Score, you know, both at Vodafone UK as well as at Frontier. If you think about it, that's a perfect fit for us because those are the areas that we're making significant progress today, and you can see it in all of our, you know, our Net Promoter Scores are moving up.
It could go faster, and I think Nick will be a great fit for the team and can be an accelerant for the things that matter to us most, in returning the company to broadband growth.
Great. Let's talk about convergence. It's the best theme in the sector. We've had a lot of your competitors, and we had Comcast here at the conference yesterday.
They're a peer, not a competitor.
Right. That's why I broke them out separately.
Yes.
Tell us about Charter's value prop today to consumers, how you stack it up versus the competitive set, and, you know, what do you need to do to drive better results from the product offerings you have in the market?
The conversation around convergence and our capabilities, we have convergence in 100% of our footprint everywhere we operate. We have the fastest speeds and the fastest mobile service everywhere we operate because of our wireline network and because of convergence. We save customers, you know, hundreds, even thousands of dollars, and we stand behind that commitment. Unlike our competitors, we're America's Connectivity Company, and we have 100% US-based sales and service. None of our competitors can make those claims. The downside for us is that because of the historical reputation of cable, you know, we haven't earned the service reputation that we've invested in.
Yeah.
That's unfortunate, but the good news is the money's already been spent. I don't think it's a question of more marketing or more service investments. It's about doing things better and having a different approach towards customers. That's really the focus for us, as I mentioned before, is to go get those things right, and we can turn the knob hopefully quickly.
Chris, when you think about competing in the marketplace in broadband anyway, how do you look at fixed wireless relative to fiber when you think about the sort of the long-term competitive set? Do you look at those as requiring different.
Yeah
... approaches competitively?
We have different packages for everybody's needs and budget while still trying to be simple. In the end, we treat, you know, those competitors the same way, which is better, faster, and lower cost, meaning higher value. That's what we provide against fiber, and that's what we provide against Fixed Wireless Access. You know, from a fiber standpoint, you know, we've competed well against fiber for years. Even inside of mature fiber markets where they have overlap today, we still have higher penetration in mature fiber markets.
The new element that's come about here really is new competition, particularly in the form of Fixed Wireless Access, where even though it's slower, less reliable, and all in actually costs more money. It's a new competitor in the marketplace, and it's taking a place at a point in time where you have a low, a low move rate, new household start rate. You know, at an unfortunate timing for us, new competition at the same time, macro environment has slowed down a bit.
Yeah. I was gonna actually ask you about housing. I know you're not one for excuses, but how much is the lack of housing movement impacting the business? Certainly it impacts-
Yeah
you know, the stock because it's a game of inches when it comes to net add.
It is.
Yeah.
Look, our biggest focus right now is control what you can control, and that's being a better competitor, and we have new competition. I would not underestimate the impact of the macro environment. It's huge. Lower housing new starts, less movers producing, selling opportunities. you know, interest rates that have been higher, that's also impacting new starts and moves, you know, and wireless substitution has all played a significant factor.
Yeah.
I don't think that continues on forever. I think people will start to move again. I think people will start to build houses again. I don't have a crystal ball, and it's not what we do, so I can't tell you when. In the meantime, if you think about the rural footprint that we have, that's gonna produce a leg of growth for many years to come because you have new plant out there that continues to have higher penetration take up. The other thing that we can do is a better job amongst the cable operators in terms of capturing or recapturing the move opportunity that's out there. We do some of that today, but I think we have an opportunity to really do a better job, together with us, together with Comcast and work on that.
You know, this market environment, the macro environment and competitive environment, it is making us much better service operators along the way.
Sticking with the sort of branding comment earlier, you also talked about Invincible WiFi.
Yes
... which I think came to market, I believe, last month. Tell us about what that product offering entails. Why is it important, and can it move the needle?
Invincible WiFi is using a Wi-Fi 7 router, together with a 5G cellular backup. It's a backup product and a battery backup as well. In the event of a storm or an outage or, you know, power outage, that your internet service stays connected on the same SSID, so you're not having to reconnect devices throughout the home. In fact, as a consumer, you would see your speed go down because it's going to 5G, basically Fixed Wireless Access as a backup. Other than that, you wouldn't know the difference.
Yeah.
for a small incremental value of $10, you know, that's a pretty, you know, good value. I think the bigger opportunity it's another way to help improve our service reputation.
Yeah.
by having always on Invincible WiFi. You know, when we launched it a couple weeks ago, it actually went so fast that we had to pull back in certain sales channels-
Mm.
because of a supply standpoint. It's not, you know, doing everything that it could today just because we're ramping up backup supply, so we had to slow it down a little bit just from availability. I think the opportunity for Invincible WiFi is to, you know, have an operational improvement, less trouble calls, improve our service reputation, and of course, you know, has a financial benefit, you know, to ARPU along the way as well.
Yeah. Customers clearly value that peace of mind.
Yeah. I think, you know, would you pay for it? Of course, you would.
Right. Right.
It'd be great.
You guys also launched a $1,000 annual savings guarantee for customers that take your converged offer.
Yeah.
including some bill credits, if you guys, you know, have a misstep from a service point of view. How should investors, shareholders think about this approach and whether this is sort of a step towards, I don't know, lower CLVs or how you compete with your-
What's a lower COV?
Customer lifetime value.
Oh.
Sorry.
Oh.
LV.
CLV. Okay.
Yeah. My bad.
I thought CoV. Yeah. No, look, I think the, the interesting thing about the $1,000 guarantee is we're providing it because we can.
Yeah.
We're providing it because it's true. Those of you investors who've been watching know that we've used this as an investor slide for over a year now that shows against the three major telcos how we genuinely save you over $1,000 a year. We put it on our website, you know, probably six months ago. We came to the conclusion and said, "Well, we know that we're doing this nearly 100% of the time. We can stand behind it. Why wouldn't we guarantee it?" The opportunity there, I hope, is the opportunity to break through on messaging the value and utility that I was talking about before. I don't think there's gonna be a lot of credits attached to this.
Yeah.
Simply because if you look at the math, it's almost every single time. You know, if, you know, many of our investors are based in New York City and L.A., put us to the test. If we can't save you the money, we'll put the credit on the bill happily. I guarantee you, we're gonna save you the money.
Okay. I know we've been talking about convergence, and that's how you think about going to market.
Yeah.
just on the wireless business, you've been growing that business quite nicely over the last...
Yeah
couple years from a volume point of view, in revenue as well. Where are you in terms of, sort of the growth outlook from here? What are the pieces of the puzzle, whether it's distribution, customer service, et c, that you think really delivers on sort of the mobile opportunity at Spectrum?
I think the growth rate is significant and is gonna be with us for a very long point in time. It's gonna throttle a little bit based on the level of subsidies that are taking place with handsets out there in the marketplace.
Yeah.
That moves around a bit. If you think back to what we have, you know, we have two very strategic MVNOs, and we have a Wi-Fi service that provides us a superior set of economics and connectivity for customers, and we're rolling out CBRS across our entire footprint.
Yeah.
We already have the fastest mobile speeds in the country because of that seamless connectivity, because we boost through Wi-Fi and through CBRS, and because the Wi-Fi capabilities, you know, will continue to get better and we'll have more offload. I think we have the opportunity, and we still have a 5G umbrella protective cover through a good relationship, a strategic relationship that we have with Verizon. I think our speeds can continue to be faster into perpetuity with a product that has better seamless connectivity, better speeds, and better economics. I think we're positioned for growth for, you know, a really long time.
You guys announced amended or modernized MVNO, I think was the word everyone's using.
We have a modernized MVNO with-
Modernized MVNO.
... Verizon, and we have a strategic partner who, actually has been a pleasure to deal with, and I think it bodes well for what we can do together over time.
I guess my question is in terms of the profitability of the wireless business, how much does that... I think it's 88% of your mobile traffic is being offloaded onto your own network-
Correct
... which gives you better economics. Is that meaningful from a profitability point of view? Can you move that up as you roll out more technology?
We can move it up through all the things that I talked about as, you know, additional Wi-Fi seven, more CBRS rollout. The goal isn't to hit a metric. The goal is actually to make sure that we have better seamless connectivity than any of our competitors, which we do, and to have better speeds, which we do, not through, not only the seamless connectivity, but also through the Wi-Fi speed boost that we provide.
Mm-hmm.
Of course, as an output of that, when you do more offload, you know, you have to rent less of the macro cell tower network, and so you have savings associated with that by using our existing infrastructure. You know, I know there's been people who've said, "Well, you're not a facilities-based wireless provider." I say that's garbage.
Right.
We're more of a facilities-based wireless provider than anybody in the country. The reason for that is even the cellular companies, 75% of their traffic goes over our Wi-Fi. you know, 25% of their traffic is going over the macro cell towers.
Mm.
88%, 89% of our traffic is going over our network. We are the facilities-based wireless provider really for the entire country when you include us and Comcast. I think we have an economic advantage, and we're gonna continue to use it. We're under-penetrated relative to our existing broadband footprint. It's having a huge impact on our churn for broadband customers, and I think it can do the same for us in acquisition over time. Our biggest issue is, you know, brand awareness that you could actually get your mobile product through Spectrum. You asked about the things we have and don't earlier, and should have mentioned that. We have full distribution, you know, throughout our footprint. Our service works well. Pricing and packaging is great.
What we really need is more brand awareness along the way, and a lot of that is just gonna take place with word of mouth. Savings guarantee, the speeds actually work, and people talking and promoting it themselves to their friends and family.
Great. Why don't we shift gears to a topic I'm not sure I've asked you about in a few years, which is the video business.
Yes.
It's back, at least at Charter. It's been a bright spot. You guys have really worked hard to change that product, innovate. I'm a customer. I have Xumo. Talk a little bit about what you've done, and if you think that the rebound in that business is sort of sustainable over time.
Our reason for being in the video business, first and foremost is to support broadband connectivity, both at acquisition and in retention. You know, the margins aren't as good as it used to be in video, but if we can add value to the broadband relationship, then it's worth it. We have made a pretty significant turnaround in video, and that comes about through value and utility that we've provided into the product and into the relationship, which is really where this all started. Today, you know, we have increased flexibility in packaging. We're upgrading customers from broadband only to video, upgrading customers from skinny packages to full video, and we have direct-to-consumer apps that have $125 of additional value that's included.
Mm-hmm
for free. I know you have activated, you know, several of those.
Yeah.
I hope you enjoy. It makes sure that the customer, even though the price is high because of the programming cost that is put upon us, that the value is there and something that we're, you know, happy to sell and attach to the bill for a broadband customer. You know, in terms of growth, it's not our objective in video.
Yeah.
It's just to provide, you know, value. In fact, you know, we had small growth inside of Q4. We made sure it was clear people knew what we were doing. Sure enough, you know, we have to pass through programming rate increases inside of Q1, and, you know, we're gonna be dramatically better than we've been over the past few years. You know, we're it's hard to imagine we'll be in a positive quarter for Q1 on video just because of having to pass through the programming rate increase.
Yeah. You're selling it in the call centers now, right? I mean.
Yeah, we are. We never stopped. We never stopped selling it in the call centers, but we did start second guessing ourselves, you know, three years ago and said, "If the price has gotten so high and we're having to pass through so many rate increases essentially to our broadband customers, if there's not a value there and there's not utility, then should we be selling this product?" The value comes about through all the things I just described, including the apps as part of your service. The utility comes about, you mentioned Xumo, the ability to have unified search and discovery with the voice remote. It's a unique product. There's not another platform out there that does what Xumo does. We're pretty pleased that at least we have something that we can be proud of on the bill.
Yep. Great. I did wanna touch, I know it's not a huge part of the P&L, but still relevant, which is the commercial business.
Yes.
The space. You know, some of the challenges you've seen on the residential side, at least in broadband, what are you guys doing to try to re-accelerate small business and also push the enterprise opportunity as well?
Yeah. Small business suffers from some of the same, you know, new competition issues that we've seen in residential. I think Invincible WiFi in the business space can be really compelling. The opportunity for a very low fee to be able to have Fixed Wireless Access is just a backup, which I think is a great backup, and competitively, I think is ideal. I think we can re-accelerate a bit with that. The enterprise space, we continue to do well. We're gaining credibility in the marketplace with more advanced products, larger customers. You, you know, they call it logos. We're, you know, attaching more logos that a couple years ago we wouldn't have had a right to win in that space.
Having mobile added in, I don't know that it's gonna change the trajectory, but it's a nice addition to be able to go to these large accounts with mobile as well. Finally, in Cox, you know, this is, you know, this is a really great combination. They have complementary assets and capabilities to us and vice versa. I think the Cox transaction, it was a bit of an unforeseen synergy, not just from the scale of having a larger B2B business, but they have things like hospitality, managed services that we don't have, and our enterprise footprint actually has some advanced products they don't have, plus the additional scale that we have. I'm optimistic that, you know, we'll see some upside there.
Since you brought up Cox, I know it hasn't fully closed yet. Just talk a little bit about the kinda top integration priorities once you do get this closed. What are the work streams that matter the most to making sure you guys capture all the value ahead?
Priority number one is to get Spectrum pricing and packaging into the marketplace. A more competitive internet pricing, at the same time, you know, reintroducing video, Spectrum video. They're very, you know, have low penetration at this point in mobile, so getting, you know, those additional products into the marketplace and putting that all together in pricing and packaging so that you can have a lower internet price and have more revenue per household, have more margin per household by providing better value and service to the customer. You know, we're very much focused on getting that foot in place. Commercial, I mentioned.
Mm-hmm.
I think is going to be an upside. In addition to selling more, you know, they're starting from 13% or so penetration on video and very low, much lower penetration on mobile. We'll do well there. I think we'll end up growing video for a period of time, just because of where the starting point is and what we can bring in. That'll help lift things like advertising.
Yeah.
You know, when you think about that space. I'm excited about, you know, getting the transaction closed. I think it's great for consumers, it's great for employees. We're excited to get going, and I think it's underestimated how much value this is gonna bring to Charter.
Where are you in the process on the transaction?
We have FCC approval. DOJ was complete essentially in September. FCC approval last Friday. No secret we're working through California as the big state that remains open. We hope to have a productive conversation with them and those around the CPUC to accelerate the closing really for the benefit of consumers and for the employees as well.
Got it. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. There's a lot of focus on EBITDA growth in 2026. You guys expect to grow EBITDA this year. Can you talk a little bit on the cost side, Chris? What are the things that we should be thinking about or that you're focused on in expenses to sort of deliver on that expectation?
Yeah. It's more of the same. When you have better service, you have less transactions, less cost. There isn't anything that is... I think I mentioned to you yesterday, there's nothing unholy that needs to be done in order to meet that objective. It's more of doing what we're saying, managing the cost structure effectively and making sure along the way, rule number one is you don't do anything that impacts sales or service. We're very much focused on long-term growth rate of the company. Yes, we'll be efficient with our expenditures, but we're not gonna do anything that compromises sales or service.
Yeah. You've got tens of millions of customers, millions and millions of transactions.
Yes.
-customer interactions every year. How are you guys integrating AI across sales, your call centers, field ops, and is this something that is a real benefit to the business and maybe even the P&L this year? Where are you in that process?
I think already we've seen benefit to the P&L from the use of AI. We certainly see the benefit of AI usage in providing a better customer experience. Why? Because it's focused on making the job for employees easier and more efficient. If we can do that, then we're gonna have a better service, which really is the number one goal. If you think about applications that are deployed today from an AI perspective, we have conversational IVR, which is AI based. Significant number of our calls are handled that way to triage those and get them, in many cases, solved right up front with simple transactions.
From our agent's perspective across service, sales, and retention, you know, the employee may not know it, but these calls are now guided calls by AI, where you have suggestions, previous service history, telemetry, all of which is being proactively presented to the employee so they can have a more or higher quality conversation with the customer with more empathy because they're not banging on 10 different systems, it's being presented to them. In the case of service to provide next best action, which is using LLM and all of the data that we have about the customer to recommend, say, these are the next step to go solve the customer's problems. It's still the agent.
The employee has the ability to dictate where, you know, they take the conversation, but there's support along the way because there's real-time transcription, and it's feeding into LLMs that allows the agent to be supported. The same thing exists for sales and retention with what we call next best offer. There's not 50 best offers for this customer based on everything we know about them and all the data that we have. You know, here are the three or four different best options that are gonna get you to that. You know, from a field tech perspective already today...
They may not realize that it's AI, but that service call that takes place not only do we have a transcript that's feeding an LLM for the service call, but it's being summarized by AI so that when the field technician gets to the door of the customer, they can tell the customer, "My understanding is I'm here to address this, and this." It may not be the person at the door who made the phone call.
Yeah.
That's a much higher quality experience for the employee. Instead of saying, "Why am I here?" or for the customer to say, "I don't know why you're here because my spouse was the one who actually called in." Now that the employee is empowered to know all the details of the service history and you know why they're there, better experience for the employee, better experience for the customer. All of that means if you think about everything I just described, it means you have less transactions, you have lower average handle time, you have less repeats, you have higher customer satisfaction, which produces less churn. There are huge financial benefits along the way, but the way we approach it is if it cannot improve...
If AI can't match the quality that we provide with our best employees, we're not gonna introduce it.
Yeah.
Because that's rule number one. We're willing to invest in service and spend more money. We always have benefit produces a better service transaction. That's still the case today.
Okay. Speaking of spending money, you guys are at an elevated level of CapEx...
Yeah.
right now. You've broken with past history and provided long-term guidance-
Yes.
in CapEx.
Yes.
With CapEx expected to come down towards a kind of an $8 billion run rate by 2028, capital intensity coming down, free cash flow ramping. What should give the market confidence that that glide path makes sense and that there isn't another?
Yeah.
CapEx cycle on the other side of this since us old-timers have seen that.
We outlined a CapEx that would come to less than $8 billion, which means less than $8 billion. A CapEx as a percentage of revenue in the 13%-14% range. Why should people have confidence in that? One, because we typically don't make those type of long-range commitments.
Yeah.
When we say it, we mean it. , you think about what we've been spending on. We've made two major generational investments. We've done the largest expansion of the cable network that's taken place since the 1980s and the largest physical upgrade of the network that's taken place since the 1990s. It's hard to recreate that, you know, back to back.
Right.
Even if you didn't believe us, the reality is that the money has been spent, and it sets us up to make sure that we maintain our network and product superiority for, you know, a prolonged period of time. The capital that we're gonna have going forward really is a success-based capital that's on the back of those generational investments that have already been made. You know, we always in the past have preferred not to give an outlook so that you could, you know, be more nimble and flexible in the marketplace. Given the amount of outsized spend that we've had for great initiatives, we thought it was really important for shareholders to know that this is where we're heading, and we intend to keep that pace.
You're working your way through the network evolution.
Yeah.
You know, upgrading speeds to symmetric gigabit speed. Where you've rolled that out, is that proving to be a differentiator for the business competitively yet?
You know, we'll be at 50% at the end of this year with much more of the actual physical work complete beyond just that 50%. Today, when you think about where we've lit up the symmetrical and multi-gig speeds, it's only in about 15% of the footprint.
Okay.
Until we get to critical scale, we've been quiet. We haven't been actively marketing, just because we wanted to get to critical scale before we start becoming loud.
Yeah.
Other than, you know, a dramatic drop-off, essentially at that point, no node splits because you have really complete fallow capacity that exists inside the network, which we want other people to go fill. You know, other than that, I can't sit here and tell you about a great benefit just yet, but there will be.
Okay. I know it doesn't get talked about as much anymore, but the rural expansion you referenced earlier...
Yeah.
It's a huge project, huge investment for the company. How should we think about the returns on that spend as that project matures? 'Cause I think you're, you know, you're not too far away from kind of the end of that build.
No. Look, we did RDOF deferred. We did RDOF, we did ARPA, we did state grants. We got a little bit of BEAD. The fact that our rate of returns for the RDOF and the other projects are at or above where we set out is pretty impressive.
Mm-hmm.
You know. A lot of variables changed along the way. Despite even things like Fixed Wireless Access being available in some rural markets, you know, our penetrations on broadband are really high. The thing that we probably didn't anticipate is how high our video, mobile, and even wireline phone in a rural environment, our penetrations for those would be. The returns have been great. The plant is, you know, now in front of customers who really don't have anything remotely similar to this option in terms of quality and in terms of price. The growth and the penetration will continue for years to come. The capital's gonna drop off dramatically. It's gonna go away, and the revenue will continue to grow. There's a long way to go in terms of that generate.
The piece that I don't think was not in our returns analysis and may not be well appreciated is a lot of this build was taking place in places like Florida, the Carolinas, and Texas. What is rural today in those markets will end up being suburban. In addition to the penetration growth that'll take many years to really fill out-
Mm.
You have serviceability extensions at a really low cost, success-based capital, when rural environments turn into neighborhoods in these places. We're gonna be really pleased with what we did, you know, for, you know, a decade, 15 years. It produces the next opportunity to extend beyond, you know, at the right time.
Maybe, Chris, just as we wrap up here, I wanted to ask you about your balance sheet and sort of the leverage framework. You guys recently reduced your long-term leverage target, so this is kind of post the Cox transaction.
Yes.
-targeting three and a half to 3.75 times with a plan to reach it within three years after close. Talk about what drove that decision, why you think that's a positive, and how it impacts, if at all, return to capital?
Look, I have to admit, I wasn't a big fan of it at the outset, in terms of lowering our leverage. Why? Because we fully believe in the growth rate, you know, that we're gonna achieve with the company. Having said that, I think it was important for us to let everybody know we do listen to shareholders.
Mm-hmm.
Our investment grade rating and how we treat our debt investors matters greatly to us, and it matters greatly to equity investors as well. We wanted to make sure that we were responsive to shareholders along the way. By doing so, I think you open the door for additional types of shareholders who could come in, who might have been reticent to do that before. Theoretically, when you go back to, you know, business school, your weighted average cost of capital should come down. That should be good for shareholders as well. Is the company really valued on that? I don't know, but it's academically true. I think being responsive to shareholders and recognizing that's a goal over three years. In the short term, there wasn't a big difference.
This is not a big change in our target leverage. We were 3.75 - 4 before, and now we said the lower end of 3.5 - 3.75.
Right.
It's not a huge shift. Given that it's taken place over three years, I don't think it's going to have a material impact in, you know, the amount of stock that we buy back, particularly up front where it's at a, you know, really low price today.
Yep. Well, great. We're all out of time. Chris, anything you wanna wrap up with before we close it out?
Yeah. Look, we're, you know, sitting here, it should be very clear we're very motivated. We're excited about the opportunity to return broadband to growth. We do have the best network. We've got the best product. We've got the best pricing. We can guarantee that to customers. We've got some work to do in the areas that I talked about, but it's not about additional investment. The investment's been made. It's about earning back the service reputation, which also will help us in terms of how we message utility and value uniquely in the marketplace.
Great. Chris, great to see you.
Ben, you've probably heard this from a few people by now, but I just, you know, together with the audience here and those on webcast, I know these are your last days. I don't know how many of these that we've done together and how many, you know, dinners, breakfast, whatnot that we've had. I just wanted to say thanks to Ben. Really from an industry perspective, he's I don't know what you'd, you know, statue is probably the wrong word, but he's an institution inside the TMT space and in cable in particular. As he goes off to be a programmer, we'll see you on the other side. We'll partner with you in every way. I wanted to say on behalf of Charter, on behalf of Spectrum, thank you very much for what he's done for the industry.
Oh, thank you very much, Chris. I appreciate it.