... Hello? There you go.
Great, perfect.
Great.
Okay, welcome to day two, and we're thrilled to have you back, Dennis. So we've got Dennis Mathew, the Chairman and CEO of Altice USA, back for a session. So anyway, thank you.
Great. Happy to be here.
So let's just dive right in. Can you discuss your overarching vision for the company over the next, let's say, three to five years? And as part of that, can you give us an overview of the priorities, let's say, over the next twelve months, and how they'll support your vision for the company?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, since I joined, our vision has been and remains to be the connectivity provider of choice in every community that we serve. And I've got to tell you, the last two and a half years have been a journey of transformation. We've had to do a ton of work in terms of fixing the culture, building a leadership team. We've brought in over a hundred and fifty new VPs and above, and the focus really was just stabilizing the company. Stabilizing the network, our products, our service, really making sure that we were operating with financial discipline.2 And the good news is that two and a half. You know, there were nights that, you know, every week, every other day, we had Sev 1 outages, and we were really frustrating our customers and frustrating our teammates because the products and the network and their tools just weren't working. And so there was a lot of work rolling up our sleeves and just really putting a foundation in place that would allow us to ultimately get back to growth. And so the good news is we're now winning awards from companies like PCMag and Ookla. I remember I would dread whenever they published anything because either we weren't there or we were last, or Everything was wrong, and now we're being named ISP. You know, we're top ISP across the footprint
We're getting rated for having the fastest network in places like New York and New Jersey by Ookla. And so the stabilization phase, while not 100% complete, is largely done, and now, as we think about the next two, three, four years, we have an opportunity to really accelerate. The good news and the bad news, well, you know, the bad news is we didn't historically invest in platforms and in a sophisticated way. So the good news is, we don't, we're not tied to anything from the past. And so we're now implementing automation and AI to really help ensure our teammates can serve our customers effectively, that we can deliver the right level of quality. Ultimately, we must be the simplest company to do business with.
When I joined, we were the hardest company to do business with. It was impossible to buy from us, to pay, even to pay your bill, even to solve a problem. Like, these are fundamental things that we've stabilized, but now we have an opportunity to leapfrog and be the easiest company to work with and get back to ultimately sustainable growth.
Right. You've guided to roughly $3.4 billion in EBITDA in 2025-
Yes.
which requires a healthy ramp in second half 2025.
Yes.
A return to EBITDA growth year- over- year for the first time since the third quarter of 2021.
Yes.
Can you help us think through the path, and the expense efficient efficiencies to achieving growth in second half of 2025?
Yeah, this is a very exciting milestone for us. You know, we've had a sequential decline year over year for the last several years, and we've done a ton of work, as I mentioned, to stabilize the company, to drive efficiency, to really make sure that we can achieve this objective. You know, we'll see a little bit of a step-up in Q3, but the bulk of that is going to come in Q4, in terms of helping us get back to that stabilization of EBITDA. I had mentioned in the past earnings call that, you know, we had some workforce efficiency and reductions occur to 5% reduction. A bulk of that comes into play, is delivered, is realized in Q4.
You know, I had mentioned that we had spent some real time investing in transformation, and so that investment is two things. One, the moderation of that expense, it's significantly moderated in Q4, but then it's now delivering results, and the results that we were hoping for. You know, we needed to drive, continue to drive down calls, continue to drive down truck rolls and dispatch rate, and in August, we had one of the lowest dispatch rates ever. August is seasonally one of the highest dispatch rates ever. So, I know we're going to talk about AI, but that's helping us deliver on this 3.4 objective. Then the good news is that, you know, the Lightpath team has been doing incredible work.
We've talked about the work they're doing in terms of building the sales funnel and hyperscaler programs, and so we're going to start to see some of that revenue layer into Q4. On the advertising side as well, we have with state and local races that are happening, and that's going to allow us to step up in Q4, and then ultimately, we're bringing to bear all of our new go-to-market strategies that are really starting to deliver results. The reality is that it's we only launched some of these things in Q2, and we're just still starting to scale them, whether you're talking about our income constraint strategy, our MDU strategy, our hyperlocal strategy. You know, it took us some time to build these teams and build the strategies, ensure that we had the infrastructure to execute on these strategies.
We have them, and now we're going to hit the accelerator.
... Great. Well, since you mentioned AI,
Yes!
Can you discuss how you are leveraging AI currently to drive efficiencies, and how you plan to extend AI utilization in coming years?
I mean, what a time that we're living in, right? I mean, when you think about AI and its transformative nature, and, you know, we've all been around, and we saw the change that occurred when, you know, PCs came into place, and the internet came in, and, you know, then you had the BlackBerry, and then the smartphone came, and you were like: "What the hell is this thing? It doesn't even have any buttons. Like, how am I gonna use this?" I was, like, so confused, and now it's, like, transformed our lives. And AI is like a multiplier across all of those, and it's really giving us an opportunity to reimagine the entire way we operate, whether it's go-to-market, customer experience, sales, marketing, even back-office functions.
And so my challenge to my team is we must reimagine every part of this organization, and we've started it with our frontline teammates because we, they deserve to have the tools to serve our customers effectively. When I started, I would do roundtables. I still do roundtables every month with our frontline teammates, and their number-one ask was, "Dennis, I want to serve the customer, but the tools don't work. I can't even, like, log in sometimes in the morning." Okay, we've gotten past that, but they have too many tools. They have too many screens. These are all antiquated systems, and the good news is that we don't have to, like, crawl, walk, run. We can just run. We can just immediately implement new tools that make it easier for them to make sure that we're doing the right thing for our customers.
And so we implemented a tool called AVA, for example, in retention and in care, and so this is a tool that allows our teammates to be able to ensure that we're providing the right offers and taking care of our teammates to taking care of our customers, maximizing customer lifetime value. You know, when a customer would call into retention, and they said, "Hey, I'm not happy with this value," you know, historically, they had a spreadsheet with, like, a thousand lines trying to figure out, okay, what offer does this person...? Now, the tool provides three offers, four offers, and ensures that we have the right balance of maximizing CLV, providing value, and making sure that our customers walk away thinking, "Man, I got I had a an engaging experience." You know, is it right 100% of the time?
Not yet, but we're doing it much better, and our NPS over the last couple of years has improved by 30-plus points, and that's through these interactions. On the network side, as I had mentioned, truck rolls, for example, you know, we just had limited visibility, and when there was an outage or there was a disruption in the network, or there was an issue with the quality of service, it was very hard to correlate what was happening, where, and then we'd have to roll trucks, and people would have to go out and do a lot of manual triaging.
Now, we're implementing tools where we're able to pull all this data together and really correlate what's happening, where it's happening, and we can send one, technician and solve an issue for a hundred customers, and it's really helping us, drive efficiency. And so this is just the beginning. We're starting to roll it out on our, in marketing. We're starting to roll it out in the back office, and so this will be a journey over the next, few years. But we'll focus first on making sure our teammates, our frontline teammates, have the tools, whether it's care, retention, sales, our field techs, to serve our customers most effectively.
So, I mean, most of it sounds like it's cost benefits. On the revenue side, there's, like, easier, you know what I mean? Just, like, easier for sales or to upsell. Like, what would the revenue side look like?
Oh, it's exciting, really exciting. As we put it into our sales channels, really helps our teammates, think about solution selling in a much more robust fashion. Before, it was just a very binary conversation. Now, we can really assist our teammates in terms of which offers will resonate most. There's also coaching tools that help. You know, we know the profile of the top performers.
We know, like, what it is they do, how they do it, and so now we're piloting tools to help those that are kind of in the bottom to middle to say, "Hey, this is what a top performer looks like, and so here are two or three things that you should be doing in terms of how to have the conversation, what are the offers, how to, you know, really drive your performance in terms of yield and ARPU," and really help. I mean, it's just such a simple example of how to improve productivity and performance and allows the teammate to be able to maximize their own earning potential. 'Cause they wanna sell more, they wanna be the best, and these coaching tools really help us drive that performance to that next level, and that's just one example.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay, let's move on to broadband.
Yeah!
Topic du jour.
Topic du jour, for sure.
What is the optimal split between fiber and hybrid fiber coax over the next, let's say, three to five years? But as you consider the customer experience, what metrics, upload speed, latency, you know, whatever-
Yeah
... would guide your decision to build out fiber versus upgrading with HFC?
Yeah, so when I joined, there was kind of a one-size-fits-all plan to fiberize the entire footprint, and you know, I just didn't know. I didn't think that was the right approach. And we've been on a journey to build because there's a lot of power in HFC. There's a lot of power in fiber. The competitive landscapes across the country are vastly different. You know, in the East, we're 70% overbuilt by fiber. In the West, when I started, it was, you know, low double digits. It's now, you know, 40-plus%. So as we looked at the different markets, we realized that we really needed to make sure that we were not approaching it as one size fits all. We had to have really a town-by-town, state-by-state strategy.
And so as we think about the path forward, you know, we have three million fiber passings now. We're doing about 175,000-plus new build every year, and that's going to be primarily fiber. That's really a great way to deploy new fiber into the marketplace and help us grow the network. But where we have HFC, we have an opportunity to really deliver incredible network experience through mid-splits and delivering multi-gig in a very cost-efficient fashion. And so for a little over $100 per passing, we're now able to provide multi-gig speeds, and in the markets where we're doing that, we're finding that we can compete very effectively because we're bringing to bear, in most of these markets, it's fixed wireless, or it's a fiber overbuilder, and we have a whole portfolio of products.
And we have value proposition that really resonates. And so, you know, as we move forward, our focus is driving fiber where we have it, driving it in acquisition, driving it in migrations in a very strategic fashion, and then growing fiber for new build and then investing and unlocking the power of our HFC network where we have it so that we can deliver multi-gig across the footprint.
Key question: What type of broadband sub-trends have you seen during the third quarter in both the east and the west footprints?
Yeah, so it's been. You know, we're seeing the same pressure all of our peers are seeing. It's been exciting to see that our gross add strategies are really coming to bear, but as I think about Q3, we're going to be flat-ish year over year to last year, and that's because we've had some pressure on disconnects. You know, we've rolled out a number of rate events and promo rolls and just some rate activity that we had planned. We're seeing intense competition with fixed wireless expanding. The good news is that our teams are reacting quickly. They're building playbooks to help us moderate this going forward, and I'm confident that we're going to continue to stabilize broadband in the medium and long term. The gross add machine is performing incredibly well.
We're seeing higher yield, higher productivity, and so we saw some pressure in Q3, on the disconnect side, which I'm confident that we're going to be able to stabilize going forward.
Right. I mean, the competitive market is, if anything, it's getting more... I mean, it's not getting better, that's for sure.
That's right.
So how do you see it evolving from here? Do you see, you know, and where do you see FWA pressure, like, you know, are there areas where it's getting worse? Are there any areas where it's actually softening?
Yeah, so we're seeing on the fiber side, you know, the east is very different from the west. As I mentioned, about 70% overbuilt there. On the west, you know, it's been steadily increasing. As I mentioned on my last earnings call, it was kind of flattish to the prior six months at about 45%-46%. I think that's just timing. I'm sure that's going to continue to ramp and ultimately get to the levels of where we are in the east. And then fixed wireless is expanding. You know, T-Mobile has is across the footprint. I know AT&T is expanding. And ultimately, I do believe, though, we have the right tools and the right strategies to compete, whether it's with fiber, a mature fiber provider, a fiber overbuilder, a fixed wireless.
You know, the reality is that in any given market, we have 2, 3, 4 competitors, and we have to be number one, and the way we can be number one is by delivering great quality, delivering great value, being the simplest company to work with, and those are the fundamental capabilities that we're embedding in, and we're starting to see a really meaningful change in trajectory. As I shared in the last earnings call, you know, there are markets where we have gone from negative to positive, and we're starting to grow subs again, and that's because we are really focused at that local level, making sure that we have hyperlocal offers, making sure that we're delivering the quality people expect and demand, and just continuing to drive innovation at that local level.
The competitive landscape continues to be intense. We continue to be committed to drive innovation, to drive quality, and to drive great customer experience.
Right, but I mean, you're obviously getting attacked at the high end with fiber-
Yeah
... with the low end, with FWA. When do you think you'll return to positive broadband sub net adds?
Yeah, you know, it's. I'm not going to speculate on exactly when, but we are focused on controlling what we can control, and we're controlling these go-to-market strategies, and as we see them succeed, we're going to continue to scale them. You know, we've launched our hyperlocal strategy to about 500,000 homes. We're seeing it work. We're going to grow that. We see that FWA competes very well or very aggressively in MDU and income-constrained. And so we now, for the first time, have an MDU strategy, and we're going to scale that, and we're starting to see the impacts to help us get back to that long-term sustainable growth.
Right. And then you mentioned simplifying tiers and packaging. Like, where is there still friction in the sign-up or upgrades with your consumers?
... you know, the good news is, I know, you know, we talked about a year ago that we had to rightsize our broadband rate card. You know, it was very high, but really it was also very confusing to people, you know, in terms of, hey, what were the step-ups and transparency? And so we've done a lot of work in terms of improving, visibility, simplicity, what step-ups are happening and when and why, and, really making sure folks understand their bill. There's a lot more work to do, but we've seen tremendous progress, and that's materializing, in terms of improvements in NPS, improvements in churn. We've also done some really innovative things on the video side, where we've launched these new video tiers.
You know, we had these legacy tiers that were just so bulky with lots of content that people didn't even watch. And so now we have three simple tiers of Entertainment, Extra and Everything, and so Entertainment has Entertainment content, Extra has Entertainment content and broadcast, and Everything has all of that and sports. And so it's really no more kind of one size fits all, but folks can now choose. And now we've also started bundling in or attaching, you know, streaming products like Hulu and Disney+ and others.
I definitely want to get back to that in a second.
Mm.
But just to finish up on broadband, when do you think we'll see ARPU growth in residential or broadband?
I'm very optimistic that we have more control over rate. We're continuing to be disciplined there. We've launched a whole host of new services, like Total Care, like Whole-Home Wi-Fi, like Connection Backup on B2B, and so we're committed to driving penetration of these products. We've launched them only earlier this year, and we're seeing tens of thousands of customers taking these products, and I think that will all help us in terms of driving stabilization of ARPU in the medium term.
Okay. So then let's go, you know, to video, which is, we were just talking about. So you mentioned the Disney Plus and Hulu offerings, and you've improved your MSG Networks terms. Can you just maybe start, like, bigger picture, what are your main objectives in programming deals now, and do you see a path to reimagining the traditional linear networks?
Yeah, I think we all know, you know, one of the big elephants in the room on linear is these packages, unfortunately, include content that just people don't want to watch. Just a lot of garbage, like a lot of just content that nobody cares about. And so we're forcing customers to pay for this content, and so we're trying to have very rational conversations with our programming partners of, "Hey, churn is not helpful for anybody." Right? Like, I think we want to get customers the right value, the right products, and for us, we're you know like we want customers to be able to view the content they want in the way they want, whether that's linear or that's streaming, and we can help with that journey. We can help people.
You know, we have lots of different customers in different demographics, and folks, you know, the adoption of streaming is taking time, and so how do we rightsize the experience across both of these platforms? And one way is to rightsize these packages so that we're not forcing customers to pay for content that they don't want and probably should not exist. It should probably just shouldn't exist. Like, we should focus on delivering content. And it's incredible to see, you know, when you think about user-generated content, and you think about what's happening with tech companies and the content folks are producing, you know, we need to be able to provide customers the content they want to watch in the way they want to watch it, and those are the conversations we're having.
And that was a little bit of, you know, not everybody watches sports. That's okay! I love sports. I love it. It's Thursday, right? I can't wait for tonight.
Uh-huh.
You know, like back to football, excellent.
Mm.
But I know it could be a shock to some people, but not everybody likes football. I don't know, and not everybody likes basketball. And so why not, you know, provide customers the ability to pay for content that they want to watch and not force them to pay for content that they don't have an interest in?
Right. So how does that affect your programming negotiations? Like, what do you see for the content cost outlook and, you know, I mean, just clear what your strategy is.
Yeah, I mean, this is where, how we've been able to. The good news is that, I think the conversation is resonating at certain levels. That's why we've been able to build the Everything, the Entertainment, the Extra, the Everything packages and make them a bit leaner in terms of the content and, the price point's a bit more attractive when you're talking about $30 and, you know, $85, et cetera. And so, you know, those are that's the journey that we're on, is hey, how do we make sure that we're including the right content, that we're really thinking about putting the customer at the center, and then also, how can we be helpful in terms of driving the streaming products, right? And so it's not just this one binary conversation.
It's really a conversation across all of the solutions and making sure that we deliver them in a way to the customers that can be consumed and delivers value.
How did the simplified TV, you know, the simplified tiers and Optimum Stream, you know, how does that change your attach rates to broadband?
Oh, it's-
And the margin profile?
It's been great. I mean, we had our, you know, the lowest losses ever in Q2, which is kind of a weird thing to say, but that's good-
Yeah
... because people, you know, were driving attach. We had sequential improvement of video attach in Q2 from a gross add or from a acquisition perspective, and it's been a great tool in terms of retention. As folks are calling in, they're trying to manage their bill, they want the product, and so now we have options for them to be able to move into these packages, and we're seeing less disconnects or less downgrades because customers are excited about these new packages.
Right. Well, there's a lot going on in the content world. So you've got Verses spinning out of Comcast later this year, WBD spinning out their networks-
Yeah
... next year. Nexstar acquiring Tegna. Skydance, Paramount apparently not spinning out cable networks. How does all of this affect Altice?
You know, I think the story is yet to be written. You know, we're kind of in the early phases of some of these activities. You know, my only concern, again, is are we putting the customer at the center? Are we making sure that we're not forcing customers to pay for content that they're not watching? As some of these transactions happen, and as you start to merge some of these products, and content, there's a risk of trying to force jam in content that, you know, that people want to watch broadcast, and we want to deliver that broadcast, but we don't want to have a tax.
We don't want to have to give them a tax with content that they don't want to watch, and so, that'll continue to be a focus of our conversation is, "Hey, let's not forget the customer as we go through this journey. Let's figure out how do we get customers broadcast, for example, and not provide a tax on top of broadcast with some of this other content.
Right. It's a pretty thorny issue. So let's move on to mobile.
Yeah.
It's been a bright spot in recent quarters.
Yes.
Talk about your overall mobile strategy and how it integrates with your broadband offering.
Yeah, you know, when I joined the company, I was just super excited that we had this product in the toolkit that was kind of sitting on the shelf. We really hadn't done anything with it, and so the last two years has been, "Hey, let's really figure out how to integrate it into our go-to-market strategy. How do we really deliver great value leveraging mobile?" And so we started integrating it into our sales channels, started integrating it into our marketing, started really leveraging it as a tool for retention and driving base management, and it's been exciting. We've started to really ramp up. As you know, we were doing little to no additions a quarter, and now we're getting back into the 30, 40+ thousand additions a quarter.
We're still working through some of the, you know, elements of quality and making sure we're adding good quality connects, and that we're focused on porting phone numbers, device financing. There's still more evolution that we need to do in terms of our credit policies. We're not, you know, in line with the industry and make it easier for customers to finance devices, buy more devices.
And so this is some of the muscles that we need to continue to build over the next quarter or two, and once those muscles are fully formed, I'm looking forward to further accelerating mobile because it is delivering better churn profile, better customer satisfaction, and as we do the consumer research, you know, even from a year ago, over 25% of customers said, "Hey, I want one provider to be able to provide my connectivity in the home and outside the home." We're refreshing that. I mean, just think about it. 5, 6 years ago, nobody like, that wasn't even a concept.
Now, it's over a quarter of the customers, and I'm sure that's only gonna increase, and so it's very core to our strategy, and it allows us to differentiate ourselves, particularly when you think about fiber overbuilders and some of the competition, to be able to bring these products together in a value proposition that resonates with them.
Is that how we should think about ultimate penetration, like, in the 25%?
You know, we're at 7% base penetration today. We're on a journey to be at a million plus customers by 2027. I think there's tremendous upside here, and so we're gonna continue to make sure that we have the right offers. We've integrated it well into our channels. Quite frankly, you know, a year ago, our care and retention channels didn't sell any products, and so now this is a great tool for them to be able to have a conversation with our customers, and so I think there's a lot of upside. I think, you know, we're just getting started.
And then one more on mobile, but what levers do you have to best improve mobile unit economics within your MVNO?
Yeah, we have a great relationship with T-Mobile and the MVNO. It gives us. We're really happy with the relationship and the economics, and as we continue to scale, it gives us even better economics, and so our goal is, "Hey, how do we do that in a way that is right for the business, right for the customer, good quality?" And then, you know, we continue to have great conversations with our MVNO partner.
Moving on to SMB, can you talk about current trends that you're seeing?
Yeah, I'm excited also. As you can tell, I'm very excited about a lot of things, but I'm excited about SMB. When I came, we were- there was really little focus. There was, we- all we were was a connectivity provider, and, you know, in the world that I lived in before, we were bringing, you know, solutions. We were bringing a whole product suite. And so just even in the past few months, we've launched a whole host of new products, whether it's Connection Backup or cybersecurity, Pro WiFi. There's a whole host of things that we're just getting started with, and customers are excited because they don't want to buy these products from five different people. They want one provider to provide them solutions. We just brought now our B2B business together with our advertising and media business.
I think probably very unique in the industry, and that's unlocking even more value, where we're able to bring a host of advertising solutions to our SMB customers as well. And so we saw some benefit in Q2. We were flat-ish in terms of our units, which was, you know, materially different than, I think, the industry. And I think there's long-term opportunity to continue to drive and grow, both from a subscriber perspective and from a revenue perspective. And by the way, we're just getting started with mobile. We just launched mobile. You know, we've started to see some nice growth there, but we look forward to really building out the mobile portfolio in 2026 and 2027 to help us hit the accelerator on that product as well.
There's a tremendous upside for us in the mobile space in B2B.
Right. And then before we could go to the balance sheet-
Mm-hmm.
Capital allocation, maybe just one more on current operations. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on in advertising and what kinds of things you're doing to drive it?
Yeah, I think the team has done an incredible job. You know, we've invested in our advertising agency services. We're starting to see the benefits of that as we lean into digital, as we lean into AI. We've had some org evolution to make sure that we're bringing the power of one Optimum together so that we can go to market together with our teammates and deliver great value, and so I'm excited for the team in terms of how we're leaning into the products, the platform, AI, and one Optimum to be able to continue to drive that business.
And then moving on, you know, to the balance sheet, you have a significant debt maturity approaching in 2027.
Mm-hmm.
Totaling $7.3 billion, including maturities at Cable, Cablevision Lightpath. In July, you entered into a $1 billion asset-backed loan.
Yeah.
Can you talk about the potential to drive similar financing arrangements over the next twelve months and the path to refinancing your 2027 maturities?
Yes, yes. Intimately familiar with what's happening in 2027. The team is laser-focused to ultimately help us get back to, you know, a sustainable capital structure and really making sure that we have a capital structure that supports our operation, and it's just incredible. You know, I talked about culture, I talked about building a great team and driving innovation, and that's also as we reimagine our balance sheet and reimagine the capital structure. You know, I have folks in the audience that are living this and breathing this every day. HFC is an asset that we had never monetized in the past, and I think we were told maybe we couldn't do it. So the fact that we were able to do this and monetize this asset is very exciting.
It gives us flexibility. It gives us a cost structure that we're really happy with, and it gives us flexibility. And so we're leveraging this for general corporate purposes now, and you know, the perimeter has additional capacity, and so we're really taking an opportunity. And then combined with our fiber assets, you know, this is an opportunity for us to continue to lean in and continue to build solutions to help us address our maturities.
Is this your single biggest challenge, or it was- you know, you kind of came into the company with a lot of-
Oh, there was a couple problems. There was a couple challenges on the plate. Yeah, of course.
The balance sheet plus, you know, competition, so it-
Yeah, first and foremost, you know, we had to fix our brand. You know, we had lost trust with our customers. We had lost trust with our teammates. We had lost trust with attorney generals who were suing us, literally. And so first and foremost, we had to fix, and we are fixing the operation. And, you know, the brand and consideration and NPS are just up and to the right, moving in the right direction. And now, you know, the team has been hard at work in helping us think about how do we reimagine and fix the balance sheet?
And so we are gonna be opportunistic in terms of how we think about the balance sheet and determining how and when we have to raise additional capital, which includes in the securitization market, and making sure that we have the right options and the right tools to do this in a way that's long-term sustainable.
Right. And one last question. We have time for one more thing.
But you've reduced CapEx guidance for two years in a row. Can you talk about how you're balancing debt reduction and your leverage overall with the necessary CapEx to drive growth?
Yeah, you know, and, and, the good news is the CapEx reductions were all tied to driving efficiency. You know, just like there was inefficiency across every other part of the business, there was massive inefficiency in CapEx. We brought the right people together. You know, the simple example I provide is that, you know, from a network maintenance perspective, we were spending tens of thousands of dollars on node splits, and now the team got together and said, "Hey, we have additional capacity. Just for a couple of hundred dollars, we can leverage OFDM and OFDMA to be able to unlock capacity for hundreds of dollars versus tens of thousands of dollars." And so the last couple of years, what you've seen is for us to be more disciplined, driving efficiency while making sure we're investing in growth.
So we haven't taken our foot off the pedal in terms of growing our footprint, launching new products, making sure we have the growth capital for the future while driving efficiency and just being smarter. Like, at some point, you've got to work smarter and not just harder, and that's what you've seen us on this journey in terms of capital efficiency.
Right. Well, you've accomplished an incredible amount in a relatively short time. So-
Thank you.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Great conversation.
Thank you.
Awesome.