Okay, great. We'll get started. I'm John Hodulik from the communications team here at UBS Research, and I'm happy to welcome this morning, Mike Sievert, the President and CEO of T-Mobile. Mike, thanks for being here.
Thanks for doing this. Thanks for having us at this, in-house conference center. I guess you're capturing synergies here
Yes.
than having us at a hotel. It's beautiful facility.
Near and dear to your heart?
Yeah.
Yeah, so great, great to have you. We've got about 35 minutes for Q&A.
Okay.
I've got a list of questions that I want to run through.
Let's jump right in. My lawyers would like me to point out that I might make forward-looking statements, and actual results might differ, and you can learn about our risk factors by looking online.
Perfect. I've got the questions here. We've also got the iPad. If anybody in the audience has some questions they want to lob in, I can work them into the conversation. You know, this time of year, we always start off with a question about 2024, just how you're thinking of the company's positioning and what the priorities are for next year.
Yeah, it is that time of year. You know, our business, John, is incredibly simple, and so the priorities for next year are incredibly simple: take share, continue to take share at our historic rates, translate that share taking into cash flow production for our shareholders, and continue to make smart investments for the future. And, you know, that's what's working about this business model, and it really is working in a significant way. You've seen in 2023, we're just. And, I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk more about this. You know, we're coming off the four quarters in our storied ten-year growth run. That are the greatest growth quarters ever in our history, is right now.
And so, you know, obviously, we've got a formula here that's really resonating, as we're out there marketing, you know, this world's best 5G network. And it's to focus on continuing that story, continue taking share, mining those underrepresented segments, having our unique value proposition resonate with more and more people. Translate that into outsized cash flow growth and cash production per service revenue dollar, which is the best in the industry, and make smart investments for the future.
How would you characterize the competitive backdrop that we're seeing? And, you know, maybe, you know, translate that into sort of the promotions we saw on Black Friday. I mean, how does it seem like as we stand here looking out into 2024 versus where we were in 2023?
It's healthy and vibrant. This is a highly competitive industry, but it's also a very valuable industry. You know, cash production in this industry is much higher than five years ago or 10 years ago, and people that side-eye our industry sometimes forget that this is an industry producing enormous value today, in the same time period that people wonder if it's, quote, unquote, "too competitive." You know, we like it competitive. It's incredibly competitive, and in that context, we're delivering, you know, outsized results that, as I said, you know, outpaces any point in our history. But what's interesting is, the customer is also winning. So it's not just the industry that's winning, the customer is winning. I mean, customers are getting service that is 4x faster than just five years ago, on average, across this entire industry.
And they're taking three times more data, all against the backdrop that, in T-Mobile's case, is about the same monthly revenue, you know, per customer. And that means that the per unit cost of a transmission of a gigabyte is falling through the floor, while the industry produces all-time record cash flows. So the customer is winning, the industry is winning. That's the 5G dividend that everybody's been looking for. It's, it's right there in front of our face. And, you know, so obviously, we're, we're very happy with the development. This industry continues to look, from a consumer standpoint, very resilient. You know, everybody reports that they're not seeing early signs of stress.
Right.
Growth continues to come in at modest rates that, you know, look very sustainable. You know, in the holiday, we saw another round of, you know, typical intense competition.
How was T-Mobile positioned sort of for Black Friday and the holiday promotions? I mean, was the performance of the company what you expected, or the promotions that you saw from some of your competitors sort of in line?
Both are right on track.
Yeah.
Everything we saw looked, you know, consistent with our expectations, our own performance, consistent with our expectations. It's all unfolding really, really nicely. You know, and you saw some of that in the confidence in our guide. You know, with it, we, you know, continue to expect 3 million postpaid phone net additions this year-
Right
or more, against the backdrop. If you look at Q3, you know, service revenues for us were up nearly 4%. Postpaid service revenues, up 6%. That's where most of the value creation is, by far, you know, industry leading. EBITDA, up 12% year-over-year for T-Mobile in Q3. And of course, cash flow up, you know, almost 2x, on track for 75% year-over-year cash flow performance. So, you know, everything that we indicated earlier would unfold, you know, as we said at the end of Q3, you know, continues to be on track.
It is amazing. You guys gave guidance a long time ago. I forget how long ago the Analyst Day was.
Spring of 2021.
Spring of 2021. And it's all on track. I mean, it. You know, people seem to tweak guidance on a quarter-to-quarter basis these days, and you guys have some guidance out here. You for another year, that seems to be tracking the plan. Since you guys gave that guidance, it does seem like the competition from cable has increased pretty meaningfully, right? These guys are adding a ton of subs. It seems as if Comcast, in particular, is leaning in this quarter. How should we think of how these competitors entering the scene sort of impact the model?
Think of it as fully in the run rate.
Right.
You know, I mean, cable, a lot of people—I guess the premise of your question is, is cable the bogeyman that's coming? I'd say they're the bogeyman that came five years ago.
Right.
They're fully in the run rate at this point, and if anything, it gets a little harder, you know, as things go along. So you might see promotions, but that's because they're trying to outrun their own churn, you know, as they get bigger, and that's just a normal dynamic of a subscription business. And so everything that's happening there, you know, looks to us very much run rate. And of course, you see that in that time period you talked about, you know, quote, unquote, "unexpected competition from cable." I don't really view it that way. I mean, it was unexpected for us five years ago. I don't know if you remember, we were out there going: "Oh, they'll never make it in this industry." But, you know, obviously, they made it in this industry, so we were wrong five years ago.
But since then, it's we've been right. You know, what we've expected from them, they've essentially delivered, and you see it fully in the run rate. And again, you know, our periods of greatest growth ever in our history and value production from that growth has been in the last 12 months-
Right
you know, during this time period that some say cable's ruining everything.
And it doesn't seem to be affecting—I mean, they're, they're putting up some big subscriber numbers, but it doesn't seem to be affecting your subscriber growth somehow, and maybe that's a big—that's part of the story of the, of the sort of above-average market growth that we've seen. But, I mean, as you think about competition from cable, does it, does it affect your ability to, to, to price as you or to, to sort of attract new subscribers?
Not at all. I mean, over the last two quarters, the last two quarters, T-Mobile has taken roughly 40% share of overall postpaid net additions, including cable. And so, you know, like I said, they're fully in the run rate. We don't set our game plan based on what they're doing. What they do is reasonably consistent. Where they compete is reasonably consistent, and we continue to be focused on our game plan, which is working beautifully. So it's, you know, it's I mean, they're a real vibrant player in the market. I'm not discounting their contribution and that they're building a business for themselves. It's just not affecting our game plan anymore.
Got it. You know, turning to a couple of the sort of value drivers, so sort of the traditional wireless space. First of all, ARPU. ARPU has been relatively flat, but you've, you've had a lot of success in moving customers into higher, higher value tiers that come with higher prices. How much more room do you have to, to push that in, in 2024?
We think a lot. You know, on the front book coming in, as we've disclosed recently, better than 60% of customers are choosing Go5G Plus or better, and that, you know, that's kind of the benchmark of our most popular plans that we're focused on. Those plans are a little more expensive than their predecessors, the Magenta MAX plans, and customers get way more. And again, what we're seeing with customers switching to T-Mobile is they're switching to us because they want the best 5G network, and when they get here, they want rate plans that unleash that network for them. They want more of what T-Mobile has to offer, and that is fantastic as a trend because it means we don't have to go back into the back book the way others have with as extensive of pricing actions.
That being said, you know, this is a business about flows, and so, you know, this is not a new phenomenon anymore. We were talking about 60% run rates at the top of our book a year ago, and so that starts to penetrate slowly over time, the base. So that's a wonderful trend for us. You know, we should be thoughtful and patient and not jolted into that future, but what you see is rising customer value. And, you know, right at the time that some people look at this industry and say, "Wow, is customer value being destroyed?" That's the exact opposite trend that's happening, and we like the rate and pace of it, so we're very comfortable with this strategy.
People on those higher rate plans, do they use a lot more data than people on lower rate plans? And then, are there any other KPIs? Is there lower churn, is there lower. You know, just anything about that sort of cohort in that higher-
Yeah, they use a lot more data, which is great. That's what we built this network for. And, you know, we, we designed this network to see mobile usage during the planning horizon move from back around the time of our merger. You know, it was in the low double digits of gigs per month, and, you know, we, we designed this network to see it run to something like 80 gigs per customer per month. And, you know, that's the kind of capacity that we're ready to serve. And so for us, it's a competitive advantage, you know, to be able to serve customers the data they're looking for from their 5G smartphones, because it's something that, you know, there's some disparity in all the providers' ability to support that kind of throughput.
Right. And I'll get to some of the sort of spectrum issues and the network that allows you to drive that plan for 80 gigs per month. But sticking with ARPU, pricing power is another issue. You know, aside from the change in you know, the tiering, how much pricing power would you say. you guys have made some pricing moves, Verizon, there's been some other in the industry. As you look out in 2024, is there still room to make some targeted pricing changes?
Yeah, we'll see. I mean, like I said, I like the way it's all working right now. And, you know, if we watch that dynamic unfold, you'll see that Go5G Plus or better continue to penetrate more and more portions of the base just organically, and so that's really good. We're obviously always looking for opportunities to be able to present the customer with more for more. And what we're finding is the T-Mobile customer base is pretty interested in that. There's also opportunities for us to optimize our cost structure and revenue structure here and there, and we take those opportunities if we think they'll be well accepted by customers.
And so one of the things that's, I think, different about us, and you mentioned it when you said that we're on track for, you know, essentially every single thing we talked about in our Analyst Day two and a half years ago, is that we try to be very planful and data-driven. We try to be highly analytical. I mean, I don't put promises out there that aren't backed by some amount of deep thought, and in many cases, in-market testing. And so, yeah, we try things a lot. And we will push and see what customers will accept and what they'll highly value and what will allow them to continue deepening their relationship with T-Mobile.
Another thing that certainly we didn't anticipate when you guys at your Analyst Day, when you guys gave all that information or all that forward looking, is just how low upgrades would get. I mean, maybe there's good guys and there's bad guys. Just how low upgrades would get. I mean, over the last few quarters, we've been very surprised at just how low everybody's numbers are. How is that impacting your business? I would say, one, how is that impacting your business? And two, do you think that that's a sort of, you know, something that can persist for a while?
Yeah. I, I think it's been in the run rate long enough now that it's sort of a new normal. And how it's affecting the business is it's essentially partially offsetting a bad guy, which is the cost per upgrade is a lot higher than we had planned.
True.
And so one of the places where competition has gone over the past few years is to the cost of device subsidies, and that's a lot higher than it was, for example, three years ago. And, you know, but on the other hand, upgrades are much lower. And, you know, so that all works out fine. That, in addition to other things that have gone differently than planned. You know, we captured synergies bigger and faster than we planned. We built a home internet business bigger and faster than we planned. ARPU trends are a little better than planned, and then there's these two dynamics on subsidies, upgrade rates being lower, but costs per upgrade being higher. Flush all that out, you know, and we're, from a P&L standpoint, right on track to where we said we would be.
Does that also help in churn? I mean, it seems, you know, certainly in the past, when people were making new decisions to get a new phone, there was more likelihood that they would shop around and potentially look for a new service provider.
What you want is simultaneously the lowest churn and the lowest upgrade rates, and that's incredibly hard to accomplish. And, you know, for example, in Q2, we had the lowest churn in the industry and by far the lowest upgrade rates. And so what that means is you're not over-investing in upgrades for people that wouldn't value them-
Right
because an upgrade is a retention mechanism, and if you can have the lowest churn and the lowest upgrade, that's a trifecta. That means you're placing those upgrades right with the people who value the most surgically. And for us, as a data-driven company, an analytical company, that was a massive first-time accomplishment for us that I hope to be able to come back and repeat many times in the future. And, you know, what was funny, it was a little disconcerting, is that we announced that quarter in Q2, and then people said: "Oh, well, T-Mobile missed on total revenues.
Oh, they did?
You know, 'cause, because remember, the service revenue growth beat expectations, but the delta up to total revenues-
Yeah
is the equipment revenue. I'm like, "Right, that's 'cause we didn't do all the upgrades.
Right.
And then on second.
That's it.
Then they looked closer, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, right. That's actually excellent.
Right.
But that first read for a minute, when you release, you know, 'cause above service revenues is all just those phone sales that are money-losing.
Right.
You know, and you don't want, you don't want more of that.
Headline was
You want as little of that as possible, right?
Right. Right,
With great retention. You want as much of that as is necessary to drive great retention.
And that's obviously one of the biggest value drivers of the business is the churn, and the churn has come way down, and like you said, leading the industry in the second quarter. I mean, is there room to drive that down even further, given where upgrades are, what you're seeing in terms of-
Absolutely
kind of intensity?
You know, I mean, in Q3, we had the lowest churn ever for a Q3 in our history. And yet, you know, our company is pacing this year. I could get this wrong, it's all- you can all look it up, but, our company is pacing this year to lose something like 8 million postpaid customers, with the lowest churn in our hist- millions and millions of people-
Yeah
are still going falling down an accident chain and eventually throwing their hands up and leaving T-Mobile. Now, we're about as good as it gets in this. Q2, we had the best churn in the industry. And yet millions of people leave. And the answer is yes. I mean, millions less should be leaving. You know, when you join T-Mobile, it should be we should be in a position to serve your wireless needs for life, and every single one of those defections is regretted and avoidable. And so it's an absolute. You know, this winning customers for life, earning their relationship for life is an absolute passion at T-Mobile, top to bottom, and we think there's lots of room to run.
So now I'm gonna shift to the network, and then from there, that'll set up questions about some of your growth areas, like rural and business and fixed, and fixed wireless as well. So first of all, you know, you talked about the 5G dividend. You know, we're still in the early days of 5G at this, I'd say, at this stage, and how would you characterize the evolution of the sort of 5G ecosystem? Is it a sort of bigger deal or smaller deal than expected? I mean, I think, going back maybe to the answer, even five years ago, I think people expected a lot of sort of mobile edge compute, network slicing, apps that you couldn't use on 4G, on 5G, but, I mean, how would you say that the 5G ecosystem has been evolving?
I think it's generally on track, although it's on track from expectations in our company that I think were reasonably realistic. I mean, we weren't. Although we were very excited about leading 5G network deployment, and you heard a lot of squawking from us about that as we, you know, hit all these early milestones and all the industry first, what you didn't hear from us was lots of sort of breathless prediction that the whole world would change because of 5G. We understood that it's, you know, it's just a faster network.
Now, one thing that I think is interesting is that we did expect module prices to come down faster, and whether it's the pandemic, whether it's geopolitics or other things, module prices, you know, those very low-cost 5G modules have taken a little longer, and that is one of the things that will catalyze lots of sorts of hardware innovation.
When you say modules, you're talking about the actual equipment or the volume?
Yeah. I mean, people expected lots of 5G devices.
Right.
You know, at all kinds of things in your life with 5G built in, and that requires very low-cost modules. And, you know, and those have been more, a little slower at coming down for all the reasons I said. You know, nobody predicted the pandemic, and certainly, the geopolitical issues, you know, have delayed some of that innovation. So, you know, but it's coming. And, you know, we're three years into a 10- to perhaps 15-year 5G cycle, and, so we see a lot of that innovation, absolutely in the pipeline. And, you know, what is happening, as I mentioned, is that in the massive business that is here, it has turned out to be remarkably resilient. I don't think many people predicted the kind of ongoing, you know, high-end growth we've seen in the United States in the 5G smartphone marketplace.
And again, customers are experiencing 3 times more data. I'm not talking T-Mobile. As an industry, 3x more data than five years ago, at 4 x greater speeds, with the price per unit falling through the floor. And units aren't becoming less valuable. I mean, a gig of data being moved is still worth what it was five years ago. I mean, it's still the same amount of video stream, you know, that hasn't changed, right? So this is an incredibly per unit deflationary market to the benefit of consumers and businesses, while the industry is realizing higher cash flows than at any point in our history. And that, you know, as I mentioned earlier, that is all because of the innovation of 5G.
You know, AT&T made an announcement yesterday, we had John Stankey here this morning, about O-RAN, and that then over the next. I forget the time frame, but they're gonna shift a lot of their traffic, I think he said 70%, over to O-RAN infrastructure. Is that part of the sort of roadmap for T-Mobile?
Well, I think generally people have presumed that, kind of the de-verticalization of the industry is just a matter of time, and that you wanna be able to smartly buy the different components up and down the stack. That's certainly our hope and expectation. Now, for us, we really deeply value our partnerships with both Nokia and Ericsson, and see it as an advantage that we can buy up and down the stack from multiple partners. We also think it's very good that the Western world has two global leaders in this space, et cetera. So we're very comfortable with our relationships and, you know, highly value those deep partnerships that we have with both Ericsson and Nokia.
Makes sense. Let's talk about some of the spectrum you guys hold, and are deploying and potentially selling. So first, starting off with the 2.5, obviously, came with the Sprint transaction. Where are you in terms of deploying it, both in terms of the sort of breadth and depth and sort of how has that changed the game for you?
Back to those promises of the merger, I don't really think most people believed us when we said we could blanket this country with mid-band 5G by 2023, and we did it. You know, two months ahead of schedule, we hit 300 million people covered by our Ultra Capacity 5G. That's mid-band 5G, with an average of 155 megahertz deployed already of dedicated 5G. That is just astonishing. This is a big, big country. It's 3x more landmass to go from 100 million pops to 200 million pops. It's 3x again to go from 200 million pops to 300 million pops. So we cover 300 million pops with mid-band 5G, with 155 megahertz.
We had said we'd get to 200 megahertz around the end of this year, and that's, you know, the plant's in the ground already for that, so that's also done. Now, it'll be at our convenience whether we actually switch from LTE to 5G, and we'll follow the volume trends there. But with the plant in the ground, that's, you know, that's just a configuration. So we can move to 200 megahertz or north, you know, cell by cell, sector by sector, based on where the demand is between LTE and 5G. So those, those missions are accomplished, and, it's just a huge, huge advantage. I mean, this has been a historic, multi-year effort, six long years of our lives to leapfrog everybody from dead last in the 4G LTE era to first and best in 5G.
It's a massive, long-term, durable advantage now that that plant's in the ground. You see it in our P&L. You know, we had, we said years ago, we were gonna pull some capital forward to get this done because we had the wherewithal to get it done at pace, and we felt there'd be advantages to do that, and we did it. And now, you know, we, we have an outlook for the next several years that is highly capital efficient as a result. Because, again, the plant's in the ground and, you know, we have lots more room to run on spectrum we can build. I mean, we're, we're far from done, but this, you know, this looks like a business model that will be able to deliver against our aspirations in a reasonably capital efficient way over the next many years.
Makes sense. So turning to some of those other spectrum bands, we were talking earlier, the 600, you guys have effectively aggregated a big chunk of the 600. Just recently signed a transaction to fill in some spots with Comcast, I think first on a lease basis and maybe sort of lease to own. Just what does that band do for the business?
It's critical. You know, we've been talking about our spectrum strategy since, again, at the beginning of that six-year journey when we laid out our merger vision and the layer cake strategy. We've always felt that 5G would unfold principally in the mid-band, and that it would be best supported by a dedicated 5G layer at low band. We're the only ones that really pursued that strategy. So now, virtually everywhere you go, we're able to offer multiple carrier aggregation. So your phone is simultaneously attaching to the 600 and to the 2.5 gigahertz in the rest of our mid-band spectrum, 1.9.
This is incredibly powerful and it's a standalone 5G capability, because what it does is essentially increases the ring from each one of our towers, and that's really, really important for our overall competitiveness. In general, with that carrier aggregation, the uplink is provided by the low band, and the downlink is provided by the mid band. And so really important that we have adequate supply of both to be able to continue this incredible advantage that we have on the network side. So it's not just about building the plant, it's not just about having the right spectrum, it's also about deploying the right technologies that allow you to take advantage of all that stuff, the way we have with our first of its kind four-way Carrier Aggregation technology. Long way of saying it's really important
Got it.
We realized early the value of it. You know, we, we got our company ready to play with the first major auction win, really, of our history, was that 600 megahertz auction, and we've been trying to smartly buy it ever since then. By the way, it's not just low band. In our opinion, it's also the best low band, meaning it, it reaches further from towers, it penetrates buildings better, it comes in big contiguous blocks. It's perfectly tailor-made for a 5G Layer Cake network.
Right. A couple other bands, first of all, you guys have bought some C-band spectrum, some three, four, five, and you guys have been talking about deploying that sort of on an as-needed basis once the dual radios are available.
Yeah.
Is that still the strategy? And what do you think the timing for that is?
Yeah. Well, first of all, dual radios are available, so that's great. And it's important. You know, the others had four. They had no choice. They had to jump out before that was the case. And so for us, you know, we had the ability to be able to hold until we had that. But we also hold until we need it, you know. And so, as I said, we're at 155 nationwide in mid-band. We're going to 200 here very quickly. That's plenty for the moment. Our plans in place across 300 million. So within the capital envelope, we've been talking about that kind of $9 billion-$10 billion a year. You know, we've got plenty of room to be able to get this deployed before customers need it from a capacity standpoint.
We'll just be really smart about how we do that and where we do that, and, you know, data-led.
Got it. Okay, last on what has been a very sort of focused strategy or spectrum section here is the 800 megahertz spectrum. Obviously, you've got you picked that up from the Nextel transaction years ago, and then now it's on the block, and you have a potential deal with DISH, and that's been extended. But tell me where you are with that and sort of, you know, the potential path this could go.
Yeah. Well, just as a reminder to everybody, the divestiture of 800 was a condition of the merger, and so this was part of our original agreement with the Department of Justice and DISH. And DISH did not execute against that along the timelines that we expected, and we entered into a discussion with them. And ultimately, arrived at a deal with the Department of Justice and DISH earlier this year, that trades essentially more certainty for us for more time for DISH. And it's a nice win-win for everybody involved. And so the way the deal works now is DISH has until April 1, 2024 to execute their transaction. They've already sent us a non-refundable $100 million deposit against that transaction.
If they fail to close as expected, and I do think their plans are sincere here, the question's affordability, et cetera-
Sure
then we've already been authorized by the DOJ to conduct an auction for that spectrum. We're not required to sell it below the reserve price, but we're fully authorized to conduct that. And in fact, we're authorized to conduct it in advance, if we'd like. So, what's nice is everything's put to bed on this transaction, and we have certainty now that should we choose, we can execute either a transaction with DISH at their option or an auction and have this done in the first half of 2024. And that's just a great spot to be.
Got it. Okay, now turning to some of the growth drivers, now that we sort of have a better understanding of where you are from a network standpoint. Fixed wireless has obviously been a focus; it gets a lot of attention here, both because of the wireless providers and because of the cable providers. How, I would say, you know, talk about the product and what it means in terms of your portfolio, and sort of how much runway do you have, given that, you know, sort of long-term requirement that you guys laid out of 80 gigs per month per sub on the mobile side?
Well, that, that's actually been one of the inputs that was in the design of our fixed wireless plan. So just to remind everybody, you know, this is essentially a plan that looked at our nationwide mobile network. It looked at our ongoing expected share taking on that network. It looked at the ongoing expected growth in usage per smartphone on that network, and it identified sectors all across the nation by the thousands, that no amount of normal smartphone usage would soak up the capacity on that particular sector. And on those particular sectors, we have approved applicants for home broadband use. That's the premise on which we are now, you know, the fifth largest ISP in the nation, and by far the fastest growing for four quarters in a row.
It's essentially about monetizing planned excess capacity on our mobile network, and it's just a beautiful strategy. And it's working at least as well as we expected. Some would say better. I'd say no. I mean, actually, I'd love to take credit for its going better than expected. It's just essentially right on track. The only reason it's better than expected is that when we laid out these plans for our high-speed internet business, nobody believed us. You know, we said we'd be right here by now. It's just nobody believed us.
We believed you.
We're right on track.
Yeah.
We're really not ahead of schedule. I mean, you could say, if you were to take our roughly 500,000 net adds a quarter and our plan to get to 7 million-8 million by the end of 2025, you could say we're a little ahead of schedule.
Yeah.
And because of that, and, you know, because the TAM on this business opportunity is reasonably finite, you know, you might see us experimenting with rate versus volume kind of dynamics, you know, over this next year. Because we wanna make sure that we, you know, add the most possible value to the company within, you know, this reasonably finite TAM. So you might see some of that, which could affect the 500,000 quarterly run rate, but that would be a, you know, a net positive. So it's just going beautifully.
Yeah, I mean, that's in keeping with the broadband market, right? The broadband is still a product in the U.S. with that consumer, and I think video too, where consumers expect price increases almost, you know, every year. So you're just staying within that envelope by moving-
What's happening that I'm particularly proud of is that the churn is falling, and the Net Promoter Scores are some of the very best in the industry. 30 points higher than typical cable, higher than typical fiber, one of the best in the overall country. And so this is a product that I think has surprised a lot of people, and it's really a showcase of what 5G, especially, if you can allow me, the world's best 5G, can do.
Right. So you mentioned the guides, the 7 million-8 million sub guides. It does seem, you know, at—certainly at this pace, and even if you slow down a little bit, you'll hit that number. I mean, I guess... aside from asking you to change guidance here on the stage, I mean, how much capacity do you have in the network to, to, you know, how many subs? Or talk about the, the potential capacity and the potential size of this business as we look out a number of years.
Yeah, we've always said we saw it as about 7 million-8 million-
Yeah
Homes, and, you know, and that's still the case. You know, some people discount what we say. Maybe there's, maybe there's a tiny bit of room there, but it's in that area code.
Okay.
But on the other hand, we're also evaluating whether a capital-burdened wireless strategy will work. You know, this is a sort of almost capital-free, but certainly at the RAN level, capital-free strategy. We're looking at whether or not a capital-burdened strategy would work to take us further in the TAM. We have to be really thoughtful about that. You know, and so far we have not cracked the code on that in terms of a business that we think would be a great return. But, you know, there's lots of movement in that space, lots of technologies emerging, some of them non-standards-based, other things that might become available to us. So we're working that really hard. Haven't concluded that there's a scalable strategy there beyond what we're doing.
And of course, we're also looking at fiber, you know, and I've been, you know, pretty clear about the trials that we've been doing and some of the wholesale partnerships that we've established, and that may be another way for us to continue to extend, you know, the addressable market well beyond this initial, you know, 5G wireless market, if we can find the right, you know, win-win there.
On both of those, first of all, on the capital-burdened fixed wireless, are you talking about sort of adding infrastructure to sort of extend the capacity of the network, say, through small cells or cell splitting or things? Or are you talking about sort of putting masts on buildings and taking an MDU approach, maybe using some of your millimeter wave spectrum to do something that's a little bit sort of non-mobile fixed wireless?
I was talking about both.
Okay.
Or either, and neither so far, neither so far is something that is immediately obvious that it would be a high return. But in both of those areas, both kind of the millimeter wave and small cell, as well as kind of maybe mid-band, but with standards or non-standards-based technologies, all that stuff we're looking at, they're different from each other, and we haven't drawn any conclusions yet.
And similarly, on the fiber to the home, you, you've had these pilot programs. Any early learnings you can talk about? I mean, are you getting better wireless penetration in those markets? I'd imagine you're selling a converged product. I mean, what, what-
Yeah. You know, I'd say as time goes on, our confidence in our ability to execute in this space is rising.
Okay.
And that's good. Not just because of those trials, but also because of our persistent success in 5G home internet. And all that is showing that our team knows how to execute in this space. We know how to not just acquire customers, but care for them, which is really important. It's not as easy as it looks. It's different than the wireless business. That our brand resonates, that our distribution is relevant, that our digital assets are working. And so, you know, it gives us confidence that there could be a business here that could generate a return. And what's interesting is we've never, and I think I've said this before, we've never looked at this really as a defensive play, and that's part of why we've been somewhat patient.
You know, people said, "Mike, you've started talking about this like a year ago." And we can afford to be patient because our model works so well, and we're only gonna plunge into this space if, A, it doesn't really change who we are, if it's capital light and smart, and it's something that's, that we can make money at, you know, because we think it would be a business that would be incremental versus something we'd do for some kind of defensive, fend off the convergence, you know, bogeyman kind of story. That's just not something we're deeply concerned about.
Gotcha. I do want to touch on the rural. You obviously, that's been a nice source of growth for you guys. Maybe just give us an update on where you are in terms of getting the spectrum out there, getting the distribution out there, and penetrating those rural markets.
We had a giant milestone in Q3. I mentioned it during our earnings, but it didn't get much comment upon. Which is that, because, you know, we've been the share-taking leader for many years in the top 100 markets. That's part of what fuels our growth. For the first time ever in our history, in Q3, we were the share-taking leader in smaller markets and rural areas. This is 40% of the country, and we took the, you know, the number one position of share of port-ins in Q3, and that is a major milestone. Remember, at our Analyst Day in 2021, when we laid out our aspirations here, we were nobodies in the smaller market and rural areas, and said we could maybe get to a 20 share by 2025.
At last disclosure, which was a quarter or two ago, we were at 16.5 share, and we are taking share now at pace. And this and that's, by the way, not just in the places where we're competing. Remember, we stratify the 775 markets and classify them based on how much competition we're bringing in those spaces, and some we haven't gotten to yet, some we've gotten to lately, and some we're deeply competing in. This is across the blended entirety of smaller markets in rural areas. We are now the share-taking leader as of Q3.
Finishing off, you touched on CapEx, the $9 billion-$10 billion level. I mean, is that a sustainable level, sort of going forward, even with these other potential growth initiatives? And then sort of how should we think of the company's use of excess cash in terms of new growth, and sort of other options, including the buyback?
Based on the promises we've made on value creation, revenue, and EBITDA, that does look like the right capital picture, you know. Now, I can't say we wouldn't come back and say, "Hey, we're gonna actually increase capital and increase our aspirations." Maybe we will. We'll see. But that looks like the right area code to us, to accomplish everything we've set out to accomplish, and that's mostly because, you know, again, thank you, our investors have been very patient. We've spent a lot of money over the past five years, a lot of money building the world's best 5G plant, you know, and it's time to be able to enjoy having that in the ground and be able to realize the benefits of that. So, you know, that's just money already spent.
In terms of capital return, this is such an exciting story. I mean, we, we are in the middle. We just authorized our second big tranche of shareholder returns, $19 billion, including our first-ever dividend, $3 billion of that on an annualized basis-ish. You know, again, it's mostly favoring buybacks because we're a growth company.
Right.
You know, but, there is a first-time-ever dividend that we indicated we would expect to grow on an annualized basis. That's just so exciting to be able to see the cash production of this business. Again, this year, free cash flow, you know, tracking to 75% year-over-year growth.
Yeah, it's been fantastic. Well, Mike, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.