Julie Laulis
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead
Thank you, Steven, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today's call. The second quarter of 2021 marks the sixth anniversary of our spin-off from Graham Holdings Company, formally The Washington Post Company. We were set to celebrate our 5th anniversary last year, but instead focused on supporting our communities throughout the pandemic. While the pandemic is not over yet, we remain confident in our ability to continue to pivot our operations as needed and keep our associates and customers safe, while connecting our communities to what matters most. In recognition of all of our associates effort since the spin, we'd like to share some of the incredible results we have had over that period of time. Since the spin, our last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA has expanded from $316 million to more than $850 million, and our enterprise value has increased over 400%. We have maintained our strategic focus on HSD and business services across our family of brands, deemphasized video and continually found ways to be efficient with costs, but not at the expense of quality or reliability. Our results to-date have exceeded expectations with compounded annual residential HSD revenue growth of 17.9% and compounded annual business services revenue growth of 20.6% during the six-year [Phonetic] period ended June 30, 2021. Last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA over the same period grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 18% and adjusted EBITDA margins expanded over 1,400 basis points from 39% to 53.1%. The spend also unlocked a new plank in our strategy. Since we were no longer a subsidiary of Graham Holdings, we took control of our capital allocation and used our balance sheet capacity to invest in the rural markets we serve so well. Since 2015, we have either made or entered into a total of 10 strategic acquisitions or joint ventures with a total aggregate investment of approximately $4.5 billion. These transactions have contributed significantly to the growth in our enterprise value from approximately $2.9 billion as of June 30, 2015 to approximately $15 billion as of the end of the quarter. This track record gives us great confidence in what lies ahead. Our focus, as always, remains on the long-term future and what's next for Cable One. Turning to our second quarter results. We are pleased to have once again delivered a quarter that exemplifies our trajectory since spin-off with continued strong customer and financial growth. Revenues increased 22.4% compared to prior-year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased 30.7% and adjusted EBITDA margin improved 340 basis points to 53.1%. Excluding the impact of Hargray Operations, revenues and adjusted EBITDA increased by 7% and 17% respectively, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 54.4%. Our residential HSD customer growth continues on a course well above pre-pandemic trends. Excluding Hargray, in the second quarter of 2021, we added over 12,000 residential HSD customers on a sequential basis. That is over 10 times higher than our growth relative to the second quarter of 2019. On a year-over-year basis, again, excluding Hargray, we added more than 53,000 residential HSD customers. Since the beginning of 2020 through June 30, 2021 our HSD penetration has increased over 500 basis points from 33.2% to 38.5%, highlighting how far we have come as well as a significant growth opportunity that remains available for us to capture. We continue to support our customers through the pandemic by participating in the FCC's Emergency Broadband Benefit or EBB program. This program provides critical connectivity to those who have been financially impacted by COVID-19. EBB participants to receive up to $50 off of their monthly bill based on their current Internet service and rented equipment. And those who live on qualifying tribal lands can receive up to $75 off their monthly bill. We began offering this benefit in May and currently have nearly 5,000 customers enrolled with more than 75% selecting premium product offerings with speeds of 200 megs or greater. Of those enrolled, less than 10% are new customers. Residential HSD demand for higher tier product offering continues, as sell-in for packages with a download speed of 200 megs or greater was approximately 78% in the second quarter and sell-in for our gig speed tier reached nearly 15%. The sell-in results, the increased take rates of our unlimited data plan and continued migration of existing customers into higher tiers contributed to our 6.2% year-over-year residential data ARPU growth. As a reminder, we haven't had rate increase in our legacy systems since the fall of 2015, and we actually decreased prices on our higher tiers at the start of 2019 when we launched our new pricing and packaging across the legacy footprint. Business services revenues continued to show positive momentum this quarter, with a growth of 31% year-over-year and 5.6% excluding Hargray operations. The business services team continues to seek opportunities to partner with government and local entities to provide connectivity in rural communities. In 2020, we were awarded $29 million from three agencies to expand broadband services for schools, libraries and small businesses within Gila County, Arizona. We recently completed construction on a portion of that project, building a fiber optic network that will provide fast and reliable, high speed internet service to businesses in Payson, Arizona. Once the entire project is completed, it will consist of more than 200 route miles to nearly 29,000 fiber miles, making this one of Cable One's largest single fiber construction projects to date. Businesses have shown incredible resiliency throughout COVID-19, and we consider ourselves a trusted partner to our business customers and have worked closely with them who -- those who have been impacted adversely by the pandemic. While we aren't back to pre-pandemic numbers, we have seen business services revenue accelerating each month through 2021, fueled by strong demand for connectivity in both the SMB and the enterprise segment. To round out another quarter of strong growth, we turned to our minority investments, where residential HSD customers grew by 1.7% on a sequential basis and added a total of approximately 5,400 new residential and business data customers. As a reminder, Hargray net adds are now consolidated with our operating results and are no longer included in this figure. These results demonstrate the continued demand for quality HSD services as well as the shared focus of our strategic partners. Turning to our network. Average data usage was approximately 475 gigabits per month. Plant utilization during peak now averages below 20% for both downstream and upstream traffic. Downstream improved meaningfully year-over-year from 25% to 19% and upstream utilization grew slightly from 17% to 18%. As a result of our ongoing investment and upgrades targeted at expanding capacity, we continue to stay well ahead of the demand. Moving to integration. Teams from across the company continue to focus on bringing our new brands together. Given that Fidelity's performance is ahead of plan, we've been able to pivot our primary focus to Hargray, where we are developing relationships and having knowledge exchange between peer leaders as we develop our three-year road map. As previously mentioned, we expect to start realizing synergies in 2022. In the meantime, Hargray continues to execute successfully on its business strategy. Through years of lessons learned, strategic resource allocation, hard work, we believe integration is now one of our core competencies. With the close of the Hargray transaction, we now compete in approximately 24% of our markets with Internet service providers that offer residential broadband download speeds of 100 megs or higher. While still a relatively low competitive profile, we continue to run our business as if every market is highly competitive, offering award-winning products and services and maintaining a local focus on customer needs. Before handing the call over to Stephen, I'd like to mention a few other notable events from this quarter. We are honored to have named third in the nation on PC Magazine's 2021 list of the top 10 fastest Internet service providers. Speed test for this award were conducted through the -- conducted during the height of the pandemic, which affirms our confidence in the robust and reliable network we have engineered and built. We are proud to have met the surge in Internet usage throughout the pandemic and to have provided the connectivity that has been so critical over this past 1.5 years. Sparklight business was also named a top business Internet service provider by PC Magazine, ranking fifth in the nation. Businesses across our footprint gave Sparklight top marks in overall satisfaction, cost, reliability and support to name a few. These awards would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of our associates, who remain dedicated to supporting our customers and our communities. In keeping with our commitment to supporting our communities, not only through our products and services, but through philanthropic initiatives and partnerships, we are pleased to share that we recently awarded more than $100,000 in grants to 30 nonprofit organizations across our 24-state footprint through the company's Charitable Giving Fund, which was launched in January 2021. The Charitable Giving Fund, which will annually award $200,000 in grants to local nonprofit organizations in our markets, concentrate support in the areas of education and digital literacy, hunger relief and community development. Finally, I'd like to welcome Todd Koetje, who will join the company as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Finance, in September. Todd comes to us from Truist Securities where he most recently served as Managing Director of Technology, Media and Telecommunications leverage finance team. He brings more than 20 years of relevant capital markets, telecom industry and financial leadership experience, making him a valuable addition to the Cable One leadership team. And now, Steven.