David Schaeffer - Cogent Communications Holdings, Inc.
Management
Good morning, and thank you all for joining our call today. Welcome to our Third Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Dave Schaeffer, Co-Chair and CEO, and with me on this morning's call is Tad Weed, our CFO. We are pleased with our results for the quarter and continue to be optimistic about the underlying strength in our business and the outlook for the remainder of 2017, 2018, and beyond. We achieved sequential revenue growth on a quarterly basis of 2.7%. Our sales rep productivity was 5.7 units installed per full-time equivalent rep per month, a productivity rate that was again significantly above our long-term historical average of 5.1 units per full-time equivalent sales rep per month. Despite incurring $824,000.00 in net neutrality fees in the quarters, EBITDA increased by $3 million, or 8.2%, from the third quarter of 2016. Our capital expenditures decreased by 7.5% for the nine-month period ending on September 30, 2017 when compared to the comparable period in 2016. Our capital and capital lease expenditures for 2016 nine-month period were $38 million as compared to $35.2 million for this nine-month period. For the quarter we achieved an increase in our traffic growth rates. We achieved and accelerated a sequential quarterly traffic growth rate of 8%, a significant increase from the 3% sequential rate we reported last quarter, and also our year-over-year traffic growth improved to 27%. During the quarter, we returned $20.9 million to our shareholders through our regular dividend program. At quarter-end, we had a total of $41.5 million available for stock buybacks under our stock buyback authorization, which continues through December of 2018. Our gross leverage ratio improved to 4.57 times EBITDA as compared to 4.26 in the previous quarter. And our net leverage remained relatively constant and was at 3.00 times at the end of the quarter. We ended the quarter with $250,800,000 in cash on our balance sheet. Of this cash, $84.2 million is held at the holding company, and therefore, is available for dividends, other unrestricted uses, or buybacks by the companies. We continue to remain confident about our growth potential and the cash generating capabilities of our business. As a result, as indicated in our press release, we announced yet another $0.02 per share sequential increase in our quarterly dividend, raising our regular quarterly dividend from $0.46 a share to $0.48 a share. This represents the 21st consecutive quarter in which Cogent has been able to raise its regular quarterly dividend. Throughout this discussion we'll highlight several operational statistics, I'll review in greater detail some operational highlights, and Tad will provide additional details on our financial performance. Following our remarks, we'll be happy to open the floor for questions and answers. Now I'd like to turn it over to Tad to read our Safe Harbor language.