Greetings, and welcome to Lumen Technologies’ Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Breen, Senior Vice President Investor Relations. Jim, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Lumen Technologies second quarter 2024 earnings call. On the call today are Kate Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Chris Stansbury, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I need to call your attention to our Safe Harbor Statement on Slide 1 of our second quarter 2024 presentation, which notes that this conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements and the risk factors in our SEC filings. We will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures reconciled to the most comparable GAAP measures which can be found in our earnings press release. In addition, certain metrics discussed today exclude costs for special items as detailed in our earnings materials, which can be found in our Investor Relations section of our Lumen website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kate.

Thanks, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining. I'm cognizant of the timing of this call, because over the past two days the markets have been a bit noisy with lots of uncertainty about the health of the economy in the next six to 12 to 18 months. And in contrast, the announcement we made last night about Lumen's pivot to growth is all about building critical infrastructure to support the AI economy for the next several decades. And to net it out, there are three key takeaways from our call today. First, Lumen's enterprise operational turnaround is progressing well with continued sales momentum across our growth portfolio and further improvement in customer satisfaction. We are also executing extremely well in our Quantum Fiber business. Second, Lumen has been anointed as the trusted network for AI by some of the most important technology companies on earth. With over $5 billion in major partnership inked to date and visibility to nearly $7 billion more in opportunities, we see the market for Lumen's private connectivity fabric as providing a major positive momentum shift for this company. Third, given our success in forging these partnerships, we're seeing a significant improvement in our overall liquidity profile, further securing our ability to transform the company and pivot to growth. Let me give some detail on the operational turnaround part first. As I've described on prior calls, we're focusing on delivering dramatically improved customer experiences from quote to cash, giving customers a reason to choose Lumen for core network services. The best way to measure that progress is to look at three areas, sales, customer sat, and securing the base. I'm delighted to share our progress across the fundamentals. After a blockbuster Q1, we continue to see strong sales performance in the second quarter, with North…

Thanks, Kate. Before I discuss the quarter, I want to take a moment to reflect back to Q2 earnings last year. Since that time, we've successfully completed a refinancing that addressed over $15 billion of our debt and extended over $10 billion of our maturities. And we secured access to over $2.3 billion in new liquidity. And we launched our PCF solutions as well as our suite of new digital offerings. And we generated early growth in our public sector and the growth segment of our large enterprise business. And as of yesterday, we announced the largest sales in the company's history, totaling nearly $5 billion, fueled by our AI hyperscaler customers. This is all as we drive a network unification from four discrete enterprise networks to one, resulting in over $1 billion in cost efficiencies. None of this would be possible without our world-class management team who's executing on our vision. We're moving with pace and we're not done. The recent developments in our business reflect major proof points in terms of early and material execution on Lumen's transformation path forward and we are pleased the market is starting to value this opportunity. We believe we're in the first inning of the AI growth opportunity for our fiber infrastructure and Lumen Digital Services. Accordingly, the positive impact these private connectivity fabric sales will have on our financials are powerful and clear. First, we believe the progress we've made on driving PCF sales these past few months is just the beginning of a vast new TAM, which brings long-term, sticky revenue offsetting higher churn legacy product declines. Second, we estimate that the cash received from PCF sales will close any free cash flow deficit between now and when we reach sustainable positive free cash flow growth. Third, we will have…

Thanks, Chris. Before we open up the call for questions I wanted to pause to acknowledge where we are. AI represents one of the most significant technology shifts in history. Every person and every organization on earth will be impacted. AI needs data, data needs data centers, and data centers need to be connected. What was once an overbuilt fiber network is shifting from commodity to something much more valuable. At Lumen, we aren't streamlining and digitizing our operations to try to find growth in legacy telco markets. Instead, we're building a digital platform to help us become the trusted network for AI so we can capitalize on the markets that will likely see explosive growth for decades. This is Lumen's moment. We are playing to win. This is the business that we are in. Operator, we're ready for questions.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Michael Rollins with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thanks and good afternoon. First, with respect to the $5 billion of sales, curious if you could give some additional color on the competitiveness of that process? Are these customers using single vendors for the solution or multiple vendors? So this is something that's not just helping Lumen, but maybe the ecosystem. And then for Lumen specifically, can you share the mix of assets that are existing fiber, existing conduit, leveraging assets that are already out there from you versus what you're building is new infrastructure. And as you consume some of those fiber inventories such that investment mix or margin mix might look differently over time as you continue to sell within this new [PCF] (ph) segment? Thanks.

Hey, Mike. So I'll take the first the first part, I’ll let Chris do the second part. So first part, what does the competitive landscape look like? Look, obviously, I'm a little bit biased, but here's my observation. Our network is the crown jewel that we always thought it was. It's got great coverage, unique routes, it's diverse and it's got state-of-the-art fiber because we've been taking care of it for a long time. And that's giving us great positioning with our customers. They're looking at sometimes building some routes by themselves. Most of the time understanding that we can get them there faster with higher quality and better service and that's the observation across the deals we've won so far.

Yes. And just on the economics, it's a really good question, and then I'm not going to be evasive with you. But the reality is, it's really complicated. So it's a deal to deal, every deal is different in terms of where they want to go from and to, how much capacity they need. And inevitably, you will end up with a combination of existing fiber, new fiber, existing conduit, new conduit. It really does vary deal to deal. Now, on that, we'll never disclose it, because these are called private connectivity fabric for a reason. And our customers want to keep it private because it's a competitive secret that they have as is it a competitive secret for us. So, it will vary deal to deal, but the video that we released, I think, gives a good flavor on average.

Thank you.

Next question.

Your next question comes from the line of Sebastiano Petti. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Just had a quick question on the free cash flow guidance. Can you help us think about, is that fully just driven by the customer deposits from the just private custom fiber -- fabric AI? Or is that also reflective of the -- I think, Chris, you said gain on the sale? And in addition to that, can you help us maybe think -- does the free cash flow uplift that you're seeing here. Is that something that we should expect to stay on the balance sheet in 2024 or is this something that will probably get spent as you're probably -- to fund the increase in CapEx that you've guided to today? Just trying to help think about the commencement of the build-out in pacing? Thank you.

I'll give you credit, because you asked one of the great questions on the call early. So the cash flow guidance for this year is driven by both some of the upfront cash received. We haven't received all of it, obviously, for the PCF deals, and it is also related to the asset sale that we did. So both of those things contributed to the free cash flow. As it relates to where we go from here, and again, I want to really be really careful because we're not giving 2025 guidance yet. But we haven't received all the cash yet. That will be received some this year, some next year, some the following year, because again, these are massive construction projects. They take time. And we will start to spend the CapEx as evidenced by our guidance. This year and have more next year. But the point is, on these deals, we're not financing the build. So we get paid in advance of the construction. The only thing that is kind of hanging as you go out 12 months is, we pay tax on the cash received. So even though the revenue is amortized, the IRS likes to get paid on a cash basis for these deals. So that will be something that we deal with, and we'll get more color on that as we move through. But high level, I would say that next year free cash flow looks good.

Thank you.

Next question.

Your next question comes from the line of Batya Levi from UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Looking at the EBITDA guidance change for the year, is that purely related to the incremental OpEx for getting ready for these network [indiscernible]? Is there any change in terms of the underlying trend? And can you just go over the $1 billion cost savings you expect over the next three years, the pacing of that? I think you mentioned some of the expenses will be pulled forward. And then, is there any incremental cost to achieve that savings through the next three years? Thank you.

Yes. So as it relates to this year, the vast majority of the -- there's obviously a lot of things that go on inside of EBITDA. But the main driver here are the TCF deals. And the OpEx investments we need to make to get that construction factory up and running in a more scaled way. It's a group that exists. It's one of Lumen's core competencies, but the size of that group needs to get substantially larger to support just the quantum of the deals. And so, that's the key driver. As it relates to the $1 billion cost takeout, we haven't -- again, I want to stay away from 2025 guidance as much as I can. We're not expecting those savings to start until next year. There will be some investment next year, and we'll disclose that when we give guidance for next year. But my comments on just trying to dimensionalize where we go from here, are really around the fact that we're taking the opportunity near term balance of this year and 2025 to really pull forward investments we were going to have to make in 2026 and 2027 to get to a place where our IT systems, as Kate mentioned, are more consolidated, simplified to drive a customer experience. And I would say, if there's one key driver in that it's going from what our four enterprise networks today to one. And that is a legacy that exist today that needs to be cleaned up because it just drives a much more seamless customer experience as we go forward.

Got it. Thank you.

Next question please.

Your next question comes from the line of David Barden from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks so much for taking the question. Chris, I guess it's not so much a question is, I want to put forward a hypothesis and I want you to tell -- it would be, I think, super helpful for people to share what you think is right or wrong about it. So we've got this $5 billion deal, but the majority of the cash is coming in, in the next three to four years, and the majority of the cash of that cash is also going out the door in the next three to four years. So any kind of cash inflow we're getting is kind of a timing benefit relative to the CapEx that's required under the contract. And if it's a $5 billion contract and the majority of it is related to the construction piece, let's just call it $3 billion round numbers. That means that the actual [indiscernible] sale piece is about $2 billion. And as you shared in your video, that [indiscernible] revenue doesn't start until after the build is done, which would be probably year four or five, over a 20-year period, $2 billion is a $100 million in revenue a year, very high margin, maybe $85 million in EBITDA, tax affected, as you've mentioned in your video, maybe, again, the taxes will be timing related, but let's just call it $65 million of tax-affected cash flow over a 20-year period. So a $5 billion deal announcement turns into $65 million of cash flow five years from now, what's right and what's wrong about that assessment?

I'd say most of it is wrong. The -- Yes, I think, David, here's where we go. So again, it's multiple deals that added up to the $5 billion. Not just one. And in the video, we talked about a cash contribution margin, which is effectively the EBITDA less the CapEx, pretax that's roughly in the ballpark of our existing EBITDA margin. So you do the math on that, that will give you the pretax free cash flow associated with these deals. And that cash flow, to your point, does come largely at the front end. Now there's ongoing payments for space and power, for operating and maintenance if they want us to run the networks for them that gives us nice cash flow over the years. But the tax would also be front-end loaded. So the key thing here is that, in one set of deals in those $5 billion deals that the net after-tax cash generated from that fully fund the liquidity gap that we've talked about for so long on these calls. It's over, it's behind us. And we're not done. So as we said, there's another $7 billion of discussions underway right now. And this trend will continue. The demand isn't one and done. So that's the key difference. So there's more cash in the deal than you've laid out and there's more to come.

And additionally, it's not one deal. The $5 billion represents multiple customers, and each contract is very different. I think that's important to stress.

Thank you. I just want to follow up on that, Chris, if I could. So just to make -- so if the majority of the cash is coming in, as you say in the press release, in the next three to four years, and it's also going out in the next three to four years. So then you've got this minority of the $5 billion that's been realized over the following 20 years. Is that -- what's -- so there's a net kind of zero. And then there's this tail of income. Is that -- how is that not what you said in the press release.

I'm not -- I guess I'm not following and we can do it in the after call. I'm not following the net zero. The net is significant and fully funds the liquidity gap that you and your peers have modeled over the next number of years. That's now fully addressed. So -- and you're right, then, yes, the renew leads in over a much longer time frame. But that cash allows us to fund the transformation. It allows us to pay down debt and start to attack the debt structure. And again, that's with this first bundle of deals that total $5 billion and there's more coming.

And so just my last follow-up. So when you say in the press release that the majority of the cash comes in the next three to four years, and there's a roughly equal amount of disbursements, so that the CapEx related to the deal is smaller than -- so if I add the deficit and the CapEx necessary to win these deals, that gets us to the breakeven, the liquidity that you're talking about.

That's right. So said another way, David, the cash contribution, the $5 billion, let's the OpEx to support it less the CapEx to support it, leaves us with an amount of cash. We pay tax on that cash. And the after-tax impact of that fully funds the liquidity gap that we have modeled over the next few years, from this first kind of deals.

Okay. Thank you, Chris.

Operator, next question please.

Your next question comes from the line of Jim Schneider with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could maybe give us some color on -- within the $5 billion of closed deals, the diversity of customers within that is that a few large hyperscale type customers? Is it a much longer tail of customers, including corporates? And then if you could give us any kind of sense about the same kind of color on the additional $7 billion you're pursuing now?

So the first $5 billion is that first tranche that I talked about. It's hyperscalers, it's social platforms, it's huge technology companies, it's a cloud company. As everybody building the AI models, right? Where they're building them and they're training them. They're seeing the data flows and they're saying, holy cow, current networks simply don't serve where the state of growth is going. So they're building out their data centers because data needs compute. And that is driving the requirements that they bring to us about, "Hey, can you get me from here to there? And by the way, can you connect me back to the main Internet highways so that I can continue to serve my customers there as well.” So that's the first one. The second tranche is -- and we're just at the really early phase of that piece. Which is enterprises that are using the AI models. And frankly, we're one of them. We're using AI models to transform our business. We have great partnerships with all of these guys to try and take cost out, drive efficiency, gain insight, more intelligent services. And those enterprises that are leading the way are in health care, retail and financial services for the most part. And they're doing it in a different way. It's not necessarily an end-to-end custom private network per se. But it's a little bit of fiber and some advanced services on top of it, dramatically increasing the bandwidth and performance needs.

Thanks. And then maybe just relative to the network build-out itself. I believe at your Analyst Day last year, you referenced that you had 6 million inner city fiber route miles in the network, and you were planning on doubling that, which is, I think, the same commentary you made on one of your earlier announcements. So is -- with the pre-funding and the revenue associated with these deals, is that simply accelerating the build-out you already had contemplated and pulling them forward in time? Or is there any change to the profile or complexion of that build plan?

So, I'm -- I struggled to figure out where the baseline is from your question. I'll just give you continually what's happening. We are increasing connectivity both inside the metro areas as well as in the long-haul networks. And that's with new routes and pulling more fiber on existing routes. And so it's a combination of all of it. And each deal is a bit different when you overlay them all together what you see is a doubling in metro and a significant increase in long haul.

I would just add to that, that the fiber that we put in the ground already and the fiber that we're adding today supports 400 gig waves. And over the next two years, that will scale to 800 and 1.6 terabytes. So the fiber that's going in the ground has enormous expandability. And I don't think -- at least I'm not aware of anyone else who's investing at that rate to meet the needs of customers.

Thank you very much.

Next question please.

Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Chaplin with New Street. Please ask your questions.

Great. Thanks for taking the question, guys. First, just to follow up on David's question. I wonder if you could help contextualize the recurring revenue piece that comes on the back of these massive transactions that you're doing? How should we think about these transactions driving growth in the grow segment, presumably this is sort of all large enterprise at this point? And then given how important this sort of transformative event for the business is, unlike embarrassed to be asking about mass markets, but you did really well on net adds in mass markets this quarter. It's been sort of a pretty dramatic acceleration in the business over the course of the last two quarters. And I'm wondering if you can give us some context to what's driving that? And also just speak to sort of the strategy around ARPU a little bit. It looks like ARPU is well below peers. I assume that's sort of a conscious decision to drive penetration. I'm wondering if you -- if there's sort of a plan to close the gap over time? Thanks.

Yes. There's a lot in there. I'll try to remember. As it relates to the PCF deals, we did say in the video that once you get to scale, and again, as David pointed out, it's anywhere between that three and five year window. In some cases, not all, customers will ask us to run the networks, we will also provide space and power. So again, if you're powering a signal from San Francisco to New York, along the way you're going to need huts where you can put rats, you can put the equipment that powers those signals. And we said that on average, think about that as roughly 10% of the total contract value. And that revenue and cash will be earned in the year the services are provided. So that's, I think, a good broad guideline. As it relates to mass markets, yes, I could not be more proud of the team. They're killing it. There's an intense focus on driving marketing execution and really focus on both enablement and penetration. And they kept the enablement machine chugging along, but we're just super pleased that the -- is the growth in penetration. They're executing flawlessly right now. On ARPU, that's part of the strategy, yes. I mean we're not trying to over or under price. In fact, we have raised prices where we see the opportunity to do so, and we'll continue to do that. But we're pleased with the way everything is working in combination ARPU penetration, et cetera. So more to come.

Thanks, guys.

Next question, please.

Your next question comes from the line of Nick Del Deo with MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. First, Chris, the comments you've made around the cash contribution margins associated with these deals seem to apply mostly to the $5 billion in signed deals. As we think about future deals, like the $7 billion you have in negotiation, would you expect those to have more favorable cash economics by leveraging some of the fiber being put in the ground for these earlier deals, or should they be kind of in the same ballpark?

Yes. I would say, on average, I think the guidance we gave is pretty good. Again, it's hard to say. So I mean I can tell you that -- we've had discrete decisions that we've made along the way of do we make some incremental investments now on routes where we may have slightly less capacity to try to help for the future, and that would obviously be a benefit to your point. But then we don't know yet the full scale of what all of the customers want, and that may require us to do additional things that we don't have today. So it's just -- again, given the quantum of the deals and the complexity it's hard to answer right now. But I would tell you that I think the guidance we gave is good general guidance around how to think about it.

Okay. So not trying to get too far ahead of signed deals in terms of capital commitments and whatnot?

Right. I mean, look, we will continue to invest in our network as we have for years, and I view that more as kind of baseline responsibility. As it relates to big CapEx expansions, we will be very measured in how we do that. This is not a gamble. We will -- if we see a route where we know there's going to be demand in the future, and we're already pulling fiber, we may pull more. If it's a route where we've got lots of capacity, we won't. So it really is route by route mile by mile that we do those analytics, and it's actually really impressive what the team is doing as they model this out. That's it's a core capability. And quite frankly, I think it's one of the reasons in addition to the digital services that we can offer these customers that customers come to Lumen.

Okay. Okay. And then Chris, you quickly alluded to it in your prepared remarks, but I was hoping you could expand a bit on how you're thinking about cannibalization risk, whether current revenue or revenue that you otherwise might have generated. So for example, if you're selling someone dark fiber, I'm guessing you're not selling them waves on that route going forward?

So think about it -- think about it this way, private connectivity fabric is a bundle of everything from dark fiber to wave to IP. It's your network, your way. And these first deals happen to be very large infrastructure, dark fiber kind of deals with some of the other things mixed in. As time goes on, I would expect that mix to continue to evolve. And so it depends on what -- again, what the customer wants, where they want to get as to whether we've got some of that fiber already in the ground or whether we need to pull more.

I'd also like to add as person coming from the tech world into telecom, there's this proclivity to worry about cannibalization rather than evolution of portfolio. And I think that's how we got to a place of being quite overbuilt. And as I look at the demand for these services and our strategy moving forward, we are going to prioritize penetration of our assets to deliver return to our shareholders. And I think that, that's going to be very accretive long term.

Yes. This is not to be very clear. We haven't even talked about cannibalization. This isn't cannibalization of legacy at all. This is about net new and where we're going. And this is why we see the upside that we see in our ability to drive returns for shareholders.

Next question please.

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Williams with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. We're all trying to size the total addressable market of AI and you did a good job of articulating those three phases. Maybe we'll start just with that first phase and all these deals are more dark fiber, as Christa. So really, I think the addressable market would be how many new data centers are they creating? And we are talking a stab at it earlier this week in some reports. And really the better way of asking you guys how many new data centers are you feeding roughly $4 billion to $5 billion of deals? Is it like 10? Is it 30 ? I'm just trying to get a sense of that, and it helps us with our scope? Thanks.

I mean we're not tracking that really. What we're tracking is across the group of technology companies that we're speaking to, which is at this point in the dozens, what do their needs look like? What are the synergies between the requests that we can drive economies of scale and how can we drive to closure as fast as possible so we can group them in those ways by route, and by how operationally we can deliver upon these. The one thing we do look at when we model it out is where is the power. Data centers need power space cooling and fiber. And I think the energy piece of the equation is where can you build a data center that you can deliver a green footprint because there's also that piece of it as well. And so it's pretty complex.

Next question please.

Your next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan with Raymond James.

Great. Thank you. Maybe you can give us a little more color within this sort of $5 billion group, can you give us an idea of the largest deal as a percentage of revenue? And then as it relates to the $5 billion in bookings here, what do you -- what's an average annual bookings? And how much is it up this year, including the PCF deals?

So yes, in terms of the biggest one, again, that starts to get close to really starting to disclose stuff around customers because if I give you that, then it's just a guessing game as to which customer it is. And that's not fair to the customer. And frankly, it's sensitive information for us. So we're not going to give that. As it relates to the bookings, I want to make sure I understand -- are you asking that once we get to scale, how much -- how does that relate to what we're selling today? Is that the question?

Well, it seems -- maybe I'm misusing the terms here, but it seems like you've done $5 billion in sales for here, which sounds like a bookings number. Not necessarily something hitting revenue in the income statement. What is -- I'm just getting an idea of what the incremental upside from that -- from bookings is in 2024 versus, say, 2023, inclusive of this bump from the PCF deal?

Yes. I would say from a modeling standpoint, I would think about that as largely all incremental. We always sell dark fiber. And I think the dark fiber run rate I'd have to go back and check frank because I don't know off the top of my head, but ex these deals, dark fiber is obviously in the grow bucket, and we continue to grow that segment. But this -- yes, we had the state of California in the fall that we mentioned, right, so that was a big deal. But again, we've done those in the past, and we'll do other deals like that going forward. This shift that we're seeing right now, which, quite frankly, I don't think comes as a surprise, right? There's been so much research and communication around the amount of investment required to support AI. And everybody forgot about the fact that the data doesn't originate in the data center and stay in the data center, right? It's got to get in, it's got to get out. So what we're really seeing is that now finally being realized and I'd say that's largely incremental.

Okay. And one quick thing. Did you -- can you clarify the split and the increase in free cash flow between the asset sale and the upfront cash?

The asset sale was, I think, after tax, $190 million.

Okay. Thank you.

Next question, please, operator.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Luebchow with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Appreciate you taking the questions. Thank you. So you talked about getting back to EBITDA growth in 2026 after a step down next year. How should we think about the visibility of getting back to revenue growth, given the trajectory of bookings you've had. And it sounds like these PCF deals since they'll be amortized over a very long contract duration. They'll certainly help revenues, but I don't know if there are enough to really get you back to revenue growth by 2026 as well? If you could kind of talk through the moving parts there? Thanks.

Yes. So again, I don't want to get too close to guidance here. As we've said, revenue will obviously lag the EBITDA turnaround because of our ability to drive significant cost takeout as we fix broken, right? And we go from four networks to one. So the timing on the revenue, we -- I guess what we said most recently is that that's going to lag by at least a year. And I think that still holds in this situation. But again, the comment that I made, I want to be really clear about this, around kind of directionally 2025 and 2026. To be very clear, that excludes the $7 billion set of discussions we're having right now. right? We don't count that until it comes in because just like this first batch of deals, they're very hard to predict. One, what's required to deliver them; and two, what the timing is.

Yes. Understood. And then just one follow-up. These new data center deals, the ones you've announced and then the ones that are in your pipeline, you tied them to the intercity fiber investments that -- where you'll double your fiber capacity over the next handful of years. We've heard a lot about data center deals moving to more further out rural locations given power constraints in a lot of markets. So can you talk at all about like splits between middle mile, long-haul fiber versus metro fiber this in your pipeline to support these types of deals given data center deals are being done in further out locations, it seems based on what we've seen? Thanks.

What I'll say is this, our network, one of the reasons why it's so attractive. And by the way, when I say network, it's fiber and in some cases, it's conduit, right? It's this vision that was built 25 years ago. And now because of the advances in fiber technology, we have the ability to monetize it. So it's both. It's both of those things. And so I would say the strength of both the inner city and the metro that customers, broadly speaking, are wanting to access. And as we continue to invest in things like waves, it will be to deliver against both of those. Wave customers want two things. They want to get where they want to get, and they want to get there quickly. And I don't know if anyone else in the space who is investing the kind of money that we are to make sure that happens.

Next question, please.

Since there are no more questions, I will now turn the conference back over to Kate Johnson, CEO, for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much. To wrap, it's an exciting time for Lumen as AI charts the course for our pivoted growth, and our future is very, very bright. Thanks for joining today. We look forward to meeting you at the upcoming conferences and updating you on the significant progress we're making in transforming our company. Have a great night.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.