Optimum Communications, Inc. (OPTU) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings. Welcome to Optimum's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Sarah Freedman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Sarah, you may begin.

Thank you. Welcome to the Optimum Q4 and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. We are joined today by Optimum's Chairman and CEO, Dennis Mathew; and CFO, Marc Sirota, who together will take you through the presentation and then be available for questions. As today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements, please carefully review the section titled Forward-Looking Statements on Slide 2. Now turning over to Dennis to begin.

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I want to thank all our teammates across Optimum, particularly our network and frontline teams, for their proactive preparation and disciplined response during the multiple winter storms that affected the majority of our footprint in early 2026. Our teams worked alongside local, state and federal authorities as well as power companies to mobilize personnel, equipment and critical infrastructure. This focus defined by our One Optimum team culture helped to minimize disruption and keep our network resilient for our customers and communities. Let me now turn to our results and the key drivers of our performance. 2025 was a year of meaningful transformation for our business. We sharpened our focus on core priorities, strengthened execution to drive operating efficiencies, enhanced network quality and reliability and made intentional decisions to elevate the customer experience. This foundational work was critical as competition intensified across nearly every market and promotional activity reached unprecedented levels. Against this backdrop, we took a balanced and disciplined approach to execute our objectives and remain firm in our go-to-market and base management strategies. Turning to Slide 3, you will see that our fourth quarter financial results reflect that focus. While total revenue declined by 2.3%, connectivity and all other revenue grew 2% year-over-year. Broadband subscriber results reflect both the intensity of the competitive environment and our conscious decision to prioritize sustainable pricing and returns. We delivered our best performance on video net losses in the last several years, supported by lower video churn and growing penetration of newly launched video tiers. At the same time, we moderated the pace of fiber migrations to balance near-term margins and cash flow. On mobile, we strengthened the quality of our mobile customer base, which contributed to improved mobile churn in the quarter. Looking at customer economics, broadband ARPU grew 2.8% and residential ARPU grew 0.4% year-over-year. These results demonstrate continued progress in product mix, retention, rate actions and pricing discipline despite market dynamics. In the fourth quarter, improved gross margins combined with cost discipline contributed to a meaningful step-up in adjusted EBITDA, consistent with our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA grew nearly 8% year-over-year to just over $900 million, representing our first quarter of year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth in 16 quarters. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to over 41%, up 380 basis points, and gross margin reached approximately 70%, up 180 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA growth reflects nearly $60 million of year-over-year operating expense reductions, driven in part by continued improvements in customer experience and operational performance. Our field dispatch rate improved 19% year-over-year. Our 7-day customer care repeat rate reached its lowest levels ever in Q4. And we ended the year with a Net Promoter Score 11 points higher than when we started the year. We further improved efficiency through the divestment of noncore assets, including the i24NEWS business in December, and the sale of our towers business earlier in the year. Our disciplined execution and capital management drove cash generation, resulting in free cash flow of approximately $200 million for the quarter. In the fourth quarter, cash capital stepped down 28% year-over-year, achieving approximately 13% capital intensity, while growing our total passings footprint by 1.8% year-over-year for the full year. Overall, the fourth quarter reflects the progress we made throughout 2025 to improve the business, drive efficiency and reset our foundation. With that context, let's turn to our full year '25 results. Slide 4 outlines the commitments we set early in the year and how we successfully delivered on them while remaining focused on controlling what we can control. Full year revenue came in at approximately $8.6 billion. Broadband ARPU grew 1.6%. Programming and direct costs, along with other operating expenses, were each $2.6 billion. Notably, we made strategic and sometimes difficult programming decisions designed to strengthen the overall economics of the video business while remaining focused on customer needs. We completed several major programming agreements that provided customers with the content they value, increased flexibility and choice, and reinforced cost discipline, resulting in improved video churn and gross margins. Full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA was $3.4 billion, excluding the divested i24NEWS business, or $3.3 billion on a reported basis. Cash capital expenditures totaled roughly $1.3 billion. And we added 177,000 new passings, slightly exceeding our target. Overall, our full year 2025 performance reflects the deliberate trade-offs and disciplined execution across the organization during a challenging operating environment. Importantly, we entered 2026 with a simplified operating model, improved cost structure and a clearer path to strengthening our performance. Let's now turn to Slide 5 to review our 2026 priorities, which are centered on further simplifying how we operate to deliver greater customer and employee experiences. First, we are focused on improving our broadband trajectory. We are simplifying our product portfolio by offering fewer speed tiers, transparent pricing and driving increased attachment of value-added services. This includes rolling out our fresh mobile offer to drive deeper convergence and putting greater emphasis on our new video tiers. Mobile convergence serves as a key driver of improved broadband retention and residential ARPU. Following the investments we made in mobile in 2025, we expect that mobile along with other value-added product bundles will reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value. It is important to highlight that our simplified go-to-market strategies reflect testing and trials we started in select markets in late 2025, which showed encouraging results in December, and which we will continue to use to inform our broader 2026 strategy. Improving our broadband trajectory directly supports our second priority of maintaining financial discipline in 2026. Our approach begins with a continued focus on base management, including proactive churn reduction, targeted competitive responses in areas of elevated pressure, a customer loyalty program and the use of price locks for certain subscriber cohorts. We will also continue to drive product margin expansion across the portfolio. Video is a good example. Industry-wide cord cutting and shifts in consumer behavior have contributed to significant video revenue decline since 2022. Despite this, our video profitability in 2025 was higher in absolute dollars than in 2022. And video gross margins was more than 750 basis points higher in the full year 2025 compared to 2022. This performance reflects our disciplined approach to programming costs, margin management and the introduction of flexible packages that resonate with our customers. Furthermore, we will continue to deploy advanced AI tools and automation across the organization, including in network operations, customer service, marketing and sales. Specifically, we are increasingly using AI tools to support our frontline teams and help improve their productivity, which in turn leads to better employee and customer experiences. For example, as a result of our partnership with Google, millions of customer calls are now routed through Google CES, which analyzes customer sentiment and agent interactions to identify opportunities for continuous improvement and best practices across our care organization. On the network side, we leverage Access Network Automation, which ingests network telemetry and operational data, including trouble tickets, and applies AI to more precisely identify the location and root cause of a network issue. Taken together, these capabilities help us resolve problems faster and proactively, reduce recurring issues, identify opportunities for self-service and reduce contact rate in services, which enhance efficiency and improve our overall cost structure. Finally, investments in these tools and automation combined with changing business demands allow us to continue to evolve our workforce and organizational structure. In late 2025, we expanded partnerships with leading third-party service providers to rationalize and consolidate elements of our field services and retail operations, improving accountability and driving operating efficiencies. We will continue to evaluate opportunities, both internally and with key partners, to ensure we have the right workforce structure to drive our business forward. Importantly, our approach to managing cost has not come at the expense of network performance, product quality or customer experience. In fact, customer satisfaction scores continue to improve and our network continues to lead the market. Just last week, our Optimum Fiber network in the Tri-State once again earned multiple #1 rankings from Ookla Speedtest for best-in-class Internet performance, outperforming every major 5G home Internet provider on speed, reliability and consistency. These results reinforce that Optimum Fiber delivers the fastest and most reliable speeds, the lowest latency and a best-in-class gaming experience across key markets. Finally, our third priority is investing for long-term value creation. This includes continued fiber expansion, targeted network upgrades, and ongoing investment in technology and tools that improve the customer experience, enhance performance, quality and reliability, and drive operational efficiency. With more than 3 million fiber passings, we view fiber as an important long-term value engine, and are actively improving the migration process to increase customer lifetime value while improving ARPU erosion and migration costs, helping to maximize the value of our existing customer base. As these process enhancements are implemented, we expect to expand migrations in a disciplined, returns-driven manner over time. On the new build front, we have more precision than ever in how and where we build, as well as greater command of how we drive penetration to those new passings through a coordinated go-to-market strategy. We will continue to balance our build plans with long-term economics to further enhance our returns. Of note, we can offer 1 gigabit or higher download speeds to approximately 96% of our entire footprint. We will continue to evaluate markets to deploy mid-split upgrades on our DOCSIS 3.1 HFC network, which can enable multi-gig speeds and improve capacity and reliability in a highly capital-efficient manner. Regarding our capital structure, as Marc will review shortly, we completed several debt refinancings in 2025, which improved liquidity and expanded financial flexibility, giving us room to operate in 2026. In closing, I couldn't be prouder of the entire Optimum team for their hard work in 2025 and their unwavering commitment to each other and our customers. Despite the sustained competitive intensity, I remain confident that by simplifying how we operate, we can strengthen execution and elevate our operating performance to build a stronger business and deliver long-term shareholder value. I'd now like to turn it over to Marc to review our performance in greater detail.

Thank you, Dennis. Starting on Slide 6, I'll review our subscriber trends. In the fourth quarter, we lost 62,000 net broadband subscribers and ended the year with 4.2 million broadband subscribers. Net losses were primarily driven by fewer gross additions, reflecting continued low household move activity, heightened price sensitivity among customers and sustained competitive intensity. In addition, our more measured and disciplined promotional approach, combined with the competitive environment, contributed to higher churn year-over-year. As we closed out 2025, we began testing a simplified pricing and product structure with more competitive offers. And those early learnings have helped shape the 2026 broadband strategy that Dennis previewed. Our fiber customer accounts reached 716,000 at the end of Q4, representing 33% year-over-year growth. Net additions moderated in the fourth quarter with 12,000 fiber customer net adds, reflecting our intentional decision in mid-2025 to slow fiber migrations. This approach underscores our focus on executing migrations in the most value-accretive manner, minimizing ARPU erosion and optimizing costs. Total mobile lines at the end of the fourth quarter reached 623,000 lines, representing 35% year-over-year growth. In Q4, we added 38,000 mobile lines, in line with recent trends. Our focus remains on building high-quality mobile customer relationships to reduce churn and increase penetration within our broadband base. In Q4, annualized mobile churn improved by over 700 basis points, reflecting the effectiveness of programs and initiatives we've launched in 2025 to strengthen quality and the mobile value proposition. As we enter 2026, our mobile program is centered on driving high-quality sales, expanding multiline attach rates and deepening broadband mobile convergence to drive growth, strengthen retention and expand customer lifetime value. We ended the year with 1.7 million video subscribers, down 13% year-over-year. In the fourth quarter, we recorded a net loss of 49,000 video subscribers, representing our lowest quarterly video net losses in more than 5 years and a marked improvement compared to recent trends. This performance reflects our intentional video strategy of delivering the content customers want at a compelling value, with choice and flexibility at the center of our negotiations. This proactive approach enabled the launch of 3 new higher-margin video tiers in 2024, which are performing well, stabilizing gross add attachment rates and supporting our lowest video churn in more than a decade. By year-end 2025, these video tiers account for over 15% of our residential video customers. Lower video churn was driven in part by higher retention effectiveness as our teams increasingly migrate customers to these new tiers. Across broadband, mobile and video, all results reflect deliberate trade-offs in a challenging competitive environment. While subscriber trends remain under pressure, we are taking clear actions to drive improved performance in 2026 through simplified product and pricing, a more focused go-to-market approach centered on convergence, investments in AI to improve marketing and sales channel yield, and improved customer value propositions. Next, on Slide 7, I'll review our quarterly financials. Total revenue of approximately $2.2 billion declined 2.3% year-over-year. Revenue pressure remains mainly concentrated in video, which declined almost 10%. News and advertising revenue declined 8%, driven by tougher political comps from prior year. Excluding political revenue, news and advertising revenue grew 6%. Connectivity and all other revenue grew 2% year-over-year. This was supported by timing of rate actions within residential connectivity, mobile revenue growth of over 40% as well as business services growth of over 8%, driven by Lightpath revenue growth of 35%. Lightpath growth was driven by nonrecurring revenues from installations and delivery of services to large hyperscale customers as well as recurring revenue growth from continued positive net installations. News and advertising growth, excluding political, was driven by continued growth in our advanced advertising agency services business, contributing to higher national sales. Residential ARPU grew by 0.4% to $134.49, or grew by $0.54. Of the $0.54 year-over-year growth, video represented a $2.80 decline, while all other products grew by $3.40, driven by broadband ARPU expansion and selling of mobile and value-added services. Residential ARPU remains under pressure as a smaller share of customer relationships include a video product. While this continues to weigh on top line and per customer revenue, the impact of a declining video base is increasingly being mitigated by continued product margin expansion. Broadband ARPU grew 2.8% year-over-year to $76.71, our highest quarterly broadband ARPU in 14 quarters, driven primarily by the benefits of timing of rate actions as well as disciplined rate preservation in care and retention. Continuing on Slide 8, gross margin reached 69.5% and expanded by 180 basis points year-over-year. This reflects the continued mix shift towards higher-margin products such as broadband and new video tiers, along with a disciplined approach to programming agreements and ongoing efforts to optimize video margins. We also continue to see favorable mix shifts toward higher-speed broadband, with 52% of new customers selecting 1 gig or higher tiers during the quarter, bringing 43% of our broadband base to 1 gig or higher speeds at year-end. Adjusted EBITDA of $902 million grew 7.7% year-over-year. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 380 basis points year-over-year to 41.3%, representing our highest EBITDA margin in 16 quarters and surpassing 40% margin milestone. Our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA performance was supported by a few key drivers. In the quarter, revenue declines moderated, primarily supported by rate actions and pricing discipline, Lightpath revenue growth and continued momentum in mobile. Strong gross margin performance reflected the benefits of disciplined programming and direct cost management, which helped offset some revenue pressure. And operating expenses declined year-over-year by almost $60 million. Contributing to this was a strategic workforce optimization, which represented over 6% reduction in head count year-over-year. In addition, we exercised tighter cost controls across the business, including a mix shift in marketing in the quarter to rationalize customer acquisition costs. Turning to Slide 9, I'll walk through our network investments and capital expenditures. As shown on the left side of the slide, full year 2025 cash capital totaled approximately $1.3 billion, reflecting our disciplined approach to capital deployment, increased capital efficiency and focus on prioritizing higher-return investments. For the full year, cash capital spend, excluding Lightpath, improved by 10% year-over-year for an improvement of over $120 million. Lightpath capital spending accounted for approximately $200 million in full year 2025. Total capital intensity reached less than 16% in the full year 2025, our most efficient in the last 4 years. Excluding the Lightpath business, capital intensity would have been approximately 14%, a 500 basis points reduction compared to 2022. On the far right, you can see how that capital translates into network expansion enhancements. In the fourth quarter, we added approximately 65,000 total new passings, bringing full year additions to 177,000 total passings, and total fiber passings expansion of 43,000 homes in the quarter, resulting in 134,000 new fiber passings for the full year, underscoring our continued progress in expanding our footprint primarily as fiber passings. Our approach to network investment remains balanced and disciplined. We moderated capital intensity, prioritized fiber and high-return projects and leveraged targeted upgrades to our HFC network to support improved broadband competitiveness, protect margins and drive long-term network value. Turning to Slide 10, I'll highlight the continued strength and momentum of our Lightpath Fiber business. Lightpath continues to increase its position as a provider of AI-grade digital infrastructure and connectivity. At the end of 2025, Lightpath's awarded AI-driven contract value totaled $362 million. This represents a 240% increase over the $110 million of total contract value awarded in 2024. As shown on the right, Lightpath revenue, which is consolidated in business services revenue within Optimum total revenue, has grown steadily over the past several years. Lightpath revenue reached $468 million in the full year 2025, representing 13% growth year-over-year. This growth reflects continued demand from hyperscale customers along with strong underlying recurring enterprise revenue. Profitability continues to scale along with revenue, with Lightpath adjusted EBITDA growth of 17% year-over-year. In addition, in February, Lightpath priced an inaugural ABS transaction of approximately $1.7 billion, which is expected to close in early March. Proceeds are primarily expected to repay existing Lightpath debt. Overall, Lightpath continues to serve as a differentiated growth platform within our portfolio, supported by durable revenue growth, expanding margins and attractive returns, while reinforcing the strategic value of our fiber infrastructure and addressing broader enterprise and network connectivity needs. And finally, on Slide 11, I'll review our debt maturity profile pro forma for recent transactions. In the fourth quarter, we closed a refinancing transaction through which we received $2 billion of new financing from JPMorgan to voluntarily prepay our existing incremental B-6 term loan in full. Subsequent to quarter-end, in January, we secured approximately $1.1 billion of additional financing from JPMorgan to refinance our $1 billion asset-backed facility. Both transactions enhance our short-term liquidity and financial flexibility. And as previously mentioned, in February, Lightpath priced an ABS transaction, which is included in our pro forma schedule subject to closing. Pro forma for these transactions, our weighted average cost of debt is 6.8%. Our weighted average life of debt is 3.3 years, and 81% of our debt stack is fixed. Consolidated liquidity is approximately $1.4 billion, and our leverage ratio is 7.3x the last 2 quarters annualized adjusted EBITDA. As we have communicated, one of the company's key strategic priorities is ensuring that our capital structure supports our long-term operating goals. We believe meaningful debt reduction and a reset of the balance sheet are essential to continuing our transformation, competing effectively and investing thoughtfully to maximize long-term value for all stakeholders. In closing, 2025 was a year of discipline, execution and progress. We strengthened our foundation, improved profitability and positioned the business to move forward with greater focus and competitiveness. Importantly, we have remained focused on the operating and financial levers within our control. Since Dennis and I joined the company nearly 3 years ago, this fourth quarter represents our best adjusted EBITDA margin, our strongest broadband ARPU performance, our near lowest capital intensity and our strongest Lightpath performance to date, along with a near all-time high gross margin. While the business environment remains challenging, we look to 2026 with clear and deliberate focus. We are simplifying how we operate and how we serve our customers, while improving efficiency through continued discipline, cost management and execution. At the same time, we are investing across the portfolio in a way that protects cash flow and margins and creates long-term value for our shareholders. With that, we will now take questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from the line of Kutgun Maral with Evercore ISI.

Great. Two if I could. First, on broadband subscribers, as always, Dennis, thank you for the color and candor. Is there anything more you can unpack as it relates to Q4 and trends into 2026? And I know that improving broadband trends is a key priority in the year, but that seems hard for any cable operator in this hyper-competitive backdrop. So how do we think about the time line and path towards an improvement as you continue to also focus on financial integrity? And then I know you haven't provided, or at least that I have seen, explicit guidance for EBITDA and free cash flow. But following your execution against the 2025 outlook, I wanted to see if there's anything you'd be willing to share on how we should think about these metrics in 2026.

Kutgun, Q4, we continued to operate in a very hypercompetitive marketplace. We continued to see just unprecedented levels of spend from a marketing perspective, very aggressive pricing and packaging and value adds and incentives that were being provided. That being said, we continue to operate with discipline. As I've said, last year was a year where we continued to lay the foundation. We are on a significant transformation journey. '23 and '24, we were focused on stabilizing the company. '25, we continued to invest to ensure we have high-quality network, and we're continuing to win awards across the footprint like from Ookla. We saw an improvement in our customer experience, which was critical, 11-point improvement. And we're leaning into automation and AI, which is really helping us optimize our cost structure. And leaning into digital, we saw a 12% improvement there and 19% improvement on dispatch rate, which allowed us to further transform the workforce. I say all this because this is critical as we think about how we can now start to, one, ensure we have command of the business. We have more command than ever as we think about reporting and analytics and ARPU erosion and managing credits and making sure that we're disciplined on acquisition pricing. And this will allow us to really start to go on the offensive in a more meaningful way from a go-to-market perspective. And so as we enter into '26, we're continuing to evolve our go-to-market. I'm excited about some of the new programs that we've launched around referrals and platforms for leasing agents and property managers, affiliate programs. But then ultimately, we have launched some simplified pricing, pricing and packaging across all the geographies and all the channels. And we'll be able to leverage the hard work of '25 to further invest in our go-to-market strategies. And so Q1 remains hypercompetitive, and there's lots of headwinds. But we did some foundational work in '25 that will allow us to go on the offensive more meaningfully in '26, is what I'll say. Maybe, Marc, you can comment on the financial questions?

Sure, Kutgun. We're not going to be providing specific 2026 guidance on this call today. As Dennis was mentioning, we believe that the operational improvements we've made in 2025 certainly put us in a better position to support long-term EBITDA stability and over time, grow. 2025, we certainly benefited from the operational efficiencies, the OpEx efficiencies, including the org redesign, vendor rationalization, the foundation of just simplifying how we operate, using AI in a much more meaningful way. These actions really reset our cost base, strengthened our execution just as we were navigating this unprecedented competitive environment. As we think about turning to 2026, I think the work that we did in 2025 really does allow us to invest in a targeted way into strategies that stabilize broadband trends. It's going to be some targeted investments in pricing, customer value and, again, just continuing to improve the network. But we certainly will share more in our first quarter earnings call.

Our next question is from the line of Frank Louthan with Raymond James.

Can you give us an update on the balance sheet? You've done quite a few debt refinancings and the Lightpath ABS deal. So what's sort of the net impact there? And you've got a debt stack going current this year. Just give us an update on the balance sheet and how you plan to address that in the next 12 months.

Yes. I'll take this, Frank. Again, pleased with the work that the team has done this year. As we've communicated, one of the key company's strategic priorities is ensuring that we have the right capital structure to support our long-term goals. We do still believe that meaningful debt reduction and a reset of the balance sheet are essential to continuing our transformation and really allowing us to invest thoughtfully to maximize long-term value for all of our stakeholders. We're not going to comment beyond that on the capital structure. I will just call out, proud of the Lightpath team. They just priced this week their inaugural ABS about $1.7 billion. That's expected to close here shortly, probably early March. Those proceeds will be primarily used to repay the existing Lightpath debt. But beyond that, we won't comment.

The next question is from the line of Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs.

I just have 2. First, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the residential broadband ARPU strength, nearly $77. I think that this is the second highest on record. So if you could talk about that and whether you see that as a good baseline for next year, that would be helpful. And then I just have a quick follow-up.

You want to jump into that, Marc?

Sure, Michael. Yes, really, again, proud of the team for all the hard work. Overall total residential ARPU grew 0.4% year-over-year, and this is despite all of the video headwinds, nearly a $3 decline in video contribution. We overcame that with $3.50 of connectivity and other ARPU expansion, really driven by broadband. The broadband results just continue to demonstrate our continued progress on product mix. We now have 43% of our customers taking 1 gig services. Our sell-in is over 50% sell-in on 1 gig, and our fiber customers are over 50% on the 1 gig platform. It shows the continued discipline that we have in retention, our pricing strategies and price actions. We're just executing with a different level of discipline, leveraging AI at its highest levels. And that's despite all of the competitive pressures. Certainly, we've made trade-offs this quarter to focus on driving ARPU expansion and EBITDA stabilization, that came at a slight cost to subscribers, but still positive on how the team managed ARPU this year. When you think about video ARPU, that's up over 4% year-over-year. Mobile ARPU up 2%. So the team is really operating on all cylinders and really controlling what we control.

Yes. And I will say just on ARPU, the ability to control erosion, the ability to strategically drive our acquisition pricing, we're just gaining more command across all channels and geographies that will allow us to remain disciplined going forward.

Great. Wonderful. Second, I wanted to ask about your expectations around video programming costs per subscriber. Really good favorability from that this quarter. I can appreciate there are a lot of moving parts, as we think about next year, the impact from more skinny bundles perhaps, I know there are some comps on like carriage disputes. Given some of the spinoffs, like Versant and Comcast, like do you see opportunities to work down programming costs there? Just any thoughts there would be helpful.

Yes. We've been laser-focused on programming and our video strategy. As you've seen over the past year or so, we're going into these conversations with much more data and clarity than ever. We have a clear understanding of the value of this content relative to our customer base. And so that gives us the opportunity to have some of these hard conversations. And we're fighting for our customers to make sure that we've got flexibility in terms of tiering and packaging, that we have the right cost basis, and we're able to ensure that, ultimately, our customers are at the center of these discussions so that we can deliver value and choice. And so we continue -- we have ongoing programming discussions that are happening throughout the year. And that's going to be the focus, to make sure that we have very disciplined conversations so that we deliver for our customers. And we see the results. We're able to produce, for example, these new [ e-tiers ] that have been very well-received and are helping us drive attach during acquisition, helping us also in terms of going back to our base and talking about these new tiers that deliver incredible value for them as well to help us stabilize the base. So Marc, do you want to get -- talk a little bit about the financial elements?

Sure. Again, the team is doing a fantastic job, again, just renegotiating and resetting programming. Our costs are down in the quarter, 16% on programming costs, I think an industry-leading measure, 15% for the full year. And we know that there's pressure on revenue, so we are targeted and focused on driving our gross margin. For every -- interesting fact, for every dollar of video declines that we see, we offset with $1.25 of programming cost reductions. And so we're just taking a different approach. In fact, typically, you see steady inflation in pricing for programmers. We're down almost 3% in the quarter on cost inflation. So we're heading in the other direction. And that's really just optimizing our packaging, our constructs, getting folks, as Dennis mentioned, on to these skinnier tiers that are meeting the customer needs. So really pleased with that. It's funny when you look back before Dennis and I started in 2022, we have certainly eroded customers and revenue tied to the video business. But on an absolute dollar basis, we actually make more money now from the video business from where we were in 2022. So again, controlling what we control. We take a very financially disciplined approach to pricing, packaging and strategy here, and I think it's paying off.

The next question is from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

I guess just housekeeping or just clarification. On the fourth quarter EBITDA, I did think, Marc, in your prepared remarks, you did say that there were some nonrecurring product revenue that kind of hit -- that drove some of that strength. Should we assume that that's 0 or very low margin contribution to the overall EBITDA in the fourth quarter?

Yes. From the fourth quarter, again, really pleased with the revenue trajectory, as we looked at the connectivity business specifically. Just as it relates to the revenue side, really where we saw some of that time -- the onetime stuff was around Lightpath tied to the hyperscaler activity that we have in the business. Now really pleased with where Lightpath is growing. As you've heard, over $250 million of contracts awarded in 2025, up from $100 million about in 2024. We're just at the start of the cycle, I think, here as it relates to Lightpath growth. So in my mind, these things will continue as we go out. I'm really pleased how we're positioned in the hyperscaler market. We're well positioned for the connectivity provider to these data centers. So feel good about how Lightpath is set up for continued growth.

Okay. And then any way to help us think about the book-to-bill and the total contract value that's been announced to date? What's the timing or phasing as we should think about that over time? Are these like 30-year IRUs? Any kind of help there?

Yes. We won't get into the specifics around the individual contracts. But again, we see that there's a large opportunity still out there for us to capture with the funnel. Really pleased on over $360 million of contracts booked to date. And again, as we turn these networks on, we'll start to see those revenues come in. And I would say the team is firing on all cylinders as far as construction and really getting those networks turned up. So beyond that, we won't comment on the specifics, just due to the confidentiality of those agreements. But really pleased on where we're positioned and really the opportunity ahead.

Got it. And then lastly on competition, I mean, is there any -- is there any -- is it concentrated in one specific market or one specific legacy operating footprint as you think about Suddenlink versus Fios in the Northeast, perhaps? Just any kind of help thinking about where the competitive intensity is coming from.

Yes. The competitive landscape continues in line with what I've shared in the past. When we look at the East, we're 75% -- I'm sorry, 70% fiber overbuilt, primarily with Verizon. We've got fixed wireless at over 85% now across the East. In the West, I mentioned last time, based on the BDC data, we were 45%, 46% overlapped with fiber. That's now up to 50%, and almost 80% in terms of fixed wireless. And so that intensity remains, but I believe that we are really well positioned in terms of having the right products, the right pricing, the right network to be able to compete. And that's exactly what we're going to be doing in '26, really going -- leveraging all of the hard work in '25 to be able to invest in our ability to go to market from an acquisition perspective and make sure that we can compete for jump balls, which, by the way, are fewer than ever just given the move environment, but then also from a base management perspective and continuing to lean into the base and mitigate churn.

Our next question is from the line of Craig Moffett with MoffettNathanson.

I want to stay on this topic of Lightpath because it really is obviously a pretty dramatic set of numbers. First of all, what portion of the growth was what you characterized as nonrecurring? And I'm curious as to what makes it nonrecurring. It's not obvious that contracts, if you see future growth in significant contracts with hyperscalers and cloud providers and the like, that, that would necessarily be nonrecurring. So I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about that and what we can expect from Lightpath going forward.

Certainly. I'll take that, Craig. Again, the Lightpath business is accelerating the growth, 35% growth in the quarter, very strong results, and exciting for the full year, you see EBITDA along with that growing 17%. When you look at the core Lightpath business, excluding the hyperscale or activity that we have going on, the business grew 8% year-over-year. So there's still strong underlying demand for just the core business. As we enter into the hyperscaler business, maybe nonrecurring is not the right choice of words. But as we stand up these networks, the sale of those networks, we recognize that revenue as we build those projects. And so as we continue to scale and get more contracts under our belt and build these new connected pipes, we'll continue to see revenue growth coming from that. So we feel pretty optimistic about where we stand today with the contracts that we were awarded and the growth that will come from that. And then more importantly, what the pipeline looks like and where we're placed in the marketplace to win incremental contracts and continue to drive our large AI-driven data center connectivity business. And so I'm really pleased, we do feel that there's a nice path of growth here, continuing growth for Lightpath.

And outside of Lightpath, in the business services segment, what are you seeing outside of the enterprise and hyperscaler market? Particularly I'm thinking with small, medium business in your core footprint. What do those trends look like?

Yes. Craig, this is Dennis. For small medium business, we remain disciplined. The environment is competitive. And so there's a lot of focus for us in terms of moving beyond just core connectivity. We've launched a whole host of new products like our Connection Backup product, like our Secure Internet product, relaunch of WiFi Pro (sic) [ PRO WiFi ]. And so we believe that there's opportunity here. And we also, earlier last year, completed the launch of the fiber products on the fiber network as well. And so we see steady trends there, and we're going to continue to lean in, as we are on the residential side, to be able to move beyond just connectivity and offer a whole host of solutions so that we can drive growth in the core B2B business as well, in the small and medium space.

Our next question is from the line of Vikash Harlalka with New Street Research.

Two, if I could. One, Dennis, you mentioned the slowing down of the pace of fiber migrations in 4Q. I was wondering if you could sort of like double click on that and just help us understand how you're thinking about 2026. And has your thinking around fiber changed at all for the long term? And then second, are there any further opportunities for you to take out non-programming costs from the business, especially in 2026?

Thanks, Vikash. On fiber, we remain very bullish on fiber. We see churn benefit, we see NPS benefit. And so we're excited. Our new builds, over 177,000 new passings, are fiber-rich, the majority of which are fiber. On fiber migrations, as you know, this has been a transformation journey. When I first joined, there were numerous technical challenges with being able to migrate folks and we had to spend the better part of the year solving those defects so that, from a technical perspective, we were able to do that seamlessly, efficiently and ensure all the products worked in the right way so that we were delivering the right customer experience. As we continued on that journey, now we really need to continue to refine the process so that we're doing this in the most cost-efficient and maximizing customer lifetime value. In full transparency, a lot of that activity was happening in our retention channel and in our care channel. We have an opportunity to really leverage our base management strategies to do that much further up the funnel so that we can maximize customer lifetime value and ARPU and ensure that we're delivering the absolute best experience. And that's why, purposely, we decided to slow down the migration process. We're continuing to drive from a gross add. We're going to take a beat and make sure we have the right strategy to be able to maximize our CLV when doing a migration. And so expect us to pull that strategy together over the next few months and then really hit the accelerator in the second half of the year, and really do that in a way that's scalable and delivers the maximum enterprise value. Again, we are going to do all of these things in a very disciplined fashion. That's how we operated in '25. And this is another area where I know that we can do this in a way that is delivering even more value to the enterprise. And so we're going to build that strategy and more to come.

I'll just add on, Vikash, for OpEx in 2026, I mean, just first reflecting on 2025, down nearly 9%, $60 million quarter over -- year-over-year in the fourth quarter, really, we talked about it going into the quarter, reflects all the optimization we have done over 2025, workforce transformation, really taking a hard look at our staff costs and marketing and really rebalancing that. We mentioned that we expected lower consulting costs as we entered in the second half of the year, and that certainly took place. So pleased on really how we are acting with discipline around managing OpEx lower. As we think about 2026, we still think the work that we did in 2025 sets us up for a strong foundation. It is going to allow us to make strategic investments in 2026, but we'll continue to try to optimize our workforce, leveraging AI and really driving out noise, truck rolls, phone calls out of the ecosystem. So we still feel like there is opportunity and we'll continue to optimize the business.

Yes. We're really pleased with the early results that leveraging AI is delivering, but we're in the early innings. And so as I mentioned earlier, we've seen a 12% increase in digital interactions. So we're shifting from phone calls to chat and mobile and self-service, and we're still in the early innings of that. We're leveraging solutions to optimize the management of our network. And so again, early innings, we're seeing great results in terms of call reduction and service visit reduction. For the year, we were able to reduce dispatch rate by almost 20%, and there's more opportunity. And so we're leaning into AI and seeing real tangible results in terms of driving efficiency, but also elevating customer experience. And so we're excited about continuing to lean in here.

The next question is from the line of Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo.

First, I just wanted to drill down a little more in the ARPU trend. So as you talked about, really strong Q4 in terms of sequential growth. It sounds like gig sell-in is a big piece of that. You also spoke to looking at doing some targeted competitive responses, including maybe price locks in 2026. So how do we wrap all that together? Do you think you can grow ARPU in 2026 and sort of continue that strong Q4 trend? And then a big-picture question on the balance sheet. On a good day, the debt is 25x the equity, on a bad day, it's closer to 50x. I know you've got a lot going on with your creditors to look at ways to improve the indebtedness over time. What do you think the scope is for something strategic where you can really maybe potentially chop that big debt stack down? Because there's just so much potential equity realization if you can do that.

I'll talk a little bit about our strategy on ARPU. And Marc, you can fill in anything I missed, and then of course, talk a little bit about the balance sheet. But from an ARPU perspective, as I mentioned, we spent '25 really laying the foundation. So we have much more command of ARPU holistically. Quite frankly, when I joined, we had little to no visibility in terms of ARPU erosion, what channel, how it was happening. We were able to use some brute force to mitigate that some. And we have now implemented solutions and tools to be able to manage that more effectively. We had little to no command over things like rate events and promo rolls. Now we have incredible visibility into -- and we've built customer segments so that we understand exactly what's happening, why it's happening, how much erosion occurs within our -- with a promo roll, with a rate event, so that we can be much more targeted and disciplined in the way we do that. And then in terms of just being able to drive sell-in of products fast for higher speeds, mobile, we haven't talked much about mobile, but we're really proud about the improvements that we've made. We, as I mentioned earlier, we were going to, again, take a step back and focus on quality. And now we've delivered a 700 basis-point improvement in churn, and we've seen incredible improvement, 10% improvement in ported phone numbers, 15% improvement in selling in new devices and financing devices. And so this will allow us to really start to scale, not only on acquisition, but also in the base. And so as we'll be able to leverage all of this foundational work to drive our go-to-market, to improve our subscriber trends and remain very disciplined from an ARPU perspective. Marc, anything to add?

I think you got it. The only thing I would just call out as you think about broadband ARPU, certainly up $2 year-over-year, nearly 3%, very strong, again, up $2 sequentially as well. It is really about the product mix that we talked about. There was timing of just the annual rate event, so we did have some of that hit in the fourth quarter. But we're going to take a measured approach to rate and volume as we turn to 2026. We're not going to provide specific guidance on this call around ARPU trends for 2026. We'll do that in the first quarter call. But pleased around how we're executing and managing in a disciplined way the rate strategy. And then on just the balance sheet, we're not going to really comment beyond what we always talked about. It is a strategic priority of ours. We do feel that there is a meaningful amount of debt reduction that we do need to obtain to really continue on our journey of transformation. But nothing more to share outside of that.

Thank you. At this time, we've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to management for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining. Please reach out to Investor Relations or Media Relations with any further questions.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.