Optimum Communications, Inc. (OPTU) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, everyone. Welcome to Optimum Communications Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Sarah Freedman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to the Optimum's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm joined today by Optimum's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Mathew; and Chief Financial Officer, Marc Sirota. Dennis and Marc will walk you through the first quarter results and then be available for a question-and-answer session. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements. Please take a moment to review the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements included on Slide 2 of our presentation as actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures today. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dennis.

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. As we entered 2026, we were clear that this needs to be a year of sharper execution, smarter competitive response and continued transformation. To accomplish this, we laid out 3 priorities: improve broadband trends, maintain financial discipline, and invest for long-term value creation in addition to evolving our capital structure. In the first quarter, we took deliberate steps to advance each of these areas, and our results reflect both the reality of an intense competitive environment and the impact of those strategic actions underway. Total revenue was $2.1 billion, and adjusted EBITDA was $789 million. Broadband subscriber net losses totaled 64,000 in the quarter or 56,000 excluding a subscriber adjustment taken in the quarter related to prior periods. Mobile delivered its strongest quarter in the past 6 years with 52,000 line net adds. And we saw progress on video churn, which improved by over 400 basis points year-over-year on an annualized basis, supported by the adoption of our tiered offerings and streaming solutions. Operationally, we are focused on improving the stability and quality of our subscriber base. Customers today are making more thoughtful choices about where they spend and were meeting that moment by continuing to adapt our go-to-market approach. We are remaining nimble in adjusting our offers to lead with value without compromising on quality. As I will cover in more detail shortly, we are simplifying our go-to-market model to compete more effectively on entry pricing. At the same time, we are focused on providing customers with more value, strengthening loyalty, expanding product penetration and mix, and increasing sell-through within the base. The clearest validation of this approach is the momentum we are seeing in convergence. Customers who take both broadband and mobile churn at a meaningfully lower rate and generate higher lifetime value compared to broadband-only customers. To better capture this impact, we are evolving how we measure performance through the introduction of convergence ARPU as a new metric this quarter, which reflects the value of these relationships. We believe this is the right lens through which to track our progress because it demonstrates the value that broadband plus mobile relationships create value that is increasingly not visible in stand-alone product metrics. On cost, we remain disciplined. We are continuing to optimize direct costs and operating expenses and make targeted investments in AI and automation, reducing truck rolls, improving first call resolution and enabling our teams to serve customers and manage our networks more efficiently and proactively. Together, these actions are what we expect to drive margin expansion and structurally lower our operating cost base over time. Lastly, as Marc will speak to in more detail shortly, addressing our balance sheet remains a top priority. As we move forward, we continue to evaluate opportunities to strengthen our capital structure, to better position the business for long-term value creation. I'll cover each of our priorities in a moment, but the common thread is this. We are taking the right steps to build a more resilient business and we remain focused on executing with the urgency that this environment demands. With that, let me turn to the 2026 priorities, which we introduced last quarter and provide more detail on the progress we are making. The theme across everything we are doing this year is applying simplification to drive acceleration. As we continuously evaluate both the business and competitive environment, we have taken a step back to identify where complexity is slowing us down across pricing, products and operations and we are consciously working to simplify the business so we can move faster, execute more consistently and compete more effectively. Starting with broadband. The broadband environment in the first quarter remained as competitive as any we have seen. Across our footprint, ILECs fixed wireless providers and fiber overbuilders all continue to lean aggressively into lower entry pricing, extended price locks and promotional incentives. In the West, in particular, the competitive profile has shifted considerably with the expansion of fixed wireless availability as well as fiber overbuilders further intensifying market dynamics in an already challenging landscape. This is the backdrop against which we are executing. That said, we remain focused on what we can control. Our response has been to simplify and establish a more consistent and competitive product and pricing structure across our footprint. While this may lead to near-term pressure on broadband ARPU from gross additions, it is a deliberate step to stabilize subscriber trends. In practice, our simplified approach is based on standardizing pricing and core offers national while driving incremental sales of value-added services like mobile, our new video products, Whole Home WiFi and Total Care to partially offset this pressure. Our next priority, maintaining financial discipline is embedded in how we run the business every day. We are focused on making consistent, deliberate decisions that protect and strengthen the economics of the business for the long term, even when that means absorbing near-term pressure. As Marc will highlight, we are focused on minimizing the rate of non-video revenue declines and are taking deliberate steps to improve video margins through driving higher attach of our new video packages, continuing our approach to analytic-based programming contract negotiations and growing video ARPU. In the first quarter, adjusted EBITDA declined by 1.3% while margins expanded year-over-year, reflecting revenue decline of 4% and a continued focus on cost management and operational efficiency. Within direct costs, we are benefiting from favorable programming cost trends and continued video ARPU growth, which is driving sustained video gross margin expansion of almost 350 basis points year-over-year and nearly 1,000 basis points in the last 3 years. Importantly, these efficiency gains have strengthened our cost structure without compromising the customer experience as reflected in our transactional Net Promoter Score, which has remained at a 2-year high. Finally, we ended the quarter with $1.3 billion of liquidity, providing us with the flexibility to continue executing on our key priorities and investing in the business in the near term. Building on that, the discipline we apply to how we operate also guides how we invest for long-term value creation. In short, we are prioritizing capital allocation in the areas with the strongest opportunity to drive sustained growth and returns. A big part of that, of course, is our award-winning network. We remain focused on building fiber, selling fiber and continuing to migrate customers organically within our base, having expanded our network by over 500,000 homes passed over the past 3 years. As we think about where to direct our resources, growing broadband is the top priority, and our operational decisions reflect that. While fiber migration remains an important part of our long-term road map, we are currently prioritizing new builds and new broadband customer trends over migrations of existing customers to fiber. Over time, we expect to reengage more proactively to transition customers to fiber. But in the current environment, we are focused on investing where we see the highest near-term returns and greatest impact on long-term value creation. Lightpath remains a meaningful growth engine, delivering over 8% year-over-year revenue growth and almost 10% adjusted EBITDA growth. We are also investing in the customer experience by improving self-install capabilities, improving the My Optimum digital platform and continuing to build tools that make it easier for our teammates to serve our customers and for our customers to do business with us. Taken together, our capital investments are targeted at the areas where the returns are clearest, and we continue to manage our overall capital intensity with the same discipline we apply across the rest of the business. Next, on Slide 5, I'll spend some time on our go-to-market and base strategies around driving improved trends. On the acquisition side, it starts with making it easier for customers to understand our value through simpler offers and more competitive entry pricing. On the sales side, we are providing clear pathways to upsell into higher speed tiers and value-added services and are beginning to leverage AI-driven performance management. While we are still in the early stages, this collective approach is driving channel improvements. Year-over-year gross add decline is moderating. Sales channel yield has improved meaningfully, and we're seeing relatively stable gross add ARPU, all reflecting a healthier acquisition model. Importantly, our lower, more competitive entry pricing serves as a strong acquisition generator, bringing in customers through lower speed tiers advertised, while the majority continue to choose 1 gig speed at sign-up. You can see that pull-through in our residential broadband base. The portion of customers taking 1 gig or higher has grown to approximately 47%, up from 37% a year ago and 21% in 2023. We are leveraging a lower entry price point to drive multiproduct upsell, increasing bundle adoption among new customers and supporting stronger lifetime value. At the same time, we are starting to take a more proactive approach to base management to improve churn. Over half of our residential broadband customers have been with us for more than 5 years and over 1/3 have been with us for more than 10 years. We are being deliberate about reinforcing customer loyalty and protecting our long tenured base. We recently launched the Optimum Thank You loyalty program which focuses on customer engagement and value adds, such as speed upgrades and price lock offerings. We are beginning to see encouraging early indicators from these efforts, including improved customer perception and retention in select markets. Together, we expect that strengthening our competitiveness combined with improved sales conversion, marketing execution and better base management provide the right road map to improve subscriber trends over time. Turning to Slide 6. Our broadband and mobile convergence momentum continues to build as customers increasingly look for simplicity, value and a single provider for their connectivity needs. Broadband remains the anchor product in the home, while mobile plays a critical role in enhancing that value. By bundling mobile with broadband, we're increasing customer stickiness, improving retention and driving higher lifetime value. We delivered strong mobile growth in the first quarter, reaching 674,000 mobile lines. This is supported by continued improvement in our go-to-market execution, including stronger sales quality, better experience, more competitive offers with everyday low pricing and discounts on broadband and a focus on multiline adoption, all of which are driving higher value customer additions. This is reinforced by our recently launched UnBIG Your Bill campaign which highlights meaningful annual savings compared to the major carriers. Mobile customer penetration in our broadband base reached almost 9% in the first quarter, while we have steadily grown convergence in our base we still see significant runway to continue to drive mobile attachment and deepen penetration among existing customers. More broadly, our entry offer plus attach model is central to our strategy and how we go to market. Every new broadband customer is an opportunity to deepen the relationship and attach mobile as well as video, Whole Home WiFi, Total Care or other value-added services. This approach allows us to balance more competitive entry pricing with stronger lifetime value. Moving to Slide 7. Video continues to play an important role in how we create value across customer relationships helping drive retention and add value within the bundle. We recognize that customer behavior has evolved and our approach reflects that. We're focused on giving customers more choice and flexibility while improving the overall economics of the business. We're seeing that shift play out in the adoption of our simplified video tiers, Entertainment, Extra and Everything TV, which we scaled last year. These packages are better aligned with how people consume content today and represented the majority of sell-in during the quarter with adoption within our residential video base increasing from 6% of the base in Q1 '25 and to 17% in the first quarter of '26. Importantly, these new tiers are demonstrating upwards of 20% churn improvement within video compared to legacy packages, reinforcing their role in improving retention and long-term customer value. We are also continuing to enhance how we merchandise these tiers, better showcasing the breadth of the included streaming apps and the inherent value customers received as part of their Optimum TV subscription. For example, our top-tier Everything TV includes access to over 50 apps representing significant streaming value compared to purchasing these services separately. We are also emphasizing the simplicity of a unified login and billing relationship through Optimum, helping to drive greater engagement and product attachment across our base. By more tightly integrating broadband and streaming directly into our go-to-market approach, we are creating a seamless and connected customer experience that is beginning to show early retention benefits. With that in mind, we are optimizing the video business for margins and long-term value, while it continues to play an important role in reducing broadband churn. So while video revenue continues to be under pressure, driven by a declining video subscriber base, we are, however, growing video unit economics on ARPU while stabilizing programming cost inflation per subscriber. As a result, we have seen an expansion of residential video gross margin by 1,000 basis points from approximately 14% in the first quarter of '23 to 24% in Q1 of '26. In summary, we've strengthened video subscriber trends by better aligning with evolving customer preferences, while simultaneously enhancing profitability. Stepping back, we are focused on executing against what we can control, simplifying the business, strengthening our competitiveness and taking a more proactive approach to improving retention and driving greater lifetime value. While the environment remains challenging and our near-term results reflect these headwinds, we're encouraged by early signs in go-to-market execution and continued convergence momentum. Combined with our ongoing focus on cost discipline and targeted investment, we believe these actions position us to improve trends and build a more durable, resilient business over time. With that, I'll turn it over to Marc to walk through our financial and operating results in greater detail.

Thank you, Dennis. Starting on Slide 8, I'll review our subscriber trends. Before going into the details, our first quarter 2026 results include subscriber adjustments taken in the quarter, which relate to prior periods. The impact of these adjustments was not material for any one period presented, and as such, prior period metrics were not restated. The performance presented on this slide excludes this adjustment, which affects broadband and video trends. The underlying trends I'll walk through are consistent with the performance we see in the business. While Dennis covered some quarterly subscriber results, I want to highlight a few additional points. First, on broadband, net subscriber declines 56,000 in the quarter, excluding the adjustment, ending the quarter with 4.1 million broadband subscribers. Trends in the quarter reflect continued competitive intensity, which resulted in muted gross add activity as well as elevated churn year-over-year amid intensified promotional activity across the market. In response, we're taking targeted steps, including remaining agile in our go-to-market approach, staying competitive in our pricing and continuously evolving to meet the market dynamics. In mobile, we continue to build momentum in the first quarter. We added 52,000 net lines, our best quarterly performance in approximately 6 years, growing mobile lines by 33% year-over-year. Importantly, the quality of those additions is improving. We are seeing stronger multiline attach, higher device financing rates and more customers porting their phone numbers, all of which are indicators of deeper, more durable customer relationships. This is contributing to a meaningful churn improvement with annualized mobile churn improving by over 790 basis points in the quarter. Video subscriber net losses were 51,000, excluding the adjustment noted earlier. Underlying trends remained improved from the prior year losses. And as Dennis noted, these trends are consistent with our strategy to enhance customer choice and flexibility while also improving margin profile on video. Finally, on fiber, we added 13,000 customers in the quarter, bringing our total to 729,000 fiber customers, up over 20% year-over-year. As expected, net additions moderated year-over-year, reflecting a more intentional and disciplined approach to migrations. We continue to see fiber as a meaningful long-term value driver and remain focused on deploying capital where we can generate the strongest returns. Moving to Slide 9. I'll review our Q1 financials. Total revenue of almost $2.1 billion declined 4% year-over-year. As with recent quarters, the decline is concentrated in residential video, which declined approximately 10%. Excluding video, revenues declined 1.6% year-over-year. Business services revenue of $364 million grew slightly year-over-year, driven primarily by Lightpath revenue growth of 8%. News and advertising revenue grew approximately 17%, driven by advertising strength related to the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics. Residential connectivity and all other, which includes residential broadband, mobile, telephony as well as all other revenue, declined year-over-year by 4.1%, reflecting broadband subscriber pressure, partially offset by mobile revenue growth. As we expect total subscriber volumes to continue to impact our top line performance, we anticipate total revenue to decline mid-single digits in the full year 2026. Turning to ARPU. Residential ARPU of $132.32 declined by 1.2% year-over-year or by $1.61 driven primarily by product mix shift away from video. Video's contribution to the year-over-year decline was $2.36, which was partially offset by non-video ARPU growth of $0.75, mainly tied to convergence. This quarter, we introduced convergence ARPU as a metric that captures our underlying focus of selling more products to our broadband customers. Specifically, it captures broadband and mobile service as well as our other high-margin broadband products, such as Whole Home WiFi. As Dennis mentioned, we are driving multiproduct sell-in, which is allowing us to maintain ARPU discipline while remaining competitive on our go-to-market broadband pricing. Given the increasing importance of convergence in our strategy, we believe this provides a more meaningful view of customer value by capturing the combined economics of the relationship and the impact of bundling on unit economics. Convergence ARPU grew 1.2% year-over-year to $79.32. Convergence ARPU is calculated by dividing the average monthly revenue from broadband and mobile services by the average number of residential broadband relationships and excludes mobile-only customers. We expect convergence ARPU to become an increasingly important metric on how we evaluate the business. That said, we will continue to balance rate and volume throughout the course of the year as we push to improve the underlying trends on broadband customer results, we do anticipate pressure on ARPU in the full year, particularly from broadband growth additions as we focus on prioritizing volume stabilization and multiproduct penetration. We believe this shift will ultimately drive stronger attach and improve the overall value of the customer relationship, supporting more durable revenue and ARPU growth over time. As a result, we would expect both broadband ARPU and convergence ARPU to decline on a year-over-year basis for the full year. We will remain nimble and adjust our rate strategy based on the individual market dynamics we see throughout our footprint and over the duration of 2026. Continuing on Slide 10. Gross margin reached 69.4%, expanding 60 basis points year-over-year. This reflects both the product mix shift towards higher-margin products such as broadband as well as disciplined execution to improve all product margins, particularly in video. Adjusted EBITDA of $789 million declined 1.3% year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 110 basis points to 38.2%. This reflects lower revenue, partially offset by lower programming and direct costs and lower operating expenses. Programming and direct costs declined by almost 6%, driven by programming costs down almost 13% year-over-year. Other operating expenses, excluding share-based compensation, was down 5% year-over-year in the first quarter. We maintained tight controls over operating expenses driven by meaningful operational efficiencies. Call volumes declined by 23%, contributing to 39% fewer truck rolls and a 16% reduction in service visits. In addition, salary costs were reduced by over 13% year-over-year. Building on this momentum, we are deploying additional tools and initiatives to further optimize operating expenses over time with a continued focus on enhancing the customer experience. Net loss in the quarter was approximately $2.9 billion, which includes a noncash impairment charge of $2.7 billion related to our indefinite live cable franchise rights. This was a noncash charge and does not affect our cash flow, liquidity or ongoing operations. A full reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income is available in the earnings release posted on our website. Given the expected declines in revenues, partially offset by continued discipline on both direct costs and OpEx, we expect adjusted EBITDA to decline low to mid-single digits in the full year. Turning to Slide 11. I'll walk through our capital expenditures and network investment. As we execute on our strategic priorities and focus on strengthening the balance sheet, capital efficiency remains a key priority. Consistent with that approach, we anticipate total capital expenditures in 2026 in the range of $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion. This quarter, we've broken out our capital expenditures between maintenance, growth and Lightpath capital. As you recall, in prior years, we had a more significant fiber overbuild program across our existing footprint. And we have since pulled back on that activity as we have shifted our investment focus. As a result, growth capital, excluding fiber overbuild and maintenance capital, have remained relatively steady over the last few years, and we expect similar ranges in the full year 2026. On Lightpath, we continue to invest in growth, with expected annual capital expenditures in the range of $200 million to $300 million, primarily supporting construction tied to recently announced hyperscale contracts. Looking ahead, our broader capital envelope will remain focused on building fiber in new markets, simultaneously growing our fiber footprint and our total footprint, which will continue to be recaptured in growth CapEx. Alongside this, where we do not have fiber, we are investing in our HFC network, leveraging mid-split frequency allocations to increase bandwidth, and we are testing new technologies and architectures to improve the efficient use of capacity to enable higher speeds across certain markets. Our fiber network offers up to 8 gig symmetrical speeds, and we have a path to deploy multi-gig speeds across portions of our HFC network. We began launching these capabilities in select communities late last year and now offer download speeds of up to 2 gigabits per second in parts of our West Virginia HFC markets. Overall, we're taking a disciplined and return-focused approach with growth capital, making strategic investments to support long-term top line performance while retaining the flexibility to adjust the pace of investment as operating conditions evolve. For Q1, capital expenditures of $308 million represented approximately 15% capital intensity. We ended the first quarter with approximately 10 million total passings and 3.1 million fiber passings, with 190,000 total passings added over the last 12 months. We expect total passing expansion in the full year 2026 to be consistent with prior year trends of 150,000 to 175,000 passing additions. Finally, I want to turn to our capital structure, which remains a critical priority for us and one we are actively working to advance. We ended the quarter with approximately $1.3 billion in liquidity, giving us the financial flexibility to run operations, serve our customers and invest in our key priorities without disruption in the near term. Over the past several quarters, we have taken a series of deliberate steps to strengthen our balance sheet and extend financial flexibility. In January, we completed a $1.1 billion refinancing of our asset-backed loan facility through a transaction with JPMorgan. In addition, in March, Lightpath closed on an approximately $1.7 billion ABS transaction. The proceeds of the transactions were used primarily to repay existing Lightpath indebtedness and extend maturity. At the end of the first quarter, our weighted average cost of debt is 6.8%. Our weighted average life of debt is 3.1 years and 81% of our total debt stack is fixed and our leverage ratio is 7.5x the last 2 quarters annualized adjusted EBITDA. Looking ahead, we are aware of the upcoming maturities, and we are focused on addressing them proactively and with urgency. Our priority is putting the right long-term capital structure in place, one that supports our operating goals, reduces leverage and maximizes value for all stakeholders. While we were not in a position to share specific details today, this is an active process, and we will provide updates as there is news to share. We continue to believe that meaningful debt reduction and a balance sheet reset are essential to the next phase of our transformation, and we are committed to getting there. While we continue to operate in a highly competitive environment, we remain focused on the disciplined execution and the actions within our control to drive more consistent and sustainable performance, supported by the evolution of our go-to-market approach and our base management strategy. Underpinning this is a continued focus of ARPU discipline, cost management, capital efficiency and strengthening of the balance sheet alongside a more deliberate approach to capital allocation and investment to support long-term value creation. Taken together, these actions reflect the progress we've made over the past several years in gaining greater command of the business and positioning it for more durable performance over time. While there is more work ahead, we are confident in the strategy we have in place and the progress we are making, and we remain committed to consistent execution as we move through 2026. With that, we will open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Frank Louthan from Raymond James.

Great. Can you give us a little more color on the overlap of fixed wireless in your territory and specifically the overlap fixed wireless in the West? That would be my first question. And then given the importance of the pay TV base, I understand ARPU is up a little bit, but talk to us about how you can continue to use that base to minimize churn. And is there any way to lean into that and maybe expand that base to reduce churn going forward?

Thanks, Frank. Fixed wireless and the competitive intensity remains high. As we think about the overlap, it's about 85% overlap of our footprint in the East, almost 80% in the West. We have all the players across the board, T-Mobile and AT&T fixed air as well as Verizon. We compete very heavily with T-Mo in the East and AT&T in particular, and T-Mo in the West. That being said, we feel really good about our product portfolio. We see that customers are demanding quality and value and pricing transparency, and we're providing that. We've invested heavily over the last few years in terms of investing in the network and now winning awards for the quality and the speeds that our network is providing. And our new go-to-market strategy has helped us simplify our pricing and packaging to provide great value and to provide great transparency with the 5-year price locks that we're making available to customers. And so the intensity is high, but we are in the early innings with our new strategy. And we know that customers are demanding faster speeds. We're selling at the point of sale, gig plus multi-gig speeds at 50% plus, which is great, and we see that usage is higher than ever. And so we're going to continue to drive that. And we're excited about our video strategy. We've taken a lot of time to reimagine video. We've improved profitability. We've also had a focus on customer -- the evolving customer needs. And we've developed these new e-tiers that are resonating with our base and at the point of sale, the new tiers are delivering 20% churn benefit relative to the legacy tiers. And we're making available streaming products and the streaming products are resonating with our customers, and we're excited about how we're able to meet the customer needs as well as drive profitability. As we mentioned, we are driving higher gross margins across the video portfolio, and we're delivering churn benefit and value to our customers, and so we're going to continue to lean into that across both the East and the West.

Our next question is from Vikash Harlalka from New Street Research.

Two, if I could. Dennis, I just wanted to clarify one of your key priorities. You mentioned that you're targeting an improvement in broadband subscriber trends this year? Are you targeting an improvement in broadband subscriber loss as compared to last year? And if that's the case, how do you get there given 1Q was worse than last year? And then on EBITDA, it seems like EBITDA decline is going to be similar to last year or maybe slightly worse, is the reset in broadband pricing impacting EBITDA growth this year? And where are you on the cost reduction of 4% to 6% that you outlined last year for us?

Yes. The good news is that 3.5 years in, we have more command of the business than ever. As I mentioned in the last quarter, our objective was to land our EBITDA objectives and really drive efficiency in the business so that we could reinvest and get back to broadband growth. And we're excited about the strategy that we've launched. It's very early innings, very early. We have some key success metrics that we're focused on in terms of driving call volume, driving shoppers on the site, driving conversion in our sales channels, which is at the highest levels ever, particularly in inbound sales and retail, being able to manage our base more effectively. And so our objective is absolutely to get back to broadband growth. And we are thoughtfully investing so that we can get there. And so the EBITDA decline and where we are is absolutely something that we're in command of because we invested in ARPU to be able to drive different results. And we know our customers are demanding more quality, more value, more pricing transparency, and part of that was providing value with mobile, providing value with Total Care, with Whole Home WiFi, with the new video products. And so we are executing that play. And I'm really proud of the team in terms of how we're executing. As I mentioned last quarter, we had to take a step back on mobile. And we really had to evolve that playbook, and we see the results now. The highest quarter in mobile in the last 6 years. And so we're going to continue to be disciplined in terms of driving our go-to-market strategy, but doing that in a financially disciplined fashion. But I'll throw it over to Marc, if you want -- Marc, if you want to share a little bit more on the EBITDA and cost reduction plan.

Sure. We are pleased on how we're managing gross margin. You see that accelerating in the quarter, up 60 bps year-over-year, and we continue to drive down costs from both direct costs and our OpEx cost down 5% year-over-year. So I think our guidance suggests that we continue to believe that we'll see continued discipline around both of those. And as you know, video is a main contributor of what's weighing down, some of our video top line revenue pressure, but we're being deliberate there and offsetting most of that decline and improving gross margins in the video space. And so pleased how the teams are operating and we expect to continue to drive efficiency into the business. We're launching and continue to launch AI technologies. We're seeing meaningful reductions in call volumes, truck rolls, service visits rates. We're managing our workforce more efficiently. Cost down 13% year-over-year. So pleased on how we're managing the bottom line. And again, we'll continue to update you as we go throughout the year.

Our next question is from Kutgun Maral from Evercore.

Two, if I could. Maybe first on mobile, results there continue to be quite strong. You're already at almost, I think, 9% penetration of the broadband base. This might be a hard question to answer since we don't get a lot of visibility into mobile profitability. But I'd be curious at what level of penetration or scale do you think you need to be at for the mobile strategy to have a more meaningful uplift to consolidated EBITDA? And then is there any color you could provide on free cash flow for the full year?

Sure. I'll start, and then I'll let Marc jump in. But just in terms of our strategy for mobile, we're very pleased with the progress. As I had mentioned, we needed to take a step back to ensure that we were delivering the highest quality sales and highest quality customers. And so we're laser-focused on driving porting phone numbers, device financing, unlimited plans, and we see that in the results. We see a meaningful improvement in our churn. In the mobile churn, we also see a meaningful impact more broadly in terms of impact on broadband churn, a 20% churn benefit when folks take both broadband and mobile. And so we're still in the early innings. We're almost at 9% penetration, but we're not taking the foot off the accelerator. We have all of our channels now participating, and we're doing it in a way that's really high-quality and we're excited for the growth potential and the churn benefit and the value that we can provide to our customers. And as Marc mentioned, we're really focused on converged ARPU because that is a key indicator of how we're managing the business, selling in broadband, selling in mobile, selling in these value-added services to provide the most value to our customers. Marc, do you want to talk a little bit about the profitability piece?

Sure. I mean we're pleased on trajectory. As we grow scale, we do continue to see that our margins are improving within the product line of mobile specifically. And so as we gain scale we expect that trend to continue. Specifically on your free cash flow question, we did see slight improvement year-over-year in the quarter. Again, weighing down free cash flow is really tied to the interest costs that we're bearing, but we're not going to provide specific guidance on full year free cash flow. There's a lot of factors at play. And so we'll certainly update you as we go throughout the year.

Our next question is from Sam McHugh from BNP.

Sorry about that. Just two questions, if I can. One on the EBITDA decline this year. Does that include the benefit of the sale of i24? And then if we strip out political advertising, is it fair to think about underlying EBITDA declining maybe high single digits? And then secondly, on the ARPU side, is kind of the Q1 decline of 1.7%, a pretty good run rate to think about for the rest of the year? Any extra color there would be helpful.

Sure, I'll throw it to Marc.

Sure. The EBITDA guidance, again, reflects mainly the revenue pressure that we see from volume losses, again, tied mainly to the video subscribers. Again, our focus continues to be on driving gross margins on video. And certainly, as Dennis mentioned, we're taking deliberate steps around stabilizing broadband. So that may, in the near term, continue to weigh on ARPUs. Again, our focus there is deliberate. We're driving multiproduct sell-in including mobile convergence and other value-added services to mitigate some of that pressure. But certainly, the volume pressures will continue to weigh on revenue. And then certainly, as we talked about EBITDA, will benefit from disposing of the i24 asset. Last year, our guidance contemplates that as well. The advertising business, we expect we had some strength in the quarter tied to the Super Bowl and the Olympics. We expect political in the back half of the year to kick in as well with the midterms, and so that's how we're thinking about it.

Yes. But ultimately, as we had mentioned, coming off of the last call, we're investing to stabilize broadband, and that's a deliberate strategy and plan we have made a thoughtful decision that we're going to get back to broadband stabilization, and we've learned a ton over the last year. As we see the competitive landscape continue to evolve, we made a thoughtful decision to invest in our pricing and our packaging. And at the same time, ensure that we have the discipline of being able to upsell mobile, upsell value-added services, drive in our new e-tiers so that ultimately, we can moderate that investment as we see, as we learn, as we look at the data, as we see stabilization. And so we're going to remain flexible and nimble. The good news is that we have more command of our OpEx than ever. We have clear line of sight as to where we can continue to drive efficiency, and we're going to do that, leveraging AI, driving down contact rate, driving down truck rolls. Our dispatch rate is at an all-time low. We're investing in self-install. That's another opportunity to improve the customer experience while driving efficiency. Customers want simplicity. They want transparency. They want value, and we can provide that and we'll manage that in a financially disciplined fashion.

Can I just follow up on i24, is there an assumption that deal closes in the first quarter? Apologies if it's already closed.

Yes. That deal has actually closed.

Our next question is from Kannan Venkateshwar from Barclays.

Maybe just on the balance sheet side. Could you give us a sense for the cash that you have, the $1.3 billion that you mentioned, I mean, how long can that last to run operations? I mean when do you need to refinance? And then the debt maturity coming up. I mean, I know you can't talk a lot about it. But conceptually, when you think about the way you're thinking about alternatives to refinance your maturities, should we broadly think about more asset-based options rather than other alternatives? Any sense that you can give us will be helpful.

Yes, I can take that, Dennis. Yes, we ended the quarter with about $1.3 billion of liquidity. That does give us the financial flexibility to run our operations, serve our customers, invest in key priorities without disruption in the near term. As it relates to debt, certainly, as we've communicated, it's one of the company's key strategic priorities is really ensuring that we have the right capital structure to support our long-term objectives. As we've mentioned, we believe a meaningful debt reduction is required and a reset of the balance sheet are essential to this continued transformation, being given us the ability to compete effectively, invest thoughtfully to maximize really value for all stakeholders. Beyond that, Kannan, we're not going to today in a position to share more specifics, but we'll certainly update the market when we have something to share.

Our next question is from Craig Moffett from MoffettNathanson.

We all focus a lot on the broadband ARPU trend of percentages and that sort of thing. But I wonder if you could just comment on what your long-term expectation is for broadband price levels. You've got prices now in the market in the sub-$50 range that are promotional, not clear where they're going to end up in kind of long-term pricing. What do you think is kind of the North Star that you think about for where prices are likely to settle out in your markets?

Yes. We have launched this new strategy to ensure that we are hyper competitive across our footprint, both in the East and the West. As you've seen, we are competing at the highest level, but then also making sure that we're disciplined about driving mobile, driving value-added services and really driving converged ARPU. We're in the early innings in terms of being able to drive attach of these products. I think we have a lot of upside opportunity when we look at converged ARPU and how we can even more effectively in the days to come, attach mobile at the point of sale, attach mobile into our base, be able to drive these new value-added services like Total Care, like Whole Home WiFi and also leverage our video products even more effectively as we move forward. And now that we have streaming also available, just making it very simple for our customers to be able to have one relationship for their connectivity in the home, outside the home and also for their entertainment purposes with robust video solutions. And so we'll find the right balance in terms of being able to manage converged ARPU as a whole and making sure that we're maximizing customer lifetime value. That's what this is all about. We need to be able to show up differently than we have in the past. There's been this focus on, of course, broadband ARPU, but ultimately, our customers are looking for value. They're looking for value and transparency and clarity on their pricing, and it's our job to earn the trust of our customers, which we've been doing over the last 3.5 years, rebuilding quality, rebuilding the customer experience and now making sure they have transparency into their pricing and packaging and providing them not just broadband, but other incredible products to be able to drive our converged ARPU goals and objectives.

Our next question is from Steven Cahall from Wells Fargo.

Maybe first, just a follow-up on Craig's question. Is there a way in dollar terms to think about where residential broadband ARPU needs to settle? I'm just thinking about where fixed wireless and fiber compete in the market today, especially some of those new ones probably closer to $70 to $75. So curious if that's right. And if broadband ARPU has that kind of trajectory over the next few years. And then also, we're increasingly hearing about some of the plans of satellite and how satellite will compete in the market. It seems like a less likely competitor in your East footprint. But I'm wondering if in the West, where I think you've seen more impact from fixed wireless. If you think satellite will be an incremental competitor or sort of just another layer in an already competitive market so less of an impact?

Yes, I'll talk a little bit about satellite and let Marc talk to ARPU. But on the satellite front, I have no doubt that satellite will be a fierce competitor in the future. But as of right now, we're not seeing that satellite meaningfully across our footprint in the East or the West. Our primary focus right now and as we look at win share and loss share and flow of share, we see much more prominently competitors like the fiber overbuilders, the telcos and fixed wireless, but I have no doubt over time we may see satellite. But at the end of the day, our ability to compete with the incredible network and product portfolio is going to be what ultimately sets us apart.

And Steven, just back on ARPU, again, I would just continue to reiterate what Dennis talked about around convergence ARPU being what we believe is the key metric to measure success. And I pivot away from just looking at individual product of broadband, it eliminates the noise between the allocations of revenue between those products as we sell bundled services in. It is -- speaks to just directly how we're actually selling the product on the ground with our customers, with our agents. So we're pleased with the growth that we saw in the quarter, up nearly $1 year-over-year, up 1.2%. We won't give a specific target as far as dollars. But again, we're going to be nimble on how we manage convergence ARPU. We're making deliberate investments, as we talked about to drive a better performance on broadband subscribers. But beyond that, we think convergence ARPU is the right metric to really anchor our business. That's how we're anchoring it and how we feel others should anchor.

Our final question is from Michael Rollins from Citi.

So two, if I could, please. So first, you have a lot of markets and a number of them, particularly in the East have experienced fiber competition for a longer period of time than most. And so within that context, are you seeing micro market level turnaround where you're achieving stabilization or improvement in broadband that can inform you on the formula and the timing to get the broader portfolio to that opportunity? And then the second question is what are you learning -- and this kind of relates, I think, to some of the past questions. But maybe to ask it this way, what are you learning about the long-term earnings power or EBITDA power for the Optimum portfolio when you evaluate all the things that you talked about today, the investments in customer pricing, it could also be OpEx and CapEx? And what you think you need to do to stabilize the broadband base and defend a reasonable share across your markets?

Yes. Let me take the first portion of that, and then I'll throw it over to Marc, but that's exactly right. It's taken us some time, but we've had to build the infrastructure to be able to look at performance at the market level. We -- when I started, we formed 6 regions where we can have local level management and ensure that we have a local presence. And the good news is that we are seeing improvements. As we think about certain markets, particularly in the East, we're seeing that we are moving the needle exactly the way we want to move the needle when we think about call volumes, when we think about shoppers, when we think about yield in our sales channels. And so this is the level of data that we have now and the level that we're managing at to help inform the broader strategy. At the same time, as I think about year-over-year, the competitive intensity in the West has ratcheted up. And so we need to continue to look at what it's going to take to win there and how we evolve. The good news is that in certain markets. Again, we're seeing that the new pricing, the new packaging, the product portfolio is really starting to resonate. We do need to make sure that we're optimizing our media spend across the footprint, which is also very different when you think about the East versus certain markets in the West to make sure that we're on the ground telling that story most effectively so that we can see a differentiated outcome market by market. And that's the level that we're managing the business today. We're seeing some of those wins, and we're working to extrapolate that across the footprint so that we can do that at scale in a meaningful fashion.

And Mike, we won't provide specific long-term guidance as far as EBITDA is concerned. But certainly, we're trying to control what we can control. We're making deliberate steps to improve our broadband trends. We're controlling our direct costs and accelerating gross margin. We're controlling OpEx. We believe that there's continued runway to be more efficient, leverage AI to drive efficiency. So again, we'll control what we can control, and we won't provide longer-term guidance as it relates to EBITDA at this point.

Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

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

This call has concluded. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.