Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. (TDS) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the TDS and Array Second Quarter 2026 Operating Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to John Toomey, Treasurer, Vice President and Head of Corporate Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. The presentation we prepared to accompany our comments this morning can be found on the Investor Relations sections of the TDS and Array websites. With me today and offering prepared comments are -- on behalf of TDS, Walter Carlson, President and CEO; Vicki Villacrez, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. On behalf of TDS Telecom, Ken Dixon, President and CEO of TDS Telecom; Kris Bothfeld, Vice President of Financial Analysis and Strategic Planning of TDS. On behalf of Array Digital Infrastructure, Anthony Carlson, President and CEO of Array. This call is being simultaneously webcast on the TDS and Array Investor Relations websites. Please see the websites for the slides referenced on this call, including non-GAAP reconciliations. TDS and Array filed their SEC Forms 8-K, including the press releases earlier this morning. As shown on Slide 2, the information set forth in the presentation and discussed during this call contains statements about expected future events and financial results that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. Please review the safe harbor paragraphs in our press releases and the full description of risk factors included in our SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to TDS President and CEO, Walter Carlson. Walter?

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Today, we are pleased to share the second quarter results for TDS and Array Digital Infrastructure. Before we get to those results, I wanted to note that we will not be providing an update today on the status of TDS' previously announced offer to acquire the minority interest of Array in an all-stock transaction. That process is ongoing. TDS will not be commenting further or taking questions on this topic during today's call. Now turning to our 2026 enterprise priorities, we are at the midpoint of the year, and we continue to make steady progress across each of these 5 focus areas. As I've noted previously, our focus remains on advancing our strategy with financial and operational discipline. In addition, both business units continue to advance their individual operational goals. TDS Telecom added meaningful fiber addresses and customers during the quarter. Array increased tower tenancy quarter-over-quarter and has now successfully completed transactions to monetize virtually all of its spectrum outside of the C-band. I continue to be pleased with the progress each business unit is making and by the work underway to strengthen our culture during this period of transformation. I would like to personally thank every associate across the enterprise for their continued commitment and contributions. I will now turn the call over to Vicki.

Thank you, Walter, and good morning, everyone. The transactions we have completed over the past year, including Array's spectrum sale to Verizon in June, have strengthened our balance sheet and created meaningful capital flexibility. That improved flexibility provides a strong foundation for how we approach capital allocation and strategic opportunities. It allows us to continue to make decisions with a clear focus on financial health, strategic alignment and long-term value. Slide 4 provides an update on our progress. First, TDS Telecom continues to advance its long-term objective of 2.1 million marketable fiber service addresses and delivered approximately 66,000 addresses in the second quarter. The team's execution and momentum in this area drove our decision to increase Telecom's fiber service address and capital guidance for the year. While each market build is evaluated with our traditional financial discipline, our build cadence is not currently constrained by capital. That allows us to accelerate in attractive markets where we can take advantage of the opportunity to be the first to fiber. Our fiber network continues to perform well with consumers, both financially and operationally, and our transition to be fully fiber is the right strategic imperative and one that we believe will provide sustained value to TDS. Second, we remain committed to M&A and are actively evaluating opportunities that align with our strategy in a financially disciplined accretive business case-driven fashion. In mid-April, we announced an agreement to acquire Granite State Communications and are on track for a third quarter close that will add 11,000 fully fiber service addresses to the portfolio. As I've communicated in the past, we are primarily focused on small- to medium-sized opportunities that are either already fibered up or have an accretive economic path to all fiber and support our clustering strategy. Finally, with respect to shareholder returns, TDS continues to pay a modest quarterly dividend and Array issued a special dividend in the quarter of $11 per common share. TDS was not in the market for share repurchases during the second quarter because we were restricted from doing so due to the TDS offer to Array. As of the end of the quarter, we had $520 million remaining under the TDS share repurchase authorization, and we remain committed to executing on that program as business, market and other conditions permit. Across all 3 elements, the company intends to continue to be disciplined, balancing the needs of the business, evaluating future returns and taking into account market and other conditions as we move forward. Thank you. And now I will turn the call over to Ken Dixon to discuss TDS' fiber business.

Thank you, Vicki, and good morning, everyone. TDS Telecom continues to execute on our fiber growth plan, building fiber addresses, driving fiber sales and transforming our operations. This quarter, we again made progress across all 3 priorities. As shown on Slide 6, we delivered approximately 66,000 marketable fiber service addresses in the quarter, bringing us to approximately 106,000 for the first half of the year. This represents the strongest first half delivery in company history and even exceeds what we accomplished in the second half of 2025, which is typically our peak construction period. It reflects both strong execution by our teams as well as expanded construction capacity. We have a robust pipeline of addresses currently under construction, positioning us well for the remainder of the year. This pipeline includes a mix of addresses from our fiber expansion in new areas as well as fiber upgrades in our existing markets through our fiber deeper program and federal E-ACAM program. As a reminder, we are the largest recipient of E-ACAM, which provides federal support to bring high-speed broadband to hard-to-reach rural areas where it would otherwise not be economical. We are leveraging this support to accelerate our fiber expansion in 22 states, bringing fiber to more than 300,000 addresses in our incumbent footprint. We have already met the 2026 obligations in 3 states and now have the highest crew counts ever in the remaining E-ACAM markets to deliver on our 2026 milestones. In summary, our build teams are delivering at a record pace. This gives us confidence to increase our 2026 guidance for fiber service address delivery to 250,000 to 300,000, increasing our range by 50,000. Turning to sales. We ended the quarter with approximately 15,000 fiber net adds, up 47% year-over-year. As we continue to grow our fiber footprint, we are hyper-focused on converting these new service addresses into customers and improving the overall customer experience. We continue to build out our sales teams across all our markets. These sales teams are focused on both prelaunch sales as well as penetrating new open-for-sale addresses aftermarket delivery. We have significantly expanded our door-to-door sales capacity and we're pleased with the improved performance of our dot-com channel. In our cable markets, we're beginning to see the benefit of expanded sales teams and targeted investment, which are now driving increased gross adds. As I mentioned last quarter, our cable markets are some of the best in the country, and we see significant opportunity to grow here. Overall, we have good sales momentum as we head into the back half of the year. However, we have more work to do. Our operational transformation is centered on efficiency improving the customer experience and simplification. We continue to make progress modernizing our systems and remain on track with our transformation road map, making it easier for customers to do business with us. For example, our technicians now utilize the same platform across all of our markets, which simplifies our back-office processes and provides an improved customer experience. Further, we have several additional enhancements underway that are on schedule to be completed in the back half of the year. We will provide updates on these transformation initiatives as they advance. Turning to Slide 7. Our long-term goals reflect our continued focus on executing our fiber growth strategy that delivers scale, speed and long-term value. We believe fiber is the superior broadband technology, not only for today, but into the future, with the delivery of approximately 66,000 fiber addresses in the quarter. Now we serve nearly 1.2 million fiber service addresses, representing 60% of our total footprint with 80% of addresses capable of gig speeds. I want to take a moment to explain how we think about our footprint competitively. Our expansion markets, which are new geographies that we've entered and continue to build are 100% fiber. In our incumbent markets, we've already overbuilt 52% of our addresses with fiber. And with the assistance of E-ACAM, we plan to deliver another 300,000 addresses with fiber over the next 2 years, further reducing copper in our network. Finally, in our cable markets, 22% of our addresses are already served by fiber and we continue to expand fiber across our footprint where it is economical to upgrade. As I noted earlier, we know there is more work ahead, but the progress we're making gives us confidence in the path forward as we continue transforming into a fiber-centric company. I'll now turn it over to Kris to walk through our second quarter results.

Thanks, Ken. Turning to Slide 8. The chart on the left shows our quarterly fiber service address delivery over the past 6 quarters and reflects the build momentum we are experiencing. As Ken highlighted, our second quarter fiber address delivery more than doubled year-over-year and the first half of 2026 is more than 2.5x our delivery from the first half of 2025. The chart on the right illustrates the continued expansion of our fiber footprint. Over the past 3 years, we have increased the number of fiber service addresses across our markets by approximately 80%, demonstrating steady and meaningful progress. On Slide 9, residential fiber net adds were 15,100 in the second quarter, a 47% increase compared to prior year, driven by continued footprint expansion and ongoing copper to fiber conversions. Residential fiber connections have nearly doubled over the past 3 years, outpacing our fiber footprint growth. We expect continued fiber connection growth as we expand our footprint. Turning to Slide 10. The chart on the left depicts our residential revenue per connection, which increased 1% year-over-year. This growth reflects annual price increases offset by ongoing industry-wide declines in video attachment rates. The chart on the right highlights total residential revenue between copper, cable and fiber. You'll see our fiber revenue is up 13% or $11 million versus prior year, which helps offset the legacy revenue stream pressures we are experiencing. In cable, revenues are down roughly 10% versus the second quarter of 2025. As Ken highlighted, we are increasing investment and sales capacity in our cable markets to stem these declines. Overall, total residential revenue declined $6 million compared to prior year. Roughly $2 million of this decrease reflects the divestitures of primarily copper-based markets. Beyond that, we are continuing to experience faster declines in copper. In response, we are deploying fiber across our ILEC footprint at a record pace to help mitigate those headwinds. Slide 11 summarizes our financial performance. Total operating revenues declined 6% in the quarter or 4% excluding the impact of divestitures. Discrete adjustments to wholesale revenues that benefited 2025 are driving roughly half of the year-over-year decrease. The remaining decline reflects continued legacy revenue stream pressures partially offset by growth in fiber connections and modest improvement in revenue per connection. Cash expenses were flat, as savings from ongoing cost management initiatives were offset by costs to support our growing expansion markets and inflationary increases. The decline in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter reflects top line pressure from divestitures as well as legacy revenue streams. Capital expenditures totaled $179 million in the quarter, reflecting higher construction activity and a robust funnel of addresses under construction. Slide 12 reflects our guidance for 2026, which has been updated. We are projecting total telecom revenues of $1 billion to $1.025 billion, down from our prior guidance, primarily due to the headwinds we are experiencing in our copper and cable markets. We narrowed the adjusted EBITDA range to $310 million to $330 million, as these legacy revenue challenges are largely falling to the bottom line. As Ken noted, we increased our 2026 fiber service address guidance range by 50,000 and now expect to deliver between 250,000 and 300,000 new fiber service addresses. To support this increased address delivery, we have increased our CapEx guidance range to $625 million to $675 million. Before turning over the call, I want to thank the entire TDS team for their continued execution and focus. Their efforts across fiber delivery, customer growth and operational transformation are critical to the progress we're making toward achieving our long-term objectives. I'll now turn the call over to Anthony.

Thanks, Kris, and good morning. Momentum continued throughout the second quarter with our focus still squarely on fully optimizing our tower operations and monetizing our spectrum. In the second quarter, we saw cash site rental revenue increase 65% versus Q2 of last year. We also continued to demonstrate sequential tower tenancy growth. Finally, we continued advancing our spectrum monetization strategy by closing transactions with both T-Mobile and Verizon during the quarter. Before I get into the details of the quarter, I want to mention the receipt of TDS' proposal to acquire the shares of Array that it does not already own. As previously disclosed, our Board has formed a special committee of independent directors who've retained independent advisers to carefully evaluate the proposal and make a recommendation as to what is in the best interest of Array's shareholders. We won't be commenting further or taking questions regarding the proposal today. Starting with Slide 16, you'll see continued sequential improvement in our tenancy ratio, which increased from 0.98 to 0.96 (sic) [ 0.96 to 0.98 ] at the end of the prior quarter. As a reminder, DISH generally stopped making payments under its contracts with us in December. In addition, DISH Wireless and other DISH entities have filed for bankruptcy. Array ceased recognizing revenue from DISH in the first quarter, and all outstanding 2025 balances have been fully reserved. As a result, DISH colocations are no longer included in our tenancy ratio. Excluding this impact, we are encouraged by the consistent and steady growth in our tenancy ratio. As noted on Slide 17, cash site rental revenue in Q2 increased 55% year-over-year from all customers and when normalized for the DISH impact, this increase was 65%. The addition of T-Mobile interim site revenue drove the year-over-year increase to 81% or 92% when normalized for DISH. As T-Mobile works through its integration process, we will see the interim site revenue decline, which began in the quarter. Importantly, our existing pipeline and application volume remains strong and will drive continued revenue growth both this year and into the next. Turning to Slide 18. Integration with T-Mobile continues to be at the forefront of our focus and strong progress continues to be made. As a reminder, T-Mobile has until January 2028 to finalize its 2015 committed sites under the new MLA. Given the ongoing integration work, we are narrowing our range of projected tenantless towers post T-Mobile integration to 1,000 to 1,700. Our ground lease optimization work remains one of our top priorities and we continue to see notable progress reducing the cash burden of these negative cash flow assets. We still expect this work to be a multiyear effort focused on cost avoidance, lease-up, evaluating long-term demand and decommissioning where it makes sense. This process is well underway and allows us to assess all potential outcomes for the tenantless tower portfolio, including removing from the portfolio a subset of sites with no path to economic viability. As shown on Slide 19 and presented in prior quarters, we have reached agreements to monetize roughly 70% of our spectrum holdings. During the quarter, we closed on multiple transactions, including the $168 million sale of the 600 megahertz, 700 megahertz and AWS licenses to T-Mobile in May and the $1 billion transaction with Verizon in June. The remaining transactions with T-Mobile are expected to close by the end of 2026, depending on regulatory approval and closing conditions. As stated in prior quarters, we continue to work to opportunistically monetize our remaining spectrum, primarily C-band. Our C-band spectrum is a highly compelling 5G asset with a mature ecosystem ready for carrier deployment and we believe, given no near-term build-out requirements, we have ample time to realize its value. Slide 20 summarizes the results of our partnership or noncontrolling investment interests. As a reminder, 2025 investment income and distributions were impacted by several onetime factors, including the impact of the Iowa partnership selling their wireless operations to T-Mobile and distributions received from Verizon related to their transaction with Vertical Bridge. Equity income for the 6 months ending June 30 was $75 million with the Q1 results elevated due to prior period adjustments recorded by the managers of certain investee entities. Slide 22 summarizes Array's financial results. Revenue growth year-over-year continues to be driven largely by the T-Mobile MLA, but with solid additional growth from our other customers. The prospective classification shift noted in prior quarters related to property taxes and insurance inclusion in our cost of operations rather than SG&A drove over half the year-over-year increase in cost of operations. SG&A expenses continue to include costs to support the wind down of the legacy wireless operations. We have seen a decline in these costs in the first half of 2026. But as we have indicated in the past, we expect these wind-down costs to persist throughout 2026 but at a declining level. Additionally, for the quarter, you'll see elevated strategic alternatives costs relating to the evaluation of the proposal the Array Board received from TDS to acquire the remaining public shares of Array. Given the classification of strategic alternatives costs, these are subtracted from Array's calculation of adjusted OIBDA. On Slide 23, we've updated our guidance for total operating revenue, adjusted EBITDA and OIBDA, while guidance for capital expenditures remained unchanged. We have narrowed our total operating revenues range, increasing the low end to $205 million from $200 million, driven by an expectation for higher T-Mobile interim site revenue based on the current pace of integrations. The top end of the revenue range remains unchanged. For adjusted OIBDA, we've increased our guidance range to $60 million to $75 million, up from $50 million to $65 million previously. This upward revision reflects the higher revenue outlook combined with expectations for modestly lower operating expenses. The expense benefit is driven in part by lower cost of services, consistent with our current assumptions regarding the pace of T-Mobile integration. Adjusted EBITDA guidance has increased to a range of $220 million to $235 million, up from $200 million to $250 million previously. This increase reflects the higher adjusted OIBDA outlook discussed earlier as well as updated expectations for both equity income and interest and dividend income. With respect to equity income, we've increased our estimate to $145 million from $140 million, reflecting year-to-date performance trends and budgets received from certain partnerships. As a reminder, these are passive investments and our forecasting approach is generally aligned with recent operating trends and partner provided expectations. We've also increased our interest and dividend income estimate to $15 million from $10 million. This revision is primarily driven by a higher cash balance due to timing of cash inflows and outflows related to the spectrum transactions. In closing, we recently marked Array's first anniversary as a stand-alone tower company. I continue to be incredibly proud of the dedication, commitment and hard work our associates demonstrate every day as we execute on our strategy, drive operational efficiencies and deliver growth. I want to personally thank the team for their contributions over the past year, and I'm excited about the opportunities ahead and the continued progress we will achieve together. I will now turn the call back to Walter.

Thank you, Anthony. As I noted in my opening remarks, TDS continues to make solid progress advancing our strategic priorities. Our execution over the first half of 2026 alongside the momentum we are seeing across the businesses gives us confidence as we move forward into the year. I'd like to again thank all of the outstanding associates across the TDS enterprise for their continued dedication and hard work in serving our customers and supporting the advancement of our business. Operator, please now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And your first question comes from Ric Prentiss with Raymond James.

Thanks for the updates. First question is a high-level question, 30,000 -- well, I guess, 300,000 kilometers up, the satellite question. Can you elaborate a little bit on, Ken, I think you said you think fiber is a great solution. But can you give us your thoughts on how does satellite reflect into competition for fiber versus copper versus coax? And on the other side, what does it mean for wireless and towers, particularly because I think people view TDS and Array Digital as maybe a more rural type company, so maybe also address kind of the rural aspect.

In the markets where TDS has deployed fiber, we're not seeing a material impact from satellite. As you just saw in our reported marketable addresses and we're seeing strong demand across the business with a nice sequential improvement in our fiber net adds. So we are -- what you're seeing from us is we're increasing the pace of our fiber build. And what we find every day is how important it is for TDS to be first to fiber. So where you're seeing us really deploy the most amount of crews right now, is to our E-ACAM markets where that is obviously copper. And along the route getting to those E-ACAM markets, we have the ability to deploy fiber. So that's where we have record crews right now. And we're in the peak summer months, and we're going to continue to see that build capacity increase. And where we're deploying fiber in those copper markets, we're seeing very strong demand for our products and services. So to us, that's the biggest thing we can do right now in the marketplace is to continue to focus on that copper plant with our fiber build and bring fiber into those respective marketplaces.

Sure. And from the Array perspective, what I'd say is that nothing we have seen or heard suggest anything other than that terrestrial networks are going to be the bedrock of mobile data delivery and that macro sites, from our perspective, continue to be the most efficient and reliable way to do that. And as far as macro sites go, we think we have a great collection of assets and we are very excited to continue to help our customers deploy their networks on them.

Second question for me. Vicki, I think you mentioned no stock buyback in the quarter because of the restriction with the TDS offer. How should we think about when can you get back into the stock buyback market given what the process might be, related question on a calendar basis and also the quiet period for spectrum transactions with the previous auction, we think ended back on July 13, another auction, which we're glad to see another auction coming, quiet period probably starts first quarter next year. So how are you thinking about those calendar questions? When can you get back into stock buyback? And is there now kind of an open window for C-band discussions?

Yes. Okay, Ric. Let me just start also big picture. First off, I'd like to say we're really pleased with where we are today. We executed a lot of our transactions. We've got T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon transactions closed and behind us. We've put in our strong balance sheet, which is giving us a lot of flexibility going forward. Having said that, as you mentioned, we were not in the market for our share buyback program. We are very committed to executing on that program as soon as we're able to do so and the business and market conditions warrant so -- but we have $520 million authorization left as of the second quarter, and we remain committed to executing on that. I can't comment on when, I can't speculate on when, as you know, we have -- TDS has a pending offer to Array, and we are not commenting on the timing of that potential transaction.

And then on spectrum?

So in terms of the C-band, we don't have a specific process update to share. What we will say is that we're encouraged by the results of the AWS re-auction in terms of the implication it may have for the value of spectrum, which we continue to believe is extremely valuable. It's available to deploy now. There's an existing ecosystem for it, and it's adjacent to the upper C-band. So that provides the opportunity for easy deployment for whoever acquires the lower end of that range. As you pointed out, we are not in a quiet period right now. As you imagine, we're going to -- whenever permitted by regulation to explore sale of that spectrum to interested parties, but [indiscernible] we're not going to be a forced seller. We believe the cost of maintaining that spectrum by building it out is very reasonable relative to the overall value of it. And so our position on that has remained unchanged.

It's good to have probably that C2, C3, C4 kind of blocks, which, like we said, kind of can help bridge that gap between lower and upper C-band.

Your next question comes from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

If you could help us on the TDS Telecom EBITDA guide. I mean it looks like the second half run rate implies a $350 million annualized TDS Telecom EBITDA, I mean what's the confidence underlying that inflection that you're seeing there? And then I have a follow-up.

Yes. Sebastiano, this is Kris. So yes, we did revise our guidance across the board for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, CapEx, service addresses. With respect to adjusted EBITDA, we are seeing increased pressure from legacy revenue stream declines, and our adjusted EBITDA was also impacted by divestitures. However, where we are seeing nice momentum is on our fiber revenue growth. So we reported residential fiber revenue growth of 13% in the quarter, and we expect that to continue to grow as we're even fueling more service address delivery in the back half of the year and expect those revenues to come. And so that's on the top line side in the back half of the year. And then also on the spend side, our transformation efforts, we are seeing savings there, and that's helping to offset the increased costs associated with inflationary increases, increases to support our growing footprint. And as Ken said, we're also investing a lot more in our sales capacity. So that transformation program is helping mitigate those costs as well. And our midpoint is guiding to a 2% reduction in costs for the full year. So again, it's -- what's driving that turnaround is the fiber revenue growth and our cost transformation program.

And that would imply some of that goodness would dictate to 2027, right? And no reason to think -- not that you're guiding, but no reason to think that momentum and the cost efforts, there's any -- that should persist into '27. Is that fair, Kris?

Absolutely.

Got it. And I guess for Vicki and the broader TDS fiber, I mean, telecom team, obviously, M&A remains a key focus of yours on the fiber side. To the extent, could you comment on what is the -- what are the valuations or the conversations in that market look like? Have they changed at all over the last 6 to 12 months? Obviously, to Rick's question, satellite broadband competition fears remain a bit of an overhang across the broader ecosystem. Not sure if that's dictating to a bid-ask spread occurring on fiber assets. And then to the -- and also another question just on M&A and I guess Anthony, for you, I guess, I don't know Vicki, you've said in the past M&A on the fiber side is the most paramount. But Anthony, how are you thinking about M&A or just overall the landscape on the tower side. Obviously, valuations on the public market side have kind of come in here. I wasn't sure if that's dictating to the private market as well.

Yes. Sebastiano, as you know, we did sign an agreement earlier in the quarter. We expect to close next quarter on a very attractive small tuck-in that's adjacent to our current footprint at TDS Telecom and this was 11,000 fiber service addresses that was for $25 million. So if you do the math, I think that shows that we are really looking for opportunities where we can make the economics work and we can see the growth, the future growth in the footprint as well as in the customers that are being fibered up with our bundled products that Ken and Kris have talked about. So we'll continue to -- and we are actively active in the space looking for these types of opportunities, both in the small and the medium-sized sector.

And from Array's perspective, we keep an eye on what's going on in the private markets and the prices that we see are a bit high for what we think are other uses of our time and energy. We're laser focused on improving Array's operations across multiple dimensions, including improving our ground lease situation and those are much more attractive uses of our money at these prices than buying tower portfolios in the private market.

Your next question comes from the line of Vikash Harlalka with New Street Research.

When I look at the FCC broadband map, it looks like there has been a significant increase in fiber overbuild activity in your footprint. Can you just tell us like what you're seeing in terms of overbuild activity? And then if an overbuilder starts building in your footprint, do you still deploy fiber in those markets? Or do you pull back on deployment? Then I have a couple of follow-ups.

Yes. What we're seeing from an overbuilder perspective is we've seen some activity in some of our cable markets. But what I will tell you about our cable markets is today, they're 22% fiber already. And as we were going through to look at our edge-out opportunities that we updated the market on in the first quarter, we use that same process to run our cable markets through. And what we found was there were tremendous opportunities still to fiberize in our cable markets. We've approved some of that in some of our markets recently. And I think we're going to continue to see that activity from us over the next couple of quarters, where we see a very economical path to fiber in those cable markets, we'll look to expand. But we have seen some fiber builder activity in cable, but we think we still have a great opportunity with fiber ourselves.

Got it. And I may have missed this in the prepared remarks, but your broadband churn both on the fiber and the cable side increased year-over-year. Any color on what drove that?

So we saw a sequential fiber churn improvement in the second quarter to 1.2%, and our overall churn improved in the second quarter sequentially as well. In our fiber business right now, we feel like we're very competitive in the marketplace, and we're right where we thought we would be from a churn perspective.

Got it. And then I just want to follow up on Sebastian's question about fiber valuations. Could you just provide us like any color as to what's the framework you use for evaluating fiber asset valuations?

Yes. When we look at fiber opportunities, we really look at where they are, what is the competition in the marketplace. We look at the percent of fibered up or is there a viable economic path to fibering up. As you know, we are driving towards the goal of fiber across our entire network and driving copper out of our businesses. So as we're looking at opportunities, we're looking for contiguous tuck-ins or something that's going to advance our current clustering strategy. I would say our clustering strategy has been very successful, where we've been investing in anchor markets and overbuilding the fiber in new markets, but we see really strong growth in the area -- the population area as well as density to expand for the future. So those are -- that's largely what we're focused on.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rollins with Citigroup.

I was curious, going over to towers and the leasing opportunity as now you've had time to incrementally engage with all of your customers. Is there a way to frame the longer-term leasing opportunity in terms of whether you want to describe it in revenue or activity dollars or colocation, like where do you see that growth path taking the business to?

Well, I think that what we're seeing is a trend going up, right? And I think a little bit of the color that I'd give on this is that if you take a look at the towers that -- we anticipate ultimately having been [ vacant ] at the end of this T-Mobile integration or the ones based on what they originally said, like we are seeing demand on both those towers and on our towers in our portfolio already get tenants. We believe there's a significant amount of growth that is possible in both of those towers. And what the endpoint is going to be a lot of factors and I'm not going to speculate on what they are. But I will say that I think we have a strong potential for growth across our portfolio [indiscernible]

So when it comes to the investments in cellular that you have. Is there any changes from the controlling partners that you're seeing in terms of how they value these stakes, whether they want to clean these minority outstanding investments up at some point that can help close whatever bid-ask spread has been there historically?

Yes. Without getting into any specific conversations, right, I'd say that, as you pointed out, there continues to be a bit of a bid-ask spread, right? The low tax bids in these. I mean if you were to do a net present value calculation of these, taking a look at historical growth rates and cost of capital, you find the value ascribed to these assets that is significantly higher than just taking the EBITDA multiple of a wireless company and putting it on top of that. And that's the way we view it. With that said, as we've said before, we remain open to offers that reflect the value that we see in these businesses, net of all other considerations.

Now these are valuable assets for us, and they generate significant cash flow for the business.

Your next question comes from the line of Sergey Dluzhevskiy with GAMCO Investors.

My first question is on TDS Telecom side. So obviously, you guys have been making investments in sales and marketing, including increasing door-to-door sales force. I guess, what is your assessment of your sales efficiency today? What are some of the things that have worked well for you year-to-date? And what are some of the initiatives that you're still kind of contemplating on sales and marketing and go-to-market front that potentially could improve your conversion rate on fiber even further, basically converting fiber passings into paying customers.

Yes. I think the first thing is address delivery because that's ultimately how we create sales. So as you've seen in the first quarter and then again in the second quarter, we had very good address delivery. And obviously, with the E-ACAM, a lot of the addresses that are now coming into our sales cycle are ones that would traditionally be in the ILEC markets in copper. So it's a great opportunity for us to migrate those copper customers over to fiber. So address delivery has been very, very strong, and that has helped us see sequential improvement in our fiber net adds. Second thing is with our game plan here, we've always had a very, very robust presale execution to where as soon as we know that the new market is coming open for sale, we immediately put our door-to-door teams and our marketing efforts in and that has helped us with that low 20% presale penetration, which I think is key to your successful fiber business. You did mention, we've been putting a tremendous amount of sales capacity into the market. One of the things that we've been doing is not only increasing the productivity significantly of our own door-to-door teams, but we've been going out to find vendors that can give us selling capacity in our cable markets, in our ILEC footprint with all of this new copper plant now turning into fiber, as well as our expansion markets. So the more open for sale that we bring in, the more vendor capacity that we brought in. We brought on several new vendors Sergey in the second quarter, and we just brought another one on in the very beginning of July. So we have done a turf analysis. We've looked at our entire geography, and we say we need more and more door-to-door both internal and external vendors, especially with the pipeline of addresses that we expect in the back half of the year. The other big development from us has been our dot-com business. We've seen significant improvement. Why that's so important is because it's the most important channel because it's your lowest cost of acquisition channel and has the greatest overall reach. We have business transformation efforts underway to do tremendous work on our website as we go into the back -- the very later part of 2026. But 2027, I think we'll see the full capabilities of it. The next thing that I think is super important is we've brought in some new leadership from a sales perspective. Most recently, we brought in someone to run our multi-dwelling channel business because 22% of the addresses that we're bringing ultimately into the market are MDU, this is where we're seeing housing growth. We expect to -- we want to win here, and we've added that additional capacity in on top of our focus on single family. So a lot going on in sales and a lot going on in terms of address delivery.

Great. And maybe a question or 2 on the tower side. So I guess, with several spectrum -- obviously, the auction is over. But prior to that, there were several spectrum transactions involving satellite players like SpaceX and Amazon. So with those transactions, do you see potential to expand the universe of parties interested in C-band spectrum that you guys have.

So we would -- I think that as you pointed out, there's growing demand for spectrum for a growing number of parties. And we certainly would -- we're not going to discriminate in who we sell the C-band spectrum to. We're focused on achieving the highest possible value for it. And if it's not a traditional party, then we'd be more than happy to sell it to them.

Got it. And another question from kind of on the operational side. And obviously, you're increasing tenancy of your towers. Maybe if you can provide more color on the initiatives that worked well for you during the course of the year and also some of the new things that maybe you're trying or started implementing that potentially could lead to further improvement, maybe somewhat of a step change in your tenancy ratio.

Yes. So there are 2 elements on the tenancy ratio. Of course, there is the number of co-locations and the number of towers. So we've been doing a number of things to increase the number of tenants, right? I think you saw the announcement that we made with Verizon about the deal that we had, we think that has been helpful in stimulating demand from Verizon. We have stood up -- we have in-sourced our sales team over the last 18 months. That sales team has been doing excellent work to support our customers' needs and encourage colocation with us by being a good partner. In addition, we have set up a vertical sales business where basically we didn't have one before, and we've been getting a lot of traction throughout [indiscernible] areas we serve from a variety of players, a lot [indiscernible] you name it. So we've gone from basically not having that at all to actually being able to do that. So we're seeing a lot of things on the tenant side. Now as you probably noticed, our tower -- the count of towers has been going up at certain legacy build programs that occurred from -- in the U.S. Cellular days has been developing. Now eventually, that's going to conclude. And at the same time, we are evaluating every single tower continuously on its economic viability. And the worst of the worst of those towers that don't have a path to economic viability, we will exit our portfolio. And that's going to reduce the denominator and therefore reduce the overall tenancy ratio. And well, I'd just say that we've already started to get some of the worst of those ones on the path to decommissioning and being out of our portfolio. So we have 2 things that are driving on either side. We're quite encouraged by that. I think that we also have the potential to get more revenue, if not additional tenancy from some of the deployments that we're seeing from potential deployments that we're seeing, for example, if and as AT&T deploys 600 megahertz spectrum and as other companies deploy more spectrum and develop their networks further. So we think about it.

And we have a follow-up question from Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

I guess, Ken, just discussing the E-ACAM markets and converting the copper subscribers over to fiber. I mean, what's the penetration rate maybe in some of these E-ACAM markets as we kind of think about what's the migration opportunity versus penetration opportunity in those markets? And that's my follow-up.

Thank you. We're not sharing the overall penetration rate. But what I can tell you is, as we have been bringing fiber into these markets, we're seeing very nice early cohort penetration, and we're seeing the penetration curves that we had anticipated, and we're seeing very strong demand in these markets. So we're not sharing externally what the penetration target is. But I will tell you, we're seeing very, very strong demand as soon as we bring fiber into these unserved markets.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to John Toomey for closing remarks.

Thank you, and thanks, everyone, for joining us again today. As always, please reach out with any additional questions. And I hope everyone has a nice weekend. Thank you.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.