Altice USA at Bank of America Conference: Strategic Shift to Acceleration

On Thursday, 04 September 2025, Altice USA (NYSE:ATUS) presented its strategic vision at the Bank of America 2025 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference. Chairman and CEO Dennis Mathieu outlined the company’s transition from stabilization to acceleration, fueled by AI investments and customer experience improvements. While Altice USA faces challenges in the video sector and competitive pressures, it remains committed to enhancing its operational efficiency and financial outlook.

Key Takeaways

• Altice USA is shifting focus from stabilization to acceleration, leveraging AI and customer experience improvements.
• The company aims for approximately $3.4 billion in EBITDA in 2025, with significant growth expected in the second half.
• Strategic initiatives include AI-powered customer service tools, fiber deployment, and mobile expansion.
• Altice USA is addressing debt maturities and capital allocation with a $1 billion asset-backed loan.
• The company is advocating for leaner video content packages and rational pricing to improve customer satisfaction.

Financial Results

• Altice USA targets $3.4 billion in EBITDA for 2025, marking a return to year-over-year growth since 2021.
• Workforce efficiency reductions of 4-5% are expected to boost EBITDA in Q4.
• Q3 broadband subscriber trends are anticipated to be flat, with challenges from disconnects and competitive pressures.
• The company is reducing capital expenditures to drive efficiency.

Operational Updates

• AI tools like AIVA are enhancing customer service and network management, reducing truck rolls and service disruptions.
• Fiber deployment focuses on new builds and strategic areas, while HFC upgrades aim for cost-effective multi-gig speeds.
• Simplified video tiers and bundled streaming services are designed to align with customer preferences.
• Mobile integration is a key growth driver, with a target to exceed one million subscribers by 2027.

Future Outlook

• Altice USA plans to scale its strategies to address competition from fiber overbuilders and fixed wireless providers.
• The company is expanding its mobile portfolio to accelerate growth in 2026 and 2027.
• Debt management remains a priority, with plans to refinance 2027 maturities through various financing arrangements.

Q&A Highlights

• The company is prioritizing fiber for new builds and strategic acquisitions, while upgrading HFC for multi-gig speeds.
• Altice USA is optimistic about ARPU growth through new service penetration.
• Programming negotiations focus on leaner content packages and rational pricing.

For a deeper understanding of Altice USA’s strategic plans and financial outlook, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Bank of America 2025 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference:

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Hello? There you go.

Unidentified speaker: Great. Perfect. Great. Okay. Welcome to day two, and we’re thrilled to have you back, Dennis.

So we’ve got Dennis Mathieu, the chairman and CEO of Altice USA, back for a session. So anyway, thank Great.

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Happy to be here.

Unidentified speaker: So let’s just dive right in. Can you discuss your overarching vision for the company over the next, let’s say, three to five years? And as part of that, can you give us an overview of the priorities, let’s say, over the next twelve months and how they’ll support your vision for the company.

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, since I joined, our our vision has been and remains to be the connectivity provider of choice in every community that we serve. And I’ve gotta tell you, the last two and a half years have been a journey of transformation. We’ve had to do a ton of work in terms of fixing the culture, building a leadership team.

We brought in over a 150 new VPs and above, and the focus really was just stabilizing the company, stabilizing the network, our products, our service, really making sure that we were operating with financial discipline. And the good news is that two and a half you know, there were there were nights that, you know, every every week, every every other day, we had sev one outages. And and we were really frustrating our customers and frustrating our teammates because the products and the network and their tools just weren’t working. And so there was a lot of work rolling up our sleeves and just really putting a foundation in place that would allow us to ultimately get back to growth. And so the good news is we’re now winning awards from companies like PCMag and Ookla.

I remember I would dread whenever they published anything because either we weren’t there or we were last or everything was wrong. And now we’re being named ISP, you know, we’re top ISP across the footprint. We’re getting rated for having the fastest network in places like New York and New Jersey by Ookla. And so the stabilization phase, while not a 100% complete, is largely done. And now as we think about the next two, three, four years, we have an opportunity to really accelerate.

The good news and the bad news, well, you know, the bad news is we didn’t historically invest in platforms and and in a in a in a sophisticated way. So the good news is we don’t we’re not tied to anything from the past. And so we’re now implementing automation and AI to really help ensure our teammates can serve our customers effectively, that we can deliver the right level of quality. Ultimately, we must be the simplest company to do business with. When I joined, we were the hardest company to do business with.

It was impossible to buy from us, to pay even to pay your bill, even to solve a problem. Like, these are fundamental things that we’ve stabilized, but now we have an opportunity to leapfrog and be the easiest company to work with and get back to ultimately sustainable growth.

Unidentified speaker: Right. You’ve guided to roughly $3,400,000,000 in EBITDA in 2025 Yes. Which requires a healthy ramp in second half twenty five Yes. And a return to EBITDA growth year over year for the first time since the ’21.

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yes.

Unidentified speaker: Can you help us think through the path and the expense efficient efficiencies to achieving growth in ’25?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. This is a very exciting milestone for us. You know, we’ve had a sequential decline year over year for the last several years. And we’ve done a ton of work, as I mentioned, to stabilize the company, to drive efficiency, to really make sure that we can achieve this objective. You know, we’ll see a little bit of a step up in q three, but the bulk of that is gonna come in q four in terms of helping us get back to that stabilization of EBITDA.

I had mentioned in the past earnings call that, you know, we had some workforce efficiency and reductions occur, to, 5% reduction. A bulk of that comes into, is delivered, is realized in q four. You know, I had mentioned that we had spent, some real time investing in transformation. And so that investment is two things. One, the moderation of that expense, it’s significantly moderated in q four, but then it’s now delivering results and the results that we were hoping for.

You know, we needed to drive continue to drive down calls, continue to drive down truckload rolls and dispatch rate. And in August, we had one of the lowest dispatch rates ever. And August is seasonally one of the highest dispatch rates ever. And so and I know we’re gonna talk about AI, but that’s helping us deliver on this three dot four objective. And then the good news is that, you know, the Lightpath team has been doing incredible work.

We’ve talked about the work they’re doing in terms of building the sales funnel and hyperscaler programs. And so we’re gonna start to see some of that revenue layer into q four. On the advertising side as well, we have state and local races that are happening, and that’s going to allow us to step up in q four. And then ultimately, we’re bringing to bear all of our new go to market strategies that are really starting to deliver results. The reality is that it’s it’s we only launched some of these things in q two, and we’re just still starting to scale them, whether you’re talking about our income constrained strategy, our MDU strategy, our hyper local strategy.

You know, it took us some time to build these teams and, build the strategies, ensure that we had the infrastructure to execute on these strategies. We have them, and now we’re gonna hit the accelerator.

Unidentified speaker: Great. Well, since you mentioned AI Yes. Can you can you discuss how you are leveraging AI currently to drive efficiencies and how you plan to extend AI utilization in coming years?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: I mean, what a time that we’re living in. Right? I mean, when you think about AI and its transformative nature and, you know, we’ve all been around and we saw the change that occurred when, you know, PCs came into place and the Internet came in and, you know, then you had the BlackBerry, and then the smartphone came, and you’re like, what the hell is this thing? It doesn’t even have any buttons. Like, how am I gonna use this?

I was, like, so confused, and and now it’s, like, transformed our lives. And AI is like a multiplier across all of those. And it’s really giving us an opportunity to reimagine the entire way we operate, whether it’s go to market, customer experience, sales, marketing, even back office functions. And so my challenge to my team is we must reimagine every part of this organization. And we’ve started with our frontline teammates because we they deserve to have the tools to serve our customers effectively.

When I started, I would do roundtables. I still do roundtables every month with our frontline teammates. And their number one ask was, Dennis, I want to serve the customer, but the tools don’t work. I can’t even, like, log in sometimes in the morning. Okay.

We’ve gotten past that, but they have too many tools. They have too many screens. These are all antiquated systems, and the good news is that we don’t have to, like, crawl, walk, run. We can just run. We can just immediately implement new tools that make it easier for them to make sure that we’re doing the right thing for our customers.

And so we implemented a tool called AIVA, for example, in retention and in care. And so this is a tool that allows our teammates to be able to ensure that we’re providing the right offers and taking care of our teammates to taking care of our customers, maximizing customer lifetime value. You know, when a customer would call into retention and they said, hey. I’m not happy with this value. You know, historically, they had a spreadsheet with, a thousand lines trying to figure out, okay.

What offer does this person now the tool provides three offers, four offers, and ensures that we have the right balance of maximizing CLV, providing value, and making sure that our customers walk away thinking, man, I got I had a engaging experience. You know, is it right a 100% of the time? Not yet. But we’re doing it much better, and our NPS over the last couple of years has improved by 30 plus points. And and that’s through these interactions.

On the network side, as I had mentioned, truck rolls, for example, you know, we we just had limited visibility. And when there was an outage or there was a disruption in the network or there was an issue with the quality of service, it was very hard to correlate what was happening, where and then we’d have to roll trucks and people would have to go out and do a lot of manual triaging. Now we’re implementing tools where we’re able to pull all this data together and really correlate what’s happening, where it’s happening, and we can send one technician and solve an issue for a 100 customers. And it’s really helping us drive efficiency. And so this is just the beginning.

We’re starting to roll it out on our in marketing. We’re starting to roll it out in the back office. And so this will be a journey over the next few years, but we’ll focus first on making sure our teammates, our frontline teammates have the tools, whether it’s care, retention, sales, field techs to serve our customers most effectively.

Unidentified speaker: So, I mean, most of it sounds like it’s cost benefits. On the revenue side, there’s, like, easier you mean, just, like, easier for sales or to upsell? Like, what are the what what would the revenue side look like?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Oh, it’s exciting. Really exciting as we put it into our sales channels, really helps our teammates think about solution selling in a much more robust fashion. Before, it was just a very binary conversation. Now we can really assist our teammates in terms of which offers will resonate most. There’s also coaching tools that help you know, we know the profile of the top performers.

We know, like, what it is they do, how they do it. And so now we’re piloting tools to help those that are kind of in the bottom to middle to say, hey, this is what a top performer looks like, and so here are two or three things that you should be doing in terms of how to have the conversation, what are the offers, how to, you know, really drive your performance in terms of yield and ARPU, and really help I mean, it’s just such a simple example of how to improve productivity and performance and allows the the the teammate to be able to maximize their own earning potential. Because they wanna sell more, they wanna be the best, and these coaching tools really help us drive that performance to that next level. And that’s just one example. Right.

Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Let’s move on to broadband. Yeah. Topic du jour. Topic du jour for sure.

What is the optimal split between hybrid between fiber and hybrid fiber coax over the next, let’s say, three to five years? But as you consider the customer experience, what metrics, upload speed, latency, you know, whatever Yeah. Would guide your decision to build out fiber versus upgrading with HSC?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. So when I joined, there was kind of a one size fits all plan to fiberize the entire footprint. And, you know, I just didn’t know I I didn’t think that was the right approach. And we’ve we’ve been on a journey to real because there’s a lot of power in HFC. There’s a lot of power in fiber.

The competitive landscapes across the country are vastly different. You know, in the East, we’re 70% overbuilt by fiber. In the in the West, when I started, it was, you know, low double digits. It’s now, you know, 40 plus percent. And so as we looked at the different markets, we realized that we really needed to make sure that we we we were not approaching it as one size fits all.

We had to have really a town by town, state by state strategy. And so as we think about the path forward, you know, we are very we have 3,000,000 fiber passings now. We’re doing about a 175,000 plus new build every year, and that’s gonna be primarily fiber. That’s really a great way to deploy new fiber, into the marketplace and help us grow the network. But where we have HFC, we have an opportunity to really, deliver incredible network experience, through mid splits and delivering multi gig in a very cost efficient fashion.

And so for a little over a $100 per passing, we’re now able to provide multi gig speeds. And in the markets where we’re doing that, we’re finding that we can compete very effectively because we’re bringing to bear in most of these markets, it’s fixed wireless or it’s a fiber overbuilder, and we have a whole portfolio of products. And we have value proposition that really resonates. And so, you know, as we move forward, our focus is driving fiber where we have it, driving it in acquisition, driving it in migrations in a very strategic fashion, and then growing fiber for new build, and then investing and unlocking the power of our HFC network where we have it so that we can deliver multi gig across the footprint.

Unidentified speaker: And key question. What type of broadband sub trends have you seen during the third quarter in both the East and the West footprints?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. So it’s been you know, there’s a we’re seeing the same pressure all of our peers are seeing. It’s been exciting to see that our gross ad strategies are really coming to bear. But as I think about Q3, we’re going to be flattish year over year to last year. And that’s because we’ve had some pressure on disconnects.

You know, we’ve rolled out a number of rate events and promo rolls and just some rate activity that we had planned. We’re seeing intense competition with fixed wireless expanding. The good news is that our teams are reacting quickly. They’re building playbooks to help us moderate this going forward, and I’m confident that, we’re gonna continue to stabilize broadband in the, medium and long term. The gross ad machine is performing incredibly well.

We’re seeing higher yield, higher productivity. And and so we saw some pressure in q three on the disconnect side, which I’m confident that we’re gonna be able to stabilize going forward.

Unidentified speaker: Right. I mean, the competitive market is if anything, it’s it’s getting more I mean, it’s not getting better. That’s for sure.

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: That’s right.

Unidentified speaker: So how do you see it evolving from here? Do you you know, and where do you see FWA pressure? Like, you know, are there areas where it’s it’s getting worse? Are there any areas where it’s actually softening?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. So we’re we’re seeing one on the fiber side, you know, the the the East is very different from the West, as I mentioned, about 70% overbuilt there. On the West, you know, it’s been steadily increasing. As I mentioned on my last earnings call, it was kind of flattish to the prior six months at about 45, 46%. I think that’s just timing.

I’m sure that that’s gonna continue to ramp and ultimately get to the levels of where we are in the East. And then fixed wireless is expanding. You know, T Mobile has is across the footprint. I know AT and T is expanding. And ultimately, I do believe though we have the right tools and the right strategies to compete, whether it’s with fiber, a mature fiber provider, a fiber overbuilder, a fixed wireless.

You know, the reality is that in any given market, we have two, three, four competitors, and we have to be number one. And the way we can be number one is by delivering great quality, delivering great value, being the simplest company to work, to work with. And those are the fundamental capabilities that we’re embedding in in, and we’re starting to see a really meaningful change in trajectory. As I looked as I shared in the last earnings call, you know, there are markets where we have gone from negative to positive, and we’re starting to grow subs again. And that’s because we are really focused at that local level, making sure that we have hyper local offers, making sure that we’re delivering the quality people expect and demand, and just continuing to drive innovation at that local level.

And so the competitive landscape continues to be intense. We continue to be committed to drive innovation, to drive quality, and to drive great customer experience.

Unidentified speaker: Right. But I mean, you’re getting obviously getting attacked at the high end with fiber, at the low When end with do you think you’ll return to positive broadband subnet adds?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. It it you know, it’s I’m not gonna speculate on exactly when, but we are on controlling what we can control, and we’re controlling, these go to market strategies. And and as we see them succeed, we’re gonna continue to scale them. You know, we launched our hyper local strategy to about, half a million homes. We’re seeing it work.

We’re gonna grow that. We see that FWA competes very, well or very aggressively in MDU and income constrained. And so we now, for the first time, have an MDU strategy, and we’re gonna scale that. And we’re starting to see the impacts to help us get back to that long term sustainable growth.

Unidentified speaker: Right. And then you mentioned simplifying tiers and and packaging. Like, where where is there still friction in the sign up or upgrades with your consumers?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: You know, the good news is I know, you know, we talked about a year ago that we had to right size our broadband rate card. You know, it was very high, but really it was also very confusing to people, you know, in terms of, hey, what were the step ups and transparency? And so we’ve done a lot of work in terms of improving visibility, simplicity, what step ups are happening and when and why, and really making sure folks understand their bill. There’s a lot more work to do, but we’ve seen tremendous progress and that’s materializing in terms of improvements in NPS, improvements in churn. We’ve also done some really innovative things on the video side where we’ve launched these new video tiers.

We had these legacy tiers that were just so bulky with lots of content that people didn’t even watch. And so now we have three simple tiers of entertainment, extra, and everything. So entertainment has entertainment content, extra has entertainment content, and broadcast, and everything has all of that, and sports. And so it’s really no more kind of one size fits all, but folks can now choose. And now we also started bundling in or attaching, you know, streaming products like Hulu and Disney plus and others.

Unidentified speaker: I I definitely wanna get back to that in a second. But just to finish up on broadband, when do you think we’ll see ARPU growth in residential or broadband?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: So we’re I’m very optimistic that we have more control over rate. We’re continuing to be disciplined there. We’ve launched a whole host of new services like Total Care, like Whole Home WiFi, like Connection Backup on B 2 B. And so we’re committed to driving penetration of these products. We’ve launched them only earlier this year, and we’re seeing tens of thousands of customers taking these products.

And I think that will all help us in terms of driving stabilization of ARPU in the medium term.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. So then let’s go, you know, to to video, which is we were just, talking about. So you mentioned the Disney plus and Hulu offerings, and you’ve improved your MSG network terms. Could you just maybe start, like, bigger picture? What are your main objectives in programming deals now?

And do you see a path to reimagining the traditional linear networks?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. I think we all know, you know, one of the big elephants in the room on linear is these packages, unfortunately, include content that just people don’t wanna watch. Just a lot of garbage, like, lot of just content that nobody cares about. And so we’re forcing customers to pay for this content. And so we’re trying to have very rational conversations with our programming partners of, hey.

Churn is not helpful for anybody. Right? Like, I think we want to get customers the right value, the right products. And for us, we’re we’re, you know, like, we want customers to be able to view the content they want in the way they want, whether that’s linear or that’s streaming. And we can help with that journey.

We can help people. You know, we have lots of different customers in different demographics, and folks, you know, the the adoption of streaming is taking time. And so how do we right size the experience across both of these platforms? And one way is to right size these packages so that we’re not forcing customers to pay for content that they don’t want and probably should not exist. It probably shouldn’t exist.

Like, we should focus on delivering content, and it’s incredible to see, you know, when you think about user generated content, and you think about what’s happening with tech companies and the content folks are producing. You know, we need to be able to provide customers the content they want to watch in the way they wanna watch it. And those are the conversations we’re having, and that was a little bit of, you know, not everybody watches sports. That’s okay. I love sports.

I love it. I wanna watch it all the time. I it’s Thursday. Right? I can’t wait for tonight.

You know? And and and and, like, back to football. Excellent. I know it could be a shock to some people, but not everybody likes football. I don’t know.

Not everybody likes basketball. And so why not, you know, provide customers the ability to pay for content that they wanna watch and not force them to pay for content that they don’t have an interest in.

Unidentified speaker: Right. So how does that affect your negotiate your programming negotiations? Like, what what do you see for the content content cost outlook and, you know, just I mean, it’s clear what your strategy is.

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. I mean, this is where how we’ve been able to the good news is that I think the conversation is resonating at certain levels. That’s why we’ve been able to build the ex the everything the entertainment, the extra, the everything packages, and make them a bit leaner in terms of the content and the price points a bit more attractive when you’re talking about $30 and, you know, $85, etcetera. And so, you know, those are the that’s the journey that we’re on is, hey, how do we make sure that we’re including the right content, that we’re really thinking about putting the customer at the center? And then also, how can we be helpful in terms of driving the streaming products?

Right? And so it’s not just this one binary conversation. It’s really a conversation across all of the solutions and making sure that we deliver them in a way to the customers that that can be consumed and delivers value.

Unidentified speaker: Right. How did the simplified TV you know, the the the simplified tiers and OptimumStream, you know, how does that change your attach rates to broadband?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Oh, been I mean, we had our, you know, the lowest losses ever in q two, which is kind of a weird thing to say, but that’s good because people, you know, we’re driving attach. We had sequential improvement of video attach in q two from a gross ad or from a acquisition perspective. And it’s been a great tool in terms of retention. As folks are calling in, they’re trying to manage their bill, they want the product. And so now we have options for them to be able to move into these packages, and we’re seeing less disconnects or less downgrades because customers are excited about these new packages.

Unidentified speaker: Right. Well, there’s a lot going on in the content world. So you’ve got Versen spinning out of Comcast later this year. WBD spinning out their networks Yeah. Next year.

Nexstar acquiring Tenya. Peaceguy, Paramount Sky Dance apparently not spinning out cable networks. How does all of this affect Altice?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: You know, I think the story is yet to be written. You know, we’re kind of in the early phases of some of these activities. You know, my only concern again is are we putting the customer at the center? Are we making sure that we’re not forcing customers to pay for content that they’re not watching? As some of the these these transactions happen, and as you start to merge some of these products, there’s a and content, there’s a risk of trying to force jam in content that, you know, people wanna watch broadcast.

And we wanna deliver that broadcast. But we want we don’t wanna have a tax. We don’t wanna have to give them a tax with content that they don’t want to watch. And so that’ll continue to be a focus of our conversation is, hey, let’s not forget customer as we go through this journey. Let’s figure out how do we get customers broadcast, for example, and not provide attacks on top of broadcast with some of this other content.

Unidentified speaker: Right. It’s a pretty thorny issue. So let’s move on to mobile. It’s been a bright spot in recent quarters.

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yes. Can you

Unidentified speaker: talk about your overall mobile strategy and how it integrates with your broad broadband offering?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. I you know, when I joined the company, I was just super excited that we had this product, in the toolkit that was kinda sitting on the shelf. We really hadn’t done anything with it. And so the last two years has been, hey. Let’s really figure out how to integrate it into our our go to market strategy.

How do we really deliver great value leveraging mobile? And so we started integrating it into our sales channels, started integrating it into our marketing, started really leveraging it as a tool for retention and driving base management, and it’s been exciting. We’ve been started to really ramp up, as you know. We were doing little to no additions a quarter, and now we’re getting back into the thirty, forty plus thousand additions a quarter. We’re still working through some of the, you know, elements of quality and making sure we’re adding good quality connects and that we’re focused on porting phone numbers, device financing.

There’s still more evolution that we need to do in terms of our credit policies. We’re not, you know, in line with the industry and make make it easier for customers to finance devices, buy more devices. And so this is some of the muscles that we need to continue to build over the next quarter or two. And, once those muscles are fully formed, I’m looking forward to further accelerating mobile. Because it is delivering, better churn profile, better customer satisfaction, and as we do the consumer research, you know, even from a year ago, over 25 of customers said, hey.

I want one provider to be able to provide my connectivity in the home and outside the home. We’re refreshing that. I mean, just think about it. Five, six years ago, nobody like, that wasn’t even a concept. Now it’s over a quarter of the customers, and I’m sure that’s only gonna increase.

And so it’s very core to our strategy, and it allows us to differentiate ourselves particularly when you think about fiber overbuilders and some of the competition to be able to bring these products together in a value proposition that resonates with them.

Unidentified speaker: Is that how we should think about ultimate penetration? Like, in that 25%?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: You know, we’re at 7% base penetrated today. We’re on a journey to be at a million plus customers by ’27. I think there’s tremendous upside here, and so we’re gonna continue to make sure that we have the right offers. We’ve integrated it well into our channels. Quite frankly, you know, a year ago, our care and retention channels didn’t sell any products.

And so now this is a great tool for them to be able to have a conversation with our customers. And so I think there’s a lot of upside. I think, you know, we we’re we’re just getting started.

Unidentified speaker: And then one more on mobile. But what levers do you have to best improve mobile unit economics within your MVNO?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. We have a great relationship with T Mobile and the MVNO. It gives us we’re really happy with the relationship and the economics. And as we continue to scale, it gives us even better economics. And so our goal is, hey, how do we do that in a way that is right for the business, right for the customer, good quality?

And then, you know, we continue to have great conversations with our MVNO partner.

Unidentified speaker: Moving on to SMB. Can you talk about current trends that you’re seeing?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. I’m excited also. As you can tell, I’m very excited about a lot of things, but I’m excited about SMB. When I came, we were there was really There was we’re all we were was a connectivity provider.

And, you know, in the in the world that I lived in before, we were bringing, you know, solutions. We were bringing a whole product suite. And so just even in the past few months, we’ve launched a whole host of new products, whether it’s connection backup or cyber security, pro WiFi. There’s a whole host of things that we’re just getting started with. And customers are excited because they don’t wanna buy these products from five different people.

They want one provider to provide them solutions. We just brought now, our b to b business together with our advertising, and media business. I I think probably very unique in the industry, and that’s unlocking even more value, where we’re able to bring a host of advertising solutions to our SMB customers as well. And so we saw some benefit in q two. We were flattish in terms of our our our units, which was, you know, materially different than I think the industry.

And I think there’s long term opportunity to continue to drive and grow both from a subscriber perspective and from a revenue perspective. By the way, we’re just getting started with mobile. We just launched mobile. You know, we’ve started to see some nice growth there, but we look forward to really building out the mobile portfolio in ’26 and ’27 to help us hit the accelerator on that product as well. And there’s a tremendous upside for us in the mobile space and b to b.

Unidentified speaker: Right. And then before we could go to the balance sheet Mhmm. Capital allocation, maybe just one more on current operations. Can you just a little bit about what’s going on in advertising and what kinds of things you’re doing to drive it?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. I think the team has done an incredible job. You know, we we’ve invested in our advertising agency services. We’re starting to see the benefits of that as we lean into digital, as we lean into AI. We’ve had some org evolution to make sure that we’re bringing the power of one optimum together so that we can go to market together with our teammates and deliver great value.

And so I’m excited for the team in terms of how we’re leaning into the products, the platform, AI, and One Optimum to be able to continue to drive that business.

Unidentified speaker: And then moving on, you know, to to the balance sheet. You you have a significant debt maturity approach well, approaching in 2027 Mhmm. Totaling $7,300,000,000, including maturities of cable cable vision light path. In July, you entered in into a a $1,000,000,000 asset backed loan. Can you talk about the potential to drive similar financing arrangements over the next twelve months and the path to refinancing your ’27 maturities?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yes. Yes. Intimately familiar with what’s happening in ’27. The t team is laser focused to ultimately help us get back to, you know, a sustainable capital structure. And and really making sure that we have a capital structure that supports our operation.

And it’s just incredible. You know, I talked about culture. I talked about building a great team and driving innovation. And that’s also as we reimagine our balance sheet and reimagine the capital structure. And and, you know, I have folks in the audience that are living this and breathing this every day.

And HFC is an asset that we had never monetized in the past. And I think we were told maybe we couldn’t do it. And so the fact that we were able to do this and and monetize this asset is very exciting. It gives us flexibility. It gives us a a cost structure that we’re really happy with, and it gives us flexibility.

And so we’re leveraging this for general corporate purposes now, and, you know, the perimeter has additional capacity. And so we’re really taking our an opportunity and then combined with our fiber assets, you know, this is an opportunity for us to continue to lean in and continue to build solutions to help us address our our maturities.

Unidentified speaker: Is this your single biggest challenge? Or you you know, you kind of came into the company with a lot of

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: There was a couple problems. There was a couple challenges on the on the plate. Yeah. Of of The

Unidentified speaker: balance sheet plus, you know, competition. So

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: I I you first and foremost, you know, we had to fix our brand. You know, we had lost trust with our customers. We had lost trust with our teammates. We had lost trust with attorney generals who were suing us, literally. And so first and foremost, we have to we had to fix and we are fixing the operation.

And, you know, the the brand and consideration and NPS are just, up into the right moving in the right direction. And now, you know, the team has been hard at work in helping us think about how do we reimagine and fix the balance sheet. And so we are going to be opportunistic in terms of how we think about the balance sheet and determining how and when we have to raise additional capital, which includes in the securitization market, and making sure that we have the right options and the right tools to do this in a way that’s long term sustainable.

Unidentified speaker: Right. And one last question. We have time for one more thing. Mhmm. But you’ve reduced guidance for two years in a row.

Can you talk about how you’re balancing debt reduction and your leverage overall with the necessary CapEx to drive growth?

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. You know, and and the good news is the CapEx reductions were all tied to driving efficiency. You know, just like there was inefficiency across every other part of the business, there was massive inefficiency in capex. We brought the right people together. You know, the simple example I provide is that, you know, from a network maintenance perspective, we were spending tens of thousands of dollars on node splits.

And now the team got together and said, hey, we have additional cut capacity. Just for a couple $100, we can leverage OFDM and OFDMA to be able to unlock capacity for hundreds of dollars versus tens of thousands of dollars. And so the last couple of years, what you’ve seen is for us to be more disciplined driving efficiency while making sure we’re investing in growth. And so we haven’t taken our foot off the pedal in terms of growing our footprint, launching new products, making sure we have the growth capital for the future while driving efficiency and just being smarter. Like, at some point, you gotta work smarter and not just harder.

And that’s what you’ve seen us on this journey in terms of capital efficiency.

Unidentified speaker: Right. Well, you’ve you’ve accomplished an incredible amount in a relatively short time. So Thank so much for joining us today.

Dennis Mathieu, Chairman and CEO, Altice USA: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Great conversation.

Unidentified speaker: Thank you. Awesome.

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