Altice USA at Future of Connectivity Conference: Strategic Turnaround Insights

On Wednesday, 26 March 2025, Altice USA (NYSE: ATUS) presented a detailed overview of its strategic turnaround at the NewStreet Research and BCG Future of Connectivity Leaders Conference 2025. Led by CEO Dennis Matthews, the session highlighted both the challenges and opportunities facing the company in a competitive market, while emphasizing a disciplined approach to growth and innovation.

Key Takeaways

• Altice USA has completed phase one of its turnaround, delivering $500 million in value.
• The company aims to generate an additional $400 million over the next 24 months.
• Strategic investments in AI and machine learning are key to improving customer and employee experiences.
• Altice USA is expanding into business services with a strong revenue pipeline.
• The company is focused on debt management to ensure financial flexibility.

Financial Results

• Phase One Completion: Altice USA successfully completed the first phase of its turnaround, stabilizing operations and delivering $500 million in value through financial discipline and improved pricing strategies.
• Future Value Creation: The company plans to achieve an additional $400 million in value through operational efficiencies and new product penetration over the next two years.
• EBITDA Stability: Altice USA projects stable EBITDA for the year, driven by cost-cutting initiatives and the introduction of new products.

Operational Updates

• AI and Technology Investments: The company is leveraging AI and automation to streamline operations and enhance customer service, aiming for efficiency rather than short-term cost cuts.
• Product and Service Expansion: Altice USA is introducing affordable mobile plans and tailored video packages to attract and retain customers.
• Network Strategy: The company is expanding its fiber and HFC networks, focusing on maximizing return on investment and improving service quality.

Future Outlook

• Competitive Landscape: Altice USA faces significant competition from fixed wireless and fiber overbuilders but is evolving its strategy to compete on pricing and service quality.
• Business Services Growth: The company is targeting growth in business services, with a $1 billion pipeline in AI-driven revenue and $110 million in sales already achieved.
• Debt and Capital Management: Altice USA is exploring opportunities to manage its balance sheet effectively, including potential ABS opportunities based on its fiber customer base.

Q&A Highlights

• Subscriber Growth Confidence: The company remains optimistic about driving subscriber growth through improved sales and marketing efforts.
• Cost-Cutting Focus: Initiatives are centered on enhancing efficiency and customer experience, not merely reducing costs.
• Western Market Strategy: Despite the lack of fiber in the West, Altice USA is delivering quality service and value to maintain its competitive edge.

In conclusion, Altice USA’s strategic focus on innovation, customer experience, and financial discipline positions it for sustained growth. For a deeper dive into the company’s plans, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - NewStreet Research and BCG Future of Connectivity Leaders Conference 2025:

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: It’s my great pleasure to introduce Dennis Matthews for our next session. Dennis is, I think all of you know, is the CEO and Chairman of Altice USA. Dennis is in the middle of a two point five year turnaround process at Altice USA that would have been challenging in the best of market environments. It’s been made particularly challenging given some of the pressures on the broadband industry and on Cable in general. I’m hoping to get over the course of this conversation a more insight into the path to a sustainable turnaround in revenue and EBITDA growth and the path to a sustainable balance sheet as well at Altice USA.

I’m co moderating this panel with Peter Paseur, Managing Director and Partner at BCG, and I’m going to ask Peter to kick things off.

Peter Paseur, Managing Director and Partner, BCG: Thank you very much. Dennis, thank you very much for being with us today.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Really appreciate it.

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Good to be here.

Peter Paseur, Managing Director and Partner, BCG: So as we were teeing up, right, you’re in the middle of a two point five year transformation and you’re doing it at a very competitive marketplace. And I would like to start there with your competition. So as you kind of we’ll start at the high level, but if you could share a little bit to us of you look at the overall competitive market landscape, you see FWA, you see fiber over builders. How are you seeing that competitive market play out across your footprint? And how are you thinking about the investments that you’re making in order to compete?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yes, it’s been an incredible two and a half years. And as you mentioned in any environment, this would have been a challenge. And people ask me often how are things going and I say that it’s probably 10x harder than anything I could have expected, but there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. And it’s a lot of fun because even with the competitive environment, we had to really take a disciplined approach on how are we going to compete. And as I walked in the door and our teammates walked in the door, first and foremost, being in the industry for a long time, we know that customers are looking for quality and value.

And unfortunately, we had eroded trust with our customer base and to the point where we had attorney generals that were after us. We just were not executing. We were not delivering what people were expecting and that’s fast, reliable quality. And so the last two and a half years have been all about stabilizing this organization and really getting back to a level of quality that customers expect and demand across both our fiber and HFC networks. So even before we could imagine competing, we had to rebuild trust.

We had to rebuild our reputation and just the notion that we could become a provider that delivers that level of quality and value that they expect. And so we’re there. You know, we’re winning awards now for our networks, both in terms of our fiber network, being recognized by Ookla as the fastest fiber network. We’re winning awards from PCMag and CNET for having the best being the best ISP across the West. And that is kind of table stakes to be able to compete because the competitive landscape continues to get more and more aggressive.

When we look at fixed wireless, we have that competition across the entire footprint. And they’re competing very intensely, particularly in the income constrained segment across moves. There’s less moves than ever, you know, thirty year lows. But folks are feeling massive macroeconomic pressure, and so they’re looking for good enough solutions and fixed wireless is one of them. And then, you know, in the West, we have these fiber overbuilders.

And since I’ve joined, that level of overbuild has continued to tick up. And so we’ve rebuilt the brand. We’ve rebuilt trust with our customers. We’ve put in a new culture of collaboration and disciplined execution, and that took building out a new leadership team, over a 40 new vice presidents and above, as well as leveraging existing leaders and making sure we had the right people on the bus and putting people in the right seats. And I’m confident that now we have the right team, the right networks, and the right products to compete whether it’s fixed wireless, fiber over builder, large telco and we’re starting to see that come to life.

Peter Paseur, Managing Director and Partner, BCG: Specifically within fiber in fixed wireless access, how are you seeing that competition? Do you see kind of more competition coming there? Do you see that it’s kind of already peaked out?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: I mean, the fixed wireless folks, as I look at their WindShare, one, we have been competing very effectively, but I do think that they’re punching a bit above their weight class, especially given these macroeconomic times where, you know, people are looking to manage their monthly expenses. And so, you know, they’re looking at different solutions, including fixed wireless, where, you know, maybe that’s good enough for a season. And we’re seeing pressure particularly, as I mentioned in the moves, as I look at, you know, DSL switchers, there’s folks that are looking at fixed wireless, also in terms of the income constrained category. You know, when we started doing the research to, and we’re preparing to launch some new income constrained offerings in q two, we found that 75% of folks that we surveyed are having challenges with their monthly expenses. And and that’s a much broader population than we’ve ever seen in the past.

And so, we are evolving our go to market strategy to one, be competitive in terms of folks are looking for competitive pricing, consistency, transparency, simplicity, reliability. And so these are all things that, we’re building into and evolving our go to market to be able to compete most effectively with fixed wireless.

Peter Paseur, Managing Director and Partner, BCG: And when you think about the investments on the fiber side, kind of how is this competitive landscape driving your investment decisions in your fiber deployment?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yeah. The first thing I’m most excited about is that we now have a multi network a multi year network strategy. You know, when I joined the company, there wasn’t that strategy. It was kind of a one size fits all and we’re gonna build fiber across the entire footprint. And, you know, I didn’t know a lot, but I knew enough to know that didn’t make any sense.

And so we had to look at how do we maximize the return on investment and how do we have a portfolio approach to maximize our ability to compete. You know, when you look at the East, we’re competing against a large telco, a large fiber provider with a full portfolio of products. And so I’m really excited about the fact that we have now 3,000,000 homes. But when I joined, we had a lot of problems in terms of installing the fiber, migrating people to fiber. And so we made it a a a priority to make that easier.

And that’s gonna allow us to compete more effectively, against the, a competitor like Verizon and large telco. And then in the West, you have all these fiber over builders and a whole plethora of different competitors. And we have the tools. We have an incredible network that we’re investing in and we’ve launched mobile. We’re launching new video packages and, we can compete very effectively with our HFC network that’s very powerful and a powerful set of products that we didn’t have.

And so we started to focus on building out that portfolio of products so that we could compete most effectively in the West as well.

Peter Paseur, Managing Director and Partner, BCG: Great. And I love that you started bringing up mobile video. I mean, maybe we wrap that together, right? As you continue to compete, you’re bringing in mobile, you’re bringing in video. How is all of this shaping how you’re thinking about not only your acquisition strategy, but also your retention strategy?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: I mean, the exciting thing is that we’re now we have now more products and more value that we can offer than ever. And when you look at mobile, you know, we’re just making it really simple. You know, you can buy one line for $25. You can buy one get one free. You know, you can buy three lines at $25 a piece.

And so we just wanna make it really easy because folks are looking for value. They’re not just looking to cobble a bunch of products together. We launched our new video packages knowing that people’s video consumption vary. You know, some people are really into sports whereas others don’t watch any sports and they’re looking for more just entertainment packages. And we’re able to provide them entertainment TV, for example, for $30 a month.

And so we’re able to bring these products together, which allow us to compete more effectively in acquisition, but then also in retention. When folks are calling us, they’re saying, hey, I’m really struggling right now and I don’t need all this stuff. And so then we have a conversation of, well, what are the products and services that you need and how do we provide you the best value and the best quality? And now we can say that knowing that that’s exactly what we can deliver with our incredible broadband product coupled with mobile, coupled with video and even more and more products that we’re launching every day.

Peter Paseur, Managing Director and Partner, BCG: Okay. So a little bit about the competition, the products, how you guys are thinking about it. One of the things that we’ve been working together on is bringing AI and intelligence to retention sales, etcetera, with you. Would love it if you could share a little bit with the audience kind of, I mean, beyond just what we’re doing, how are you thinking about AI overall and that focus on personalization and customer lifetime value and doing that in an intelligent way?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yeah. First and foremost, and this is gonna sound ridiculous, but I’m really happy that our tools work now. Like, when I started, they didn’t turn on. Okay? I would go around the country and have round tables, and I just would leave crying.

Like, they were so up there. Like, Dennis, I love my job. I love my customers. By the way, multiple times a week, I can’t even log in. I can’t service our customers.

And so the first two years has been all about just stabilize the product, stabilize the network, stabilize the tools so that we can actually sell, so that we can actually take care of our customers. I highlight this to say that there’s been, you know, unfortunately, little to no investment historically. And so we’re not tied to anything. We are very happy to hit control alt delete now that it’s stable, and we can leapfrog everyone and now lean into digital and automation and AI. You know, we have an incredible partnership.

We work together. Our retention team, somebody would call. I I don’t even know how they, you know, had the guts to pick up the phone. They would open up a spreadsheet with a thousand lines to try and figure out, okay, what can I offer this person and how do I make sure I get them the right product and offer? And, you know, nine times out of 10, it was just like, you know, you had to have a PhD in this Excel spreadsheet to to be able to service the customer properly.

You know, we worked together and said, that makes no sense. Like, we have, like, computers and Internet and technology now, and and we have AI. And now you have an experience where we put this AVA tool in front of our retention agents, and now a customer calls. They’re getting, you know, real time information. How long have they been with us?

What products do they have? You know, what issues have they had in the past? What’s the competitive landscape? And then produces offers for the customer, that are driven by customer lifetime value. It’s not just, you know, picked out of the sky.

And so this is the the NPS for our teammates has been huge. It’s just so much easier to train people, get them up to speed, get them working. The customers have been so much happier because now they there’s some, you know, method to the madness of what we’re doing and what we’re offering and why we’re offering it and provides them the value that they deserve. And so it’s been an incredible journey to launch this in retention. We’ve started, we’ve launched it now in our care channel, so that as folks are calling us in care, we’re able to offer them and and we’ve converted care into also a sales channel where now our our care agents can start to offer products like mobile, like fiber, like video.

You know, first and foremost, we have to solve their problem, make sure they’re happy. And once we do that, when then they’re happy to engage in a conversation. And historically, the we had no relationship with these customers. We never had any value that we could offer. And now the tool is making it so much simpler and easier to be able to provide value to our customers, and and really make it easier for our teammates to do their jobs every day.

And I’m very happy that it works. It turns on every day. It’s great.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Dennis, you mentioned a minute ago that moves are frustratingly low. We’ve been worried that household formation is going to start to slow as well. Looking back at 2023, ’20 ’20 ’4, we now can see that immigration was sort of running at three times the normal level. And as it slows over the course of the next few years, we’re wondering like how that’s going to impact household formation and ultimately broadband subscriber growth for the market?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yes. We’re laser focused on this. In 2024 move activity was at an all time low. You know, the headwinds that existed when I joined continued to persist. When you look at interest rates being challengingly high, when you look at fear and uncertainty by the consumer and consumer sentiment being all time lows and and, just a challenging environment.

But we’re gonna focus on controlling what we can control. Yeah. And the reality is that, we’re kind of starting from a different spot in terms of this journey that we’re on, rebuilding the relationships with our customers, putting in a brand new leadership team, both across sales and marketing and even at the area level. And we didn’t have that before. We didn’t have the competitive insights.

We didn’t have, it was literally a one size fits all that existed in the past. And now we have five different areas, and we have leadership teams that are working closely from the field all the way up to headquarters so that, no matter the competition, no matter the environment, we want to make sure that we can drive the most effective marketing strategy, the most effective sales channel production. And we’re seeing yield at all time highs, productivity in these channels at all time highs. And so, you know, can we sit here and think and can I give you an answer on, hey, what is the next twelve, twenty four months look like in terms of macro environment? It’s challenging, but we’re gonna be laser focused on controlling what we can control and that’s continuing to elevate, the performance of our marketing, the performance of our sales and our ability to compete at the ground level.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Yep. And you also mentioned that you’re really happy to have a fiber product in the markets where you compete against Verizon with their fiber. You don’t have a fiber product in the West, but you’re facing more and more fiber competition in those markets. What does not having fiber in those markets cost you in terms of penetration and ARPU potential?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Nothing. Nothing. And I say and it’s funny because I’ll go to the field and, it’s like, oh, we need fiber, we need this, we need that. And I’m like, we’re running a real you know, when I first joined, it’s like we’re running a real live pilot. We have fiber in the East, we don’t have fiber in the West, and when I joined, we were losing as much in the East and the West.

So clearly fiber is not the solution. The solution is delivering great quality, delivering great service, delivering great value, and making sure that we’re meeting the customer expectations by providing them the right types of products and services that they’re looking for. And so, you know, one, I’m excited about the incredible network that we have in the East to be able to compete against a large fiber provider, and be able to have the best network with eight gig symmetrical speeds, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for us in the West. We have an incredibly powerful HFC network. We weren’t delivering the level of quality that we should have been, which is why we saw when a fiber overbuilder would come in, they would start to immediately take share.

We also didn’t have a playbook to deal with that. They would come in and we just sat there and said, man, wonder why everybody’s leaving. Well, we’re not delivering great quality. We’re not delivering great value. Now we have a playbook and we’ve strengthened the network, by leveraging, just doing it smarter and doing it more effectively by leveraging technology like OFDM and OFDMA and upgrading the network in a much more cost effective fashion.

And so, we’re gonna compete on both sides of the house and we’re gonna leverage our strengths, whether it’s the network or our product portfolio or our ability to act hyper local, so that we can compete most effectively.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Yeah. But it’s so I get that each market you’re going to fight with the assets that you’ve got and figure out how to compete effectively. But is there a difference in the result that you’re able to extract in markets where you do and don’t have fiber?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Well, in fiber, we absolutely see higher product satisfaction, higher better churn rates. We see a lot of benefit in terms of just the NPS and quality and satisfaction. Part of that is, you know, you’ve got an active network versus a passive network and there’s different strategies you need to employ to manage these networks. And we’re just starting to catch up on the HFC side in full transparency. You know, we’ve we’ve put this multi year network strategy in place.

There is new and different and more work that you need to do in terms of managing and ensuring that that HFC network is delivering at the highest level of quality, and we’re building the infrastructure and the tools, to be able to do that. And so there is, of course, you know, when you have fiber, you’ve got, you know, just an incredible experience, but I believe that we can deliver, just as an incredible experience by leveraging tools and leveraging AI to be able to deliver that kind of quality on our HFC network as well.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Yeah. And the fiber overlap in the East, I think, is around 70%, forty five % in the West. What’s the end state for fiber overlap?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: It’s been 70% in the East for a long time, so I’m not sure that that actually ever since I’ve joined and much prior to that. So we haven’t seen that ticking up a bit or much at all. We’ve seen it continuing to steadily tick up in the West. I’m expecting it to get to similar levels as the East. And so we need to have those playbooks and have our go to market strategy and be able to compete with our HFC most effectively.

But part of our network strategy is also to to grow the network, and we’re doing that via fiber both in the East and the West. And we can do that in a cost effective manner. And so we’re really looking at case by case, how we can maximize our return on investment and how we ensure that we can compete effectively in the long term.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Yep. And is that network expansion enough to get you back to positive subscriber growth within the next two to three years given the pressures that you’ve got particularly in the West?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: I’m very confident in our ability to drive growth in subscribers and ARPU and EBITDA in the medium to long term. And part of that is the network strategy and historically we were delivering new network passings, but unfortunately it was very inefficient and we were doing it very delayed. We were oftentimes number two or number three in the trench in a new development. And so we are, we’ve revamped that process completely and we’re seeing a much differentiated result, where when we’re moving into a new development, we’re able to deliver 50%, sixty %, seventy % penetration levels versus you know, much lower historically because we weren’t able to get there in in time and we had a lot of bureaucracy. We’ve cleaned all that up.

And now going forward, I’m confident that our network growth strategy will power us to broadband growth as well.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Yep. And give us some more sort of context for the steps in the path and like when we get back to sustainable EBITDA growth.

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yes. So we were excited to announce on our Q4 call that phase one is complete and we delivered $500,000,000 of value back to the organization through stabilization, through financial discipline, through the work that we’ve done to stabilize our poor erosion and, really add discipline in our pricing and packaging. And I really view the next twenty four months as critical as an opportunity for us to deliver even more value. Another, you know, we we said 400,000,000, in terms of value and, and ultimately free cash flow through continuing to drive efficiency in our operations and also by launching new products and new services and driving penetration, accelerating growth of mobile to 1,000,000. And we’re on a very consistent path of growth in mobile, continuing to drive the growth of fiber.

And so I view the next twenty four months as an incredible opportunity for us to accelerate our pace of growth and really start to see these initiatives deliver material benefits.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: And so if the next twenty four months is about getting through that inflection point to positive revenue growth that ultimately drives EBITDA growth without the need to continuously take costs out of the business. What is the sort of the steady state growth for this business look like on the other side of that?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yes. I think there’s more work for us to do. So we stood up a transformation office and we’re really taking a disciplined approach at looking at every part of this organization. When I joined, unfortunately, our OpEx was up into the right and it was on a trajectory to be at $2,700,000,000 We immediately stabilized that because I really didn’t see the return on investment in some of the investments that were being made and we implemented some financial discipline. Our commitment was to keep that OpEx line flat in this first phase and really drive investment through driving efficiency into the business.

And that was taking out a lot of calls and truck rolls and just a lot of noise. And so we stood up this transformation office because now we have an opportunity to leverage digital, leverage automation, really enable customers to, you know, self serve some of these simple things, make it easier for our teammates to service the customer. You know, why why should it take four or five screens for for a cause a teammate to figure out how to solve a a customer issue? And so I’m excited about AI and this journey that we’re on that will allow us to drive OpEx down in an efficient way, but also while raising and and really, improving employee experience and customer experience. So not just cutting costs for the sake of cost, but elevating those experiences while driving efficiency.

And then these new products are really in their infancy in terms of very low penetration because we’ve just launched them. And I do think that that’s going to help us drive growth. B2B is another growth engine I’m excited about. So I think over the next couple of quarters, we’ll be able to provide a bit more transparency into what that looks like longer term.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: So one of the concerns that I think investors have is under the old management team, the initial approach was to eviscerate costs and create a bunch of EBITDA that way and then they discovered they’d cut too far. And as you mentioned, when you came in, costs were heading in the other direction. I think there’s some concern around we’re now back in a mode of cost cutting. What’s the potential for that to impact some of the positive momentum that you’re creating on the top line and in your relationships with customers negatively?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: None. Because we’re going to we have an incredible team and this is not about cutting costs for the sake of cost. This is all about how do we elevate customer experience, elevate employee experience by leveraging digital, leveraging automation, leveraging AI, doing it in a smart way, making it easier for our teammates to service our customers, and making it easier for our customers to do business with us and really enabling that through our e commerce site, through our apps, through the tools that we’re implementing. And so it’s not about, hey, you know, cut costs for and sacrifice the future. It’s about improve these experiences so that it’ll power our future growth.

And that’s what this transformation office is really helping us do, and we’ll be able to provide more information, and a more detailed plan even as early as the next earnings call where we’re inventorying all those initiatives and we’ll be able to outline where the biggest opportunities are and how we’re going after them to be able to deliver long term sustainable growth.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: And I think you mentioned that you’ve got these new products in their infancy that are important drivers of future growth for you. What are the incremental margins on mobile and stream look like relative to where you’re losing revenue?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yes. So we’re really focused on customer lifetime value and how these products help us expand customer lifetime value. And so one is I’m really proud of the teams helping us continue to expand the margins on these products, especially on the video side. We have way more science than art as we go into these programming negotiations. We know the value of these content, that these content providers are providing us.

And we’re having really hard conversations because we are taking a stand for our customers. We no longer believe it makes sense to include, you know, garbage content that nobody wants to watch with content that people actually wanna watch and force them to pay for it. And so we we have to have a different outcome going forward in the video industry. And those conversations have been productive for those that are ready to partner with us and it’s helping us expand the margins there. On the mobile side, we’re just in the early phases of launching products like insurance products and selling accessories and really having bundles that will allow customers to take more and more lines in a very simple fashion.

And so our focus is to continue to grow margins on those products. But we know the churn benefit by just attaching those products is tremendous and delivering customer lifetime value.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Yes. And I think you mentioned that one of the other important areas of growth for you is business services. I think you mentioned that there’s a you’ve got a backlog or a pipeline of $1,000,000,000 in AI driven business services revenue. Can you give us a sense for over what timeframe that might be turned into revenue? And is there CapEx required to to turn that pipeline into revenue as well?

No.

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: The team has done an incredible job, you know, with this sales funnel. You know, some of these things take some time. They have long lead times, and so the team is working hard to translate this funnel into revenue. I know that we’ve been able to get some wins in Q4 and deliver already 110,000,000 of sales. And so I think we’ll see that continue to come to life.

There’s a strong pipeline. The team is working hard. Some of it does take some CapEx that’s getting pre funded by the customer. And so I’m excited about the fact that we’re in the early innings and we’re starting to bring that to life. That being said, we also have a very strong enterprise business unit that’s continuing to put points on the board.

The growth in ’24 was fueled by that team in terms of recurring revenue business and really converting sales into installs into recurring revenue. And so we now have these two business units. The enterprise is kind of the larger unit and now we have this growth engine of hyper scaler and data center to data center business that we’re excited about that’s going to start to come to life this year.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: And the enterprise piece of it grew at a phenomenal rate in 2024. It accelerated to 6%. Is that level of growth sustainable?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: The team has really done an incredible job, really continuing to put points on the board and continuing to drive the sales funnel. I don’t want to commit to a specific growth trajectory, but I’m very optimistic that the team will continue to drive growth in that business unit.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: And then drilling into EBITDA a little bit, you’ve guided to stability this year. Is that stable with 2024 levels or at some point during the year, you sort of hit the inflection point? And if so, when? And how much of the $110,000,000 to $165,000,000 in cost cutting opportunity is captured inside of 2025?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: I’m very close to sharing lots of details. What I’ll say is, on the next earnings call, we’re really doing a diligent process of making sure that we can deliver what we commit to and we’ll be able to share a much more detailed timeline. But there are initiatives that we’re pulling into ’25 and we do believe that we’ll start to see some of those benefits and we’ll outline where those big opportunities are and how they start to come to life. But we are very committed to having a disciplined approach. You know, when we started at this company, we said we were going to deliver quality and now we’re winning awards for our network and for our service.

We said we were going to launch mobile and now we are increasing the pace of mobile every quarter. We said we were going to fix fiber and now every quarter we are accelerating the pace of fiber. And so we’ve made these commitments to stabilize EBITDA to ultimately grow and get back to long term growth and we will share a plan and then we’ll deliver it.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: Yes. And then lastly, just on the balance sheet. So when you over the course of the last couple of quarters, you’ve completely shifted your capital allocation from expanding your fiber footprint to penetrating the fiber that you’ve already built. You’re hoping to get to a million customers. Strategy makes all the sense in the world to us.

That million customers on our sort of rough math, suggests a sort of an ABS opportunity of maybe like $7,000,000,000 plus, which would certainly help with the upcoming maturity wall in 2027. Are we looking at it the right way in terms of the ABS capacity that you create with that asset?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: The team has done a great job really making sure that we look at all of the options. And I’m excited about the work the team has done and ABS didn’t even exist when I started. And so we’ll start to share some of that in future calls, but, you know, we’re laser focused on making sure we have the runway to operate and turning around the operation will give us even more options. Yeah. And being able to deliver broadband, deliver EBITDA will ensure that we have all the runway we need.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: And ultimately, in the balance sheet just needs to needs to be reduced to get to a point where it’s sustainable. Looking at what your majority owner has done in France with liability management exercises, we’re sort of wondering what the opportunity is to follow a similar path in The U. S? What the prospect of debt for equity might be?

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: Yes. What I would say is that the French operation is a separate entity and quite frankly exists in a very different environment, different regulatory environment, different competitive landscape. And so, I don’t know that that is the right corollary necessary, but we are looking at all options and we have some really, you know, as we continue to deliver on the operation, we will have more options.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: I think we’re out of time guys. I didn’t get through all my questions, but this has been a great discussion. I really appreciate it.

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: All right. Sorry, I kind of I’m passionate and long winded and a lot of hot air.

Unidentified speaker, Co-moderator, BCG: No, we love the passion. It’s great.

Dennis Matthews, CEO and Chairman, Altice USA: All right. Thanks.

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