Verizon at Goldman Sachs Conference: Strategic Moves and Market Position

On Monday, 08 September 2025, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) participated in the Goldman Sachs Communicopia + Technology Conference 2025. CEO Hans Vestberg outlined Verizon’s strategic direction, highlighting both opportunities and challenges. Key discussions included the pending acquisition of Frontier Communications, growth in the perks platform, and the competitive wireless landscape.

Key Takeaways

• Verizon plans to acquire Frontier Communications, expecting $500 million in cost synergies.
• The perks platform is generating $2 billion annually with mid-30% profit margins.
• Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) has reached 5 million subscribers, aiming for 8 to 9 million by 2028.
• Verizon has paid down nearly $7 billion in debt this year, targeting a leverage ratio of 2.25%.
• The company has increased dividends for the 19th consecutive year.

Financial Results

• EBITDA Growth: Verizon reported a 4% growth in EBITDA in the second quarter.
• Debt Reduction: Nearly $7 billion in debt has been paid down so far this year.
• Leverage Ratio: Currently at 2.3%, with a target of 2.25%. The Frontier acquisition is expected to increase leverage by 25 basis points.
• Capital Intensity: Last year’s capital intensity was 12.7%, with a slight increase anticipated due to fiber expansion.
• Dividend Growth: Verizon has increased its dividend for the 19th year in a row.
• Revenue from Perks: The perks platform generates $2 billion annually with mid-30% margins.
• Bonus Depreciation: A positive impact of $1.5 to $2 billion is expected this year from the recent bill.

Operational Updates

• Frontier Acquisition: Expected to close in Q1, with $500 million in cost synergies anticipated.
• Fiber Build-Out: Fiber passings will increase from 400,000-450,000 in 2023 to 650,000 in 2024, with an investment of $8 to $8.5 billion.
• Consumer Wireless: Facing increased competition, Verizon is focusing on a tiered promotional model and expects mid-single-digit to high growth in upgrades this year.
• Fixed Wireless Access (FWA): With 5 million subscribers currently, Verizon targets 8 to 9 million by 2028 and is exploring FWA for multi-dwelling units.
• Prepaid Business: Experiencing growth for three consecutive quarters, with a base over 20 million.
• C-Band Deployment: 80%-90% of the build-out will be completed this year, with full completion by 2026.
• Perks Platform: Aiming to reach 15 million perks this year.
• AI Initiatives: Offering the Gemini Pro AI app as a perk and developing AI Connect.

Future Outlook

• Revenue Growth: Focused on consumer wireless growth through perks, services, and convergence. A stronger second half is expected for broadband.
• Capital Allocation: Prioritizing business investment, fiber expansion, and the Frontier acquisition. Dividend increases will continue, with buybacks considered post-debt target achievement.
• Technology and Innovation: Anticipating benefits from edge computing and large language models.
• Leverage: Aiming to reduce leverage from 2.3% to 2.25%.
• Fixed Wireless Access: Targeting 8 to 9 million subscribers by 2028.

Q&A Highlights

• Frontier Synergies: Integration is expected to be smooth, with significant convergence opportunities.
• Satellite Spectrum: Verizon sees potential partnerships with LEO and GEO players.
• Promotional Intensity: Growth in upgrades is expected, driven by replacement cycles and promotions.
• Device Pricing: Promotions will be tiered based on plan type.
• Capital Expenditures: Increased CapEx due to fiber expansion, estimated between $8 to $8.5 billion this year.

For a detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Goldman Sachs Communicopia + Technology Conference 2025:

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the first company sessions of the Goldman Sachs Communicopia and Technology Conference. I have the privilege of introducing and hosting Hans Vestberg, who’s the Chairman and CEO of Verizon. Prior to becoming the CEO in 2018, Hans worked as Verizon’s Chief Technology Officer and President of Global Networks. Prior to joining Verizon in 2017, he served as Ericsson’s CEO. My name is Mike Ng, and I cover U.S. telecom here at Goldman Sachs. We have about 35 minutes for today’s presentation. Thank you so much for being here this morning, Hans.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Thank you for having me.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hans, around this time last year, you announced the Frontier acquisition. Verizon’s targeting 30+ million fiber passings by 2028, 35 to 40 million over time. Could you just talk a little bit about how Frontier fits into the broader Verizon strategy and some of the opportunities that you see as you think about the integration of Frontier?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah. I guess my team has posted my safe harbor behind me. Oh, the phone is calling as well. Yes, I will. Safe harbor statement. I might say something that is forward-looking, so just be aware of that. Let me talk about Frontier. One year ago, we basically announced the acquisition of Frontier. It was based on that we did a strategy of how we’re going to continue to roll out fiber outside our ILEC footprint. Of course, when we had done that strategy, we realized that the footprint on Frontier was a very good buy versus build for us, timing-wise and even value-wise as we closed it. That was the first. The second one is, of course, that we’re going through all the regulatory approvals. We have all the federal approvals.

We’re now working down the last couple of states here that we believe is going best, definitely on track to close in the first quarter, as we’ve said all the time. All that you can park, and then you can sort of move on and see what are the synergies. Our early indication when we talked about synergies was $500 million in cost synergies. We haven’t talked about our revenue synergies, but for obvious reasons, we see a great opportunity for convergence here. I usually say when it comes to convergence, when you have mobility and broadband together, when fixed wireless access customers, they have a high degree on convergence, FiOS lower, and Frontier the lowest. That’s sort of the opportunity we have. We’re very excited over it. It almost is connected directly to our footprint because this was ex-Verizon business or assets.

The connection of it and doing the integration, I would say, and you know no acquisition is easy. It’s always complex. In all acquisitions we have done the last 15 years, this is probably the easiest from an integration point of view if you exclude Spectrum because Spectrum is way easier. We’re very excited over it, and we think we’re going to have multiple opportunities both for revenue and cost synergies. We have not come out yet and say how many passings we’re going to do. We just said plus 1 million and it’s plus, plus, plus when 1 million. We want to have better visibility on when we close, and then we’re going to have an investor update with how much passings, how much capital allocation we’re going to do, what type of revenue synergies do we see, and all of that.

We will, of course, come in one full package and how much CapEx we’re going to spend. There are a lot of things still to unpack on it, but everything is going according to plan, and we’re really excited for it. The good news is also that Frontier has been performing really well since the announcement of the acquisition. They are on plan with our, what we assume, their business plan. Sometimes, you know, it’s very easy. You buy something, it takes 18 months before you close. There’s a lot of things happening. So far, Frontier has been executed extraordinarily well. We’re very pleased with that.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: That’s great. Just as a quick follow-up, when you think about some of the synergy opportunities, just qualitatively, what does that look like? Is that Frontier service in Verizon stores?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah, there’s a lot, but yeah, one is, of course, in the footprint of Frontier. We have more than 1,000 stores. Of course, we can use that. There’s a better distribution. We can use our IT systems in order to enhance the service levels and also the efficiency of deployment. There’s a lot of things we can do given our footprint that we can combine with them. We can have things to learn from them, how they have been reinventing themselves. Remember, they went bankrupt. You think a little bit different than when you have an ongoing concern. We have things that we need to learn from them that we can involve in our business. All in all, there’s a lot of cost synergies. I’m also very excited for the revenue synergies for us to continue to drive convergence, step-ups, and all of that.

Of course, seeing that we have a harmonized technology stack.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great. I wanted to ask you about some industry news this morning. There was a lower-orbit satellite provider who acquired some spectrum. Could you talk a little bit about your views on that, whether that’s as a competitor to broadband or in the future as a competitor to mobile wireless service, and what the implications are.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: I read the same news that you are doing, so I don’t have any other. I think that, again, the portfolio Spectrum is, of course, an interesting piece of business. This is the majority of, of course, satellite Spectrum. We are working with all the LEO and GEO players in order to have both backhaul or direct-to-device. I think this is just giving more opportunities for us to have more supply. I can only read what I’m reading, but I see this is creating more opportunities to do direct-to-device connection with satellites in especially areas where we cannot build because of requirements of international park and things like that. I still believe that emergency or texting and calling in these areas will be important as a service that we will provide to our customers. Today, we have AST doing it. We have our iPhone. We have Skylo.

We have this sort of covered. This will just create more opportunities in the market and partners for us to go there. It’s a little bit early to say, but clearly, this was in the cards after they sold out what they did last week or two weeks ago that now their operations will be less of an operation company, and now they’re selling out the Spectrum.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great. Shifting gears, maybe we can talk a little bit about consumer wireless and the industry and the market. We’ve seen quite strong market activity, high gross additions, higher churn at the beginning of the year. Could you just give us an update on what you’re seeing in the wireless market for consumer at the industry level? Where do you see churn trending and what does normalized churn look like?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: What we saw in the first year was somewhat, I would say, elevated competition, higher promotional intensity. I don’t think it’s strange, to be honest. The market is shrinking because the demographics of the U.S., it’s not a growing market. We have less immigration, so it’s less customers on the consumer side coming in. It’s a little bit more competitive. That’s what we saw. The other is that we now have over 40 months. That’s how long a consumer keeps their phones. So sooner or later, people will start doing upgrades of their phones. We incentivize that even in the second quarter with our new offerings. I think that was pretty normal, and that, of course, increased a little bit of the intensity. We are coming in and out, as always. We are financial disciplines, but we see opportunities. We come in second quarter, were a little bit more aggressive.

That, of course, has elevated churn in the whole industry, which is not strange neither. I think it’s just a sort of some sort of an impact of where the industry are, in which way we are, and we sort of come into the third wave of wireless. The first wave was sort of extraordinarily expensive to have a mobile phone. The second was mass market. You can still build market share and grab a lot of new customers. Now we’re in a satellite to consumer wireless market, and then you need to work differently. Our strategy has been very clear there. We are building our vertical stack. We’re building our horizontal stack because we believe that we can continue to grow our service revenue, even though volumes might be smaller when it comes to new customers.

That’s why we build the whole perks platform, adjacent services, access, and loyalty programs, and seeing also we can do all the step-ups and the convergence. That gives us, I would say, several vectors of growth that we didn’t have before. Just the perks. Last year, we had, I think, 7 million perks. This year, we said we’re going to go to 10. Then we upgraded to 14, and now we believe we’re going to have 15 million perks. It’s going way faster than we thought. We basically have exclusive agreements with all the Netflix of the world, Apple One of the world, the Paramount Plus of the world, Disney Plus of the world. This is a unique way for us to build something that nobody else is building. It’s good revenues. As Sowmyanarayan Sampath, the Head of CEO Consumer Goods, said, this is good margins as well.

All in all, that’s how we build in this market going forward. I think that’s very important because the next couple of years is going to be a little bit more tighter, new customers coming into the market. We will have that together with also all the multi-brands we have on the prepaid, so we can address any market segments, and we can scale it upwards with growth.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot there that I would love to.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah, it was a lot in that one. I heard that. Sorry.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: No, I would love to dive more deeply into a lot of those things, but maybe just starting out with the replacement cycle that you mentioned has approached 40 months at this time. One of the topics that is on the mind of investors today is the upcoming Apple iPhone launch, right?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah, tomorrow.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: will get it tomorrow.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the launch of the iconic phones. What do you think that does as it relates to the promotional intensity of the market? Do we see a pull forward of that upgrade demand early this year that may make the back half more?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah. Remember, for almost three years, we have been having downward trends on upgrades. That you sooner or later will have an upward trend. We believe it should be mid-single digit to high growth of upgrades this year, which probably will happen. Still to be seen is, of course, the launch of Apple, what that means to our customers. If many Apple customers have taken sort of iPhone 16 in May, they might wait and see what’s going to happen with this launch. We are going to see how it’s going to turn out in the rest of the year. Definitely, we are going to have growth on upgrades this year, which is just logical after years of decline and also with the promotions we have put into the market. It’s still very exciting. The Google Pixel 10 come out, I would say, a great phone.

Also, very good traction on that one. We see all these new devices coming out and being exciting. I’ve always said that when you see a real boom in upgrades is when you go from a G to another, 3G to 4G, 4G to 5G. 6G is not even in the plan right now. It’s probably a couple of years out. Or a real hardware redesign. Those are the moments where you see that consumers really throw themselves in and, "I need this phone. I need to upgrade it." Other than that, we have seen that the softwares are so good, you know, and the changes in between different versions have been a little bit smaller. People have kept the phone way longer.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah. I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on the reaction to changes in device prices. I think the expectation for tomorrow is that we see some de facto price increases on some of the models. How do the carriers, how does Verizon react to something like that? Is it more about making sure we get consumers upgraded to certain tiers of service?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: There were many assumptions in that question, you know, and things that I cannot answer or I shouldn’t answer. Historically, we have been very disciplined. We have a tiered model for our promotions. Basically, if you take the highest plan for us, the ultimate plan, then you get a certain amount of promotional money. If you take the medium, you take less. If you take the lowest, sort of the welcome plan, we give you $400. We always tier the promotions. We have thought that was a good idea to incentivize our customers. We are going to see what is going to happen in the future. I can never talk about the future pricing or whatever I am going to do in the future. That is historically how we have been dealing with different prices.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: OK. One of the things that you mentioned in response to the first question on consumer wireless was just perks and the platform. Perks is something that I thought is really interesting, right? I think you guys have talked about $2 billion of annualized revenue, mid-30% margin.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: In less than 18 months.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: In less than 18 months, I think it has been a good driver of our view and should continue to be.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: The penetration is still low. We still have probably 2/3 on my plan. First of all, getting everybody on my plan, and then also starting to get a penetration on every account on perks. We have a way to go. I think what you realize when you have that size of the business we have, you need to take it in steps. You need to have the whole sales channel, digital as in the stores, being prepared to do it. It takes some time. In the beginning, when we had these perks, it didn’t even sell. Right now, it’s selling. The value proposition is that we now have the best value because if you take a plan from us, you take a couple of perks, that value nobody can compete with. We definitely have the best value for our consumers, the postpaid right now.

We just need to market it better, and we will.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah. It’s a revenue profit driver, and it also helps with the price value perception.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah, your price value perception, the loyalty. We also have, starting with the adjacent services, like the high yield account, bank account that we now have together with Open Bank. We have the credit card. We’re just building different services that have a brand affection that is connected with our brand, but also it resonates for our customer. It has to be sort of flexible. Customers need to be picking and choosing. We cannot tell, hey, if you take this plan, it’s included. Our consumers don’t like that. They want to have the flexibility, and they want to have the optionality of doing it. We still are the only one that can do a mix and match inside a wireless account, meaning if you have four lines, you can have one line on welcome plan, one on ultimate. No other competitor can do that.

That came from the consumer research we did two years ago that customers want that flexibility and optionality to move around. We have it both on our wireless, then we have it on our perks. We have it on all other adjacent services as well. Part we are building based on the consumer insights we have. Now it’s more about branding and seeing that the distribution channels can really handle the volumes of different products that we have.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah. Just on the topic of perks, perks is one way that Verizon can be an AI beneficiary, right? Because you’re distributing Google Events. That’s how consumers are getting Gemini in many instances. Could you maybe just talk about that aspect of it, right? The AI apps and how that could potentially help?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah. Also, one of the perks is, of course, that we have the Gemini Pro AI app that we are also offering like a perk. Yes, we see that as also softwares that can be enhancing the consumer experience you put them in. Remember, we are doing this on consumer wireless. We’re also bringing the perks platform into my home, meaning broadband. We are gearing up for doing it on prepaid. We are starting it also in the SMB sector where we’re also working the same. I think that’s the way of working this in the future to have sort of a vertical integrated stack for your customers, and they can pick and choose what they want. You need to have the best network in the bottom that is performing and with the flexibility, and then you build upwards. Yeah, you’re right.

This is giving us a great opportunity to engage with our customers way more often than coming into the store once a year and doing your upgrade or buying your phone.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah. Thinking about this all a little longer term, I was wondering if you could just describe how you think about wireless revenue growth in terms of subscriber growth versus pricing. On the subscriber side, should we be thinking more about non-phone subscribers to the extent we get new types of devices? Is there a pricing opportunity because of some of these platforms that you mentioned?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: If you look in the future, I think we now have created so many vectors of growth on the consumer side that we grow on. Of course, new customers are always important, but we have so many other areas we can grow on right now. We just need to see that we deploy the capital in the right area, which has the best return on investment. If that’s perks or high yield bank accounts or insurance, we will do that. If it’s to acquire new customers, we will do that. The financial discipline in the team is extraordinary. On the business side, we have been always a very good balance between volume and price and whatever offers we have. Recently, we had some impact on the public sector for obvious reasons. When we see downsizing in the public sector with our market share, we have some negative impact on that.

The other sectors are performing well for us, and we have, I would say, a high market share there. We have all of that. What I see in the future is that the innovation of network-enabled devices, meaning devices that are using the network for their applications, for the processing, et cetera. We built the whole Metro network and the edge capabilities five years ago, way early maybe. That’s really what we’re going to see when AI will start to have devices that are going to connect with the network in a totally different way. They’re probably a couple of years out, but that is the next boundary of wireless growth for us where we’re both going to have new, I would say, new offerings for these types of devices. The manufacturer of the device needs to have edge capabilities from us that we can charge as well.

You’re going to have dual revenue streams. That’s what I see happening also with time here. Adding to that, all the AI being built with our business side, the AI Connect, which have a great opportunity right now with Lithium and Dark Fiber for all the routes that need to be built. Over time, edge processing, edge capabilities, which we also already have in our data center. There are multiple new vectors of growth that we have been building on for years. We built our network to be prepared for it that is coming in the next years to come. We have the vectors of growth here and now with the perks, adjacent services, my home, my plan, and all of that we have built the last couple of years. We’re excited over it.

You saw when we finished the second quarter, we now are growing our EBITDA with 4%, which we haven’t done for a very long time. We upgraded our guidance in the second quarter for the full year. The team is doing a great job. We have a great team that is super focused on doing the right thing for our customers and then bringing that together.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Right. You guys were early with AI-enabled services with the product forming.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah, we were very early with that. On the edge computing, we’re probably five years too early. You know, now we have all the capacity at the edge, which will be beneficial when the large language models are done, sort of, and you bring it to an AI application or an enterprise, for example, that’s going to move out to the edge for transport cost, latency, security, and privacy. That’s where we’re going to be very well placed to take care of that, serving 98% of the Fortune 500.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah, just kind of wrapping up on consumer wireless, I was wondering if you could.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Oh, we’re still talking about that. OK.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Briefly, yeah. I was just wondering if you could talk about what current trends have looked like. How has Back to School performed for, as a for instance?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah, nothing special. I think this third quarter is always the quarter where everybody’s waiting for the iconic launch. Even though Back to School, I think what I’m really encouraged is our prepaid business, which has been doing really well. I mean, I think it’s three quarters of growth after the acquisition. We had some five, six, eight quarters of negative growth. Now we are growing that business. The team is doing a great job. We have seven brands. We have Visible, Total Wireless, and of course, Straight Talk and a couple of others, Walmart Family. All of them are distinguished, segmented in the market. These are perfect for Back to School and things like that. I’m excited over the prepaid portfolio. Sometimes we have this conversation with investors, you know, yeah, but postpaid is important. I would say, I mean, high-end prepaid is more profitable than low-end postpaid.

For me, again, the strategy is very clear. Build a network once, having as many profitable connections on top of the network. Prepaid plays a very important role there. Some prepaid offerings have limitations of usage. You can make a good, profitable business on any type of connections as long as you have the right requirements around them. That’s why I see the base of our prepaid that is plus 20 million is very important for us. We can do quite a lot with it. Now we’re growing as well.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Maybe just following up on prepaid since you mentioned it, could you talk about how that strategically fits into the broader portfolio? Has the characteristics of prepaid changed relative to how we may have perceived it a decade ago?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: I think that when you work with brands, it’s a brand perception of your brand in the consumer world that you want to have. Of course, Verizon has a good brand. I mean, premium brand, high-quality brand, the highest brand value in the industry, in our industry. That tells you something when you want to approach it. That means also that some consumers might say, Verizon is not for me. That’s why we built Total Wireless, which we have built up now in one and a half years, which is a high-end prepaid, for example, Visible, 100% digital, where customers don’t want a store, no hassle. They just want to buy the things online and nothing else. We’re trying to have the whole portfolio with Walmart, which is another cohort of customers that like that type of business.

I think that it’s important when you’re in consumer business and when you want to extend the time, you need to be true to your brands and the brand perception you have and what type of brand values you are building. That’s why the whole prepaid is playing a big business for us. We have never had this prepaid to postpaid convergence. Over time, we’re building that muscle right now with many of the stores we’re building with Total Wireless, for example.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah. Shifting gears to broadband, obviously, the market has been incredibly dynamic over the past several years. Your fixed wireless product has performed very well, 5 million subscribers on its way to 8 to 9 million by 2028. Could you just talk a little bit about fixed wireless access? Is it a transitional technology? Is it a good business? What do the returns look like relative to fiber?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: It’s a great product, and it fits very well in this portfolio of vectors of growth. Certain consumers, certain business customers really like fixed wireless access for the simplicity. You self-install, you get it quickly, and it’s really good performance. Of course, we’re also going to have fiber. There are different customers there. It’s a long-term strategy to be in fixed wireless access. We are developing and improving all the time. We are now also starting with our multi-MDU solution, multi-dwelling units being in high rises, where we’re going to do fixed wireless access to high rises, which has not been a market we have penetrated before. Basically, taking between the tower on one building, taking a very broad spectrum tranche, sending capacity over, and then using all the cabling in the building. Suddenly, you can also address multi-units. We see more development on fixed wireless access and opportunities.

On top of that, of course, being able to see that the business side is using fixed wireless access much more. I mean, when we did our business case on fixed wireless access, it was basically built on consumer. Right now, we see very good traction on fixed wireless access on small and medium businesses, retail offices using fixed wireless access for their primary broadband solution because it’s so easy and so quickly. This is a technology that’s going to be here. Some of you might remember that when we launched it, we were first in the world, basically, with it. Nobody believed it even would work. I think the industry has proven that this is one of the great innovations for 5G. Everybody talks, where are the big things from 5G?

Fixed wireless access is definitely the biggest innovation of 5G so far together with private 5G networks and edge computing.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: How do you think about balancing your capacity between fixed wireless and mobile?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah. The capital expenditures that we have on mobility are in a very clear priority. Number one, we build for mobility, for the mobile case. The C-band we bought in 2019 or 2020 for $52 billion. We will finish between 80% and 90% of that build-out this year. What we’re doing is that we build a C-band for mobility, and then our adjacent business case is fixed wireless access. We don’t build our wireless spectrum for fixed wireless access. That’s a secondary business case on the mobility. During 2026, we’re going to finish basically the C-band deployment as we planned. Then it’s more about capacity and business opportunities. Of course, we’re going to have the opportunity to build more tuned to fixed wireless access where the mobility will be the secondary business case. Right now, the team is focused on finishing the C-band deployment.

Again, this year, we’re going to finish between 80% and 90% of the plan. In 2026, we’re going to finish that out.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: As part of just the broader broadband strategy, is fixed wireless a business that helps you gain market share versus cable? Is it going to improve broadband penetration for the market overall? Just wondering where you think we are kind of from an industry broadband penetration.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yes. We have seen the last, I mean, we have been between 300,000 to 400,000 new net ads every quarter for many quarters right now in a mix of fiber and fixed wireless access. In the end of 2024, I already said that we’re going to have a little bit lower net ads on fixed wireless access, not because we’re not deploying fast. It’s because we go from urban areas to suburban and rural areas where we build our C-band, and there’s less density of houses. The passings on fixed wireless access is a little bit lower. At the same time, we’re now ramping up our fiber from 400,000 to 450,000 passings in 2024 to 650,000 this year. We’re now looking forward to enjoying that increase in fiber that we’re doing on the FiOS footprint.

As I said in the second quarter, we’re going to be having a stronger second half on broadband, meaning FiOS plus fixed wireless access in the second quarter, the second half of the year compared to the first half of the year.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: OK, great. Maybe moving to capital allocation, leverage, lots of moving parts here with the pending closure of the Frontier acquisition. Could you just talk a little bit about how long you expect it’ll take to reach your target leverage? Are there things that perhaps you haven’t been particularly prescriptive about as it relates to tax benefits from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that should help on the Frontier side, which you guys haven’t quantified yet, that may help you reach your target leverage sooner?

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Yeah. The bonus depreciation that was part of the big bill that was approved here in August has a positive impact for us, $1.5 to $2 billion this year. On cash, which is, of course, sizable money. The capital allocation is very clear. Number one, we put it into our business. This year, we increased our CapEx because we increased our fiber build somewhere $8 to $8.5 billion, depending on where you are on where you believe you are in the guide. More important, of course, we’re investing in our business by buying Frontier. We have not come out to say what the capital intensity will be when we have Frontier. I will do that in one package. Historically, we have by far the lowest capital intensity in the industry, in the world, basically. Last year, we were at 12.7% capital intensity, which is low.

The Europeans are probably up to 20%, and our competition here is 300, 400 basis points higher. Fiber is a little bit higher density. The mix is going to probably go up a little bit, but I will come back with that. Number two is continue to put our board in a situation to increase our dividend. For the ones that are following us, the press release on Friday confirmed that 19 consecutive years of growing our dividend. Again, we added $0.05 for the next year. A very good increase on dividend again, and that’s what we have done for 19 years. We’re paying down our debts. So far this year, until the second quarter, we paid down almost $7 billion in debt, $6.9 billion. Our leverage is 2.3%. We want to go to 2.25%. We’re definitely on our way.

When we buy Frontier, we will come up a quarter of an inch, I would say 25 basis points on our leverage. Given the cash generation we have right now, I think that we will continue to work well on that. After that, if we have proceeds left, we will start considering buybacks, which we don’t have in the plan right now. Given how quickly we’re moving here, we definitely want to consider that as soon as we get there. We’re very clear on capital allocation and see that we honor our shareholders with a good returns pack. Of course, given the size of the buybacks, the return on our yield is really high.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great. In the last couple of minutes here, I was just wondering if you could talk about one or two things strategically that you’d like investors to take away from this conversation as it relates to the three-year outlook.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: No, I think that what investors should look at Verizon is, first of all, extremely stable, very solid balance sheets, and of course, more vectors of growth than we have had in many, many years. Topping that with also more opportunities for cost reductions in many, many years with AI coming in, I think we’re coming into a new era of business. We are best positioned with the best network, the biggest distribution, highest market share in every sector we’re into. We’re adding Frontier, so of course, we’re excited. We’re a team that is executing. I think that’s, and we’re very prudent with our capital allocation. I think that’s what we want investors to see and knowing about our stock.

Mike Ng, Host, U.S. Telecom Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Excellent. Hans, that was a fantastic conversation. Really appreciate you coming out here today. Thank you, everybody, for coming in.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon: Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

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