Charter Communications, Inc. (CHTR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi. I hope everybody got some lunch and got to eat and meet with some companies. Okay, we are going to get started again. Here is the agenda as a reminder. We do start Q&A around 1:30. And before that, we'll talk about Liberty TripAdvisor and TripAdvisor and the Cable Sector. So we do have some more FLS for your viewing pleasure. And then we thought -- it seems like you guys are enjoying the TikTok, so we might have some -- we might have a career -- some careers being influencers. We'll see. And we wanted to also though, do a little bit more comedy in a little bit of a different way. So I hope you'll join it. [Presentation]

Good afternoon. I hope you enjoyed your lunch. Thank you. So Travel is back. You may have heard, demand is incredibly high. Americans want to get out and spend. And you've heard our theme today is about Joy. Their discretionary spending is very much focused on their experiences in many cases, rather than their goods, and they aren't going to stop spending even if the economy gets a little worse. Their spending prioritization is right up [ Trips alley ] between dining out and travel and where they want to spend and where they plan to increase their spend is right up [ our alley ] too. And you've seen that in the business at Trip. Slowest in the core but stronger at fork and even stronger yet at [indiscernible] with experiences. You're going to hear a lot more about that and what Matt Goldberg, our new CEO, and his team intend to do. But you've seen that reflected the success to date in the improving financial profile at Trip, substantially stronger. Obviously, COVID was not a good time to be a travel company. This is a good time to be a travel company, and Trip is taking advantage of it. We've also tried to take advantage of it at L Trip and strengthen the balance sheet. And we've really lockdown or protected ourselves for the next for years or so while still maintaining upside on the shares that are unblocked, unhinged, unhedged. And you can see over there on the other side [Technical Difficulty].

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Matt Goldberg, CEO of TripAdvisor. And I guess I should kick off by saying if travel isn't joyful, I don't know what is. And as many of you know, I've been in the seat since July. This is my first Liberty Day as a presenter. And it's good to be back in the Liberty family, where I spent some time at QVC Group now known as Qurate. My path to TripAdvisor includes a background in digital media and ad tech, e-commerce and travel with operating roles at the Trade Desk, News Corp, the Wall Street Journal and Lonely Planet. And I'm excited to lead TripAdvisor, building on the legacy of our pioneering founder. It's an exciting time to join this iconic company given the travel environment in the last few years, the trajectory of recovery in the sector and the strong return of the leisure traveler. I'm personally passionate about travel and the purpose it serves to experience the world, connect to other cultures and broaden our perspectives. Professionally, the industry has always captured my attention given the massive size and dynamic nature of the market and the rewards available to those who innovate to serve consumer needs. This creates a compelling opportunity for TripAdvisor to take advantage of its heritage, to reimagine the future of travel, put the consumer at the heart of everything we do, and that's why I'm here. You know the drill. Now Greg mentioned that the consumer is back and sentiment is favorable for travel. And we're seeing that in our internal data, too. Travel remains robust, and the majority of travelers plan to travel the same or more in the coming months, and many are even willing to spend more. Coming out of the pandemic, with travel rebounding and the experiences category exploding, we believe that people are seeking ways to reconnect with the world, making the most of their precious time and resources as they prioritize meaningful experiences above material consumption and we are well positioned to capture the secular shift, which we expect to fuel the future of leisure travel. Our goal is to guide travelers and experience seekers on that journey. And we think of ourselves simply stated as a platform that connects people to experiences worth sharing. TripAdvisor Group represents a family of brands with a shared mission to be the world's most trusted source for travel and experiences. This includes Brand TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel guidance platform, Viator, a leading marketplace for in-destination bookable experiences and TheFork, Europe's leading online restaurant reservation platform. And across our brands, we have hundreds of millions of visitors who arrive on our sites and use our mobile apps. The key question, as we think about the future, is why the customers and consumers come to us. We believe it's because we've created a community of like-minded people who want to share their experiences, so others can be confident when making their next decision about a property or restaurant or an experience. They come looking for ideas and inspiration to connect to over 1 billion reviews and more than 300 million photos from travelers who've actually been there before to leverage our scale and find great pricing options for accommodations and to book experiences in dining on Viator and TheFork. We also believe that travelers experience seekers and diners come to us because they trust us. Our opportunity is to build on that relationship of trust, one of our most precious assets and one that we will continue to reinforce and enhance. So we have a unique position in our industry. It's an attractive long-term market with a vast TAM. We're addressing the global travel market opportunity estimated to grow to over $1 trillion in the next few years with more than half of that online. In particular, bookable experiences is growing rapidly as one of the last categories of travel to shift from offline to online, fueling growth in the category that's expected to reach more than $250 billion by 2024, up from $100 billion in 2021. We also estimate that digital ad spend in the travel and hospitality sector will outperform other ad categories coming out of the pandemic, growing by strong double-digit CAGR over the coming years. We benefit from operating a diverse set of assets and capabilities to participate in this growth. We have a diversified portfolio serving travelers at different points along their journey, whether they're coming to us to plan a trip, to get inspiration for their next experience or to facilitate making it happen. And there's a common theme in the traveler journey, which is that making decisions is not easy. There's a paradox of choice. Many of the options may be unfamiliar, and the stakes are high. We know the average traveler can take up to a month or more to plan a trip visiting dozens of sites before finalizing their plans. We have a number of advantages to leverage as we address this opportunity to help travelers with decision-making. This includes: a globally recognized brand built on trust; a large global audience making meaningful content contributions; a wealth of high intent data to leverage across the group; and a diverse set of suppliers in each of our segments. This creates multiple ways to connect consumers with our partners who are: the online travel agencies who value our high-intent traffic; hotels and restaurants looking to drive additional demand, endemic and non-endemic advertisers seeking a valuable travel audience; and of course, the local operators who offer experiences where we've assembled the largest bookable inventory of things to do in a destination available anywhere online. We're one of the only players in our ecosystem, connecting consumers and partners in this way across all of travel and experiences today. As we think about our portfolio, we can start with core TripAdvisor to mirror how we manage the business across our 3 segments. TripAdvisor is well positioned as the world's largest travel guidance platform, serving travelers, as I said, at different points in their journey and whatever they may choose to do, including being in destination and looking for an activity or a nearby restaurant. We drive revenue from partners, the OTAs, advertisers, hotels, restaurants and operators who are the beneficiaries of our reach as we send them high-quality, high-intent customers. As you can see from the revenue recovery on the right-hand side, the TripAdvisor Core segment has recovered steadily quarter-by-quarter relative to 2019. This indicates the strength and relevance of our offerings to meet consumer demand. We've seen even stronger recovery in some areas of the business. So for example, our Hotel Meta business in Europe and the U.S. combined last quarter was at 100% of 2019. And our experiences in dining offering recovered to 125%. Some areas have been slower to recovery such as our advertising and B2B offerings, which mirrored shifts in advertising and hotel marketing trends. But in general, we can clearly see an overall healthy recovery trend. Second, our Viator segment, operates a marketplace for experiences and activities. We connect travelers with a highly fragmented market of operators and suppliers across the globe. Tours and excursions, outdoor activities, water sports and cultural experiences. We work with over 50,000 operators worldwide who offer over 300,000 experiences to travelers. We do this through our Viator brand and our TripAdvisor Point of Sale as well as powering a few thousand third-party distribution partners. We're a market leader in this category and are driving growth and market share in a space that offers favorable secular tailwinds. The experiences market, as I've said, is estimated to explode to over $250 billion in gross bookings by 2024. And as we've referenced earlier, we're benefiting from the shift from offline to online. Nearly 80% of these experiences are still booked through traditional off-line resources but we know that travelers want in online solution. With only 20% of the transactions taking place online, the experiences category trails online bookings of other travel categories, and we see no reason why experiences won't follow suit. So we're investing in this segment, in areas that include improving our mobile experience, developing new programs for suppliers and expanding our marketing channels. We see the results in higher take rates, record new customers and improved repeat rates. We're also investing in driving greater brand awareness. Here is an example of one of the spots we recently launched as part of a connected TV campaign. Let's roll the video. [Presentation]

I really like the spot because I think it captures the essential role that Viator can play in the consumer travel journey and the opportunity we have to connect global travelers to memorable experiences. In terms of revenue recovery, the Viator segment is accelerating quarter-by-quarter. The team is executing well and driving impressive results. This last quarter, we saw a record revenue of $174 million, which was 138% growth year-over-year and 179% of 2019 levels. Year-to-date gross bookings have crossed over the $2 billion mark. Third, TheFork segment, which represents our operations primarily in Europe, connecting consumers and dining experiences. Diners use TheFork's mobile app to access restaurant information and reserve tables. Restaurants sign up with us to reach diners and manage their reservations. Our revenues primarily earned through per seat diner charges paid by restaurants. Our leadership in the European market is clear. Currently, approximately 50,000 restaurants in 12 countries partner with us to reach consumers. We also see more opportunity in a fragmented market of over 500,000 [Technical Difficulty] we're investing in product, technology and marketing with good results. We're seeing strong mobile app downloads and unique visitors on an aggregate basis that compare favorably to other global players. Approximately 3/4 of our bookings come from the mobile app with strong repeat bookings and higher lifetime value economics. Last quarter, we reached 103% of 2019 levels, which was a strong showing, particularly because of the estimated negative impact of 9% from currency headwinds. And we're pleased with the performance because in the backdrop, there's been uneven recovery in the European consumer food service industry, which still hasn't recovered to pre-pandemic levels. So you can see we play in attractive markets and have a great set of assets to leverage. This leads me to an area I've spent much of my time since joining, aligning the TripAdvisor Core segment around a clear set of strategic priorities. We're exploring how we can serve travelers as the definitive contemporary travel guide. And while it's still early, we have an emerging view of some of the themes we're excited about and are doing the work now to explore further. First, we will put the traveler at the heart of everything we do. And I mentioned the pain point earlier around decision-making, how hard that is at every stage of the travel journey. And we're exploring how to lean into that and use all of our assets to help us make decisions. We can leverage our heritage of trust where we rank higher than most of our major competitors, including Google. We can also differentiate by creating more relevant opportunities to connect the community, the global group of travelers that we serve. We'll continue to improve our mobile offering to serve consumers wherever they are. And at a minimum, I can say that the traveler experience will be at the center of anything we prioritize. Second, we'll aim to drive more engagement on our platform. If we're helping you make decisions on multiple points along the journey, you should be spending more time on our site, and we should be building a deeper relationship with you. We can do this in a number of ways by enhancing and curating content, not just reviews and photos but also videos and other immerse experiences; by offering useful tools and features for planning and discovery; by leveraging our data to understand the consumer better and create more personalized and relevant user journeys that meet their needs and wants. And all of this ties into membership, how we strengthen the value proposition of being a TripAdvisor member and keep you coming back. Third, focusing on how we fully monetize this engagement. This includes reinforcing the relevance of how we serve hotel shoppers through meta search and other products to help them find the best accommodation. Expanding our media business with new products and services, offering a strong value proposition for marketers and doing a better job of matching supply and demand when travelers have made a decision and are ready to make it happen with our partners. These are just a few of the emerging themes to robust data-driven analysis into the areas where we currently play where the market is going and how we can deliver more value to travelers and partners and grow our share of the market. Before we close, let me share some of the financial highlights of the group. In our year-to-date performance, we're meaningfully ahead of where we were last year on our key financial metrics. Revenue recovery is strong. And year-to-date, revenue grew 72% year-over-year. Our adjusted EBITDA recovery is also strong and has been the result of a combination of disciplined cost management and our balanced approach to growth and investment. Here, you can see our operating cash flow and free cash flow over the last 5 years. Our numbers indicate that we're a low capital-intensive business, and we generate healthy cash flow. Working capital timing impacts the magnitude of this year's year-to-date figures versus other periods. But the point here is that we have historically generated healthy levels of cash and continue to see this improve as well. Finally, at the end of the third quarter, we had $1.6 billion available in liquidity, which reflects our solid financial flexibility. It's a good position to be in with a balance sheet that will provide us with optionality and whether through organic investment, M&A in support of our strategy or uses of -- or other uses of cash. As always, we'll continue to make those decisions with a disciplined ROI-driven approach. To close, we are optimistic about the future of TripAdvisor Group. This is an enduring long-term opportunity to be the world's most trusted source for travel and experiences. We sit in an attractive, large and growing market. We have a strong family of brands with a unique relationship to our consumer and strong positioning in each segment. We have powerful assets and the ability to capitalize on addressable opportunities to deliver even more value. And we're focused on establishing our strategic priorities and driving operational excellence. In short, we're excited about the journey ahead. Thank you. [Presentation]

Cable is always in the headlines, at least the ones we read, and with a diverse group of opinions about what's going to happen, what the risks are, I was at dinner last night and somebody said, 2 years ago, cable could do no wrong. Everybody loved it. Now it can do no right. Everybody hates it. They don't want to hear about it. We're here to make you talk about it, whether you want to or not. We're actually pretty excited about it. And there are a bunch of narratives out there on those cable headlines. One is FWA, fixed wireless assets is going to handle all your needs. You don't need cable. The other is you need fiber. The cable plant is dead, it's not worthy, can't handle what you need to do. And these seems somewhat at odds or maybe there's just no room in the middle for us. We think both have limitations. Speed limits on the download and the upload are problematic for many users of FWA. Again, the same person who made these comments said they made one of their analysts go buy FWA and test it and see how the latency worked. They complained that -- it was on the 20th floor, so that wasn't working so well when they were on the 20th floor. I think it's going to work fine for some customers, as John said, in some locations, but for many places, it won't work. And overtime, there are going to be capacity limitations, both on performance and on the attractiveness for the suppliers. On the other hand, fiber. Fiber has been around a long time. People have been overbuilding for a long, long time, mostly with limited success. And yes, on the margin, they will take customers from us in some locations or slower growth in some locations, but it is a high cost to deploy. And in many cases, the easiest stuff, aerial and the most attractive dense stuff has been done. And the rate of growth is limited by the supply of talent in the market to deploy and by many of the supply chain issues that are out there. There is convergence happening. And clearly, TMO and Verizon and others, AT&T are trying to get into our business, some ways for FWA and in some ways, through fiber. And you see also smaller players trying to get into fiber. But I would argue our opportunity into their business is much greater. We are already ubiquitous through our MVNO relationship, and we have the opportunity to go out and get buyer economics in the most attractive markets. And you can see that in the net adds that we are achieving as a cable operator as a percent of all that is ongoing in the marketplace in postpaid wireless. And I remind you that postpaid wireless market is 2.5x as big as the broadband market. The average spend is much higher and the opportunity for us where we're ubiquitous and now is much better than the opportunity for them where they're somewhat limited because of either capacity or what they'll be able to do in our judgment or the speed with which they can deploy. Nonetheless, in our judgment, the mark has massively overplayed the hand of the other players. We then brought our multiples down to their levels and something's wrong here. Either we're too low or they're too high. I don't believe this is the incurring in the ongoing situation. I would much rather have our hand than theirs. So something's got to give. I think we are pretty well set up versus these guys because if you look at what the average capacity utilization of a mobile customer is per month versus what the capacity utilization of a fixed broadband customers per month and what they're getting paid per gig, this is a bad bet for them. And I don't think they're going to go for the long term, where they have capacity, absolutely, where they have excess capacity makes a ton of sense, but it doesn't make sense for their long-term economics. We believe instead cable and particularly Charter is very well positioned, differentiated products, opportunity for rural expansion, which is attractive, and we are absolutely the leader in. Some of it fueled by [indiscernible] the government's programs to help accelerate rural outlays, but much of it on the attractiveness of our own plant and what we can do in new markets. I know Tom will talk more about this. I also believe we have a capital-efficient network evolution, and John touched on this high split and then DOC SIS -- from 3.1 to high split the DOC SIS 4.0 are all very attractive and relatively low cost and will carry our network for a long time in a versatile fashion. So you can see this in our -- and as I mentioned, for the overall industry, but particularly for Charter, which is really taking the lead in rolling out mobile in its plant. And you can see our mobile revenue growing dramatically, and I think it's only going to increase over the next several quarters that mobile -- our share of mobile net adds will only grow. And this gives us an opportunity to increase our revenue per home passed. And it also gives us an opportunity to the reality is Video is declining, not new news, but it's more than offset by the opportunities we see in broadband, we see in SMB, we see in advertising and above all, the fastest growth element in mobile. Let me turn briefly to GCI. I'll let Ron Duncan, the humorous man from Alaska, touch on this more. But GCI has been doing fabulously as well. Clearly, business is strong, helped by COVID, has seen meaningful cash flow improvement, driven by better results, a higher margin mix shift, consumer data up, consumer wireless up and GCI is paying dividends to Liberty Broadband, which we're using in attractive ways. We have been prioritizing share repurchase but also managing our liabilities. We have an upcoming convertible or exchangeable rather that we need to refinance in the coming year. We don't necessarily want to do it at these prices. So we're playing a little bit of a game between current repurchase and how much we want to have flexibility to handle the balance sheet issues, which are manageable but done in the most attractive position possible. That share repurchase has led to combined with the success of Charter and growing cash flow per share has led to our free cash flow for share on a look-through basis growing substantially. And we're very bullish on where it's going to go over the next several years. I think cable is incredibly well positioned, and Liberty Broadband given the discount and the ability to continue to repurchase at discounted rates only more so. So with that, I think we're going to turn it over to Tom Rutledge. Thanks. [Presentation]

Well, good afternoon. I guess this was your first meeting. My first meeting here, Greg provocatively played time is on my side. And actually, unfortunately, for me, it isn't. So I'm going to be moving on to Executive Chairman of Charter next month. But I'm not going to be selling my stock. So take a look at this map of Charter and its assets. Charter is a growth company. It's been a growth company, and it will continue to be a growth company. And it has the opportunity to grow in a variety of ways. It can add more revenue and more products to the existing customers that we already have. We sell TV, cable TV. We sell Internet. We sell traditional telephony, we sell mobile. And all of those products can be put together into packages that create more value and interoperate together in a way that individual competitors that we face cannot replicate. So we can actually add more value to -- and more ARPU to every existing customer that we already have, and that's one of our opportunities. We also have an opportunity to follow the growth of housing. So we've built about 1 million homes passed per year over the last 5 years without taking any subsidies or building out rural areas. Just organic growth and the opportunities on the periphery of our infrastructure. And we have a very large infrastructure. It's about 800,000 miles of physical plant. And we also have another opportunity, which is now the subsidized build-out of low-density areas. And we have been a major winner in the first the RDOF process, the Rural Development Opportunity Fund, and we have to build another 110,000 miles of infrastructure and over 1 million homes passed as a result of that opportunity, which is going to produce good returns on investment and those returns are going to come through a combination of our private capital investment and the subsidies that we're getting through the program. So there's plenty of growth for our business, both sort of horizontally, meaning more revenue per customer, more growth opportunity in the passings that are available to us and the opportunity to grow by building out rural areas. And one of the other opportunities that comes from building out rural areas is that we get additional economic build opportunities that come from being able to serve to subsidize low-density areas that we're getting. So we actually get more growth than the subsidy envisions. And so we'll be growing for years to come, but we have a massive infrastructure project in front of us. We have to build today with local commitments as well in the range of 150,000 miles. So we could end up before the next infrastructure bill money settles in with as much as a couple of hundred thousand miles or 25% increase in infrastructure in a relatively short period of time. It's really like building another MSO separate and apart from the core business that we have. This gives you a look at where we sit as a company relative to the industry. We have 30 million internet customers and 32 million customer relationships. We've been growing nicely from a revenue perspective and from a EBITDA perspective. And relative to the rest of the industry, we're similar in size to Comcast and significantly bigger than AT&T and Verizon. And you can see that the multichannel video part of our business, which is our legacy is actually a relatively smaller piece of our business. And actually, from a revenue and EBITDA perspective, the lowest margin business we're in, well, the revenues are big, the EBITDAs are small, I should say. So this is really the money page of the opportunity in front of us. We still have lots of penetration opportunity to grow our core business. And we can do that by creating valuable products that are priced and packaged appropriately and continue to drive penetration, we have good competitive position relative to our -- all of our competitors. And our penetration of our historic business of our Internet business is -- and our wireline business is 55%. And our mobile penetration is 5%. But when you look at the penetration in total of the revenue opportunity or the consumer spend per household in our footprint, we're 28% penetrated. So we're an underpenetrated infrastructure asset where every new incremental customer we create costs less to serve than the ones we already have. So Converged Connectivity is really about what we're doing in terms of the architecture of the business and the product set. And if you think about the nature of all the devices you have, they're wireless devices. We have 500 million devices connected to our network. Almost all of them are connected wirelessly. We still have legacy set-top boxes that are connected by wire, but we have -- and I'll explain in a bit that we have a joint venture with Comcast to create a new video platform and all of those new incremental devices will be connected wirelessly. So we have the best advanced WiFi platform out there. And it's really how you serve your wireless infrastructure that determines what your product definition is and what's your capacity and what your consumer experiences from a product set perspective. And we have a ubiquitously deployed 30 million cell set mobile business. Every WiFi radio that we deploy is also a cellular radio in essence. And most of the bits on our mobile customer base and including the mobile customers who are not our customers is carried through our network. So we are building a network, and we have a better network, and we've been growing nicely as a result of that. And you can see that our growth rate at Charter actually exceeds the industry growth rate from a CAGR perspective of the Internet growth. And that our penetration has also been quite significant and steady in its growth. You can see the curve of that line there is really what the impact of COVID was. We had exceptional pull-through in '21. We had a lag this year, but I expect that basic trend to continue going forward. So when you look at our mobile growth, you can see that it's steady. I think it's actually, given what we've done with our current branding and packaging and the integration of our mobile product and our wireline -- wireless product, our WiFi product in a way that actually makes your mobile product work better than it would ordinarily creates a whole new product definition for us and allows us to sell a combination of WiFi and mobile in a package that cost significantly less than customers are paying today. And create significantly more growth and revenue opportunity and cash flow opportunity for us. And that to me is a very virtuous marketplace position to be in. We can grow and save people money while we're growing. Xumo is the name of the joint venture we created with Comcast. The video business is stressed, as everybody knows. Revenues are high. Expenses are high. Margins are small. It's been a fairly capital-intensive business. Going forward, we will continue to provide the traditional video business through an app-based platform. This joint venture is a new platform. Essentially, it's a way of distributing video content in an app-based platform. And today, Charter already is the biggest streaming app-based platform in the country. We have over 11 million customers who get their traditional video service through an app-based product, and we actually stream more streams than anybody in the live television business. So we're very excited about the opportunity to create a consumer experience where we can take this platform and integrate the capabilities of our traditional linear video with the app-based business and use search and discovery and to use new forms of targeted advertising as a way to drive the business forward. It's going to be a smaller business, I think, ultimately for us than the traditional business was in terms of our whole platform, but it's an opportunity to remake video and to actually to be in the traditional business that we've been in providing set-top boxes. But in this case, those set-top boxes will be consumer devices that the consumer will buy themselves. And the capital intensity of our video business will improve. So we're excited about that in terms of both its capability from a traditional video perspective as well as a potential opportunity to create new ways of working with video direct-to-home sellers and creating -- using our customer relationships to improve the way those products get marketed the way they get put into the marketplace. And we think that there are opportunities for us to work with content providers to create value for both them and us on a platform like this. And we'll have a fairly significant distribution because both Comcast and us will be participating and trying to make this thing go. Services of product continues to be a real opportunity for us. We've been digitizing the whole customer experience. We continue to take activity out of the business. Churn rates are low, subscriber life is longer. Subscribers that are created going forward are more valuable than they've been in the past because they churn less. So our investments in self-service and digitization are continuously improving our cost structure, and they're actually also improving the customer experience, which is actually more important because taking transactions out of the business saves more money than saving cost per transaction. And so we're investing in transaction management. We're hiring good people to work in our operations, quality people who cost more than nonqualified people. And those qualified people with the technology investments we're making are producing results that satisfy customers and actually take costs out of the business. Our network evolution, too, is a cost-based upside that we have, that's unique to us. We have ubiquitously deployed network. We upgraded to 3.1, which gave us gig speed everywhere in the country in a 2-year upgrade a couple of years ago. It costs about $50 -- or excuse me, $9 per home pass, $450 million to get that kind of capacity out of the network. Our next pathway is taking our existing 3.1 DOC SIS platform and splitting the spectrum in a different way and reallocating how we use -- how much space we're using for video and expanding the amount of capacity in the plant, all by doing an electronic drop in to existing amplifiers and electronic devices throughout the plant. So it's very inexpensive on a relative basis and allows us to upgrade at much lower cost than a replacement cost new would. So we have a lower cost infrastructure upgrade strategy, and we have a lower cost product strategy, and we can reduce cost by growing because the more you penetrate a network, the lower your average cost per customer is. And so that's historically been true of our network, and it continues to be true. And there's another path beyond this really in DOC SIS 4.0 full duplex. And the whole platform allows us to get to 10 gig kind of symmetrical speeds with a much lower capital investment relative to anybody. And the other thing about it is that we can do it and ubiquitously do it across our whole footprint in a relatively short period of time. So to the extent that there's products that can live in that environment, we can get them deployed in a mass way in a very short period of time at very low cost. This is the jaws of life and the fundamental nature of our capital intensity and EBITDA growth. You can see that EBITDA growth continues to be good, and it's growing in the right direction. And capital tends to have a little ups and downs, but it's a relatively flat sort of ratio. And that opportunity continues to improve. Capital intensity in the core business is getting better, and it's actually cheaper to serve going forward from a capital perspective than it has been in the past. Now we will have big capital associated with the expansion of the plant, but that's really a whole new network being built for unserved passings today. But the core business is less capital intensity and lots of free cash flow. So my time is up. This is a repeat of what I just said. We have a great business. It's been great over the last 10 years at Charter. It's going to be great for the next 10 years. Thank you very much. [Presentation]

Good afternoon, and welcome back to your annual update for Liberty's Top of the World investment. When I spoke to you last time, the broadband industry was still riding the essential services high from the pandemic. GCI had recently launched 2 gig services to all of our customers in our urban and most of our rural areas, and we were on the march to 10 gig with our Fiber Plus network. We also had some ambitious middle mile projects underway to connect rural Alaska, one of which provided the intro video here today. And speaking of waves, we and other providers within the industry, we're looking at a Tsunami of federal funding for broadband. Today, the equity markets would tell you that the future growth of the broadband business is more uncertain than it was a year ago. We don't see that. For us, the growth continues to be good. While our rate of growth has clearly slowed down in '22 compared to '21, we're still growing both wired and wireless connections at a rate greater than 5% per year, which is better than we did in 2019. ARPU as well continues to rise. Over the past 4 years, combined wireless and wired ARPU has grown by more than 15%. Our growth is driven by the best wired and wireless networks in Alaska. Our 5G speeds are more than -- are almost 3x as fast as our competitors. And our extensive 2-gig wired network has been cited by PC Mag repeatedly as the fastest network in Alaska. Speed clearly sells. 30% of our new customers start out at the top 2 gig level. These gains are in spite of the fact that we're seeing increased fiber-to-the-home competition in some of our markets. We're fortunate in that fixed wireless access is not really a factor in Alaska today. Remember, too, that we own our own mobile network. We're a mobile network operator, not a virtual network operator that gives us more control over the platform, better margins and more flexibility and clear profitability in that business. Wireless is also the foundation of our most compelling bundle GCI Plus. GCI Plus combines our wired modem service with a wireless line. And if you have 2 wireless lines on GCI with your modem, you can save $100 per month compared to the competition. That strategy is getting clear results, though we only launched GCI Plus last year, today, 15% of all wired lines on GCI or through the GCI Plus product, and almost 1/3 of our wireless lines are GCI. Even better, churn for GCI Plus is 40% less than for stand-alone products. The growth in customers and ARPU reflects through to our financials. After adjusting for some noncash accounting-based changes, both OIBDA and revenue have grown consistently over the past 3 years. We are facing some cost pressures, like everybody else in the industry, particularly on the labor side. But we're still benefiting from post pandemic trends in both healthcare and bad debt. Bad debt is particularly notable. We're operating now at less than half of the pre-pandemic level, and it's clearly aided by the fact that 15% of our customers today are on either the ACP or other federally subsidized programs that pay the broadband fare for low-income customers. Work from home is also helping us reduce our costs. We discovered during the pandemic that remote work suits us well. We adopted it as a permanent policy. Today, we're more than 70% remote. It helps us enormously with our recruiting because we get to compete for a nationwide pool of labor in what's otherwise a pretty small market. Our employees love it. Our landlords, not so much. In acreage, we've consolidated from 14 locations down to 3, and we shrunk our real estate footprint by 2/3. As we transition out of existing leases, our savings will be in the millions of dollars per year, and remote work is environmentally friendly. The foregone commuting by our employees says more than 10 million miles per year of their driving. I'd like to remind you each time that Alaska is a big state. I think it helps for you to look at it in perspective to the rest of the country. I know my friends from the great state of Texas, hate it when I remind them of this. But if we split Alaska in half, Texas would be the third largest state in the country. A big state takes a lot of network. Even though there aren't a lot of people in Alaska, we have to go a long way and deliver a lot of service. We operate almost 10,000 miles of fiber, 3,000 miles of microwave, 376 earth stations. That's right, satellite earth station, satellite is still a fundamental part of the distribution structure in Alaska. And in spite of a lot of the funding that's coming in, it will remain so for the foreseeable future. Today, we serve more than 96% of Alaska's residents. On that map there, you see a lot of middle mile capacity. That's necessary for us to get our product, the bits that we sell to the end users all the way out to those last mile networks. My guess is that the majority of the Infrastructure Act Funding will go to expanding and extending those middle mile facilities. I talked about our March to 10G. Today, we offer 2 gig service to our customers in the urban and many rural areas, and we're clearly on the path to be able to deliver 10 gig service within the next 3 years. We continue to build out our Fiber Plus network, leveraging off of our extensive hybrid Fiber Coax investment. We've settled on a high split strategy, expanding the plant to 2 gigahertz and using Remote PHY and extended spectrum DOC SIS. The goal is to provide 10 gigs of download capacity to every customer before the end of '25. We offer 2 gigs today in most markets, and we'll be turning up speeds for our customers as the plant is upgraded. You can see in the transition from step 2 to 3 of that chart, the substantial upstream speed benefit that came from the elimination of QAM video and the adoption of the high split. From there, as we expand the plant first to 1.2 gigahertz of capacity and then ultimately to 1.8 and add DOC SIS 4.0 will easily be able to deliver 10 gigs downstream. While we're building fiber to the home in our new markets, like on Alaska project, which was featured in the first slide and which I'll talk about a little bit later, where we have Hybrid Fiber Coax, it's clearly the more economical path to the future, and it will deliver the consumers all the capability we need with a much better return on invested capital. Last year, I talked about the Tsunami of federal broadband funding. The earthquake happened in the form of the infrastructure investment and Jobs Act, but the wave isn't really here yet. We can see it building, but it will be a while before it washes the shore. There are really 3 principal programs under the Infrastructure Act. Far and away, the largest is the broadband equity access and deployment program under which more than $42 billion will be parceled out to the 50 states based on each state's percentage of un- and underserved locations in the network. That program, although the government has more aggressive targets, that program is going to be slow to implement. I suspect it will be late '23, probably well into '24 [Technical Difficulty] that fund probably has impacts primarily in the very last part of this decade, it's not an immediate issue. The other 2 pieces of the programs, although a lot smaller, the travel broadband connectivity program and the Rural Utility Service reconnect program are up and operational today. And in fact, GCI has already received $127 million under those 2 programs to support our broadband build-out. That includes $55 million in money for the [indiscernible] program and another $73 million that will be dedicated to building out our networks in Bethel. Let's take a quick look at the 2 primary areas that we're building out today. First, the Aleutians and the footage you saw coming into today's presentation was of the undersea fiber lay out to the Aleutians. The Aleutian Fiber is an $87 million project with $54 million in grant proceeds that will serve approximately 8,000 people along the chain of Aleutian Islands all the way out to Unalaska, Dutch Harbor. Phase 1 of that project was awarded in 2020 before the Infrastructure Act was even passed, and it comprised a $25 million grant from the USDA reconnect program to construct a $53 million 800-plus mile undersea fiber connecting Unalaska and the sixth largest solution communities. Phase 2 of that project, which is funded in this October to our travel partner, the Native Village of Port Lions, adds $30 million to the project and connects the remaining 6 smaller villages along the Aleutian chain. This summer, our crews finished laying more than 800 miles of subsea fiber for the Aleutian project. Starting late this year, the far flown communities along those islands will have the same plans, prices and services that GCI provides to our urban customers in Alaska. Our second major project is out to the Bethel Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. It's one of the largest rural regions in the state, and it spans much of the Southwest Coast of Alaska. In partnership with Bethel Native Corporation, who was the award recipient on the primary grant and including funding from the NTIA and the reconnect program, will construct the network to deliver fiber-based services to 12,000 people. Consumers there will have access to up to 10 gig speeds and unlimited data at urban prices. These small communities are among the most remote in Alaska. The rivers out there froze up a couple of weeks ago. Now the only way you can get to those villages is by snow machine or a small plane. They're the traditional home of the Yup'ik people, many of whom still rely on a subsistence lifestyle. We call this our [indiscernible] project, and it will proceed in 3 phases. Phases 1 and 2 have already been awarded $73 million in funding and will extend GCI fiber network to Bethel and 9 other communities in the region. An application is pending for Phase II, which will add more middle mile and fiber for 3 additional communities. Bethel Native Corporation is our partner for this project, and we asked them to help us name the network. I'll let Ana Hoffman, the CEO of Bethel Native Corporation tell you about it. You run the video, please. [Presentation]

So how do you say it. [indiscernible] Thank you. Well, that's your update from the top of the world for this year. We're looking forward to more projects, more technology to deploy, lots to keep us busy and growing. We're very happy in our market and our industry, although we'd be a little happier if the industry multiples would improve. Thank you very much. [Presentation]

I keep thinking we should have John on a bigger screen like the voice of kind of [indiscernible].

Hi, John.

Hello, John.

Hi, everybody.

Okay. So -- so we have some microphones around, but maybe we'll just start with some pre-submitted questions first, John. Somebody wanted to hear your thoughts on the history and your thoughts on overbuilders?

Well, overbuilding has never been very successful in the industry. It's been done by government organizations and sometimes aggressors. Generally, what they find is it takes a lot longer. They get a much lower market share than they had anticipated. And returns have never lived up to expectations. So I think all the talk of sort of same technology overbuilding has been driven by super cheap money in an absence of alternate investment opportunity. So I think the Federal Reserve has taken care of some of that right now. Technological competition, on the other hand, but we experienced that, Greg and I did when we saw a satellite start to take big market share from linear cable. And we actually got out of linear cable in the U.S. and got into satellite, because we thought it was a better technological solution for linear distribution of video. Obviously, technology then created random access, and you then had a superior terrestrial technologies for delivering that new service. So it really depends on what function you're trying to fulfill and whether you have cost -- technological capital investment advantage over the incumbent, which would determine really the likelihood success of entering as a new competitor. And -- we've seen this many times over the years, we've seen technological competition. We've seen Intel, in fact, virtually announced the end of the cable industry with MMDS which is their technology. Fundamentally, to me, for our entrenched or established cable business, I think Tom just did a great job of explaining it. We have a very capable network, capable of its capacity being expanded dramatically at relatively low marginal cost and quicker, which really is any incremental demands for greater transport capacity, terrestrial broadband networks are in the best position to be able to supply that. Also, the thing we didn't talk about, but Greg had a great chart up there, Liberty Broadband with a 14% cash on equity return right now run rate and going up fairly rapidly. It's pretty hard when you start there and you can incrementally add facility, pretty hard to compete with that, especially when it's in scale. So I personally wouldn't want to put a lot of my money into an overbook.

Ameritech. That's a great example.

Right. I mean you can cherry pick, you can scan, you can build out the suburbs. If the cable operator has been to sleep and hasn't gotten the job done. But it's very, very hard to contemplate a direct terrestrial overbuild, including underground, having any kind of attractive return on investment.

Okay. Do we have any questions?

Questions from the audience?

Right here. That's Barton there.

Barton Crocket.

Yes, there's a mic right there.

Okay. Great. So I guess 2 things. One, on the tracker and the split this morning. The question is this, what keeps you from doing more with Liberty Sirius? I mean, obviously, there's been a great reaction from your investors to the Braves being split off as a separate asset-backed equity. I think that meaningful investors I talked to in Liberty Sirius are, I think there's an element of frustration that there hasn't been a larger step, perhaps a harder stand. You see some of that in the stock today. So I was wondering if you could talk to them about why not doing more at this point?

Well, we tend not to judge it just on 1.5 days of trading. That may be a little abrupt. I think I showed that chart about how many spins we've done and how they performed. I think there are reasons why we made that easier while we've made a future transaction simpler. They were more complicated before. Now they're simpler. And I think you should trust that we are going to continue to pursue things that are in the benefits of long-term shareholders.

Greg, on your chart, you left out, for instance, Expedia, which turned out to be an extremely successful spin divestiture. Obviously, even Liberty Broadband was the result of the spinout and it has performed quite well in terms of value creation. So I think the right answer is positioning and timing. I was just thinking that to myself that I'm sort of happier as an investor to see broadband where it is today than I was, say, 1 year ago or 1.5 years ago, if, in fact, I'm a long-term investor and the company is generating a lot of cash and shrinking exactly, my long-term returns are being enhanced by my patience rather than trying to exploit valuation in the near term. I mean companies are always worth more dead than alive frankly. The question is, what's the right timing and what's the right efficiency. And I think you have to read the creation of the live tracker as a move in the direction of ultimate separation and efficient distribution, but in the meanwhile, I believe that, that vehicle that Greg is creating can be a companion investor with Live and can participate in building value for both Live and [indiscernible] itself, in cooperative ways that perhaps if on its own couldn't do and Live on its own couldn't do.

During the pandemic, cable and home shopping were very important infrastructure and businesses. Travel, sports and live entertainment were shut down. Now, travel, sports and live entertainment have experienced a surge and we may be back to another wave of cord-cutting regarding infrastructure. How do we manage -- how do you manage these businesses through such cycles?

Well, the reality is the challenge for QVC and HSN has been the cord cutting has basically gone on for the last several years. Now Charter, credit to Tom and team actually had a blip up in video for a period there, but that was a short-term perturbation. You've basically seen a decline. So you're seeing them in project assets and otherwise rightsize their cost basis to get the core which has got headwinds -- had big time headwinds over the last year as inventory was out of place and the fire, but has longer-term headwinds, which are somewhat secular in terms of cord cutting. They're rightsizing the cost structure to accommodate that and then investing in the streaming part where clearly there is growth. And I think that's what's got to be managed. We are in a world where experiences are rising. And if you take the Liberty portfolio, that's been a winner for some of our companies. But if you look at particular QxH, that is a headwind. And they're going to rightsize figure out how to deal with it and then invest where there is growth on the streaming side, where they think there's a lot of opportunity. I don't know, David, would you want to add anything?

Yes, I thought that was pretty good. I think -- so there's the secular headwind. There's the top line challenge. But I think what we've continued to see is that if you look today, just the number of streaming homes we're in are greater than the number of linear TV homes we're in. We just haven't used that additional reach. Once we start using that additional reach and getting productivity out of it, I think you can see a different type of top line future for the business, but it will take time to get fully through that transition. And until then, we have what is an incredibly strong differentiated linear TV business. There's nothing else like it. That has to be a profitable business, and it should, and that's part of the work.

Okay. Do you want to go back to Craig?

Craig Moffett from MoffettNathanson SVB Securities. John, I'd love to hear your thoughts about convergence and maybe starting through the lens of your wireless business in cable and the way that you can offload traffic onto your network. I can think of a number of different steps, right? Today, there's WiFi offload, you're starting CBRS offload. How far down that path does it make sense to go? Would it make sense, for example, to go even further and acquire mid-band spectrum? Or even would there ever be any regulatory appetite for letting wireless and cable companies come together in a combination?

We should let John comment and then maybe Tom add to that.

My experience on convergence internationally is that, for instance, in Europe, virtually all of our businesses are currently converged to wire and wireless either through the acquisition by us of a wireless carrier or through essentially the merger between us. That's still in the U.K., it's true in Holland, it's true in Switzerland, true in Belgium, for instance. It's true in -- now in Chile, where we've just merged our broadband business with Carlos Slim's wireless business. So our experience is that convergence creates a lot of synergy first of all. Second of all, it reduces churn pretty dramatically. And to the degree that it reduces the number of competitors who are essentially cutting each other's throats at least to a more stable business environment, better profitability. I think from Charter's point of view, and Tom could speak to it. The ability to use your own spectrum to build your own radios opportunistically, I think could turn out to be extremely attractive. So having that optionality in order to drive down the cost of providing the wireless component of the network, I think, is just a wonderful option. Tom?

Yes. So just to add to that, Yes, the convergence is real. The interesting fact about mobility is that most mobile activity is in very defined, relatively small geographic areas. So most consumption is in the home and in the business, which is why 85% of all bits carried by devices that are distributed by mobile carriers are actually on the WiFi networks of broadband wireline companies like us. And the opportunity when you're selling mobile, which is a lot less bits in total when it's outside the home than it is inside the home is to -- if you have an MVNO like we do, to take traffic where it's opportunistic to take that traffic and move it onto your own network. And that is an opportunity because of the geographic dispersion of how mobile is used. So CBRS is an additional opportunity where we purchased some spectrum, the opportunity to use spectrum, manage spectrum. And to do that opportunistically, wherever we deploy capital to do that, will be places where there's traffic sufficient where that cost reduction and us carrying the traffic on the CBRS system pays for the capital investment necessary. So that's the opportunity in terms of -- so the question you asked is, is there more spectrum that we'd want to buy. And it's really a question of cost and opportunity and whether or not it can be used by us efficiently where actually we get a return to any capital we would spend to it. And that return is the savings.

But the good news is we have a ubiquitous permanent MVNO deal. And we're not required to build out in the unattractive places, only as Tom said, Charter gets to way and say in what markets, does this make sent to be an owner and pursue those CBRS owner economics? And what markets do we want to let the other guy, generally the less densely populated markets where it's relatively low traffic compared to the cost of the rollout, that carrier handle the cost and let us ride on him.

Yes. And the future of asset mergers is really a question of can you merge the assets in a way that -- at the price that makes it efficient from a cost perspective.

Next question, do you want to do this one, then we'll go to the audience.

Okay. So about curate. We got a few on this. How will you address near-term maturities? How will you pay the preferred dividend? And also, have you considered buying back the preferred stock?

SP1 So look, I think we've done a lot to strengthen the balance sheet of curate over the last several quarters. And you saw we actually have reduced -- even with lower EBITDA, we have reduced fixed coverage ratio. We've taken it down -- and we have a full revolver capacity as well as other potential asset sales to handle our debts as they come due, including the preferred dividends. And we're doing that and buying time to give David and his team the opportunity to go out and execute on what they believe they can. We've seen some of these are clearly onetime problems in terms of the fire, in terms of the supply chains, but also the longer term for growth, give them time to be the free cash flow machine that Q and H historically have been. So yes, I think we'll pay them as they come due. And we'll look at the opportunities and depends on what we see and our flexibility to go out and repurchase some of those instruments at below par.

Okay. I think that's right Richard there.

I guess a question really for John. I think probably everyone in this room sort of looks at Warner Bros. discovery as an LBO gone bad in the last few months. And I guess just given sort of Tom's comments about sort of the outlook for the video business and the headwinds video is facing or being a smaller business as well as Disney, which seems to have had a lot of struggles recently, and I think a lot of investors have sort of soured in recent days. What gives you so much confidence because it seems like you have a lot of conviction in what you've been saying. Why are you so convinced? And is it M&A related? Or just what gives you that confidence in the story and how it fits into the next few years?

Well, I think the #1 thing I think it gives me confidence is the management. I have enormous confidence in David Zaslav and his guys having seen the integration of Scripps with Discovery a couple of years ago. Number two, the balance sheet that they put together, 17-year average maturity, 4% cost of funding, very light, near term maturities. Number 3 is, at least as an investor, it's -- even in its absolutely worst year, it's generating a 10% cash return on its equity value. So to stay in as an investor and look for the future, where the cash return is almost certain to dramatically increase is a pretty good upward point of vector. I think the transition -- let's face it. Everybody went for this mad Oklahoma land rush of streaming. I think Greg pointed out to this audience a year ago that, that was a false arrogance. I'm not going to call AT&T management fools, but they certainly [indiscernible] and they threw everything but the cash didn't sink at it, and they put the run rate of the business in a little bit of stress. That said, it's still a business even with all of those issues that's generating meaningful free cash flow right now. The synergies that we predicted, I believe, are quite achievable and those are not trivial. Those are, I think, now estimated at run rate $3.5 billion a year. So yes, we have a modestly shrinking linear business, which generates a lot of free cash flow. The model, the dual stream model, which we had a lot to do with creating is going to be hard to replicate. That was a very profitable and stable economic structure for content producers. But obviously, the public has shown an interest for random access and streaming. They've also shown a distaste for the overpriced sports rights parasitized big bundle. So to a lot -- for a lot of consumers, they weren't necessarily bailing on the content that they like to watch. They were bailing on the price tag when compared to what Netflix and others were offering for entertainment programming. So the real challenge, I think, for the content industry is how to put their product in front of the consumer in an attractive way without having to buy through or buy around a very expensive bundle of content, and John McKinney had it right about, I don't know, 10, 12, 15 years ago, when you wanted to force unbundling a la carte. We don't have this problem, by the way, in Europe, where sports has always been -- expensive sports has always been a la carte and has never been a burden on the television bundle for the typical viewer. This was a challenge in America. Sports has gotten to be somewhat of a tax on the public and has gotten to be perhaps prohibitively expensive. And this is a real challenge. As long as there's competition amongst distributors, sports will have a disproportionate economic market power and will continue to. So I don't see an end to that. The other phenomenon that I think we have to look at is network neutrality essentially created a global super highway for big tech, where they don't participate in any of the capital requirements that there are burdened places on the network. But this is something that I think perhaps was a regulatory error that, let's say, for instance, that Facebook, Meta, I guess, now were to come and attach as an edge supplier to our networks with massive consumption of network capacity, a real latency challenges and relatively few customers willing to buy it. Is that appropriate essentially that the distribution industry should eat and then have to recover that across its base of customers when it's benefiting one particular edge supplier. So I think there is a regulatory challenge here that eventually needs to be addressed. And the one-size-fits-all, everybody-pays-the-same mentality, which is really what's created the power of sports economics is perhaps something that ultimately needs to be addressed.

So maybe, John, kind of along those lines from one of our shareholders, observed that Netflix is particularly sticky. Do you have any comments on why this may be? And if you think their foray into sports rights is the best move for their shareholders?

Well, I think Reed Hastings, his shareholders should build up a huge monument because he's done a fabulous job with that company. He got out in the lead, he saw the opportunity and he exploited the opportunity, and he went for massive scale and he does have a revenue and scale advantage over the other streamers at this point. So he was very early. He does an excellent job. His service is very convenient and easy to use. And a lot of people are regarding it now as a foundational programming service. So I just attribute it to his excellent execution. I think his effort to essentially be the only entertainment service by broadening out and spending so much on so much content is not likely to be successful because there are just too many variant cases. There's just too much content. And I think when you started to see growth slow, even international growth slow. I think the message is there's going to be more than one streamer. How profitable they are, I think, will depend on the discipline that they exude in terms of controlling their costs and keeping their expected growth rational and not throw too many elementary passes, but clearly, there's going to be a lot of experimentation in streaming. With bundling, I think the way I see it Disney is -- it's something to have an internal bundle of three different streams, serving perhaps three slightly different audiences. It may well be that streamers, I think that HBO Max is attempting to bundle with Discovery Plus to see what kind of stability that creates. Sports has always been a way to share shift or market. If you can buy a big sport event exclusively, you will always gain customers. And then you have to chalk that up to marketing expense. In the long run, it seems to me that whoever has the best funnel to gain and the lowest churn will be the one that still is profitable in the streaming world because marketing costs, combined with fairly high churn rates is pretty brutal to long-term profitability as that business evolves. So I don't believe their willingness to pay for these services is infinite. And so right now, people are experimenting with price, they're experimenting with subsidizing with advertising revenue, the public's tolerance for entertainment programming, long-form scripted programming being interrupted with advertising and paying a subscription fee, I think, is what's being evaluated now.

Hopefully, they'll listen to you, John, because we're a huge beneficiaries on this side with Formula One for all these guys bidding against our content and seeing new guys enter. So I'm hoping -- we heard the first part about how good he is and not the second part about bidding on sports. Thank you.

Right there in the middle. James, do you want to put your hand up?

Greg, you mentioned that regarding the live tracker creation that this opens up some options that may not have been there prior to separating that out from Liberty Sirius. Can you give us some idea of what those might be? Could they include things like could SIRI now by Liberty Sirius stock instead of their own, for example?

Well, I think Jennifer is here, so you can lean on Jennifer that you should be buying Liberty Sirius stock. But look, that may make a ton of sense for SIRI, right? We're at 82-plus percent of SIRI at Liberty Sirius. We've said sooner or later, those are likely to be combined if SIRI's choices to buy stock in itself at 100% or at a 37% or maybe it's 38% or whatever the discount is, it seems like buying it effectively through Liberty Sirius is more attractive. But I think one of the other things we talked about or one of the other ideas I want to put in your mind is Liberty Live. We can do things perhaps there that build attractive assets that can eventually go into Live and fit well with Live, and some of those could be natural extensions of Live's business, whether it's facilities-based or services-based businesses around the concert, either concert halls, or companies that service concerts. We're getting some visibility into that through Las Vegas and understanding what that takes and who the players are. And there could be synergistic assets that work in there as well. So I think both sides of the house have more flexibility to do different things and we'll look for those opportunities, particularly in this market where a lot of that stuff is getting beaten up.

David Zaslav is overpaid and arrogant. He has half the stock price and while Scripps and Discovery may have done well, he's not producing movies. After Black Adam, he has no movies this year, and Warner Bros. is better off worth more alive than dead.

I'm not sure that was a question, and this actually is the Liberty Media and Liberty companies, but thank you for the thought. I'll pass it on to David at our next SIRI Board meeting.

Thank you. Greg, just following up on Liberty Sirius. Are there any other steps that Liberty Sirius should or could take to make a deal down the road with SIRI. I think in August, you mentioned that debt might be an issue. And is debt pay down sort of necessary or a key focus in. John, you mentioned earlier you thought streaming how to consolidate. I'm curious which companies you expect to consolidate?

Just finish on Liberty Sirius, something that's actually relevant to this company and audience, but put that aside. I think there's -- we're over 80%. We can do a tax-free deal tomorrow with them. When I talk about the debt loads, you need to think if the two were combined, Liberty Sirius and SIRI, you need to think about what the combined debt load is and we've eyed that carefully with the knowledge that SIRI is an incredibly stable, great free cash flow generator, low churn, but we're certainly mindful of not incurring several billion more dollars of debt between the two companies. So I don't think there's anything needs to be done, we can affect that. We'll look at what opportunities are there. And as I said, stay tuned. John, you want to talk more about who's going to merge up with streaming, you selling Warner Bros. this morning -- or this afternoon.

Well, we can't sell Warner Bros. for at least 2 years because it was a tax-free spinoff and you have to wait 2 years. So -- so I'm not wasting any energy on thinking about who Warner Bros. could merge with or what corporate transaction could take place there. Now there are a ton of small streamers that are very specialized, who might find ultimately that they're going to have to consolidate into some of the bigger guys if their content is unique and relevant. But at the moment, there's a lot of blood flowing down the gutters of people who are streaming. Some of them can afford it and some of them can't. So my guess is the ones who can't will ultimately have to look for some kind of consolidation or exit with their content. That's just sort of the law of nature. I guess. The only other thing I would say to the comment on Mr. Zaslav is yes on paper, he's way overpaid. But remember, almost all of his compensations is in the form of options that are priced at multiples of today's stock price. So unless the stock really performs, he's really not overpaid.

I'm glad John is not commenting on my conversation today, at least. Any other questions. Let's go over here.

[indiscernible] with RBC Capital Markets. I wanted to ask about fixed wireless. I think we're all aware of the fundamental technical limitations of the service. But at the same time, the consumer adoption so far has been far greater than we expected. So it seems like we've certainly maybe underestimated the near-term competitive threats. What gives you the confidence that we're not underestimating the long-term threats over there and what the terminal penetration of the fixed wireless market could look like?

Yes. I think many observers were surprised at how fast fixed wireless rolled out. I don't disagree with that observational. But I do think there are inherent limitations both on the consumers who are going to want it, what the performance will be and the capacity of the mobile players. And hopefully, I've given you enough time. Tom, to have your succinct answer ready to go.

I do think that -- if you think about the passings that have been activated in fixed wireless, I'm shocked that the growth is so small. Because when you -- any new greenfield operator, in an overbuild environment and all the open builds I've ever seen and competitive entrants. There's a sort of the-grass-is-greener market share shift of around 10% usually very quickly. And that tends to move back and forth and be kind of the hurdle rate that really the differentiation in the product requires to get over. And so I -- when I look at the passings and I look at the customers, I think that's not doing very well.

Okay. So over here, Peter.

Question goes back to the linear TV bundle. So when we reconvene here in '25 or 2026, there might only be 50 million subscribers left. And I'm wondering if you were running the NBA or the NFL and it reached that level of scale, what might you do?

Well, I'll thank Adam Silver and Roger Dell, both done a pretty good job of looking across and exploiting cleverly, how to distribute their product across a range, and frankly, smaller version, we had the same issue in F1. What point do you jump across and go primarily to here in the U.S., what point do you jump across and go primarily to a streaming platform. And I think you'll see them pick and choose and look for the opportunity when that scale and that access is wide enough. The NFL is particularly unique obviously. Their strength and ability to draw people to a platform is stunning. So I wouldn't exactly worry that they're going to have any shortage of opportunities and people are going to be willing to slice and dice and say, okay, I'll watch it here or I'll watch it there or and they'll pursue it, whichever platform it's on. NBA still strong, not as strong obviously NFL, but they can draw a lot of fans. I don't know, John, what you might add.

Yes. I mean this would be a great question for Chapek and ESPN, who an awful lot of [indiscernible] in the cash flow is dependent on ESPN and ESPN is probably the biggest single expense that a linear distributor has. So they have the problem on the other side of the fence, which is how they replace that revenue stream if the bundle breaks down. So it's going to be interesting to watch. You could cut it both ways. You could say if major sports leaves the exclusivity of linear television because the drop in the cost, that's the increased profitability of the bundle from a distributor's point of view more than offset the decline in global that's driving the bundle. It's a conundrum for both sides, frankly. And one of the reasons is very interesting. The reason why the cable industry didn't evolve into just streaming random access a la carte menu on all of the traditional programming was contracts between the content providers and the distributors. So when CNN Plus was going to be launched or was launched, it didn't include CNN, which is kind of curious. You would think if 40% of households don't have access to CNN because of cord cutting, that maybe they might include CNN in it, but they could not contractually do it because of limitations they have with existing distributors. So the whole legal contractual relationship between the distribution industry and the content guys has got to be renegotiated in a way in which people with good content will be able to provide it to the half of the country that's not currently able to receive it because of contractual limitations.

The world, look, the world will find another way to get the NFL. NFL is strong enough that they'll find ways to put together the whole universe or the whole universe will find ways to get distribute them. It's just not going to be the case. Baseball has got challenges, in the L.A. market, what percentage can't see the game. That's a huge problem. The NFL because of its national structure, will find a way around that problem, a lot simpler. Another question?

Jim McGovern, Regions Bank, Senior Lender. Just thinking about CenturyLink and Lumen, this is a cable question. They just decided that for capital markets reasons or for execution reasons, we've got too much on our plate, and they decided to have off to Brightspeed. What's different about Charter -- either its access to capital over the longer term or the ability to execute, better management, top to bottom, that puts them in a different place. Just maybe the basis of my question is the penetration, if I understood the chart correctly, it was 22%, 28%.

Of its 55-odd million homes its penetration for broadband is 55%, something like that right, Tom? I'll let Tom comment more on the operating side. Start with the financial side of Lumen. Looked at it a bunch. Limited free cash flow generator, given the size of its dividend. Now they're restructuring that, but for a long time, very different position. Declining business, SPD, declining opportunity there, not really been able to grow or protect its consumer franchise, which doesn't have a kind of footprint. They do have an interesting fiber footprint. But when you weigh it all up, not a massive free cash flow generated with limited growth. It's a very different condition than what Charter has gone through Tom.

Right. We -- I'm sorry, if I was unclear on the penetration issue, but we have infrastructure in front of 55 million homes, and we have 32 million customers. So we have 55% penetration of the opportunity. And I thought another way, there's 45% of the country has a free -- completely paid for a cable system in front of them, and that's an opportunity to sell cable and Internet service and mobile service and all the products we offer. The penetration of 28% that I showed was our take of the total opportunity from a telecom spend per household including mobile, not including video and not including traditional telephony, just broadband and mobile. And so it just means that there's a lot more financial household spend opportunity for us to capture with the products that we sell than our traditional way of measuring penetration presence. And that's what I was trying to say.

Another question over here. We've got 2 in a row there. We will keep the mics next to each other. I'm sorry, yes, right there.

On Liberty Life, I guess, I know the intergroup interest are going to be rationalized. I am guessing is that a source of capital that you can use at Liberty Live. And then I think both John and Greg have mentioned about using this vehicle alongside live maybe for acquisitions in that kind of area. Is that kind of the mandate? Or is it just broad Liberty opportunistic kind of find an opportunity and do it? Or is it -- because it is called live? I'm just trying to get through that.

Yes. I think we're looking to capitalize it with, I think, around $400 million and some of that will come from intergroup interest and some of that may come from flow on cash, but we'll balance that and set that out. So it's appropriately capitalized. We have the ability to raise incremental capital through there or inject other compounds of capital. The mandate for Liberty Live is going to evolve. I'm saying the most obvious and interesting things -- relate to things that fit well with Live Nation. And we've talked to Michael about those kind of opportunities. So I think there's plenty of those that are interesting. You never want to say never. No one probably thought we were going to invest in broadband and into Charter incrementally through Liberty Interactive. We try and have a broad mandate across TMT. This is the kind of markets we like. Things go sideways for others. We try and get past our pain and find the opportunity. So I think we've got a good place to focus there, things that are very logical and that is an attractive space, all those around Live Nation, but I'm never going to say never on anything else. Next over there, too.

GCI offers a different selection of speed, services, bundles, et cetera, versus operators in the Lower 48. And it's been an innovator for quite some time. So to what extent should we view that network as -- or like a road map for Charter, architectural differences, is that a factor? And basically, what I'm getting that is, can Charter deploy DOCSIS for [ $255 ] home pass?

Well, I'll let Ron comment. But the conditions in Alaska, his competitive situation is very different than the Lower 48, and the kind of network he has is very different from the Lower 48.

Yes, we have some very unique advantages up there, starting with lesser competition. As I mentioned in my comments, we don't have fixed wireless because C-Band was not auctioned off in Alaska. So there's no spectrum for fixed wireless. I don't think our technology plan differs very much from Tom's. I mean we're looking at high split, migrating to DOCSIS 4.0. They probably have smaller cascades than we do. They may get to extend it to full duplex before we do, but our clear assessment is we can get 10 gigs down with the plant that we've got by the time we get to 4.0. I think Tom is talking about faster upstream speeds. We believe 10 down is more than enough to meet the consumer demand because today, the consumer can't use more than 2.5 gigs in the house. The Ploom WiFi router, which is the state-of-the-art has a point to plug in 2.5 gigs. You can't go any faster than that. You're buying 10 today, you're throwing 7.5 gigs away. So I think Charter's plan and Tom should comment, but I don't think it differs that much from ours. And I think they'll probably get ahead of us because they can do it more to scale.

Yes, I would agree that there aren't that many differences really. I mean, the density of Alaska and the density of our plant is significantly different, which means you use different techniques to get capacity out of your network and you actually have higher costs on a relative basis for consumers when there's lower density in terms of capital investment. But I agree, we're on -- in terms of what you can do with the network and how you can use the DOCSIS technologies and the evolutionary pathway that we've developed for DOCSIS is common. And the capital costs for like environments in terms of density and you've got some really unusual circumstances. And you evolve from a different topology than we did. So it's -- but in terms of future spend, I agree with you, usage in the network is 14:1 down versus up. And I don't see a significant product breakthrough that's going to change that. And I also agree, which is why I said earlier about having the best wireless WiFi platform is really the key to our strategic success, I think, competitively in that you can't actually receive 10 gigs of product on any device that exists in the world. And most devices, even if you have the router, the device themselves, in fact, all devices can't deal with that kind of speed. So there is no -- unless you've got like as we do, 0.5 billion devices, that speed gets distributed over a lot of devices, but the actual speed itself can't be used by a device.

Okay. Maybe 1 or 2 more. All right. We may have an early adjournment for lunch -- for post lunch.

I had a couple of questions on Curate. The first was, when you looked back over the last 2 years' data, which you were looking all the time, you sort of thought the customers are following traditional customers that you added. What mistakes do you think you made looking at them versus the separate evaluation now. And then I guess the second question would be for your best customers, can you just sort of talk about any differences in churn and frequency of purchases, et cetera, between prepandemic, postpandemic and maybe how you're tracking the data to make sure you're getting, you think, a pretty accurate picture of what's going on?

David, do you want to take that?

Yes. So on the pandemic churn question that was before my time. So -- but I'll hazard a guess which is that when you actually look at the data for the pandemic customers, at first, they behaved a lot like our traditional customers. And so it took the ending of the pandemic, the change of behavior to then be able to see it in the trailing data that they actually were not our traditional customers. So I think if you were trying to read it real time as management then we're doing, it was reasonable to look at the data as it existed at that time and say, the early signs are this looks like a lot of our traditional customers. I think it's become clear once we've had some of those customers in the customer file for 6, 12, 18 months, 2 years now, that they were really a different set of customers. I think the critical cut has been, are they engaging at all in our video commerce enterprise. So a lot of those customers were digital-only customers who came to our website and did some shopping on our website. That's not really core to how we build deep relationships with customers. People who came and experienced a lot of our core value proposition stayed with us. In terms of our best customers. So we have about as good a best customer file as exists in retail. They're very loyal. They're high spend, they're high frequency. We've seen around the edges for a while. We saw especially during the Rocky Mount Fire where we had delivery challenges. We saw a little bit of weakness, but you're still seeing retention rate well into the 90s for our best customers. You're still seeing average spend grow per customer with our best customers. You're seeing an average number of minutes watched grow per customer with our best customers. So that still creates an incredibly solid base for the business.

Great. We're done. Let me thank you for coming to Liberty's Investor Day 2022. I appreciate your interest in our companies. Appreciate your support. Hope to see you again next year, if not sooner. Thank you.