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

Good morning. I'm Ben Swinburne, Morgan Stanley's Media and Telecom analyst. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. I'm really excited to welcome back to the conference, Chris Winfrey, President and CEO of Charter Communications. Chris, thanks for being here.

It's good to be back.

Absolutely. Why don't we level set for the audience here and talk to us about Charter's focus for 2026 to drive customer growth and ultimately sustainable EBITDA and free cash flow growth.

Look, no surprise. Our priority 1, 2 and 3 is to return the company to broadband growth over time. And in 2026, we're really on the cusp of nearly finishing some generational long-term investment programs. The rural build and extension of the footprint will be largely complete at the end of this year. The network evolution will be done about 50% with the remaining very much in flight to be completed next year. So those investments really set us up for the long term of protecting the superior assets, products and infrastructure that we have today. In the meantime, in 2026, our real focus is on two things. One is improving our message around value and utility. And the second is earning the service reputation that we've really invested in from a quality of service perspective. And the thinking is that those are the two missing pieces. We have the best network. We have the best product. We have the best pricing, but really getting our messaging to flow through and getting the service reputation that we've invested for, those are the things that are going to put us back on track.

On your earnings call back in January, Chris, you framed Spectrum as America's connectivity company.

We did.

And you are into branding. What does that mean? What does that tell us about the product set and sort of the go-to-market that the company has to try to really drive a better customer relationship customer profile?

I think it picks up on the fact that we're 100% U.S. based sales and service. That's unique. None of our competitors have that. But it was really focused on 3 different commitments. We guarantee your service, which is your Internet reliability, your product reliability. And if we're not perfect, we stand behind it with credits. We guarantee your service, and we'll be there the same day if you call us for a professional install or service. And then we guarantee you savings, $1,000 if you take Internet plus 2 mobile lines. And our biggest challenge really has been around messaging that. And it comes about from the cable industry of not having the best service reputation. And so for the entire industry, I think our focus is finding new ways to communicate that and deliver on that service proposition in a way. And I think being America's connectivity company is because we are, and we can provide these things in a way that our competitors can't. And so finding new ways to not only communicate but deliver on the service that we're committed to.

Great. Maybe one other kind of high-level question, and we'll get more into the business. You just recently announced the hiring of a new COO, Nick Jeffery, who folks certainly in the telecom and cable space know from Frontier. Talk about this hire and sort of what investors should take from bringing Nick onto the team.

So I'm looking forward to Nick starting with us in September. I think the hiring of Nick as our Chief Operating Officer represented a unique opportunity. We have a tremendous amount of talent. We have a deep bench, both at Spectrum as well as at Cox, but there was a unique opportunity to go get talent from the outside in Nick that had operated in a highly competitive wireless space in the U.K., had run global B2B for Vodafone and in addition to that, had been in a competitive overbuilder situation and bring some of those skill sets from the outside into Spectrum. The two things that Nick, from my perspective that I saw that was really unique was he has a proven track record on both sides of the pond and the ability to cut through on messaging value and utility in the marketplace. And then secondly, a radical transformation of the Net Promoter Score, both at Vodafone U.K. as well as at Frontier. And if you think about it, that's a perfect fit for us because those are the areas that we're making significant progress today. And you can see it in all of our Net Promoter Scores are moving up, but it's -- they could go faster, and I think Nick will be a great fit for the team and can be an accelerant for the things that matter to us most in returning the company to broadband growth.

Great. Let's talk about convergence. It is the best theme in the sector. We've had a lot of your competitors, and we had Comcast here at the conference yesterday.

We're a peer, not a competitor.

Right. So I broke them out separately. So tell us about Charter's value prop today to consumers, how you stack it up versus the competitive set? And what do you need to do to drive better results from the product offerings you have in the market?

Yes. Look, the conversation around convergence and our capabilities, we have convergence in 100% of our footprint everywhere we operate. We have the fastest speeds and the fastest mobile service everywhere we operate because of our wireline network and because of convergence. And we save customers hundreds, even thousands of dollars, and we stand behind that commitment. And unlike our competitor, we're competitors, we're America's connectivity company, and we have 100% U.S.-based sales and service. None of our competitors can make those claims. The downside for us is that because of the historical reputation of cable, we haven't earned the service reputation that we've invested in. And that's unfortunate. But the good news is the money has already been spent. I don't think it's a question of more marketing or more service investment. It's about doing things better and having a different approach towards customers. And so that's really the focus for us, as I mentioned before, is to go get those things right, and we can turn the knob hopefully quickly.

And Chris, when you think about competing in the marketplace in broadband anyway, how do you look at fixed wireless relative to cyber when you think about sort of the long-term competitive set? And do you look at those as requiring different approaches competitively?

Of course, we have different packages for everybody's needs and budget while still trying to be simple. But in the end, we treat those competitors the same way, which is better, faster and lower cost, meaning higher value. And that's what we provide against fiber, and that's what we provide against fixed wireless access. Now from a fiber standpoint, we've competed well against fiber for years. And even inside of mature fiber markets where they have overlap today, we still have higher penetration in mature fiber markets. The new element that's come about here really is new competition, particularly in the form of fixed wireless access, where even though it's slower, less reliable and all in actually cost more money, it's a new competitor in the marketplace, and it's taking a place at a point in time where you have a low move rate, new household start rate. And so unfortunately -- unfortunate timing for us, new competition at the same time, macro environment has slowed down a bit.

Yes. I was going to actually ask you about housing. I know you're not one for excuses, but how much is the lack of housing movement impacting the business? Certainly, it impacts the stock because it's a game of inches when it comes to net adds.

It is. So look, our biggest focus right now is control, what we can control, and that's being a better competitor, and we have new competition. But I would not underestimate the impact of the macro environment. It's huge. Lower housing new starts, less movers producing selling opportunities, interest rates that have been higher that's also impacting new starts and moves has played and wireless substitution has all played a significant factor. The two things -- I don't think that continues on forever. I think people start to move again. I think people start to build houses again. I don't have a crystal ball, and it's not what we do. So I can't tell you when. But in the meantime, if you think about the rural footprint that we have, that's going to produce a leg of growth for many years to come because you have new plants out there that continues to have higher penetration take-up. The other thing that we can do is a better job amongst the cable operators in terms of capturing or recapturing the move opportunity that's out there. We do some of that today, but I think we have an opportunity to really do a better job together with us, together with Comcast and work on that. And this market environment, the macro environment and competitive environment, it is making us much better service operators along the way.

Sticking with the sort of branding comment earlier, you also talked about Invincible WiFi, which did came to market, I believe, last month. Tell us about what that product offering entails? Why is it important? And can it move the needle?

So Invincible WiFi is using a WiFi 7 router together with a 5G cellular backup as a backup product and a battery backup as well. So in the event of a storm or an outage or power outage that your Internet service stays connected on the same SSID. So you're not having to reconnect devices throughout the home. In fact, as a consumer, you would see your speed go down because it's going to 5G, basically fixed wireless access as a backup. But other than that, you wouldn't know the difference. And so for a small incremental value of $10, that's a pretty good value. I think the bigger opportunity is it's another way to help improve our service reputation by having always on Invincible WiFi. We launched it a couple of weeks ago. It actually went so fast that we had to pull back in certain sales channels because of a supply standpoint. And so it's not doing everything that it could today just because we're ramping up back up supply. So we had to slow it down a little bit just from availability. But I think the opportunity for Invincible WiFi is to have an operational improvement, less trouble calls, improve our service reputation and of course, has a financial benefit to ARPU along the way as well.

Yes. So customers clearly value that peace of mind.

Yes. I think would you pay for it? Of course, you would be great.

You guys also launched a $1,000 annual savings guarantee for customers that take your converged offer, including some bill credits if you guys have a misstep from a service point of view. How should investors, shareholders think about this approach and whether this is sort of a step towards, I don't know, lower CLVs or how you compete with your...

What's the lower COB?

Customer lifetime value, sorry.

CLV, okay. I thought it is COB. Yes. No, look, I think the interesting thing about the $1,000 guarantee is we're providing it because we can. We're providing it because it's true. Those of who -- investors have been watching know that we've used this as an investor slide for over a year now that shows against the 3 major telcos, how we genuinely save you over $1,000 a year. We put it on our website probably 6 months ago. And we came to the conclusion and said, well, we know that we're doing this nearly 100% of the time, we can stand behind it. Why wouldn't we guarantee it? The opportunity there, I hope, is the opportunity to break through on messaging the value and utility that I was talking about before. I don't think there's going to be a lot of credits attached to this simply because if you look at the math, it's almost every single time. But if many of our investors are based in New York City and L.A. put us to the test. If we can't save you the money, we'll put the credit on the bill happily, but I guarantee you, we're going to save you the money.

Okay. I know we've been talking about convergence, and that's how you think about going to market. But just on the wireless business, you've been growing that business quite nicely over the last couple of years from a volume point of view and revenue as well. Where are you in terms of sort of the growth outlook from here? And what are the pieces of the puzzle, whether it's distribution, customer service, et cetera, that you think really delivers on sort of the mobile opportunity in spectrum?

I think the growth rate is significant and it's going to be with us for a very long point in time. It's going to throttle a little bit based on the level of subsidies that are taking place with handsets out there in the marketplace. So that moves around a bit. But if you think back to what we have, we have 2 very strategic MVNOs. And we have a WiFi service that provides us a superior set of economics and connectivity for customers, and we're rolling out CBRS across our entire footprint. And so we already have the fastest mobile speeds in the country because of that seamless connectivity, because we boost through WiFi and through CBRS. And because the WiFi capabilities will continue to get better and we'll have more offload, I think we have the opportunity, and we still have a 5G umbrella protective cover through a good relationship, a strategic relationship that we have with Verizon. I think our speeds can continue to be faster into perpetuity with a product that has better seamless connectivity, better speeds and better economics. And so I think we're positioned for growth for a really long time.

You guys announced amended or modernized MVNO, I think was the word that everyone is using.

We have a modernized MVNO. And we have a strategic partner who actually has been a pleasure to deal with. And I think there's -- it bodes well for what we can do together over time.

I guess my question is in terms of the profitability of the wireless business, how much does that -- I think it's an 88% of your mobile traffic is being offloaded onto your own network, which gives you better economics. Is that meaningful from a profitability point of view? Can you move that up as you roll out more technology?

We can move it up through all the things that I talked about is additional WiFi 7, more CBRS rollout. The goal isn't to hit a metric. The goal is actually to make sure that we have better seamless connectivity than any of our competitors, which we do and to have better speeds, which we do not through -- not only the seamless connectivity, but also through the WiFi speed boost that we provide. Of course, as an output of that, when you do more offload, you have to rent less of the macro cell tower network. And so you have savings associated with that by using our existing infrastructure. I know there's been people who've said, well, you're not a facilities-based wireless provider. I say that's garbage. We're more of a facilities-based wireless provider than anybody in the country. And the reason for that is even the cellular companies, they -- 75% of their traffic goes over our WiFi. So 25% of their traffic is going over the macro cell towers. 88%, 89% of our traffic is going over our network. And so we are the facilities-based wireless provider really for the entire country when you include us in Comcast. And so I think we have an economic advantage. We're going to continue to use it and we're underpenetrated relative to our existing broadband footprint. It's having a huge impact on our churn for our broadband customers. And I think it can do the same for us in acquisition over time. Our biggest issue is brand awareness that you could actually get your mobile product through Spectrum. So you asked about the things we have and don't earlier, and I should have mentioned that. We have full distribution throughout our footprint. Our service works well. Pricing and packaging is great. What we really need is more brand awareness along the way. And a lot of that is just going to take place with word of mouth, savings guarantee, the speeds actually work and people talking and promoting it themselves to their friends and family.

Great. Why don't we shift gears to a topic I'm not sure I've asked you about in a few years, which is the video business. But it's back, at least at Charter. It's been a bright spot. You guys have really worked hard to change that product, innovate. I'm a customer, I have Xumo. Talk a little bit about what you've done and if you think that the rebound in that business is sort of sustainable over time?

Well, our reason for being in the video business, first and foremost is to support broadband connectivity, both at acquisition and in retention. The margins aren't as good as it used to be in video. But if we can add value to the broadband relationship that it's worth it. We have made a pretty significant turnaround in video, and that comes about through value and utility that we've provided into the product and into the relationship, which is really where this all started. So today, we have increased flexibility in packaging. We have -- we're upgrading customers from broadband only to video, upgrading customers from skinny packages to full video. And we have direct-to-consumer apps that have $125 of additional value that's included for free. I know you have activated several of those. I hope you enjoy. But it makes sure that the customer, even though the price is high because of the programming cost that is put upon us, that the value is there and something that we're happy to sell and attach to the bill for a broadband customer. In terms of growth, it's not our objective in video. It's just to provide value. In fact, we had small growth inside of Q4. We made sure it was clear people knew what we were doing. sure enough, we have to pass through programming rate increases inside of Q1, and we're going to be dramatically better than we've been over the past few years. But it's hard to imagine we'll be in a positive quarter for Q1 on video just because of having to pass through the programming rate increase.

You're selling it in the call centers now, right? I mean is it...

Yes, we never stopped. We never stopped selling it in the call centers, but we did start to have -- start second-guessing ourselves 3 years ago and said, if the price has gotten so high, and we're having to pass through so many rate increases essentially to our broadband customers, if there's not a value there and there's not utility, then should we be selling this product? And the value comes about through all the things I just described, including the apps as part of your service. But the utility comes about -- you mentioned Xumo. The ability to have unified search and discovery with voice remote, it's a unique product. There's not another platform out there that does what Xumo does. And so we're pretty pleased that at least we have something that we can be proud of on the bill.

Yes. Great. I did want to touch -- I know it's not a huge part of the P&L, but still relevant, which is the commercial business space, some of the challenges you've seen on the residential side, at least in broadband. What are you guys doing to try to reaccelerate small business and also push the enterprise opportunity as well?

Yes. The small business suffers from some of the same new competition issues that we've seen in residential. I think Invincible WiFi in the business space can be really compelling. The opportunity for a very low fee to be able to have fixed wireless access is just a backup, which I think is a great backup. Competitively, I think, is ideal. So I think we can reaccelerate a bit with that. The enterprise space, we continue to do well. We're gaining credibility in the marketplace with more advanced products, larger customers. And so they call it logos, we're attaching more logos that a couple of years ago, we wouldn't have had a right to win in that space. Having mobile added in, I don't know that it's going to change the trajectory, but it's a nice addition to be able to go to these large accounts with mobile as well. And then finally, Cox, this is a really great combination. They have complementary assets and capabilities to us and vice versa. And so I think the Cox transaction, it was a bit of an unforeseen synergy, not just from the scale of having a larger B2B business, but they have things like hospitality, managed services that we don't have in our enterprise footprint actually has some advanced products they don't have plus the additional scale that we have. So I'm optimistic that we'll see some upside there.

Since you brought up Cox, I know it hasn't fully closed yet. Just talk a little bit about the kind of top integration priorities once you do get this closed. What are the work streams that matter the most to making sure you guys capture all the value ahead?

Priority #1 is to get spectrum pricing and packaging into the marketplace, a more competitive Internet pricing, at the same time, reintroducing video, Spectrum video. And they're very -- have low penetration at this point in mobile. So getting those additional products into the marketplace and putting that all together in pricing and packaging so that you can take -- you can have a lower Internet price and have more revenue per household, have more margin per household by providing better value and service to the customer. And so we're very much focused on getting that put in place. Commercial, I mentioned, I think, is going to be an upside. And in addition to selling more, they're starting from 13% or so penetration on video and very low -- much lower penetration on mobile, we'll do well there. I think we'll end up growing video for a period of time just because of where the starting point is and what we can bring in. That will help lift things like advertising when you think about that space. So I'm excited about getting the transaction closed. I think it's great for consumers, great for employees. We're excited to get going. And I think it's underestimated how much value this is going to bring to Charter.

And where are you in the process on the transaction?

We have FCC approval. DOJ was complete essentially in September, FCC approval last Friday. No secret, we're working through California is the big state that remains open. And we hope to have a productive conversation with them and those around the CPUC to accelerate the closing really for the benefit of consumers and for the employees as well.

Got it. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but there's a lot of focus on EBITDA growth in 2026. You guys expect to grow EBITDA this year. Can you talk a little bit on the cost side, Chris? What are the things that we should be thinking about or that you're focused on in expenses to sort of deliver on that expectation?

Yes, it's more of the same. When you have better service, you have less transactions, less transactions, less cost. There isn't anything that is -- I think I mentioned to you yesterday, there's nothing unholy that needs to be done in order to meet that objective. It's more of doing what we're saying, managing the cost structure effectively and making sure along the way, Rule #1 is you don't do anything that impacts sales or service. We're very much focused on long-term growth rate of the company. And so yes, we'll be efficient with our expenditures, but we're not going to do anything that compromises sales or service.

Yes. You've got tens of millions of customers, millions and millions of transactions and customer interactions every year. How are you guys integrating AI across sales, your call centers, field ops? And is this something that is a real benefit to the business and maybe even the P&L this year? Where are you in that process?

I think already, we've seen benefit to the P&L from the use of AI. We certainly see the benefit of AI usage in providing a better customer experience. Why? Because it's focused on making the job for our employees easier and more efficient. And if we can do that, then we're going to have a better service, which really is the #1 goal. But if you think about applications that are deployed today from an AI perspective, we have conversational IVR, which is AI-based. Significant number of our calls are handled that way. It's a triage those and get them, in many cases, solved right upfront with simple transactions. From our agents' perspective across service, sales and retention, the employee may not know it, but these calls are now guided calls by AI, where you have suggestions, previous service history, telemetry, all of which is being proactively presented to the employees so they can have a more higher quality conversation with the customer with more empathy because they're not banging on 10 different systems. It's being presented to them. And then in the case of service to provide next best action, which is using LLM and all of the data that we have about the customer to recommend and say these are the next step to go solve the customer's problem. It's still the agent. The employee has the ability to dictate where they take the conversation, but there's support along the way because there's real-time transcription that's feeding into LLMs that allows the agent to be supported. The same thing exists for sales and retention with what we call next best offer. So there's not 50 best offers for this customer based on everything we know about them and all the data that we have, here are the 3 or 4 different best options that are going to get you to that. From a field tech perspective, already today, again, they may not realize that it's AI, but that service call that takes place is being -- not only do we have a transcript that's feeding in LLM for the service call, but it's being summarized by AI so that when the field technician gets to the door of the customer, they can tell the customer, my understanding is I'm here to address this, this and this, may not be the person at the door who made the phone call. So that's a much higher quality experience for the employee instead of saying, why am I here or for the customer to say, I don't know why you're here because my spouse is the one who actually called in. So now that the employee is empowered to know all the details of the service history and why they're there, better experience for the employee, better experience for the customer. Now all of that means, if you think about everything I just described, it means you have less transactions, you have lower average handle time, you have less repeats, you have higher customer satisfaction, which produces less churn. So there are huge financial benefits along the way. But the way we approach it is if it cannot improve -- if AI can't match the quality that we provide with our best employees, we're not going to introduce it because that's Rule #1. We're willing to invest in service and spend more money. We always have benefit produces a better service transaction, and that's still the case today.

Okay. Speaking of spending money, you guys are at an elevated level of CapEx right now. You've broken with past history and provided long-term guidance in CapEx. With CapEx expected to come down towards kind of an $8 billion run rate by 2028, capital intensity coming down, free cash flow ramping. What gives you -- what should give the market confidence that, that glide path makes sense and that there isn't another CapEx cycle on the other side of this since us old timers have seen that.

So we outlined a capital expenditure that would come to less than $8 billion, which means less than $8 billion and capital expenditure as a percentage of revenue in the 13% to 14% range. Why should people have confidence in that? One, because we don't typically don't make those type of long-range commitments. And when we say it, we mean it. Two, if you think about what we've been spending on, we've made two major generational investments. We've done the largest expansion of the cable network that's taken place since the 1980s and the largest physical upgrade of the network that's taken place since the 1990s. It's hard to recreate that back to back. Even if you didn't believe us, the reality is that the money has been spent, and it sets us up to make sure that we maintain our network and product superiority for a prolonged period of time. And the capital that we're going to have going forward really is a success-based capital that's on the back of those investments that -- those generational investments that have already been made. So we always, in the past, have preferred not to give an outlook so that you could be more nimble and flexible in the marketplace. But given the amount of outside spend that we've had for great initiatives, we thought it was really important for shareholders to know that this is where we're heading, and we intend to keep that pace.

You're working your way through the network evolution or upgrading speeds to symmetric gigabit speeds. Is that proving -- where you've rolled that out? And has that proven to be a differentiator for the business competitively yet?

We'll be at 50% at the end of this year with much more of the actual physical work complete beyond just that 50%. But today, when you think about where we've lit up the symmetrical and multi-gig speeds, it's only in about 15% of the footprint. So until we get to critical scale, we've been quiet. We haven't been actively marketing just because we wanted to get to critical scale before we start becoming loud. So other than a dramatic drop off, essentially, at that point, no node splits because you have really complete fallow capacity that exists inside the network, which we want other people to go fill. Other than that, I can't sit here and tell you about a great benefit just yet, but there will be.

Okay. I know it doesn't get talked about as much anymore, but the rural expansion you referenced earlier, it's a huge project, huge investment for the company. How should we think about the returns on that spend as that project matures? Because I think you're not too far away from kind of the end of that build.

No. Look, we did RDOF deferred. We did RDOF, we did ARPU. We did state grants. Now we got a little bit of BEAD. The fact that our rate of returns for the RDOF and the other projects are at or above where we set out is pretty impressive. Now a lot of variables changed along the way. But despite even things like fixed wireless access being available in some rural markets, our penetrations on broadband are really high. The thing that we probably didn't anticipate is how high our video, mobile and even wireline phone in a rural environment, our penetrations for those would be. So the returns have been great. The plant is now in front of customers who really have -- don't have anything remotely similar to this option in terms of quality and in terms of price. So the growth and the penetration will continue for years to come. The capital is going to drop off dramatically. It's going to go away, and the revenue will continue to grow. So there's a long way to go in terms of that generate. The piece that I don't think was not in our returns analysis and may not be well appreciated is a lot of this build was taking place in places like Florida, the Carolinas and Texas. So what is rural today in those markets will end up being suburban. And so in addition to the penetration growth that will take many years to really fill out, you have serviceability extensions at a really low-cost success-based capital when rural environments turn into neighborhoods in these places. So we're going to be really pleased with what we did for a decade, 15 years. And it produces the next opportunity to extend beyond at the right time.

Maybe, Chris, just as we wrap up here, I wanted to ask you about your balance sheet and sort of the leverage framework. So you guys recently reduced your long-term leverage target. So this is kind of post the Cox transaction, targeting 3.5x to 3.75x with a plan to reach it within 3 years after close. So talk about what drove that decision, why you think that's a positive and how it impacts, if at all, return of capital?

Yes. Look, I have to admit, I wasn't a big fan of it at the outset in terms of lowering your leverage. Why? Because we fully believe in the growth rate that we're going to achieve with the company. Having said that, I think it was important for us to let everybody know, we do listen to shareholders and one. And two, our investment-grade rating and how we treat our debt investors matters greatly to us and it matters greatly to equity investors as well. And so we wanted to make sure that we were responsive to shareholders along the way. By doing so, I think you open the door for additional types of shareholders who could come in who might have been reticent to do that before. Theoretically, when you go back to business school, your weighted average cost of capital should come down. That should be good for shareholders as well. Is the company really valued on that? I don't know, but it's academically true. But I think being responsive to shareholders and recognizing that's a goal over 3 years. So in the short term, there wasn't a big difference. This is not a big change in our target leverage. We were 3.75x to 4x before, and now we said the lower end of 3.5x to 3.75x. It's not a huge shift. And given that it's taken place over 3 years, I don't think it's going to have a material impact in the amount of stock that we buy back, particularly upfront where it's at a really low price today.

Yes. Well, great. We're all out of time. Chris, anything you want to wrap up with before we close it out?

Yes. Look, we're -- sitting here, it should be very clear. We're very motivated. We're excited about the opportunity to return broadband to growth. We do have the best network. We've got the best products. We've got the best pricing. We can guarantee that to customers. We've got some work to do in the areas that I talked about. But it's not about additional investment. The investment has been made. It's about earning back the service reputation, which also will help us in terms of how we message utility and value uniquely in the marketplace.

Great. Chris, great to see you.

Ben, you've probably heard this from a few people by now. But I just -- together with the audience here and those on the webcast, I know these are your last days. I don't know how many of these that we've done together and how many dinners, breakfast, whatnot that we've had. I just wanted to say thanks to Ben. Really from an industry perspective, he's -- I don't know what you -- statute is probably the wrong word, but he's an institution inside the TMT space and in cable in particular. And as he goes off to be a programmer, we'll see you on the other side. We'll partner with you in every way. But I wanted to say on behalf of Charter, behalf of Spectrum, thank you very much for what he's done for the industry.

Thank you very much, Chris.

Appreciate it.