Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (SHEN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Shenandoah Telecommunications' second quarter, 2026 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Lucas. Vice President of Corporate Finance for Chantel. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. The purpose of today's call is to review Shentel's results for the second quarter of 2026. Our results were announced in a press release distributed this morning. In addition, we filed our Form 10-Q with the SEC. The presentation we will be reviewing is included on the investor page on our investor.chentel.com website. Please note that an audio replay of this call will be made available later today. The details are set forth in the press release announcing this call. With us on the call today are Ed McKay, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Volk, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After the prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. I refer you to slide two of the presentation, which contains our safe harbor disclaimer, and remind you that this conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Additionally, we have provided a detailed discussion of various risk factors. in our FCC filings which you are encouraged to review. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ed. Go ahead, Ed.

Thanks Lucas. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. Starting on slide four I'll share some of our second quarter highlights. The quarter included several important milestones for Centel and our Glow Fiber business. achieved a record 6,200 Glow Fiber Net Additions during the quarter, demonstrating continued strong demand for our service. We also surpassed 100,000 Glow Fiber data customers, representing 31.3% year-over-year growth and underscoring the success of our seven-year investment in fiber to the home. Fiber revenue, which includes both Glow Fiber and Commercial Fiber, grew 21.4% year-over-year in the second quarter, reflecting the strong momentum we continue to see across both fiber businesses. For the first time, our fast-growing fiber businesses represented 51% of consolidated revenue in the second quarter, exceeding the combined revenue for our incumbent broadband and RLEC businesses. Consolidated revenue for the quarter was $93.5 million, an annual increase of 5.5%, and adjusted EBITDA was $32 million, up 12.9% year-over-year. This growth reflects the success in our Fiber First strategy we put in place years ago, including our early investment in fiber to the home starting in 2019, the expansion of our commercial fiber business through the Horizon acquisition, and our continued focus on driving sustained residential and commercial growth. Our operating footprint also provides a strategic advantage with close proximity to major data center hubs in Ashburn, Virginia and Columbus, Ohio. I would like to thank our team members for their dedication and execution in achieving these results. As we complete our fiber of the home build and position our business to return to positive free cash flow beginning in 2027, I'm excited about the opportunities ahead continue building on the momentum. Turning to slide five, we highlight our scale integrated broadband network that spans more than 19,800 fiber route miles across eight states with approximately 730,000 total broadband passings. On the map, all planned glow fiber markets have now been launched, and we've added nearly 97,000 fiber passings over the past 12 months. We remain on track to substantially complete our Glow Fiber expansion in 2026, reaching 510,000 passings. On slide six, our sales and marketing team continues to drive strong growth across our Glow Fiber expansion markets. During the second quarter, we added over 6,000 new customers, a record for quarterly net additions, and nearly 7,000 total data, video, and voice revenue generating units. Our five-year price guarantee card, introduced in the second half of 2025, continues to drive interest and is supported by the expansion of our door-to-door sales channel. Over the past 12 months, we've added approximately 24,000 new data customers and more than 26,000 total RGU's. Total Glow Fiber Revenue Generating Units surpassed 117,000 in the second quarter, up 30% compared to the prior year. Moving to slide seven, second quarter construction was strong with more than 26,000 passings added, bringing the total to more than 475,000. Penetration rose to 21.1%, 20 basis point increase over the first quarter, and a 93 basis point increase year over year. Penetration trends across our Glowfiber cohorts are shown on slide 8 and reflect blended penetration rates for both residential and small and medium business passings. We're expecting data penetration rates of approximately 37% five to seven years after launching a market. Most mature cohorts launched during the two years ending in the third quarter of 2021 have surpassed the five-year mark and currently average 35% penetration, providing confidence in our ability to reach our objective. In addition to providing the fastest speeds in our markets, we continue to focus on providing outstanding local customer service. As shown on slide nine, our average monthly churn was 1.21% in the second quarter, which continues to be among the best in the industry. As expected, seasonal customer move activity was elevated during the quarter. Almost half of our churn, or approximately 59 basis points, was driven by customers relocating. Included in that figure are 13 basis points associated with customers who transferred their Glow Fiber service to a new address. We saw virtually no low-fiber churn to satellite providers during the quarter. Broadband data average revenue per user for the second quarter was down slightly sequentially year over year to just under $77. We continue to have success selling up the rate card and differentiating our offerings through faster speeds than our cable competitors. Customer demand for higher speed products remains strong, with more than 80% of new residential customers in the second quarter selecting speeds of 1 gig or higher, including nearly 19% choosing 2 gig service and almost 5% choosing 5 gig service. Our commercial fiber business is highlighted on slide 10. In the second quarter, incremental monthly sales bookings exceeded 180,000, driven by strong demand across commercial and enterprise customers, including wireless carriers, wholesale customers, and school systems. Our service delivery team had a strong quarter, installing 209,000 in new monthly revenue, and the exceptional customer support from our sales and network operations teams kept average monthly compression and disconnect churn very low at 0.4%. Turning to slide 11, we ended the second quarter with more than 110,000 broadband data customers in our incumbent broadband markets, a modest decline of less than 1% year over year. While total RGU's declined at a faster rate, the decrease was largely attributable to expected video subscriber losses as consumers continued the industry-wide shift towards streaming services. Total broadband passings in our incumbent markets increased slightly quarter over quarter, and we expect to complete approximately 1,100 additional government-subsidized fiber passings in the second half of 2026, primarily in West Virginia. As shown on slide 12, our recently constructed subsidized passings represent a strong growth opportunity for our incumbent markets, and data penetration has exceeded 40 percent within 18 months of a neighborhood launch. The average penetration of our 2023 cohorts is over 59%, with the oldest cohort reaching more than 72%. We've already achieved an aggregate penetration of 40% across 23,000 subsidized passes. Moving to slide 13, broadband data monthly churn increased modestly in the second quarter to 1.73 percent. The increase was driven by a combination of normal seasonal move activity, wired broadband competition across roughly 35% of our passings, and softer demand in rural markets with weaker demographics as inflation continues to pressure household budgets. Customer moves contributed 65 basis points of churn, including 23 basis points associated with customer transfers to another Shentel service address. The impact from satellite competition declined from the first quarter and remained a relatively small contributor to churn. We saw further improvement in June and will continue to monitor competitive activity across all technologies. Broadband data ARPU declined 2.6% year over year to $81. As we previously disclosed, we introduced a more competitive rate card a few years ago in markets where we face wired broadband competition. Those markets drove about a 1% decline in ARPU, consistent with recent quarters. Late in the first quarter, we introduced a new rate card in our rural markets where demographics are weaker and demand was softer. The pricing change reduced ARPU by an additional 1.6%, but it has already improved the satellite-related churn we saw in the first quarter. We expect the new pricing strategy to drive higher growth ads and further turn improvement over the coming quarters. Overall, we believe these changes will maximize long-term revenue by balancing subscriber growth, retention, and ARPU. I'll now turn the call over to Jim to walk you through our second quarter 2026 financial results.

Thank you, Ed, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide 15 with the financial results for the second quarter. Revenue grew 5.5% to $93.5 million, driven by another quarter of strong global fiber expansion market revenue growth of $6.5 million, or 32.8%, due to a 30-year growth in the 31.3% increase in data subscribers and stable year-over-year data arbitrage. Commercial fiber revenue grew 1.9 million, or 9.8% year over year. This growth was driven by a combination of recurring revenue growth in the enterprise and carrier verticals, a non-cash sales type lease of customer equipment in the second quarter of 26, and a negative non-cash deferred revenue adjustment for one of our national wireless carrier customers in the second quarter of 2025. Fiber revenue, the combination of our fast-growing GLOW and commercial fiber revenue, grew 21.4% to 51% of total revenue in the second quarter. the first time fiber revenue exceeded incumbent broadband markets and RLEC revenue. Incumbent broadband markets revenue declined 2.5 million, primarily due to lower video revenue from a 14.1% decline in video RGUs as customers continue to switch to streaming video services. and lowered data revenues due primarily to a 2.6 percent decline in data output. RLEC revenue declined $1 million, primarily due to lower DSL revenue from a 31% decline in DSL RGUs and lower government grant support revenues. Approximately half of the decline in DSL RGU's was due to transfers to our own broadband service. Adjusted ETH dog grew 3.6 million, or 12.9%, to 32 million. driven by 4.9 million revenue growth and offset by 1.3 million higher operating expenses. Incremental adjusted EBITDA margin was 73% in the second quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margins increased 200 basis points to 34.3% in the second quarter of 26 as compared to the second quarter of 2025. Turning to slide 16, we reiterate our annual guidance for 2026. We expect revenues of $370 to $377 million, adjusted EBITDA of $131 to $136 million, and CapEx net government grant reimbursements to be 220 to 250 million. We expect second half 2026 revenue and adjusted EBITDA to be favorably impacted by continued high margin growth fiber revenue growth, similar to recent quarterly trends and lower operating expenses from the previously announced reduction in force. Moving to slide 17, we invested $146 million in capital expenditures in the first half collected $20 million in government grants for net cap back to $126 million. Net capex declined 18% to the first half 2025 due to decline in incumbent government subsidized construction. As of June 30th, construction was complete for 95% of the subsidized passings and 93% of our target globe fiber passings, with both projects expected to be substantially complete by the end of 2026. I'd now like to update you on our liquidity and debt maturities on slide 18. As of June 30th, we had $728 million in outstanding debt. 674 million of net debt. We have no debt maturities until 2029 and 78% of our debt is fixed rate, providing meaningful protection for potential increases in short-term interest rates. Total available liquidity was 159 million. consisting of $24 million of cash and cash equivalents, $31 million in restricted cash as required by the ABS InVenture, $2 million available under the VFN, $75 million available under the revolving credit facility, 27 remaining reimbursements under government grants. In addition, the company has over $105 million of BFN commitments that are not available to draw as of June 30th. However, we expect the available VFN capacity to reach the commitment levels with continued growth in the secured fiber network revenues from the ABS entities. In summary, as noted on slide 19, we have three catalysts converging that we expect will lead us to generating and growing positive free cash flow in 2027 and beyond. low double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth rates driven by our FIDO businesses, declining capital intensity as we exit the construction phase of our business plan, and declining cost of capital after refinancing our debt in December 2025.

Thank you, operator. And we're now ready for questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. If you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press star one one again. We ask that you wait for your name and company to be announced before proceeding with your question. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will be coming from the line of Christian Schwab of Craig Elliman. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Congrats on the good quarter. I'm wondering if you could give us an update We kind of talked about it a little bit last quarter on the data center opportunity. I know in your geographical footprint, we got 20 data centers sitting in Ohio and we have a lot in Virginia and wondering if there's anything new to report there.

Hey, Christian, good morning. This is Ed. We don't have anything specific to report at this time. I will state that we're making progress there. We do have a master service agreement in place with a major hyperscaler that will enable them to potentially buy services in the future. So we're still confident in the opportunity going forward.

Great. I know I think you kind of talked about before that that you maybe would need multiple customers to really make a go at that, if you will. But since you do have an MSA with one, you know, is one customer,.

enough if the terms and opportunity is right? So the advantage we have, we have existing fiber and existing conduit in close proximity to some of these data centers. So that gives us an advantage where we can provide the service without having to make as significant a capital investment as other providers may.

Okay, fantastic. And then just as we do transition the business model from heavy cap backs, to CapEx Lite and free cash flow positive. I just wanted to confirm again that the target over the next couple of years is still kind of a 40% consolidated target. EBITDA margin target and 50% long-term, that's still accurate, right?.

Yes, Christian, that is accurate. We expect to grow EBITDA margins by 300 to 400 basis points a year for the next couple of years and expect that we have a clear visibility to get to 40% in a couple of years.

Excellent. No other questions. Thanks, guys. Thank you. One moment for the next question, please. And our next question is coming from Milana Pramod, correspondent of BWS Financial. Please go ahead.