WideOpenWest, Inc. (WOW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome to the WideOpenWest Inc. 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. My name is Ashley, and I will be your operator. I will now go ahead and turn the call over to Jeff Marcus. Mr. Marcus, you may begin.

Good morning. I am Jeff Marcus, Chairman of the Board of Directors of WideOpenWest Inc., and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Stockholders WideOpenWest, Inc. We're hosting this annual meeting virtually on the Internet. All stockholders as of the close of business on March 16, 2020, are invited to attend this meeting. A web replay of the annual meeting will be posted at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/wow2020 for 1 year following today's meeting. Craig Martin, WOW!'s General Counsel and Secretary, will be serving as Secretary of the Meeting. The meeting will now come to order. Now I'd like to introduce the other members of the Board of Directors: Teresa Elder, our CEO; Jill Bright; Brian Cassidy; Daniel Kilpatrick; Tom McMillin; Phil Seskin; and Barry Volpert. In addition, I would like to introduce the following officers of the company: David Brunick, Chief Human Resources Officer; Bill Case, Chief Information Officer; Henry Hryckiewicz, Chief Technology Officer; Craig Martin, General Counsel and Secretary; Nancy McGee, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer; and Don Schena, Chief Customer Experience Officer. The company has appointed Broadridge Financial Services to act is tabulator of election. [ Christine Emrine ] from Broadridge is attending this meeting virtually. We will have a brief Q&A session at the end of the meeting, and I would now like to introduce Teresa Elder, the CEO of WOW!.

Thank you, Jeff. Our industry is rapidly evolving as more customers access content where, when and how they choose. Through the continued efforts and initiatives of the last couple of years, WOW! is positioning itself to provide products and services that align with the evolution in content consumption. Through strategic partnerships with YouTube TV and SlingTV and new products such as whole business Wifi, we continue toward our vision of connecting people to their world through the WOW! experience by being reliable, easy and pleasantly surprising every time. Our execution in 2019 resulted in the addition of 23,700 high-speed data RGUs and transaction adjusted EBITDA of $431.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, representing 3.8% growth over 2018. Additionally, we turned up more than 48,000 new homes passed through our Edge-Out projects. As we look to 2020 and continue to grow high-speed data customers and transform the business, our future initiatives are focused on several key objectives: to free up bandwidth capacity, to provide more customer choice and to optimize our customer service capabilities. We believe the movement away from traditional linear video and toward an IT-based platform will facilitate the reduction of programming expenses and result in fewer calls to our care organization and fewer [ triples ] for in-home service repairs. This will help improve gross profit and adjusted EBITDA margins in the process. We're excited to be part of this evolving technological environment and are invigorated by the opportunities that 2020 poses. Thank you to our employees for your continued efforts and support during these challenging and exciting times. And thank you to our shareholders for your interest in WOW!. We provide an essential service. And especially in this time of the global health crisis, our advanced broadband network has demonstrated the capability to handle the increased demand. We are connecting customers to their world while we care for our employees and our investors. Jeff?

Thank you, Teresa. We will now begin the formal part of the meeting. After the formal meeting has been adjourned, we'll provide time for Q&A. Only validated stockholders will be able to ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. Out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to one question. And please note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending the webcast is permitted to use any audio recording device. And I'll now turn it over to our Secretary, Craig Martin.

Thank you, Jeff. The Board fixed March 16, 2020, as the record date for determining stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting. An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that either, one, a notice of Internet availability of proxy materials; or two, the proxy materials themselves, were mailed on or about March 31, 2020, to all stockholders as of the record date and will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The registered shareholder list, which is linked on the virtual shareholder meeting website at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/wow2020 as of the close of business on March 16, 2020, there were 86,872,547 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting. We have been informed by the inspector of election that more than a majority of the voting power of all issued and outstanding stock entitled to vote on the record date are now represented either virtually via webcast or by proxy shares of common stock. As such, a quorum is present for purposes of transacting business and for purposes of voting on each of the proposals to be considered at this meeting. As indicated in the notice of Internet availability and accompanying documents that were made available beginning on March 31, 2020, to all holders of record of common stock, as of the close of business on the record date, we are here today to consider the following business items: proposal 1, to elect 2 members of the Board of Directors. The Board -- I apologize, to elect 3 members of the Board of Directors. The Board has nominated Jill Bright and Brian Cassidy for reelection and has nominated Angela Courtin for election. The election of each director will require the affirmative vote of holders of a plurality of our outstanding shares of common stock present via webcast at this meeting or represented by proxy at this annual meeting. Proposal 2, to ratify the appointment of BDO USA., LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm for 2020. The affirmative vote of majority of votes cast of common stock present via webcast at this meeting or represented by proxy at this annual meeting is required to approve Proposal 2. Proposal 3, to approve through a nonbinding advisory vote the company's executive compensation. This vote is advisory in nature, which means that it is not binding upon the company, but the Board of Directors and the compensation committee will consider the affirmative vote of stockholders holding a majority of our outstanding common stock as approval of proposal 3. The polls are now open. Any stockholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. Stockholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or internet and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action. We'll just take a short pause here for voting. [Voting]

Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls for the 2020 WideOpenWest, Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders closed.