A：Dan Shulman comes to the role of CEO at Verizon with extensive experience in the technology, telecoms, and wireless industries. He began his career as an assistant account executive at New Jersey Bell and spent 18 years at AT&T, eventually becoming the president of its consumer division. He has led and grown iconic consumer brands and has served on the Verizon board for the past seven years.

A：Dan Shulman, the new CEO for Verizon, mentioned that the company's priority is to build the best and most reliable network. After that foundation is established, the focus will be on delighting customers by building the industry's best overall value proposition and the best customer experience. The company will also shift to a customer-first focus, redefining its trajectory towards sustainable value for shareholders through financially disciplined growth.

A：Verizon plans to expand its fiber footprint through a significant investment in fiber and the acquisition of Frontier, which is expected to close early next year. The acquisition is anticipated to provide a stronger foundation for future growth and enable Verizon to capture more customer opportunities. Additionally, the company aims to bring its best-in-class broadband offerings to more households across the country, focusing on markets outside of the Verizon and Frontier footprints.

A：Verizon's strategic shift to improve its customer proposition and experience involves a move to a customer-first focus. The company aims to redefine its trajectory by building an enhanced value proposition and the best customer experience. This entails a fundamental change in the company's strategic approach to customers, with an emphasis on financially disciplined growth and winning with the right customers.

A：In the third quarter, Verizon delivered strong postpaid phone growth and a 16% year-over-year increase in consumer upgrades tied to its best value guarantee. The company saw positive subscriber growth, with 5.4 million fixed wireless access subscribers and an annualized revenue exceeding $10 billion. Consolidated revenue grew 1.5% to $33.8 billion, with year-over-year wireless service revenue growth and continued ARPU growth. However, the company faced a prepaids amortization headwind and expects it to continue, while underlying customer economics remain healthy.

A：Verizon's cost management efforts going forward will focus on driving significant cost savings across all aspects of the business. This is mentioned as a critical action for the company to further reduce its cost of services and S&A (sales and administrative expenses). The new CEO, Dan Shulman, will outline additional strategies regarding cost management during his discussion.

A：The company has generated almost $1.3 billion more in Adjusted EBITDA year to date compared to the same period in the previous year.

A：Third quarter free cash flow was $12 billion, representing a nearly $1.9 billion improvement year over year and the highest reported in the industry for the period.

A：Net unsecured debt at the end of the quarter was $112 billion, a $9.4 billion improvement year over year, resulting in a net unsecured debt to consolidated Adjusted EBITDA ratio of 2.2 times, which is ahead of schedule and before the frontier closing.

A：The company remains on track to close the Frontier deal in the first quarter of 2026. They have received approvals from 25 of 27 states and are making good progress in the remaining jurisdictions, with integration planning on track.

A：The Board has given a clear mandate to unlock the growth potential of the platform while delivering strong financial results. The key objectives are to transform the company's culture and financial profile under principles of being bold, customer-centric, and executing with financial discipline to focus on shareholder value.

A：The current strategy relies too heavily on price increases without subscriber growth, which is not sustainable. The company's culture needs to shift to a customer-first approach with a more efficient cost structure to delight customers and win in the market.

A：The top strategic imperative is to grow the customer base profitably across mobility and broadband subscription services. This will be achieved by competing and growing responsibly across all market segments, delighting customers, and leveraging network excellence along with innovative customer value propositions.

A：Verizon plans to use AI as a key tool to improve the customer experience, simplify offers, reduce churn through smart and personalized marketing, and improve service by reducing costs and complexity across the business.

A：The company plans to narrow its focus to invest in key growth areas and aggressively sunset or exit legacy businesses where there is no clear path to profitable market leadership, aiming for margin improvement.

A：Convergence is a significant near-term growth opportunity, with the acquisition of Frontier enabling Verizon to serve a large number of fiber passings for cross-selling. The acquisition is expected to drive meaningful revenue synergies and improve free cash flow.

A：The speaker is committed to maintaining a fiscally responsible approach by optimizing capital structure and enhancing shareholder returns. This includes examining operating expenses, capital spend, and capital allocation, with a focus on continued debt repayment, value-creating capital return, and maintaining a sacrosanct commitment to the dividend to preserve financial capacity for strategic investments.

A：The speaker's main priorities include delighting customers to increase industry net adds, cost transformation to fundamentally restructure the expense base, capital efficiency, optimizing investments, and accelerating shareholder returns by enhancing bottom line growth, maintaining a commitment to the dividend, and paying down debt.

A：The speaker plans to redefine what it means to be a Verizon customer by aggressively competing and transforming the company. This involves leveraging a strong network, scale, and brand, combined with strategic clarity and execution to achieve sustainable growth. The plan requires hard work, strategic focus, and thoughtful execution, and critical planning and evaluation are already well underway.

A：The three pillars of the plan are: (1) Shifting from being technology-centric to customer-centric, focusing on customer delight and growth through retention with the lowest churn rate in the industry; (2) Driving shareholder returns through sustainable revenue growth, accelerated adjusted EPS growth, and maintaining a commitment to the dividend; and (3) Reviewing CapEx spend and capital allocation to continue investing in growth areas and divest legacy businesses without a clear path to profitability.

A：The speaker plans to grow the company in the consumer segment by becoming more customer-centric, delighting customers, and focusing on customer retention. This involves creating the best value proposition segmented by market segments, thoughtfully examining the marketing mix, and providing the best customer experience to win over the long term.

A：The speaker indicates that the company reviews opportunities to potentially flex leverage higher if the right business opportunities present themselves, especially considering market conditions and future spectrum availability from regulatory bodies like the FCC. However, details on specific leverage adjustments or strategic use in future scenarios are not provided in the transcript.

A：The primary reasons customers are leaving the company are price increases, friction in the customer experience, value perception issues, and competitive intensity due to many industry offers.

A：The company plans to address these issues by fixing the experience friction, enhancing the value proposition, increasing segmentation and targeting of offers, and leveraging elements like convergence.

A：The marketing approach mentioned involves utilizing the traditional four Ps of marketing along with an additional 'P' which stands for 'prayer'. The speaker humorously indicates that pricing is considered the last resort in marketing when all else fails, but emphasizes that the company has many tools to create incremental value for customers.

A：The company aims to start increasing its share of the new-to-the-industry postpaid add market, reduce churn to become the industry best, and win in a fiscally prudent manner.

A：The company is comfortable with its long-term leverage target and has a history of executing with the balance sheet. It has strong cash flows, reiterated annual guidance, and is focused on generating strong cash flows for investing in growth and maintaining balance sheet capacity for strategic opportunities.

A：The speaker notes similarities between the two companies in terms of needing to be customer-centric and addressing customer pain points. The biggest need for change at Verizon is in the business model to become a customer champion by listening to customers, understanding their expectations, and solving their issues.

A：Verizon is planning to invest heavily in its value proposition and cut costs by being more efficient and scrappier. It is also focusing on becoming more customer-centric and is undergoing a cultural shift from being technology-centric to customer-centric.

A：While acknowledging the similarities between PayPal's success and Verizon's potential, the company is hesitant to adopt a super app strategy and prefers to develop its thoughts further. There will be more updates and clarity on the company's direction as time progresses.

A：The vision for convergence involves integrating the physical and fiber footprint and possibly leveraging fixed wireless as a way to drive more broadband business. The company is also assessing the importance of legacy businesses versus strategic growth areas and is trying to define these internally and externally for shareholders.

A：The expected revenue benefits from the convergence of mobility with fiber include lower churn rates, incremental broadband revenues, and incremental mobile revenue. This is anticipated to be a significant focus moving forward, with investments being made in broadband, fiber, and fixed wireless footprints.

A：The company's investment strategy is focused on broadband and mobility. It will also explore potential large opportunity areas such as AI infrastructure. Additionally, the company plans to invest in growth areas and consider divesting or exiting non-profitable parts of the business that are costing billions of dollars in margins.

A：The company plans to achieve free cash flow growth in 2026 by starting with strong cash flow generation from the business, which has the strongest free cash flow in the industry. It aims to significantly transform costs, be very efficient with capital spending, and complete initiatives in 2025 that are expected to be at the lower end of the range or better. The company is prioritizing investments in mobility and broadband while being efficient with capital spend and focusing on areas aligned with growth.

A：The strategy for account growth involves being more aggressive in delighting customers, focusing on what customers want rather than competitors, and avoiding irrational promotional spend. The company aims to create the best value propositions, ensure the very best customer experience, and delight customers through thoughtful marketing mix elements. The goal is for prospects to want to come to Verizon and for customers to never want to leave.

A：Dan suggests that the strategies for reducing churn include having a clear understanding of what drives churn and addressing each of those factors one by one. He emphasizes the need to be proactive and continue growing through retention while also ensuring the right offers are available in the marketplace to remain competitive. Evidence of these efforts is expected to become visible in the current quarter, although change may take some time.

A：Dan has a keen understanding of AI's potential and its transformative effect on the internet's operations, moving from a broadcast model to a more individualized approach. He acknowledges that AI is advancing rapidly, with models improving significantly every 2 to 3 months and believes that AI can enhance operations and the customer experience across various functions at Verizon and other organizations. Furthermore, AI can improve the value proposition for customers, allowing for more efficient and proactive engagement.

A：The inconsistency between Verizon's modest organic fiber expansion and its significant external fiber investments appears to be reconciled through partnerships, such as the one with Tillman. This partnership is described as capital-light and allows Verizon to expand broadband capabilities beyond its current footprint and increase the convergence of services. Despite the slower organic growth, Verizon remains on track to add fiber to 650,000 homes and is committed to the expansion deal with Tillman, indicating a continued focus on fiber infrastructure.

A：Verizon's strategy for reclaiming market leadership involves significant investment in the marketplace. The company aims to offset these investments through cost reductions and the redeployment of those savings into enhancing its value proposition. Cost reductions are considered a way of life for Verizon, and the company is focused on being more agile and efficient, investing wisely in all elements of Opex and CapEx to drive growth and shareholder value.