Specialist
Former VP at Cable One
Agenda
- Cable One's (NYSE: CABO) operating environment – implications of coronavirus pandemic
- Expected subscriber and pricing trends across voice, video and HSD (high-speed-data)
- EBITDA margin trajectory
- 2020 outlook and beyond
Questions
1.
Have any trends or drivers other than coronavirus impacted Cable One’s operating environment in the last 6-12 months?
2.
How is coronavirus impacting Cable One? Is it a net positive or negative for the company, both in the immediate and longer term?
3.
How high might churn be in a draconian scenario? What might happen when Cable One’s allowances on overdues and late fees subside?
4.
If Cable One were to revert on its move away from video subscribers and begin subsidising again, what are some recommendations you’d have to best sustain the remaining video PSUs?
5.
What are your thoughts on self-install, which is up 20% YoY? How meaningful are the operational cost savings are on a per install basis?
6.
What is your outlook for bad debt as a result of coronavirus? Normally about 20% of debtors forego payments during recessions. Is there anything different about the coronavirus that might affect the size of the risk?
7.
Is there anything Cable One could do to cater to commercial customers? Could it be remembered for how it treats prices during this difficult period?
8.
How much might Cable One foregoing the late, reconnect or over charges move the needle? Is that a substantial part of the business strategy?
9.
It seems Cable One’s market is a three-man race. How does Cable One compare to AT&T and CenturyLink?
10.
Cable One has historically majorly grown through ARPU increases. Do you think they should sacrifice ARPU in favour of market share? A lot of Cable One’s market share gain opportunity came from taking advantage of CenturyLink’s poor customer satisfaction but now price seems to be the most important factor in customer preference. Does Cable One need to respond to this?
11.
Cable One’s HSD subscriber penetration is 34%. Can Cable One accelerate that or is there not much total market opportunity left? Is Cable One always budging up against an incumbent?
12.
How much has the cost per gigabit been decreasing on the consumer side? Since so much of Cable One’s growth is coming from the ARPU side, why shouldn’t the ceiling be lowered on the achievable ARPU, especially as it relates to residential HSD [high-speed data]?
13.
Over 65% of Cable One customers opt in for at least 200Mbps. It seems all the cable operators are convincing customers they need the highest speeds possible whereas on average customers don’t even use 100 Mbps. How might that evolve longer term? Does Cable One need to improve the networks at all, given low utilisation and customers paying for speeds they don’t really need? Or should we expect a CAPEX holiday?
14.
How does buffering play into utilisation levels across the industry? Will some cable operators face that issue more than others? Might the longer-term more highly distributed workforce due to coronavirus affect the industry as a whole? Might this be another reason CAPEX stays elevated?
15.
What are your thoughts on the technology risks of 5G or fixed wireless access? How big a long-term threat are they for cable operators?
16.
Do you have any closing remarks?
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