CABLE ONE, INC. The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of
operations should be read in conjunction with our condensed consolidated
financial statements and accompanying notes included in this Quarterly Report on
Form 10-Q and the audited consolidated financial statements and notes thereto as
of and for the year ended
Throughout this "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," all totals, percentages and year-over-year changes are calculated using exact numbers. Minor differences may exist due to rounding.
Overview
We are a leading broadband communications provider committed to connecting
customers and communities to what matters most. We strive to deliver an
effortless experience by offering solutions that make our customers' lives
easier, and by relating to them personally as our neighbors and local business
partners. Powered by our fiber-rich infrastructure, the
We generate substantially all of our revenues through three primary product lines. Ranked by share of our total revenues through the first three months of 2023, they are residential data (57.5%), residential video (16.7%) and business services (data, voice and video provided to businesses: 18.1%). The profit margins, growth rates and/or capital intensity of these three primary product lines vary significantly due to competition, product maturity and relative costs.
We focus on growing our higher margin businesses, namely residential data and business services, rather than on growing revenues through maximizing customer primary service units ("PSUs"). Our strategy acknowledges the industry-wide trends of declining profitability of residential video services and declining revenues from residential voice services. The declining profitability of residential video services is due primarily to increasing programming costs and retransmission fees and competition from other streaming content providers, and the declining revenues from residential voice services are due primarily to the increasing use of wireless voice services instead of residential voice services. Separately, we have also focused on retaining customers who are likely to produce higher relative value over the life of their service relationships with us, are less attracted by discounting, require less support and churn less. This strategy focuses on increasing Adjusted EBITDA, driving higher margins and delivering attractive levels of Adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures.
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Table of Contents Excluding the effects of our recently completed and any potential future acquisitions and divestitures, the trends described above have impacted, and are expected to further impact, our three primary product lines in the following ways:
•Residential data. We have experienced significant growth in residential data customers and revenues since 2013. We expect growth for this product line to continue over the long-term as we believe upgrades made in our broadband capacity, our ability to offer higher access speeds than many of our competitors, the reliability and flexibility of our data service offerings and our Wi-Fi support service will enable us to continue to grow average monthly revenue per unit ("ARPU") from our existing customers and capture additional market share from both data subscribers who use other providers as well as households in our footprint that do not yet subscribe to data services from any provider. Our broadband plant generally consists of a fiber-to-the-premises or hybrid fiber-coaxial network with ample unused capacity, and we offer our data customers internet products at faster speeds than those available from competitors in most of our markets. We believe that the capacity and reliability of our networks exceeds that of our competitors in most of our markets and best positions us to meet the continuously increasing consumption demands of customers. We experienced elevated growth rates in residential data customers and revenues during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but are now seeing a return to more normalized, pre-pandemic growth patterns.
•Residential video. Residential video service is an increasingly costly and fragmented business, with programming costs and retransmission fees continuing to escalate in the face of a proliferation of streaming content alternatives. We intend to continue our strategy of focusing on the higher-margin businesses of residential data and business services while de-emphasizing our residential video business. As a result of our video strategy, we expect that residential video customers and revenues will decline further in the future. We now offer Sparklight® TV, an internet protocol-based ("IPTV") video service that allows customers with our Sparklight TV app to stream our video channels from the cloud. This transition from linear to IPTV video service enables us to reclaim bandwidth, freeing up network capacity to increase data speeds and capacity across our network.
•Business services. We have experienced significant growth in business data customers and revenues since 2013. We attribute this growth to our strategic focus on increasing sales to business customers and our efforts to attract enterprise business customers. We expect to experience continued growth in business data customers and revenues over the long-term. Margins for products sold to business customers have remained attractive, which we expect will continue.
We continue to experience increased competition, particularly from telephone companies; fiber, municipal and cooperative overbuilders; fixed wireless access data providers; over-the-top video providers; and direct broadcast satellite television providers. Because of the levels of competition we face, we believe it is important to make investments in our infrastructure. In addition, a key objective of our capital allocation process is to invest in initiatives designed to drive revenue and Adjusted EBITDA expansion. We continue to invest capital to, among other things, increase fiber density and coverage, expand our footprint, increase plant and data capacity, enhance network reliability and improve the customer experience. We offer Gigabit data service to nearly all of our homes passed and have deployed DOCSIS 3.1, which, together with Sparklight TV, further increases our network capacity and enables future growth in our residential data and business services product lines.
We expect to continue to devote financial resources to infrastructure
improvements in existing and newly acquired markets as well as to expand
high-speed data service in areas adjacent to our existing network. We believe
these investments are necessary to continually meet our customers' needs and to
remain competitive. The capital enhancements associated with recent acquisitions
include rebuilding low-capacity markets; reclaiming bandwidth from analog video
services; implementing 32-channel bonding; deploying DOCSIS 4.0; consolidating
back office functions such as billing, accounting and service provisioning;
migrating products to legacy
Our primary goals are to continue growing residential data and business services revenues, to increase profit margins and to deliver strong Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures. To achieve these goals, we intend to continue our disciplined cost management approach, remain focused on customers with expected higher relative value and follow through with further planned investments in broadband plant upgrades, including the deployment of DOCSIS 4.0 capabilities and new data service offerings for residential and business customers. We also plan to continue seeking broadband-related acquisition and strategic investment opportunities in rural markets in addition to pursuing organic growth through market expansion projects. Given our strategic focus on our higher margin residential data and business services product lines, we assess our level of capital expenditures relative to Adjusted EBITDA, unlike others in our industry who may compare their capital expenditures to revenues due to their much larger residential video customer bases.
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Table of Contents
In recent years, in addition to full acquisitions, we have made investments in several broadband-centric providers serving non-urban markets that follow various strategies similar to our own. Such strategic investments capitalize on opportunities that may not have existed under a full ownership model, allow us to participate more aggressively in the fiber expansion business and may potentially provide future acquisition or investment opportunities, while allowing our management team to focus on our core business and without burdening our cash flow.
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