Lumen Technologies : Earnings Document

TECHNOLOGIES

Furthering Human Progress Through Technology

2020 Annual Report

2021 Proxy Statement

IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING THE AVAILABILITY OF PROXY MATERIALS FOR

THE ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS TO BE HELD ON MAY 19, 2021

This proxy statement and related materials are available at www.proxyvote.com.

Dear fellow shareholders:

We made significant progress in 2020 to position the company for the future. The launch of Lumen Technologies and the Lumen Platform is an inflection point in our ongoing transformation. We invested in the business both to meet growing customer demand and to improve the customer experience. Under our three-year transformation plan, we continued to drive efficiencies throughout the business, and achieved our transformation savings goals a full year ahead of schedule. These investments paid off as we saw improvement in our revenue trajectory and Net Promoter scores, a measure of our customer experience. We also continued to execute our capital allocation strategy, further strengthening the balance sheet, reducing interest costs and investing in the business.

Responding to Covid-19

The events of 2020 affected every corner of the world, including our customers, our communities and our employees. Throughout the year, we recognized the importance of our services through what we do best: providing scalable, flexible connectivity to further human progress through technology.

We met customers' urgent needs for a new way to connect securely to their employees. We met frontline workers' needs by connecting emergency hospitals and pop-up medical locations around the world. We evolved our customer support models to achieve more contactless installations than ever before and enabled the growing demand for bandwidth. Finally, we supported our own employees by quickly moving to a largely work-from-home environment and standing up key protocols to ensure the safety of our work-from- work employees, with policies and procedures that remain in place today.

These events highlighted the power, flexibility and scalability of our fiber-based offerings and the responsiveness of our employees to operate in very dynamic environments. The pandemic also brought a heightened focus on digital transformation with our customers that show no signs of slowing down. Our strategy, platform and solutions are fully aligned to these needs, and we see significant opportunity to help our customers digitally transform their businesses as they continue to adapt and operate in new work and technology environments.

President and CEO

"Throughout the year, we recognized the importance

of our services through what we do best: providing scalable, flexible connectivity to further human progress through technology.

A Pivotal Year: Lumen and

Transformation of the Company

Lumen signals a new era for our company with a focus on delivering digital experiences to our customers that are designed to drive their success. Although we've been in a rapidly changing industry for decades, with the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution, the pace of change is accelerating, and I believe Lumen is uniquely positioned to enable and benefit from this rapid change. The Lumen Platform - grounded on our broad, fiber-based infrastructure and delivering virtualized network, edge cloud, security, and voice and collaboration services continues to provide essential services to customers, as they augment their capabilities to support emerging technologies. Our Lumen Platform provides:

• Edge Cloud facilities hosting critical applications within 5 milliseconds of digital interactions, enabling IoT and othernext-generation use cases for all industries;
• Software-definednetworks that create new connections around the world in seconds;
• Network-basedthreat intelligence designed to protect our customers' data and proactively stop malicious actors; and
• Massive network infrastructure with local andlong-haul fiber and deeply interconnected IP networks that connect to private data centers, public data centers, cloud service providers, 5G operators and the array of global networks serving end-users.

With the launch of Lumen, we have also enhanced our go-to-market approach for our small business and residential customers. While Lumen is the name of our company and our flagship brand for serving the enterprise and wholesale markets, we also launched Quantum Fiber. We are investing in Quantum Fiber to deliver fiber- based services to small business and consumer customers, delivered through our simplified, highly digital customer experience.

Driving Growth through the Lumen Platform

We are very optimistic about the opportunity to serve our customers with the Lumen Platform and in turn, continue to improve our revenue growth performance. With solutions like Lumen Edge Bare Metal, Lumen Edge Private Cloud, and Lumen Network Storage, we are driving the next generation of our product and services portfolio.

As of the end of March 2021, we have enabled coverage of more than 85% of U.S. enterprises within 5 milliseconds of our edge infrastructure, with Lumen's Edge Computing Solutions ready to deliver compute and storage services, and we plan to cover more than 95% of enterprises by the end of the year. These investments set us up to deliver the fastest, most-secure platform for next-gen business applications and data. Our approach enables the delivery of a continually-improving platform that will help us improve our customer experience and take advantage of the growing addressable markets for these services to grow revenue.

The reception of our platform strategy by our partners has been amazing. Some of the world's largest technology companies see a natural synergy between the amazing breadth and capability of our platform with their strengths in the hyperscaler and application delivery segments. We have launched significant solutions alongside companies like Zoom, VMware, T-Mobile, SAP and IBM, just to name a few. I am excited about the prospect of these partnerships growing in 2021 to deliver a range of new edge cloud, unified communications & collaboration and security solutions.

ESG and Corporate Governance Initiatives

Lumen has long believed that fostering a diverse and inclusive environment is more than the right thing to do; it is good business. We embrace the rich mix of cultures, viewpoints and backgrounds that come from our diverse global workforce, and we draw from their experiences in all areas of the business - from company culture to customers to the communities we serve.

Our commitment to these ideals was reinforced in 2020 as a result of heightened focus on social justice issues. Over the last year, we expanded our commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIB), and more broadly, to ESG initiatives. Earlier this year, we launched our first sustainability-linked bond, confirming our longstanding commitment to environmental initiatives. We added a number of key DIB programs, named a Chief Diversity Officer and expanded the accountability and engagement of Lumen's leadership team. While we have a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture, we know we can do better!

Building on the major governance changes implemented in 2019, the Board continued its focus on governance policies and Board composition to ensure we are aligned with the interests of all shareholders. Earlier this year, we added Quincy Allen to our Board of Directors. Quincy brings a wealth of technology and digital transformation experience to the Board and we look forward to his perspectives and guidance as we continue our own transformation.

"We embrace the rich mix of cultures, viewpoints and backgrounds that come from our diverse global workforce, and we draw from their experiences in all areas of the business - from company culture to customers to the communities we serve.