TDS (TDS) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer — Vicki L. Villacrez

Senior Vice President, TDS Telecom — Kenneth Dixon

Vice President, Finance — Christopher “Chris” Bautfeldt

Vice President, Corporate Relations — John Toomey

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Walter C.D. Carlson: Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. Turning to slide three, this morning Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. announced a proposal to acquire the remaining shares of Array not currently owned by Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. in an all‑stock transaction. As Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. continues its transformation, this proposal is the next step in executing our strategy, simplifying our corporate structure, and enhancing our ability to invest in targeted areas of growth. Array has successfully completed its transition into a tower‑focused company with strong fundamentals, and we believe this transaction will position the combined company for long‑term growth.

By bringing Array fully under Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.’s ownership, Array’s stockholders would retain a significant interest in the tower business while gaining exposure to Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.’s growing fiber business. Under the terms of the proposal, Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. would acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Array that Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. does not currently own by way of a merger in which each Array common share not owned by Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. would be exchanged for 0.86 of a Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. common share.

This exchange ratio assumes that the previously announced spectrum license sales identified in our offer letter will have closed prior to the closing of the transaction contemplated by Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.’s proposal, and that the Array Board, consistent with its treatment of net proceeds from prior spectrum sales, will have declared and paid dividends of $10.40 per share to Array stockholders prior to the closing. At $10.40 per share, Array would distribute approximately $900 million in net proceeds. This exchange ratio reflects an at‑market offer based on yesterday’s closing prices for Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. and Array, subject to the assumptions just described.

The transaction is expected to qualify as a tax‑free reorganization for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. expects the transaction to eliminate duplicative corporate costs, streamline corporate governance, increase share liquidity, and strengthen the capital structure of the enterprise, providing greater flexibility to pursue strategic investments across all our businesses, including towers and fiber. As noted in this morning’s press release, the proposal is subject to review and recommendation by a special committee of Array’s disinterested directors and the approval of the majority of the disinterested shareholders of Array based on votes cast. It would also require approval of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.’s shareholders and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. does not intend to sell or otherwise transfer its interest in Array and will not entertain any third‑party offers for Array or its assets in lieu of this proposal. Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. continues to support Array’s previously disclosed intention to opportunistically monetize its remaining unsold wireless spectrum. Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. looks forward to working constructively with the Array Board’s special committee as they evaluate this proposal. Beyond what I just disclosed, and the information included in our press release and proposal letter to Array, we are not going to comment further on or take questions regarding the offer on today’s call. With that, let us turn to slide three.

The enterprise is making good progress on its 2026 priorities. Our focus remains on advancing our strategy with financial and operational discipline. As I just mentioned, the proposal announced this morning will aid in strengthening Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.’s corporate and capital structure, and we look forward to working with Array’s special committee. Both business units continue to make progress toward their operational goals. TDS Telecom continued to add fiber addresses and customers in the quarter. Array is off to a strong start in 2026 and is making good progress growing tower tenancy.

In the arena of spectrum, Array closed on a small transaction with T‑Mobile earlier this week and expects the remaining announced T‑Mobile and Verizon spectrum sales to close in the second or third quarter, subject to regulatory approval and other customary conditions. I am pleased with the progress each business unit is making and with the efforts we have underway to strengthen our culture as we go through this period of transformation. I would like to personally thank every associate across the enterprise for their continued commitment and contribution. I will now turn the call over to Vicki.

Vicki L. Villacrez: Thank you, Walter, and good morning, everyone. Slide four updates you on our capital allocation priorities. TDS Telecom continues to make nice progress toward achieving its long‑term objective of reaching 2.1 million marketable fiber service addresses, delivering 40 thousand in the quarter. Ken and Chris will discuss more about the opportunities and momentum we are seeing in that space in a moment. We continue to evaluate M&A opportunities in a financially disciplined, accretive, business‑case‑driven fashion. In mid‑April, we announced an agreement to acquire Granite State Communications.

As I have communicated in the past, we are primarily focused on small to medium‑sized opportunities that are already fibered up or have an accretive economic path to all fiber and support our clustering strategy. Granite is just like that: fully fibered with over 11 thousand service addresses that are adjacent to several of our existing markets in New Hampshire. We are excited to welcome these associates and customers into the Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. family and expect the transaction to close in the third quarter, subject to regulatory approval. Finally, in the area of shareholder return in the form of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. share buybacks, we were not in the market during the quarter.

At the end of the first quarter, we had a $520 million authorization for Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. share buybacks available, and we remain committed to executing on that program. Across all three priorities, the company intends to be disciplined, balancing the needs of the business and evaluating future returns along with market and other conditions as we move forward. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Kenneth Dixon to discuss Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.’s fiber business.

Kenneth Dixon: Thank you, Vicki, and good morning, everyone. At TDS Telecom, 2026 is focused on executing our fiber growth plan: building fiber addresses, driving fiber sales, and continuing to transform our operations. This quarter, we made progress across all three priorities as we scale our fiber network and advance our long‑term strategy. As shown on slide six, our fiber builds are off to a good start. We delivered 40 thousand marketable fiber service addresses in the first quarter. This is the highest first‑quarter total in our company’s history and nearly 3x our delivery in 2025. This performance reflects both effective execution and construction capacity, including our highest‑ever internal and external construction crew counts.

While we are pleased with the record construction number, we still have more work to do. We continue to invest in our internal construction teams by adding headcount and upgrading tools and equipment to support increased build capacity, giving us a strategic advantage. We believe these investments provide greater control over our execution and improve long‑term efficiency. In addition, we have a robust pipeline of addresses currently under construction, positioning us very well for the spring and summer build season. This pipeline includes a mix of addresses from our fiber expansion into new areas as well as fiber upgrades in our existing markets through our Fiber Deeper program and the federal A‑CAM program.

As a reminder, the A‑CAM program provides federal support that enables us to bring fiber to approximately 300 thousand service addresses, including those along the route where it would otherwise not be economical, helping to drive copper out of our network. Looking at sales, we ended the quarter with approximately 11 thousand fiber net adds, up 32% year over year. As we continue to scale our fiber footprint, we remain focused on converting new service addresses into customers and improving the overall customer experience. During the quarter, we strengthened leadership in key sales and customer‑experience roles to support these priorities. Our operational transformation is centered on efficiency, improving the customer experience, and simplification.

We continue to make progress modernizing our systems and remain on track with our transformation roadmap. I am happy to announce that we have now completed the billing conversion in our cable markets and have also introduced a new Field Force platform to support our technicians. These updates simplify our back‑office processes and provide an improved customer experience. We are now able to launch multi‑gig speeds in our cable footprint. These areas are some of the best markets in the country, and we continue to see great opportunity here, so expect more to come. Finally, as Vicki noted, in mid‑April we signed an agreement to acquire a fiber‑based telecommunications business in New Hampshire.

The transaction adds over 11 thousand fiber addresses that are contiguous with existing TDS markets and supports our clustering strategy. Approximately 30 associates will join the TDS team. We are excited about the opportunity to continue to deliver excellent service in this area, and we look forward to closing this transaction in the third quarter, subject to regulatory approval. Turning to slide seven, our long‑term goals reflect our continued focus on executing our growth strategy that delivers scale, speed, and long‑term value. With the delivery of 40 thousand fiber addresses in the quarter, we now serve approximately 1.1 million fiber addresses representing 58% of our total footprint, with 79% of addresses capable of gig speeds.

While there is more work ahead, the progress we are making reinforces our confidence in the path forward as we continue transforming into a fiber‑centric company. I will now turn it over to Chris to walk through our first‑quarter results.

Christopher “Chris” Bautfeldt: Turning to slide eight, the chart on the left shows our quarterly fiber service address delivery over the past five quarters. As Ken highlighted, our first‑quarter fiber address delivery nearly tripled year over year. This significant increase reflects the additional construction capacity we introduced last year and are continuing to scale this year. Our execution in the first quarter demonstrates the effectiveness of the strategy and the momentum we are building as we advance toward our long‑term goals. The chart on the right illustrates the continued expansion of our fiber footprint. Over the past three years, we have nearly doubled the number of fiber service addresses across our markets, demonstrating steady and meaningful progress.

On slide nine, residential fiber net adds were approximately 11 thousand in the first quarter, a 32% increase compared to prior year, driven by continued footprint expansion and ongoing copper‑to‑fiber conversions. Residential fiber connections have also nearly doubled over the past three years, and we expect continued growth as we expand our fiber footprint. Turning to slide 10, the chart on the left depicts our residential revenue per connection, which increased 1% year over year. This growth reflects annual price increases offset by ongoing industry‑wide declines in video attachment rates. The chart on the right is new this quarter and breaks down total residential revenue between copper, cable, and fiber.

You will see our fiber revenue is up 13% versus prior year, an uplift of approximately $11 million, which helps offset the legacy revenue stream pressures we are experiencing. In cable, revenues are down roughly 10% versus 2025. As Ken highlighted, we are increasing investment in our cable markets to stem these declines. Overall, total residential revenue declined $5 million compared to prior year; approximately $3 million of this decline is attributable to divestitures of markets that were predominantly copper‑based. We remain hyper‑focused on driving fiber revenue at a pace that is expected to more than offset legacy declines. Slide 11 summarizes our financial performance. Total operating revenues declined 3% in the quarter, or 1% excluding the impact of divestitures.

This reflects continued legacy revenue‑stream pressures, partially offset by growth in fiber connections and modest improvement in revenue per connection. Cash expenses decreased 3%, driven primarily by benefits from our transformation initiatives, including lower costs for billing, circuits, and facilities. Adjusted EBITDA declined 3% in the quarter, driven largely by the revenue losses from divestitures. Capital expenditures totaled $126 million in the quarter, reflecting higher construction activity, a robust funnel of addresses under construction, and accelerated investments in our internal construction crews and equipment. Slide 12 reflects our guidance for 2026, which remains unchanged. We are projecting total Telecom revenues of $1.015 billion to $1.055 billion.

Current headwinds in our copper and cable markets are guiding us toward the lower half of this range. Adjusted EBITDA guidance remains between $310 million and $350 million as we continue our transformation efforts. Capital expenditures for the year are projected to be between $550 million and $600 million to support our goal of delivering between 200 thousand and 250 thousand new fiber service addresses. Before turning over the call, I want to thank the entire TDS team for their continued execution and focus. Their efforts across fiber delivery, customer growth, and operational transformation are critical to the progress we are making toward achieving our long‑term objectives. I will now turn the call over to Anthony.

Anthony Carlson: Thanks, Chris, and good morning. 2026 has got off to a busy but great start. The organization is laser‑focused on fully optimizing our tower operations and monetizing our spectrum. In the first quarter, we saw cash site‑rental revenue increase 64% over Q1 of last year, we also demonstrated sequential tower‑tenancy growth when adjusted for DISH, and we continue to move our announced spectrum transactions forward. Before I get to the details of the quarter, I want to acknowledge the Array Board’s receipt of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.’s proposal to acquire the remaining public shares of Array.

Our Board has formed a special committee of independent directors who have retained independent advisers to carefully evaluate the proposal and make a recommendation as to what is in the best interest of Array’s shareholders. Array will be providing updates as appropriate, but we will not be commenting further or taking questions regarding this proposal today. Moving along to slide sixteen, I want to provide an update regarding DISH. As previously disclosed, we received a letter from DISH Wireless in September 2025 in which DISH asserted that unforeseeable FCC actions impacted its master lease agreement with Array and, as a result, DISH believes it is relieved of its obligations under the MLA.

Since early December, DISH has generally failed to make the required payments and is therefore in breach of its obligations. Array continues to take actions it deems necessary to protect its rights under the MLA. Given the ongoing nonpayment, in the first quarter, Array ceased recognizing DISH revenue, and all unpaid 2025 amounts have now been fully reserved. Accordingly, our tenancy ratio no longer includes DISH colocations. When normalizing for this impact, we continue to see sequential growth in our tenancy ratio as depicted on the right, from 0.95 in Q4 2025 up to 0.96 in Q1 2026. Importantly, in Q1 we grew revenue and healthy colocation application volumes while supporting T‑Mobile in its integration.

As noted on slide 17, cash site‑rental revenue in Q1 increased 55% year over year from all customers, and when normalized for DISH impact, this increase was 64%. When layering in the T‑Mobile interim site revenue, the increase was 86% year over year, or 98% when normalized for DISH. Our application volume remains robust, and coupled with our existing pipeline, will drive additional revenue growth in 2026 and beyond. Turning to slide 18, T‑Mobile has until January 2028 to finalize its 2,015 committed sites under the new MLA. We continue to anticipate 800 to 1,800 tenantless towers after the integration is completed and all interim sites are terminated.

Our ground‑lease optimization work remained a priority in Q1, and we are making progress in reducing the cash burden of these negative cash‑flow assets. As noted previously, this will be a multiyear effort focused on cost avoidance, additional lease‑up, evaluating long‑term command, and decommissioning in situations where it makes sense, a process we have already begun on a subset of sites with no path to economic viability. This approach allows us to thoughtfully assess all potential outcomes for the tenantless tower portfolio. As shown on slide 19 and presented in prior quarters, we have reached agreements to monetize roughly 70% of our spectrum holdings.

As a reminder, the sale of spectrum to AT&T closed on January 13, 2026, with the Array Board declaring a $10.25 per share dividend that was paid on February 2. In Q1, the FCC approved the sale of certain 100 MHz licenses to T‑Mobile, and that transaction closed earlier this week. Additionally, the FCC approved the sale of the 600 MHz and AWS licenses to T‑Mobile and, pending closing conditions, we expect that sale to close in Q2. Verizon will close in Q2 or Q3 of this year, subject to regulatory approval and normal closing conditions. The remaining transactions with T‑Mobile are expected to close by the end of 2026, once again dependent on regulatory approval and closing conditions.

We continue to pursue opportunistic monetization of our remaining spectrum, primarily C‑band. We view our C‑band spectrum as a highly compelling 5G asset with a mature ecosystem ready for carrier deployment, and with no near‑term buildout requirements, we have ample time to realize its value. Slide 20 summarizes the results of our partnership, or non‑controlling investment interests. As discussed last quarter, investment income and distributions for full‑year 2025 were impacted by several one‑time factors, including the impact of the Iowa partnership selling their wireless operations to T‑Mobile and distributions received from Verizon related to their transaction with Vertical Bridge. For Q1, equity income was elevated due to prior‑period adjustments recorded by the managers of certain investee entities.

Regarding cash distributions, certain entities distribute cash only twice per year, resulting in an uneven distribution pattern throughout the year. Slide 22 summarizes Array’s financial results. Year over year, we continue to see the impact of the T‑Mobile MLA driving revenue growth. As noted last quarter, there was a prospective change in classification of property taxes and insurance from SG&A to cost of operations. As such, that is driving roughly half of the year‑over‑year increase in cost of operations. SG&A expenses continue to include costs to support the wind‑down of legacy wireless operations, but sequential quarter‑over‑quarter results are declining as planned. We expect these wind‑down expenses to persist throughout 2026, but with additional reductions over future periods.

On slide 23, our guidance across all metrics—total operating revenue, adjusted EBITDA and OIBDA, and capital expenditures—is unchanged. As a reminder, our guidance ranges are wider than industry norm due to uncertainty with the T‑Mobile MLA and the timing of interim site terminations. In closing, I want to again thank Array’s associates for their continued passion and dedication to driving operational efficiencies and growth. We continue to move through our first year as a stand‑alone tower company. I will now turn the call back to Walter.

Walter C.D. Carlson: Thank you, Anthony. As I noted in my opening remarks, Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. continues to make solid progress advancing our strategic priorities. Our first‑quarter execution, combined with the momentum we are seeing across the business, positions us well as we move forward into the year. I would like to again thank all of the outstanding associates across the Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. enterprise for their continued dedication and hard work in serving our customers and supporting the advancement of our business. Operator, please now open the line for questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now open the call for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If you have dialed in to today’s call, please press 9 to raise your hand and 6 to unmute when prompted. Your first question comes from Richard Hamilton Prentiss with Raymond James & Associates. Richard, your line is now open.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: Good morning, everybody. You continue to be very busy. A couple of questions. On the fiber side, the TDS Telecom side, have you looked at whether there is an ability to put fiber into a REIT structure, or any desire at some point to put fiber into a REIT‑like structure to be more tax efficient?

Vicki L. Villacrez: Yes, Richard, this is Vicki. I will take that one. We have looked at a number of structural options, but given where we are at today, they are just not optimal. I am not going to speculate going forward on what we may or may not do in the future, but as I think about our fiber program, we are in a really good position. We have a strong balance sheet, and we are focused on funding fiber with our cash.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: Okay. Second question, can you update us as far as the number of shares or percent ownership Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. has of Array Digital, just so we can understand exactly how many of the disinterested might be out there?

Walter C.D. Carlson: Let me take that. I think the press releases that have been issued speak to that, Richard. I think 81.9% is the right rough number, and we can get back to you with precise numbers offline.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: That is great. We had some people asking; there were some Bloomberg numbers out there saying 70%. We knew it was 80‑something, so appreciate that. The last question for me, a little more strategic. I know you have been looking at maybe providing more reporting metrics on the fiber business. Any update to what you think you could provide to help people understand what is happening with the fiber business—any cohort analysis or trend lines to help us look at the value of that business as it is going through a capital spending cycle and some EBITDA pressure? Is there a burn rate, and what can you give us to help understand the traction and future look?

Vicki L. Villacrez: Lots of questions there, Richard. We will piece those apart. On disclosures, this quarter we added disclosures for our residential revenues and broke them out by technology, so you will see reporting by fiber, cable, and copper. We think this is something that will be helpful to investors going forward. Furthermore, we have included metrics in our trending schedules on our Investor Relations website, so I will point you there. Ken, do you want to jump in on the rest of Richard’s questions?

Kenneth Dixon: The metrics that are most important as we move to a fiber‑centric business are, first, how well we are delivering marketable addresses from a build‑plan perspective, and second, our fiber net sales as we sell into that new open‑for‑sale footprint while also increasing our overall penetration in those new cohorts. So build velocity and overall fiber net performance are the two big things.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: I am going to assume as you get fiber out there, the maintenance capital and ongoing capital once you are done with the build drops to pretty low levels.

Kenneth Dixon: We definitely see the cash‑cost‑per‑customer improvements on everything—from trouble tickets, copper versus fiber, to a lower call‑in rate—so we love the fiber business. The faster we migrate away from copper and bring it to fiber, we will continue to see improvements in the bottom line.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: Great. That is helpful. Everyone have a great Mother’s Day weekend. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Sebastiano Carmine Petti from J.P. Morgan. Your line is now open.

Sebastiano Carmine Petti: Thank you for taking the question. Sticking with TDS Telecom and Ken for a second: you hired some sales folks and customer‑experience folks to support your priorities. Where are you from a process‑improvement standpoint—instilling some of your decades of experience running fiber businesses into TDS Telecom? What inning are we in? What near‑term low‑hanging fruit remains to improve process performance and construction build? And on investing in the cable footprint—something we have not heard discussed in a bit—is that strategic and core? How do you think about the blocking‑and‑tackling improvements needed for the cable KPIs to begin stabilizing, given the competitive backdrop and repricing pressures?

Kenneth Dixon: Thank you for the question. I would say we are in the very early innings, and we are starting to make very nice progress. I am starting to see wind in our sails. On address delivery, I am very happy with the team’s 40 thousand service‑address delivery—almost three times more than last year. It was important to prove we could keep our crews working all winter, and we accomplished that. We have started the spring and summer months with record crew counts for the two most important quarters of the year. Through April we are at record numbers, a combination of internal and external crews, and we continue to see sequential month‑over‑month crew‑count improvements as we head into May.

Going into the second quarter, I am bullish on what we can accomplish because we have the largest funnel of addresses under some form of construction in our company’s history. On sales and customer experience, we see the opportunity to penetrate new addresses as fast as we deliver them. We are very happy with our presales velocity; we typically go in 60 days before an address becomes marketable, and we are seeing excellent results in the low‑20% range. We have put a tremendous amount of sales capabilities into our door‑to‑door channel—adding several vendors in Q4 last year and more in April and May—and we have several others in our funnel.

We believe we have to be in the markets and use door‑to‑door to drive our sales agenda. We have also expanded significantly our .com business, which is open 24/7/365; sales have improved significantly, and we will continue to put more resources there. We are now developing our MDU sales capabilities, which is a tremendous opportunity—again, early innings but starting to see nice progress. The 11 thousand fiber net adds—up 32% year over year—is a very good start, and we have momentum. On the cable business, I love our cable markets. We are in some of the best markets in the country.

Last year, we decided to convert those markets first onto our new billing system and get them on a single stack across the company. We also made a significant investment in a new field service tool for our technicians to improve overall service delivery, and we are now positioned to move to multi‑gig in 2026. We are just getting started in terms of what we can do in those markets. A lot is going on, but I like what I am seeing, and we have more work to do. We are definitely moving in the right direction.

Sebastiano Carmine Petti: For Vicki, on Granite—should we anticipate bolt‑ons like this going forward: smaller systems that are adjacent versus big chunky deals? And does combining entities make it easier to REIT the tower business over time versus the current structure?

Vicki L. Villacrez: Sebastiano, thank you. On the second question, we are not going to comment on any impact or implications of the offer on the table, and we cannot speculate on what the future will look like at this point. On Granite, this acquisition is consistent with our capital allocation priorities—building fiber and M&A acquisitions in the fiber space. It is a tuck‑in, it is accretive, and it is adjacent to our current markets in New Hampshire. It is 100% fibered up. We are excited to bring Granite State Communications on board and welcome all of the associates. It brings 11 thousand fiber service addresses to our portfolio.

Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If you have dialed in to the call, please press 9 to raise your hand and 6 to unmute. Your next question is a follow‑up from Sebastiano Carmine Petti from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open again.

Sebastiano Carmine Petti: For Chris, on the cost‑transformation efforts, is the $100 million run‑rate savings by 2028 still the right figure? Are we at a point where the cost savings are falling to the bottom line in 2026, or is there reinvestment going back into the business?

Christopher “Chris” Bautfeldt: Hi, Sebastiano. Yes, we remain on track to hit $100 million of run‑rate savings by year‑end 2028. As you heard in my remarks, we are starting to see some of those benefits this year. The bigger benefits you will see in 2027 and 2028, but we absolutely are starting to see some of those benefits drop to the bottom line. As I have said before, we do not expect that entire $100 million to fall to the bottom line because some of that is helping offset inflationary cost increases. As we continue to expand our fiber footprint and customer base, we do plan to reinvest some of those savings.

We are seeing nice benefits and remain optimistic about the full potential of this program.

Sebastiano Carmine Petti: Thank you. And for Anthony, on the upcoming AWS‑3 reauction and upper C‑band next year—any change in conversations regarding monetization of the remaining C‑band and CBRS?

Anthony Carlson: Thanks for the question. We continue to believe that the C‑band spectrum we hold is excellent and valuable spectrum, with an ecosystem to support it today. We are not going to be a forced seller in these circumstances. We believe the carrying costs are modest. While we are open to a deal at a fair value, we do not feel it is burning a hole in our pocket. We do not have further updates on a sale of our C‑band spectrum at this time, but we remain very optimistic about realizing fair value at the appropriate time.

Operator: Your next question is from Richard Hamilton Prentiss with Raymond James & Associates. Richard, your line is open.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: On the service addresses, Ken, is the build plan still targeting 200 thousand to 250 thousand service addresses this year, and what would cause you to miss it versus hit it or beat it?

Kenneth Dixon: Yes, that is still the target. I have a very good degree of confidence based on the crew counts we have starting the second quarter and the funnel and pipeline of addresses at a new record in terms of construction. I am very confident we are going to deliver within that target.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: And, Anthony, one of the themes at Connect(X) was high‑rent relocation efforts. Do you have an appetite to do some new builds there, and what capital commitment might you put to work?

Anthony Carlson: To be very clear, as we have stated multiple times, we are laser‑focused on optimizing the value of the assets we have in hand and see significant upside from our current portfolio. That is not to say we are not open to opportunities, but the going rates we have seen for high‑rent relocations and participating in new builds have not been consistent with what we think we can achieve by optimizing our portfolio. On our own churn, a small nugget: we had only one total tenant churn in the entire first quarter, which speaks to the strength of our portfolio and its relative susceptibility to high‑rent relocation.

Richard Hamilton Prentiss: One for Walter—an obligatory satellite question. How are you thinking about the somewhat existential threat of satellite coming into terrestrial, given your assets in broadband fiber and towers?

Walter C.D. Carlson: That is an excellent question. Satellite is a technology that has gotten substantial additional focus over the last 18 months and substantial additional investment over the last 12 months. I think satellites will have substantial influence going forward on the communications industry. That being said, we feel very strongly about the continued benefit of a terrestrial tower portfolio, and we feel very strongly about the superior capabilities of fiber networks delivering specific communication into individuals’ homes and businesses without interruption and without fear of being impacted by weather. We are paying attention, and we feel very good about the thrust of both of our businesses. We are watching.

Operator: Next question comes from the line of Sergei Dluzhevskiy with GAMCO Investors, Inc. Your line is now open.

Sergei Dluzhevskiy: Good morning. First question on the TDS Telecom side. Last quarter, you expanded the fiber build target by 300 thousand edge‑out passings in, I believe, 50 adjacent markets to your current expansion footprint. How do the demographics and churn profiles of these markets compare to your older cohorts? Among this new cohort, what types of markets are you prioritizing for a build sooner rather than later?

Kenneth Dixon: We are looking at markets where we have already planted a flag—where we have established our brand and deployed fiber—so we already have technicians and sales capacity. We have looked closely at demographics, competitive intensity, build costs, and expected returns, and then prioritized accordingly. That is our edge‑out opportunity. These markets check the boxes I mentioned, and because we were first to the original market with fiber, the extensions are a natural fit. We believe we prioritized the right markets first with the highest opportunities and returns.

Sergei Dluzhevskiy: On cable, what do you like most about your cable footprint? Can you comment on the competitive environment and the investments you are planning—where the dollars will go and how quickly you expect those investments to pay off?

Kenneth Dixon: From an investment perspective, our focus now is going to a multi‑gig environment in our cable business, which is the opportunity for 2026. We are operating in highly attractive markets—some with among the highest housing growth in the United States—so we see a definite opportunity going forward.

Sergei Dluzhevskiy: On the Array side, the wireless partnerships produce nice cash flow every year. Any updated thoughts on monetizing those stakes? For example, recent transactions valued stakes at about 11.5x cash distributions. At that multiple, your stakes could be worth a significant amount. What could move you closer to taking that step?

Anthony Carlson: As we have said before, we like the cash flows from these assets. There are challenges for us with transactions similar to the ones you mentioned. We have them at a very low tax basis. If you looked at the performance of those investments over the very long term and did a DCF, it would be challenging to get a multiple commensurate with the full value. We are open to offers that would deliver full value, but they would have to deliver full value net of taxes. We like those cash flows, so we are not in a hurry to sell.

Sergei Dluzhevskiy: Lastly on Array, EBITDA is expected to be somewhat depressed in the medium term, pressured by transition and wind‑down costs. Can you talk about your targets, qualitatively and quantitatively, to take cost out and improve margins in 2026 and 2027? Longer term, post T‑Mobile transition, what kind of margins are realistic?

Anthony Carlson: We think there is significant opportunity to improve Array’s margins. We focus on tower cash‑flow margins. First, land is our largest cost, and we have a much lower rate of land ownership than many large public players. There is significant value to be realized by, where appropriate, purchasing more of the land interests under our towers. Second, as a new tower company, we believe we have opportunities to improve as we transition from a maintenance posture aligned with operating a full‑fledged wireless company to one aligned with a tower company. Those are the two big cost‑side opportunities to improve tower cash‑flow margins, in addition to expanding margins by increasing colocations, which we work hard to do every day.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to John Toomey for closing remarks.

John Toomey: Thank you again for joining us today. As always, please reach out to us if you have any questions. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.

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TDS (TDS) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool