Asked if he’s ready to build 6G, Verizon CFO says, “Not at all”
While Verizon stock prices have been on a bit of a wild ride this year, the operator’s CFO projected confidence in a discussion at the Morgan Stanley European Technology, Media and Telecom Conference this week. CFO Tony Skiadas laid out the benefits of an executive reshuffle, move to a regional approach to business sales, and ongoing momentum for its growing fixed wireless access and private networks services.
Underlying it all is Verizon’s ongoing C-Band spectrum deployment which Skiadas characterized as about halfway done in terms of cell sites with mid-band deployed. “Just because we have all th spectrum doesn’t mean the network is completely finished…we still have a couple of years of build to go. We’re very pleased with our progress thus far…but we still have more to do.”
Skiadas said the C-Band spectrum is helping with churn and delivering for both mobility and fixed wireless access. In the third quarter, Verizon had 384,000 net adds for the cellular-backed home internet service. “We have over 2.7 million subs in our base, and we said that we would see about 4 million to 5 million by 2025. If you do the math, we’re publicly a little in front of that.”
Asked by Morgan Stanley’s Simon Flannery about the sustainability of FWA growth in the context of impacting total network capacity, Skiadas said, “The network team is way out in front of the demand curve here in terms of what we see, in terms of growth, and if we have more demand for fixed wireless access. That’s a good problem. And we have plenty of ways to take pressure off the network whether it’s cell splitting or using millimeter wave…There’s options for us there. And that would be a good problem to have if that happens, and the team is building where we see demand.”
Skiadas also gave some detail on the executive shuffle earlier this year that saw Sampath Sowmyanarayan move from heading Verizon Business to Verizon Consumer, Kyle Malady move into the business group from heading up the network side, and Joe Russo move into that spot.
“The focus of the team is very much aligned around growing service revenue, wireless service revenue, EBITDA and free cash flow growth. And within that framework, driving growth in mobility, broadband and private networks. On private networks, we have early leadership there and we signed some big logos, and see further opportunity down the road.”
More on private networks: “In terms of what we’re seeing coming down the pipe, yes, we have good traction and a lot of customers interested. We’ve signed with the NFL, we’ve signed with the Cleveland Clinic and BlackRock. So we have private 5G deals with all of them. And those customers are very satisfied with the services they have with the security, the bandwidth, the reliability. The private 5G network, it starts out perhaps as a Wi-Fi replacemen,t and then we can add on to it with services like robotics and automation for factories and manufacturing and logistics and the like. So, the early returns are good…it’s still early days for private 5G, but we do see a growth opportunity there as customers continue to adopt those networks.”
