AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And as you can see, our profitability numbers has been really, really strong. And that all comes from managing the complete equation. I think we’re doing a pretty good job of that.

John Hodulik: Great. Thanks, John.

Operator: Our next question will come from the line of Simon Flannery of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Simon Flannery: Good morning. I wanted to focus on CapEx if I could. I think Pascal you said it would be about $1 billion lower in the second half. I just want to make sure I had that. I think previously you said $24 billion of CapEx, capital invested was $12.3 billion, I think, in the first half. So, it looks like you might come in in the $23 billion, $23.5 billion range. Is that right? And then $24 billion would be lower than that number. Just want to get those in line. And just be interesting just getting your update on where you are on the wireless network. You talked about getting to 200 million mid-band POPs. What’s the plan after that? What’s the plan on getting to 250 million and beyond? And maybe any update on putting 3.45 into use and how the [Internet Air] (ph) fixed wireless product is going? Thanks.

Pascal Desroches: Hey, Simon. How are you? Good morning. Yes, as we said, we gave pretty clear guidance that we would be around the same levels as we were last year. In the first half of the year, we spent $12.3 billion to $12.4 billion. And by definition, that is, we’re more than halfway through a roughly $24 billion spend. So that’s — the guidance hasn’t changed. And importantly, as we think about how efficient our deployment of spectrum has been, that’s been one of the things that when we came into the year, we understood that the spectrum that we had acquired was deploying and are propagating much more efficiently And that was in the estimates that we provided. And we’re seeing that continue in all of our plans for the year, whether it be the level of coverage or — and the level of homes passed in fiber, all those remain on track. So we feel really good about the progress.

John Stankey: On Internet Air, Simon, look, it’s performing well. It’s got, as you know, in our view, certain segments that are most attractive to that. I like the product of the business segment, and we’re certainly having some success with that. It’s going to be key for us in certain parts of our consumer segment as we move through the next phase of our cost reduction efforts, it is a means for us to begin finding a good catch to shut down other infrastructure and still serve customers. So, we will use it surgically and selectively that will help us both on the cost side as well as retaining valuable customers where we think we can have the right kind of network capacity that will support the product going forward. We still have a little bit of scaling to do.

I’m not quite satisfied with the self-install rates yet on it, but that’s not problematic stuff that’s typical when we’re kind of scaling the product and putting it out there in the first line. We’ll work through those things as we always do. So the foundation is there to use it the right way. I’m excited about having that tool. It’s certainly going to help us in managing some of our installed base and in particular, help us kind of make the transition out of some of our legacy infrastructure that we’ll need over time.

Simon Flannery: And any thoughts on 2024 in terms of POP coverage and overall CapEx levels?