joining us now to discuss is pascal Darroch,
a senior executive vice president and chief financial officer at A T and T.
Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Now it seems the company dodged most of the effects of inflation with this report.
What do you think helped drive these numbers?
Hey, good morning, asian morning, everybody.
Look, we've been on a long term strategy where we are investing in our businesses uh,
at fairly meaningful levels and we have reenergized growth
in the two areas we've identified as priorities one,
our wireless business and five G.
Uh, if you look at the last several quarters, we quarter after quarter,
we continue to drive subscribers.
And not only are we driving subscriber gains were also increasing our our poo on our,
on our wireless product on fiber, simply put when we have fiber,
we are able to win share, we're able to take share from, from our cable competitors.
And
uh,
fiber importantly is coming at a much more attractive profit
margins and our food than our historical legacy copper products.
So, oh no, those two priorities were investing in them and we are
driving improvements in our cost structure.
All those things are driving to improve profits and improve and expectations
of growth and earnings and free cash flow even in this uh,
economic backdrop.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned fiber because this year the company stated,
it aims to build out fiber broadband services to four million homes.
You mentioned the profit margins when it comes to a priority like this.
So investors want to know where is the company at when it comes to those efforts.
Look, we feel really good about our momentum and building out fiber and uh,
you know, during the first several quarters,
we've added several million fiber locations and we,
we expect to continue to grow fiber locations.
Uh, we,
we've put out publicly that over the next several years
we will get to 30 million plus fiber locations passed.
And when you think about fiber,
one of the things that were that really excites us is
when we look out 5 to 10 years from now,
fiber will be the only
technology that consumers will find acceptable.
You know, our forecast suggests that you will see meaningful increases in
uh,
consumption of bandwidth and the only technology that is able to
handle those in an economical way with symmetrical speed is fiber.
And uh, so we feel really good about the product and we,
we are the largest provider of fiber in the country and
we can do it more efficiently than than anyone else.
And we feel really good about the prospects for the long term.
We are building an infrastructure for the next several decades.
It's really exciting and I think especially um,
flipping from the investor side to the consumer side,
we hear a lot about fiber fiber optic network and commercials and things like that.
But you talk about this really visionary future that's meant to take
place when it comes to the progression of tech for decades.
So just touch base with us for what consumers can expect
from some of these developments with the fiber optic network.
You think about things like
being able to autonomous vehicles,
you're not gonna be able to have autonomous vehicles without five G.
In our fiber optic, which is underpinned by our fiber optic network, you're gonna,
you know, the ability to do things like robotics and remote
surgeries are all things that are going to be empowered by five G.
And our fiber network.
And I think we are just in the very,
very early innings of that and I think it's a
really uh is really exciting for the future for consumers.
Pascal Darroch, senior executive vice president and chief financial officer at A.
T and T. Thank you so much for joining us.