T-Mobile (TMUS) Q4 2025
2026-02-11 08:30:00
Srini Gopalan:
Hello. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us live right here in New York City for our year-end earnings call and Capital Markets Day update event. Before we get started, I'll draw your attention to our safe harbor statement. This presentation includes forward-looking statements that may differ materially from actual results as well as certain non-GAAP measures. Please see our SEC filings for a review of risk factors. Please also see our investor relations website for all related materials, including a GAAP and non-GAAP reconciliation. Okay. Let me walk you quickly through our agenda today. Srini is going to begin with a halftime check-in since our September 2024 Capital Markets Day. Before turning to our widening differentiation across best network, best value, and best customer experiences. He's then going to talk about growth. He's going to talk about how our growth opportunities across our core wireless business, across our broadband business, and in new growth areas are going to continue to drive sustained outperformance for the Un-carrier. And then Peter will wrap it all together with a financial update. We'll then have the broader leadership team join us right here on stage to answer your questions. Okay. Let's get the show started.
Srini Gopalan:
Good morning. How are you all doing? Well, you all for being here. It's a unique occasion. Few of you have asked me why are we doing this event? Well, it's Q4 earnings. It's halfway through our Capital Markets Day cycle, so felt it was good to do a halftime check-in. And there's the small thing that Mike and I did back in November, the CEO transition. And I'm excited to talk to you guys about the future, about my vision for this phenomenal company. And talk to you in detail about some of the unparalleled growth we have staring at us. So I'm excited to be here and excited to spend the next couple of hours talking about a business I've grown to love over the last ten years. Let's get started. I'm gonna kick off with a quick kind of halftime check-in. So how are we doing halfway through our capital markets day cycle? And the short answer is incredibly well. You've all seen these numbers. But every time I look at them, I'm awed with what we've achieved already. We're growing four times faster in service revenue than any of our competitors, twice as quickly on EBITDA, We've returned over $20 billion to our shareholders. Our free cash flow generation and our conversion of service revenue into free cash flow is an industry benchmark and continues to stay really strong. And that's where the rubber hits the road, right? You can report multiple things differently. Ultimately, what matters is free cash flow conversion. So incredible results and we've either met or beaten pretty much everything we've guided to. From a Capital Markets Day guidance perspective. As of this point halfway through the cycle.
Srini Gopalan:
And what lies underneath that is the incredible ability we've built to not just bring in new relationships, new families, new businesses, into the T-Mobile US, Inc. fold, but also grow and deepen those relationships. So if you look at our performance over it's a bit stubborn, the clicker. But if you look at our performance over the last five years, we've bought in over a million new prepaid relationships every year. Right? That's new businesses. That's new families, Right? One, 1,200,000 new relationships every year. There's only one of our one other competitor who reports that. And you can see those have been negative. And it's not just bringing in these relationships that matters. It's what we do with them. It's the extent to which we nurture existing relationships. Our ARPU has grown by 13% since 2020. And in an industry where people worry about deflation, where people worry about pricing power, our ability to drive these relationships. T-Mobile US, Inc. stands out. As the one carrier who's not just grown volume, but also grown the nature of that relationship driven more CLV, into these relationships. So all that's great. Those are the headline numbers. Right? Great financial performance, great revenue, solid work on volume and value, wanna talk about something different. What underlies this? Right? What's the secret sauce that drives a lot of this? And the thing that's driven all of this performance is our widening differentiation. Now there was a law of physics in this industry which is there has to be a trade-off. You can either have the best network, in which case, customers have to pay a premium for it, or you can deliver best value and best experience, but the network kind of sucks. Right? That was the law of physics of this industry. And the reason for our outstanding results is we've challenged and broken that law of physics. Because at T-Mobile US, Inc., our customers have no trade-off to make. They get the best network, the best value, and the best experience from one provider. And that widening differentiation underlies all of our results. What I'll talk to you about is we don't take that differentiation for granted. We fight every day to widen that differentiation. It's widened over the last three years, and you'll see it widen even further. That's what opens out the unparalleled growth opportunities that we're staring at. Gonna double click you through each of these elements, best network, best value, best experience, what we've done, how we're gonna widen that differentiation further, and then convert that into what does that mean in terms of growth opportunities for us. Let's start with the best network. Historically, through the storied history of the Un-carrier, the one thing we didn't have was best network. Over the last five years, we have quietly built the best network. And that changes our proposition fundamentally. It's what takes us into the no trade-offs territory. Let's talk about the best network. Right? Building the best network starts with having the best assets. And what are the best assets? Spectrum, We have more spectrum than anyone else. Importantly, we have better spectrum than anyone else. Our 2.5, which we often call the Goldilocks spectrum, r 2.5 covers 70% more area. Than C band. And that's just one example It's a very big important example of where we have not just more spectrum, but better spectrum. Our grid, now, our history, with mid-band frequencies meant for a long time, this was a bit of a disadvantage. We needed a denser grid to cover this air same area. In a 5G world, the density of that grid is a huge positive for us. It allows us to generate speeds and capacities that others can only dream of. And pulling all of that together, is the brain of the network. Our core, Now we moved to a 5G stand-alone core back in 2021. Our competitors got there sometime in '25. That's a three to four year lead on the quality of our 5G network. 5Gs SA, now 5Gs Advanced, the number of capabilities we're building into our core gives us the ability to take these best assets and put the best brain to it. Now, all of that is kind of the asset side of the story. Spectrum, towers, core, it's all great, pulls together to give us the best assets. But in the classic Un-carrier manner, what we've done different is we've turned those assets into something that makes the customer experience better. Now we talked at Capital Markets Day about our vision for customer-driven coverage. That vision today is a reality. We use AI and huge amounts of customer data to deploy capital in our network based on what's right for customers rather than chasing a vanity stack like pops. I'll give you an example of where this makes a real difference. Let's take Sacramento. Now, the traditional way of thinking about improving the network and is densify the network, cover more box. The reality is to improve the customer experience, for the people in Sacramento, where you actually need to double down on coverage. It's not just Sacramento itself, but Lake Tahoe. Given the amount of time they spend in Lake Tahoe. Right? And that understanding of where people work where they live, where they play, that combination of things is really what drives network experience. And using AI, using scale machine learning, all of our site deployment we deploy almost 4,000 greenfield sites a year now. All of our site deployment is surgically planned to improve our customer experience. That's been the heart of what's driven the best network. Great assets, a fabulous score, and the ability to use all of this to meaningfully change the game on customer experience. And what that's resulted in is a true ultra capacity network. Now the proof of capacity, the best way to think about capacity, is speed. So what speeds can your network deliver is the best way of thinking about what is it actually that this network offers in terms of capacity. Now you look at our median download speeds. Our median download speeds are, get this, twice as much as our nearest competitors. That gives you a sense of the amount of capacity this ultra capacity network has today. It's phenomenal. And speed, again, for me is not just a vanity stat. It's not a esoteric number. It's a really good indication of capacity, And when you have a new phone like the iPhone 17, it's great to compare what happens on our network versus other networks. We're 85% faster than one competitor. And nearly 50% faster than the other competitor. That's true network differentiation. And it's not just us saying it. Many of you in this room, the experts, have known for a while that we have the best network. We won Ookla. We won OpenSignal, speed tests. What gives me real pride today is J. D. Power. After 35 reports over seventeen years, the erstwhile number one network has been unseated, T-Mobile US, Inc. today is the number one in network quality as judged by J. D. Power. That's after 35 reports, seventeen years, We are number one. As a network. What's even more important than what the experts say, however, is what customers say. And this is we talk about these money slides. This is one of those graphs that I look at very, very often. Because this is what translates into customer perception. Network switches amongst the most sensitive, amongst the people who do most research, network switches when we ask them, what is the best network? Right? Now back in 2020, one in eight thought T-Mobile US, Inc. was the net was the best network. One in two and a half thought Verizon was the best network. Today, we're at a place where one in four believe that T-Mobile US, Inc. is the best network. Slightly more than one in four. And you can see that gap is closing. And you can see there's a long way for us still to go. We have the ability to meaningfully expand this lead. With our ultra capacity network, with all of the features that 5Gs SA gives us, with 5Gs Advanced, with our continued investment and doubling down on what this network is. We're not standing still. We're committed to network leadership. And we're committed to expanding this lead. And the best indication of that is how we think about the next wave of network innovation. 6G. 5G we own 5G. We still own 5G. 5G has allowed us to build a business called FWA from a standing start. To close to 8,000,000 customers. In three to four years. It blows my mind. Right? 5G, was the core of how we started competing in a segment we didn't exist, T-Mobile US, Inc. for Business. Our 5G superiority has driven a lot of the industry-leading growth. And we're not standing still. 6G opens up multiple possibilities for us. Whether that's AI, physical AI, edge AI, and we're right there defining the standards of 6G. I'll talk a bit more about specific opportunities with 6Gs later. One thing to remember, though, is our lead in 5G does mean that our RAN refresh cycle runs significantly ahead of the rest, and we start with an unfair advantage on 6G. It's an unfair advantage we love, The fact that people like John Saw saw the vision for 5G way before the rest of the industry did, puts us in a fabulous place to drive the next wave of innovation. And that 26% of network switches see us as the best network only going in one direction. It's going this way. And that unlocks phenomenal amounts of growth. And I'll come back and talk about where those growth opportunities exist. So best network, after thirteen years of the Un-carrier to be able to say that, I relish it. And if you notice, I'll say that a few times today. But it's not just best network. Having no trade-offs is more than best network. It's also best value. And we are in a truly unique place on Best Value. We provide best value not just for new customers, but also for our existing customers. We provide best value not just in terms of the freest iPhone, but in terms of value that you can count on every day. Savings, value that you get every hour. Let's talk about existing customers. Our existing customers pay between 12-15% lower than AT&T and Verizon's. That is a massive factor in terms of the flexibility it gives us It's also something that we zealously guard and protect. Because it's the heart of enabling us to claim no trade-offs, It is at the heart of flexibility that it gives us in terms of how we price new customers and importantly, it's the heart of the relationship. It's making sure that we can reassure people every day that they get not just best network, but also best value. And when we look at new customers, we the val the holistic value we provide is substantially better than AT&T and Verizon. And you can compare the experience beyond plan here where you not only get all of our services, but you also get Netflix on us. You also get Hulu on us. You also get Apple TV. You also get T Satellite. The bouquet of things that we offer and the savings we drive every day because there's a 20 to 30% gap new customers. in terms of value we're able to provide So you've got existing customers who save every day, and you've got new customers who save every day. Not just on the free phone you get every three years, but in terms of meaningful things that drive your life every day. And that best value is something we're going to guard zealously That's something we will protect. That is our heritage. And that's something we will not give up purely because we have best network now. Now you think about value in network, and there's a third thing customers care about. Experience. How do you treat me? Now, our experience story over the last thirteen years has been built on two things: incredible people and an incredible culture. Let's start with our care centers and retail. Now typically, when you talk about taking cost out, people go at this from saying, let me take cost out of experience. Let me kind of shave this much head count off. That's not how the Un-carrier thinks of it. We think of it as costs come because we've created a problem for people. And the question is, what can we do with our incredible frontline to enable them to solve those problems better? You can see on the call reduction front through a real focus on eliminating force, on working with our frontline to solve people's problems better ensuring that they don't need to call twice the same problem, equipping them with better tools, you're seeing a 50% reduction in calls. Had committed to 75% in the Capital Markets Day, at the halftime, We're making great progress on this. And this is not simply about technical things. There's a There's a great element of culture to this. One of the things that happens at T-Mobile US, Inc. is when this team visits an experience center You know, normal big companies kind of the big shots show up. Present for fifty-five minutes, and then they need to be somewhere else So they'd love to take questions, but they don't have time for it. Does that sound familiar? At T-Mobile US, Inc., this works very differently. I get on a good day, maybe eight minutes on stage, John Fryer fires them up for maybe two minutes. And then we have fifty minutes of our frontline relentlessly pounding us on what have you done recently for me in terms of solving customer problems. And their expectation is very simple. That as far as we can, they'd like us to solve the problem there. This isn't a let me take this with that's a really good point. Let me take this back home with me, and I'll get my assistant to do something about it. Our frontline is demanding They want an answer now. And they want to know why you can't send an email when you're sitting at that stage to solve my problem. That's a huge part of what's enabled all of the stuff that you're seeing. And the same thing plays out in our retail stores. Our company-owned retail, our experience stores, give us a significantly better NPS than our authorized retailers. That's down to culture. That's down to the incredible empathy our people show. And we're stoking that. We have cut back on some of our authorized retail and driven even more investment. Into our experience store. That's a big part of the secret sauce of what's driven our best experience. And it's not just that. A big part of our culture is how we think about rewarding existing customers. Unlike other companies, we don't believe customers need to prove their loyalty to us. We believe we need to prove our loyalty to them. Which is why all of our plans compact with things that they don't get elsewhere. And then there's my favorite, the money can't buy stuff with magenta status. And T-Mobile Tuesdays is probably a great highlight of that. We do wild stuff on T-Mobile Tuesdays. Free Slurpees, Actually, we give away we work with Wingstop. To give away free chicken. And Wingstop actually ran out of chicken. Which gives you a sense of the again, Fryer and Kat got lots of emails from angry customers demanding more free chicken. But that gives you some sense of When we talk about experience, this is a lot of fun for us. This is about how we work with our front This is about what we put into our product. This is about genuinely committing to giving our customers an experience that special, unique, edgy, that surprises them, that brings our relationship to life. And we're not stopping. We're now taking the best technology digital, AI, putting that in the hands of our incredible frontline, to drive an even sharper and even more differentiated experience. And at the center of all that is TLife. TLife, more than a 100,000,000 downloads, and, there were weeks last year when we were the most downloaded app on the App Stores. Both the App Stores. That's not the most downloaded telco or carrier service app That's the most downloaded app, full stop. Now we've got 34 odd million relationships, businesses, families, And typically, the primary account holder is the person who accesses TLife, 24 out of those 34,000,000 order of magnitude, use TLife every month, and they use it four times every month. It's an incredible source of engagement It's a huge portal into our experience. It's game-changing for us in terms of the nature of the relationship.
Srini Gopalan:
And with intense CX, which is AI that we've developed working really closely with OpenAI, where the objective is simple. It is to personalize the experience. We've raised the bar on what a carrier experience should look like, and using AI and digital we're taking it to the next level in terms of making that experience feel a lot more personal, feel a lot more tailored to the individual. This gives us lots of opportunities but first up, it changes the nature of our core consumer wireless business. You look at the extent of self-service now. We started off this journey with 22% of our upgrades being done through TLife, and they were all assisted. Which is an agent would show the customer what to do. That was in Q4 2024. Just a little more than a year ago. Today, we're sitting at 73% of our upgrades being done on TLife, and 39% of them unassisted consumers doing it themselves. And this unlocks a huge amount of efficiency as well as satisfaction. Peter will talk in detail about this. But across our AI and digital initiatives, we expect close to $3 billion in savings by the '27, in our '27 run rate. Which is incredible, because this has not been a slash and burn let's take out x thousand people. This has been how do we go after the experience, how do we make that experience a win-win, where consumers enjoy it, where they naturally move towards this, while at the same time making us significantly more efficient as a business. And that's the heart of the unlock, and we'll see the same story play out through Adaline, which is our second biggest transaction in retail, as well as with acquisitions. We announced breaking through another big consumer pain point the ability to switch easily with easy switch back in November, and as easy switch scales, we'll see even more transactions move on to TLife, and TLife will be the center of our relationship the portal into T-Mobile US, Inc. And again, we're not stopping here. Because like I said, we're about continuing to widen differentiation. Across network, value, and experience. One of the most personal things as we talk about personalizing experience is language. We have over 6 billion international calls every year on our network. More than 40% of our base travels internationally. And I'm proud today to introduce for the first time across the world on any network using AI Live Translate, built right into the core. Of our network. I'll let this video explain it and then come back and talk to you about it.
Srini Gopalan:
Now there's a there's a few things that get me incredibly excited about that. The product itself, live translation, suddenly, you kind of moving across barriers, You're enabling people to speak to each other, which at the end is the core purpose and mission of our industry. What gets me even more excited is this is the first scale use case of AI being built directly into the core network. Which is why the only thing you need to use this product is one person on the T-Mobile US, Inc. network. You don't need an app. You don't need to type something in and pass it to someone else to trans using translate. You just need one person on the T-Mobile US, Inc. network. And you can speak the other language. And it's an incredible capability But what I like even more than this is underlying this we've built a platform that allows us to build multiple AI services, directly into our core network. And as we talk about personalizing an experience, as we talk of kind of raising the bar on what you can expect from your carrier. This is a great example of where we're going. So we pause for a minute. Kind of talk about our journey from where we were the best network, the fact that we're not stopping there, the fact that that is even going to broaden further as we get into the 6G age, The ultra capacity network that we already have is only gonna get better. Best value, which for us doesn't mean simply new customers getting great value. And getting great value once in three years with a phone. It means delivering value every day It means delivering value to our existing customers and new. Talked about experience and how we're transitioning from a lot of that being driven purely by our people and culture to empowering those people kind of stoking that culture with the best in technology, and making that even more personal. How does all of this come together? Right? It's easy to talk about widening differentiation, but do we have any evidence of it? My favorite number is our NPS. It measures what people think about our relationship. Would they recommend us? To someone else? And here's what's happened to NPS over the last three years. If you look at where we were in twenty-three, it was we were kind of in the same place as our competitors, give or take a bit. You look at where we are in '25, We've opened up. This is what widening differentiation looks like. This is what happens when you break out of the pack. This ultimately is the biggest driver to all of the outsized financial performance that you saw. It's the fact that we're able to take these relationships use our unique combination of best value, best network, best experience, to widen that differentiation. And that differentiation are we happy with where we are today? Absolutely not. We'd love to see those bars especially the magenta bar. Grow significantly and widen the space between us and our competitors. And that's what moving our network forward moving our value forward, and moving our experience forward is. It's all about taking that and widening that differentiation. Because our strong belief proven by the results that we've seen, is what keeps driving us what drives our success is not the promotion that we did last month. What drives the tide of momentum and moves it in our direction is that widening differentiation. And that widening differentiation for us opens out unparalleled growth opportunities. And I want to spend a few minutes talking about the differentiation is great. What does that mean in terms of growth opportunities? We are convinced that we are staring at a set of growth opportunities that no one else in our industry has. Let's talk about them. Let's start with core consumer wireless. Historically, we've over-indexed on the value seeker portion of this. Today, network seekers see T-Mobile US, Inc. the home of the best network. Over 20 million families and businesses shows AT&T and Verizon mostly in the 4G era, because they were happy paying a premium because they wanted the best network. That is no longer true. And that opens up a massive growth opportunity for us. You take New York City, We are by far leaders here. With significant share Even in New York City, we're under-indexed on network seekers. And that's why we're continuing to grow share as of today. in New York City even with significant lead over the over the rest The opportunity on network seekers exists across geography exists across types of customers. Our second big opportunity small markets in rural areas. Just to be clear, because we call them small markets in rural areas, it doesn't mean a lot of people don't live 40% of America lives here. Our share used to be 13% back in 2020. Including 24%. But 24% means there's a lot of headroom to grow here. Again, these markets tend to over-index on network seekers, and moving to the best network opens up massive opportunity here. And that's not all. Even within core consumer wireless, You look at our back book pricing. And we'll talk in more detail about this. That opens up a lot of headroom in terms of value growth, in terms of how we can deepen that relationship. So if I look at core consumer wireless, there are three significant drivers of growth. And again, that's not all. Because we have T-Mobile US, Inc. for business. Here, our customers rigorously test networks before buying. And we love that. Because we know our odds of winning with a customer who's rigorously tested the network are very, very high. Again, New York's a great example. The first responders here depend on key priority. And they picked t priority after rigorous testing. Lots of runway here in terms of share growth. Moving on to broadband. Now our broadband business for the most, our FWA product is based on this ultra capacity network. And a lot of you have asked us, so, you know, where does FWA go? How do you think of capacity in this context? We've said 12 million customers in 2028. Today, I'm delighted to tell you that we believe this business will go to 15 million customers in 2030, and that there's a lot of runway even beyond that. Fiber, we believe, will add three to 4 million customers. Which will give us a broadband business of 18 to 19 million customers by 2030. I'd like to pause for a minute. We would have built a business with 18 to 19 million customers in seven years. Not sure is any company of our size and scale that's done that. 18 to 19 million customers in this industry in broadband, and remember for us, this is all incremental. None of this is an overbuild of copper and cannibalization All of this is incremental revenue. Is incremental customer relationships that we can nurture. And the growth in this business and the upside still left in it is substantial. And I'll double click on this in a little more detail. And then there's new growth areas, T ads, we've talked about. We've just launched our financial services. And we're really excited about where 6Gs goes. This last part, only a small proportion of it is captured in our guidance, as we build these businesses. But again, I'll double click through each of these to give you a sense of why I'm so excited by the growth that lies ahead of us and why I'm convinced that the best lies ahead. Let's talk about core consumer wireless first. We've grown sorry. I clicker. Yeah. We've grown really quickly and we've talked about why NPS being a big driver the network seeker population whether it's in TFB, whether it's in SMRA, or in our top 100. Is a huge unlock for us. Now let let me give you some stats. Right? New York City, talked about. We're continuing to grow share. Because we're still under-indexed with network seekers. An interesting fact is in areas where our competitors have built fiber, we have gained share. Now I'm not suggesting that there's any causality there. Right? But we have gained share even in areas where our competitors have built fiber because we continue to attract the network seeker population in those areas. And our historical under-indexation gives us share growth opportunities. This collection of opportunities across top 100 and when you look at our top 100, all of you are familiar. We split it into three kinds of markets. Markets where we're number one, number two and number three, and we're growing across all three. We're continuing to win household share. All of this gives us a significant opportunity and from a unit economics perspective, it's very, very accretive. Because under-indexing and network seekers when you're looking at future growth is a good thing. Because I in compared in comparison with value seekers, you do see accretion in terms of the relationship. And ARPU and ARPA. That's on the volume side. On the value side, our front book, back book pricing equation is a huge positive. It means that when we think about new customers coming in, as a group, they're actually accretive to both ARPU and with time ARPA. Because of the pricing of our back book. And it allows us a lot more flexibility in terms of pricing of the front book It also gives us runway in terms of deepening our relationship with existing customers and from time to time, we will look at some of our legacy plans and optimize our rate plans. In the context of more for more. So that combination of things gives us a lot of runway on the RPAS side, which is kind of the value, the p times q the complement to what I talked about on the volume side. I do want to spend a couple of minutes on one thing, though. The one tenant that has been fundamental to the Un-carrier is win-win economics. Which is economics that create really strong CLVs combined with economics that deliver unparalleled value to our customers. And from time to time, the industry loses its way and we kind of get into some bad practices, and that's when, as the Un-carrier, we step in and change the course. And what typically happens is other people follow. As I look at the industry today, I believe we're at another such point where we as an industry have gotten over-focused on how free the newest phone is, and we've lost track of some of the incredible things that we bring to the customers in terms of value. And I'm not going to say a lot more about this right now, but we will change that. The Un-carrier will make another move which will take us much more towards the direction of where we create value which will take the emphasis back to win-win economics things that are good for the customer and things that lead to more sustainable CLVs with time. Because we believe maintaining win-win economics things that are good for investors as well as customers, is critical to driving a healthy environment in this industry. But you'll hear more from us in the next few weeks and months as we drive this journey forward. But that's consumer wireless, and the broader wireless opportunities in TFB. So we've got clear line of sight to strong volume growth, especially with network seekers, and we've got the advantage of our back book combined with, as you can see here, strong premium plan loading on our front book, and the ability to grow relationships. All of which makes our p times q equation look really strong Peter will delve into that in a lot more detail. But we believe we will continue growing ARPA in the range of 2.5% to 3%. Even as we go through this journey and that'll get powered by some of the things we're talking about here. Let me move next to broadband growth. And how do we create this business with 18 to 19 million customers by 2030? Our broadband business to date, largely has been phenomenal. We've led the industry in broadband new customers. And that's from a standing start. You can see, really, we started scaling in 2022. And this business has been running at a real clip. Close to 2 million new customers every year. The industry leader in broadband net adds. And what's driven that again is NPS. What's driven that again is the simple reality of when you give customers a great product, you win. Our NPS today is higher than fiber. That's a composite of the product the value we provide, the experience, the ultra capacity network, that is the that is the source of the unlock for us on FWA. And that product has only gotten better. And this is kind of to me, the best demonstration of what an ultra capacity network is. When you look at what's happened, we have a 77% growth of customers a 27% increase in usage per customer, and our speeds have gone up by 50%, during that period of time. And if you take our newest routers, it's gone up nearly we've nearly doubled speeds. At the same point in time that we've seen 80% more customers using 2030% more. That is incredible in terms of the amount of capacity our ultra capacity network has. That's what makes us really confident that we can get to 15 million customers in 2030 and our speeds will be higher than this. Let me walk you through kind of how we think about the 50 million customers we step back for a minute first. As all of you know, we've run this business with a fallow capacity model. What does that mean? It means at a hex bin level, and there are 30 million hex bins, it's a small geographical area. Each of those 30 million hexbins what we do is we look at our wireless usage today, We project that forward for growth. And all of this is done at peak hour because that's the only thing that matters for a wireless network. So we look at wireless usage and peak projected for growth going forward. Reserve that capacity for wireless. Whatever is left, is then used for FWA. When we talk about 15 million customers in 2030, at higher speeds than what we have today, it still assumes fallow capacity. It does not assume any of the spectrum acquisitions that the one big beautiful bill will land up doing It doesn't assume any spectral ink efficiency increase because of 6Gs. What it does build for is the fact that we're broadening our our our product range. So as we sell more into businesses, for example, they don't use between seven to nine. So that create that is fallow that is true fallow capacity. It does build in the increased spectral efficiency because of better routers. It does build in the increased spectral efficiency as a result of being on 5Gs advanced. Features like L4S, which allow us to use our existing assets even better. And so when we look at that 15 million number, that's on a very conservative basis. And when I look at FWA as a category, I think the days of asking the question of, you know, is this a temporary category? Is this here to stay? Those are gone. Right? The speed of evolution of mobile technology as we look forward convinces me that this category is going to have a lot more upside. At this point in time, we can see line of sight to the 15 million, and that's what we'll go for by 2030. But that creates itself remember again, all of these are incremental. None of this is overbilled. None of this is compromising legacy revenue. And in addition to that, have a business we're really excited by, fiber, T Fiber, everything we've done to date has only confirmed our expectations in terms of the power of our brand, the relevance of our distribution, our ability to convince customers that this is the next stage in their journey, We've also been super thoughtful about the capital intensity of this. And we've picked partners who we can trust where they bring expertise that we don't have. We expect just based on our current assets, to scale to 12 million to 15 million homes passed, and three to 4 million customers by 2030, which would leave us with a broadband business of 18 to 19 million customers largely built over a seven year period. Which is again testament to the value of that NPS chart what we can do with our relationships, the power of our brand, and the power of this team. I'll spend my last few minutes now on new growth opportunities. As I said, the vast majority of these are not built into the numbers that Peter will show you. Let me just back up and tell you how we think about new growth opportunities. For us to do something other than consumer wireless business wireless and broadband. We start with kind of three questions. How large is the TAM or the target market in the business we want to be in? Is it big enough for us to play? Like, when we asked the question on broadband, the answer was clearly yes. Second, can we use our existing strengths our network, our customer relationships, do they make a difference in this industry? Does it help us win? And third, can we disrupt the industry? Because, again, we believe producing me too product in a new industry is not what T-Mobile US, Inc. is about. When the answer to those three questions is yes, then we double down and focus on that. Three areas that excited by. Advertising, T ads, You know we acquired Bliss and Vistar? That business is tracking It's in line with all of the things we talked to you about at the last Capital Markets Day. It's a business that we think has a lot of upside, and we're continuing to drive that. Financial services, we're working with Capital One. We launched our credit card in November. That's gone really well. We're excited about all of the stuff we're seeing in our first results. And we think there's there's a lot more to do in financial services because it ticks those three boxes. We believe that we can meaningfully reinvent, It's clearly a large enough TAM We have a huge amount of credit information and our existing customer base is massive, and our ability to leverage that is substantial. So again, that's a business we're excited by. And last but not least, physical and edge AI, and everything that a world that becomes increasingly connected brings to us as an opportunity both in terms of the way I think of this is in an AI RAN, we will be using we will be using a lot more compute. And if you were to think about this, what 6Gs will be, is a network that not just processes bits and bytes, but also tokens. And effectively, what physical and edge AI will do a bit like FWA, we landed up using fallow capacity here you will land up having fallow compute. That we could then put to use both in physical and edge AI. But I'm rapidly getting to kind of out of my depth on physical and edge AI, so we thought we'd invite a close friend of T-Mobile US, Inc. a man who probably knows more about physical and edge AI than anyone else, Jensen Huang, to share his thoughts on 6G and physical AI. Hello, Srini. It's great to join your Capital Markets Day. T-Mobile US, Inc. is the world leader in telecommunications networks. You did it by rethinking innovation, and how networks are engineered. A year ago, T-Mobile US, Inc. and NVIDIA announced the opening of the AI RAN Innovation Center. Together, we quickly moved from idea to making live calls over NVIDIA's aerial AI ran computer. AI continues to transform every industry. And will also revolutionize telecommunications. Like electricity, the Internet, AI is essential infrastructure. Every consumer will use it. Every company will be powered by it. And every country will build it. Now intelligence is moving into the physical world. With robots, autonomous vehicles, and cities. A billion cars, billions of robots in the future, millions of factories, and hundreds of millions of farms will all be connected to intelligence. AI will be distributed at the edge. Present at the location and understand the logic of the physical world. This is where AI RAN and 6G change everything. The radio network becomes a distributed AI. T-Mobile US, Inc. has recognized this shift. Every base station with NVIDIA aerial becomes an AI computer. And 6G is the connective fabric. Computing sensing, and connectivity converge. This creates entirely new opportunities for the telecommunications industry. That's why this moment matters. I'm thrilled to see our vision of AI RAN taking shape in T-Mobile US, Inc.'s Seattle Labs. Together, we're demonstrating how telecommunications is an essential platform for AI. And together, T-Mobile US, Inc. and NVIDIA are building this future.
Srini Gopalan:
So let me just pull this all together. The foundation of everything that we've built the foundation of everything we're building, is our NPS. It is our ability to continuously differentiate. You can see that gap widening and we've only just got started. Our fundamental capabilities across network, value, and experience is something we're working at every day. To make that gap widen even further. And what that gives us is the plethora, the unparalleled set of growth opportunities that you can see above. And we're only scratching at the surface here. One of the big advantages is you get all of those growth opportunities with no drag of legacy. And that combination of huge differentiation that will only widen with time unleashing a set of growth opportunities is the heart of our story. That in combination with this team in front of you, who have constantly set really big goals, gone out, smashed them, and strive every day to exceed every number we give you. Is the heart of the T-Mobile US, Inc. story, and that's what drives outsized financial performance. And talking of outsized financial performance, I'd like to invite Peter Osvaldik on stage to talk to us. Thank you. Thanks.
Peter Osvaldik:
Alright. You can tell we're just a little bit excited, and it's not just because the Seahawks won Super Bowl. Whoo. Whoo. I thought that'd be a little dangerous. We're close. That's good. Alright. Well, let's get into it. You know, I thought I'd start a little bit with a look at you know, Q4 and twenty twenty-five. And as Srini had said, you know, Srini said, it's a little hard to click this clicker. Anyway, you know, what did that strong differentiation deliver? It delivered industry-leading results yet again. 261,000 postpaid net account additions in Q4. Think about that. That's 10 times What the other competitor who reports this delivered in Q4. And that's important because as Srini said, this is the center of value creation for the industry. And this proves consistently and at scale that customers are choosing T-Mobile US, Inc. Combined with that growth in postpaid net accounts, we delivered postpaid ARPA growth of 2.7% on a year-over-year basis. And importantly, the organic growth was 3.6%, If you recall, as we had talked about before, our acquisitions of both MetroNet and US Cellular came with a base that had lower ARPA. Allowing us to run our playbook of ARPA expansion that we did so successfully both with Sprint as well as our base over time. That momentum between growth and ARPA expansion led to service revenue that was up 10% year over year on a reported basis and 5% year over year on an organic basis. That's 10 times and five times the next highest competitor for those keeping score. And I am. So that strength flowed through to adjusted EBITDA, which grew 7% year over year or 4% on an organic basis. And of course, the most defining metric for us is our ability to convert service revenue into free cash flow. Which we did at 22% in Q4 topping off a year where we delivered it at 25%. And that's important because it highlights a lot of the things that Trini was mentioning. The structural advantage of T-Mobile US, Inc. as expressed in terms of the best metric for value creation provided of course you're not cutting CapEx and going backwards. If you're investing in the core business appropriately like we are for expansion, you're delivering 25% free cash flow margin that's the best measure of are you able to create value shareholders. Alright. So let's look ahead. What does this all mean? How does this formula this growing differentiation, going to result in updated twenty-six and twenty twenty-seven figures? So for '26, we now expect approximately $77 billion in service revenue, representing 8% top-line growth, That includes about $3.6 billion of contribution from M and A, So we have 6% organic growth and acceleration from what we just delivered in 2025. In 'twenty-seven, we now expect between 80.5 and 81 and a half billion in reported service revenue 5% top-line growth, and includes $4 billion in contribution from M and A so delivering 5% organic growth significantly ahead where we gave you just in September 2024 our projections at Capital Markets Day. I think it's important if you step back think about what we're delivering here. At the high end of this guidance, from 2025 to 2027 we're going to deliver more than $10 billion of service revenue growth. Supporting that growth, as we've talked about, is strong postpaid net account growth. And our expectations for 2026 as we enter the year are to generate between 900,000 and one million postpaid net account additions. And for those of you who are curious, and I know you are, implicit in that guide is an expectation of about two and a half million postpaid phone net additions. Combined with that growth in postpaid net account additions, we anticipate postpaid ARPA growth of between 2.5% to 3%. And that's from all of the elements and ability to expand that Srini mentioned. It's new account inflow, taking our premium plans at 60% plus It's our base as they interact with TLife and our experience stores taking on premium plans. It's continued expansion of connections per account and introducing new products and services into account, which you can only do when you have the trust of customers, and that's evidence from MPS. And I'm pleased to share that we're now going to raise the bar on ourselves once You've heard a lot today about how we believe and we've long discussed and reported that postpaid account net additions and postpaid ARPA. Are the real correlation to value creation in this industry. Think about that. You have another competitor who delivered 600 some thousand postpaid phone net additions, but only 26,000 postpaid net account additions. The way you correlate how we're growing the service revenue and then translation profitability is how we're actually able to attract and expand customer relationships and that's best expressed by accounts and ARPA. As we said, over 90% of our postpaid phone lines are actually on a line account. And a vast majority or a substantial portion of our 34 plus million postpaid accounts actually have products beyond just postpaid phone. So when you think about it that way, that's really the unit at which you create value as Srini has long said. Beginning in Q1, long standing we've been focused on postpaid accounts and postpaid ARPA and that will be our sole focus going forward. So we'll no longer be reporting subscriber level elements. Again, I've given you the underlying assumption, two and a million postpaid phones and that very strong 900,000 to 1,000,000 postpaid net account additions. But this is what you should expect from us. This is the bar you should hold to. This is the bar you should hold the rest of the industry to. Who can attract customers switch full relationships who can grow those relationships in ARPA, that's how you get service revenue growth like we're delivering here.
Peter Osvaldik:
What does that mean? Adjusted EBITDA? So in 2026, we now expect between 37 and 37 and a half billion that includes about 1.3 billion from M and A contributions, so 10% reported growth. And 7% organic growth, an expansion again from what we delivered in 2025. 2027, including $1.7 billion from M and A contribution, we expect 9% reported growth and 8% organic growth the midpoint. Again, further expanding on the growth that we're delivering in 2026 which is further expanding on the growth that we just delivered in 2025. And again, if I step back, at the high end of the guidance, this means from '25 to 2027, we'll have delivered more than $7 billion of incremental core adjusted EBITDA. Getting us to between 40 billion and $41 billion This is of course driven by a number of things. One, continued profitable service revenue growth and operating leverage as you've seen from the ability to attract customers generate postpaid account net additions and continue to expand ARPA. But it also comes from contributions of our unique approach to how we put the customer at the center of everything digitalize, create efficiencies, utilize AI not for cost cutting as the primary focus, but for customer experience as the primary focus which generates significant efficiencies as a benefit. While at the same time enhancing their experience continuing to increase their NPS scores, continuing to allow us to deliver customer switching. We now expect between 2026 and '27 relative to 2025 these initiatives are going to deliver 1.3 billion of incremental savings in 2026, and 2.7 billion in 2027, but we're not done there. It's just the beginning of the journey. There's a lot more expansion beyond 2027. And those come from a lot of the things you've been hearing from us. Our progress on digitalization and enhancement of the customer experience through, as I experienced, through TLife, beginning with upgrades, what we've been able to do with first assisted and then unassisted upgrades. Now add a line some prospects that allows a whole new world of how do you approach retail. And approach retail with a focus on creating experience stores, a rationalized retail structure more in sourced, more focused on customer experience, that at the same time drives efficiencies and value. You heard Srini our incredible frontline and how they've reduced inbound customer contact but there's more to be done. Powered with Intense CX now that Frontline will be able to further reduce inbound customer contacts on the way to the goal that John Fryer should with you at our Capital Markets Day in 2024. Customer-driven coverage. We've been talking about this since Capital Markets Day in 2024. A proprietary AI infused model that allowed us to begin focusing CapEx dollars on where they matter most to customers. And if you put the CapEx dollars where they enhance customer value in experience the most, you get the most efficient deployment of CapEx. We've now been able to apply that model to the existing entirety of the network base. And we'll be able to start generating OpEx savings to allow for reinvestment, and the way we're doing that is we apply the same view to every one of our towers. Every one of our small cells, and said, which of these are driving the most customer value and concurrently which are not driving the most customer value. And we can streamline and optimize the network to reduce those and reinvest in those that are driving the most value. And of course, as you'd expect like everybody else, but probably in a leadership fashion, there's a lot of efficiencies in the back office, in IT, through utilization of simplicity, efficiency and AI. If you do it from a customer centricity lens first, you get differentiated results. Now, 2026 is going to have a slightly different phasing to core adjusted EBITDA than 2025 had, which you'd expect because we're both delivering on synergies in the U. Cellular and those will expand as we go through the year, but we're also going to harvest more of these AI and digitalization and simplicity savings as we go through the course of the year. So we expect Q1 core adjusted EBITDA to be between $9 to $9.1 billion There's a few below the line items in 2026 I wanted to highlight as well. Beginning with, we expect approximately 1.2 billion in merger-related costs primarily related to U. S. Cellular. As you recall, we had an exciting announcement around our acceleration of the timeline integrate U. S. Cellular at two years. Network optimization that I just mentioned, this CDC-based network optimization to generate value. Is going to result in a network optimization cost of approximately $450 million will be done through that primarily in Q1 and Q2 we'll harvest those savings and reinvest into the network. We'll have workforce restructuring charges of approximately 150 million in Q1 as we go through our simplification initiatives and conclude what we began in Q4. Alright, CapEx. No big surprises here. We've mentioned to you before, we expect CapEx of $10 billion in 2026, and that includes Between $9 billion to $10 billion and again, all of this from a network perspective will be deployed through the customer-driven coverage lens. Means that every single dollar we put into the network goes to accrue to the highest customer experience improvements and hence the best value delivery for us. While simultaneously expanding the network leadership and allowing for long-term growth. Okay. Let's tumble down to adjusted free cash flow. And the short story here is we continue to deliver a cash generation profile and margin that is industry-leading. Free cash flow is expected to be between 18 billion to $18.7 billion in 2026 growing to between 19.5 billion to 20.5 billion in 2027. Now there's a number of things as you go through an integration that I want to highlight for 2026. We anticipate approximately $1.3 billion of merger-related cash outlays. Again primarily associated with that acceleration of The U. S. Cellular integration. Also expect approximately $1.2 billion of cash outlays for the network optimization and workforce restructuring costs that includes the workforce restructuring charges that we took in Q4 where the cash outflows will happen in twenty-six. And because we're accelerating that integration so dramatically, now expect those costs to drop down significantly in 2027 to $1 billion Cash taxes are expected to be 1 and a half billion for 2026 and 3.5 billion in 2027 fully integrating the benefits we anticipate from the one big beautiful bill. Now, one important note is around cash interest. I know a lot of you in this room like to model rapid deleveraging for us. So I wanted to just highlight that we take a very prudent approach our guidance assumptions that we're delivering to you. What we do is we assume leverage at two and a half times, which means we assume utilization of the entire strategic capacity envelope. We don't put any benefits into service revenue or core adjusted EBITDA for but for purposes of cash interest modeling as we give a free cash flow guide, we assume full utilization of that. And so that results in an assumption of 4.3 billion in cash interest outlays in 2026 stepping up to 5 billion in 2027. Just for perspective, on an you know, it's apples to oranges in terms of what you're seeing in consensus because of that desire to deleverage us rapidly. And that means relative to consensus, this was about 500 million higher in 2026. And 1.1 billion higher in 2027. If you're trying to get an apples to apples comparison and understand what the underlying business expansion is doing. You know, that's something to look at given how we prudently and I think conservatively guide and assume the full utilization of the envelope. But again, the most important part here is our ability to convert service revenue into free cash flow at industry-leading pace. That's a key differentiator for T-Mobile US, Inc. and as I mentioned before, highlights the structural advantage that this business has and the ability to create shareholder value. Alright. Well, certainly, that growth core adjusted EBITDA and a delivery of free cash flow and industry-leading service revenue margin means there's a lot of capacity And so, how do we think about it? Well, we think about it very consistently with how we've shared it with you before. Capital allocation philosophy hasn't changed. It's disciplined. It's consistent. It's focused on maximizing value creation for shareholders. Begins with always setting a prudent leverage target which we continually reassess both on our belief of the internal forecasts of the business as well as what's happening from a macroeconomic perspective. We then prioritize investment in the core business. As you see, not only can we deliver in the short term, but our ability to enhance and expand this network leadership by investing in the business prudently, it's what's going to generate continued differentiation for customers even beyond 2027. We focus on high ROI strategic investments. I'll get into some of the ones that we've done there. And then our focus is to deliver with excess stockholder returns a very balanced approach between dividends and share repurchases. And all of this is done with an eye on maximizing both midterm, short term, but just as importantly, long-term value creation. Alright. So with my last Super Bowl pun, let's do our own halftime show of what have we done. Since our Capital Markets Day in 2024, we funded strategic investments of approximately $12 billion. That included our acquisition of US Cellular, included establishing the JVs with MetroNet, Lumos, Bliss, Vistar, as well as investing in Spectrum, for the long-term continued network leadership. We returned over $20 billion to shareholders, balanced between dividends as well as share buybacks which puts our total now since the program inception 2022 to over $45 billion. As we look forward, for the balance of 2026 and 2027, we have a remaining envelope of over $52 billion, driven again by that core EBITDA expansion in the free cash flow delivery. Our initial view of this is allocating up to $30 billion towards shareholder returns. That currently includes an assumption of approximately up to $10 billion in share repurchases per year. And I'm excited to announce today that we are accelerating our Q1 share buybacks to $5 billion. Up to $5 billion. Or double our run rate. And you might have seen Deutsche Telekom's announcement this morning given the strength of the business and their belief in where we're going as we've laid out for you today, they are not planning currently to sell any T-Mobile US, Inc. shares in 2026 and in fact, they're looking at strategic alternatives to further deepen their investment. I think between the acceleration of share buybacks in Q1 that you're seeing from us, as well as DT's statement that you can see the conviction in the business. And most importantly, we're always guided with respect to share buybacks as to where our belief of the intrinsic value of this company is and where the trading dynamics are today. Alright. Well, what does that leave? That leaves over $22 billion a flexible envelope. And we'll deploy that much as we've done in the past. It can be deployed for strategic ROI investments. It can be deployed potentially for further stockholder returns. And this all assumes a prudent two and a half times leverage assumption. healthiest And we're focused again on all of this. The focus remains on ensuring that we have the and the most strategically flexible balance sheet in the industry allowing us to capture opportunities for shareholder value creation as they come. Alright. I know you're very curious to get to q and a, so let me just summarize quickly. I think we've as Srini mentioned, we have a tremendously growing differentiation. Not only has our current differentiation and where we've arrived with best network best value and best experiences continue to deliver industry-leading results, both from customers selecting T-Mobile US, Inc. and our ability to translate that into outsized financial growth, top line, bottom line, free cash flow. But we see the ability to grow this differentiation and continue to deliver outsized results in 2627 and beyond. So with that, we're going to get to q and a, so if you give us just a second to set up here, we'll get the team up and get to your questions. But thank you.
Srini Gopalan:
Okay. Let's get to q and a. We'll have Mike runners across the room. Please raise your hands if you've got a question. And please also introduce yourselves once you have the mic. I'll start with Peter since he's right there.
Peter Supino:
Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the great presentation. I wanted to ask about the change in your disclosure about the elimination of postpaid phone subscriber reporting and, I guess, ARPU If you could just expand on your thoughts behind that and how you think it allows you to run the business better and ultimately benefit shareholders. Thanks.
Srini Gopalan:
Maybe I'll kick off Yep. And then hand off to you, Peter. So the change in reporting to me is actually comes from a conviction of what do we want to focus on. Do we want to double down on. Accounts, and I think of them as relationships because these are really families and businesses. That's the fundamental way in which consumers buy. 90% of our postpaid lines belong to a multiline account. It's how consumers buy, and it's where value gets created. It's the thing that's most correlated with CLV. And from our perspective, this team and everyone on the front line is incentivized on accounts. Is incentivized on relationships. We want that alignment to exist between how consumers buy what creates value, how this team is incentivized. And that in our minds, raises the bar on the industry. Because it drives this conversation on how many relationships have you actually bought in. Right? And that's, to us, the fundamental unlock and the most transparent way of thinking about the p times q equation. Peter?
Peter Osvaldik:
Yeah. I mean, as I mentioned, and fundamentally, what underpins that is the fact that the vast majority of our customer accounts have deep relationships. So you need to think about both as your approaching new accounts coming in, but also as you're thinking about the base and expansion of ARPA, over 90% of our postpaid phone lines are on multiline accounts. A significant portion of our accounts have products beyond you know, phone lines, whether that's tablets, watches, our very successful broadband offering where we're the most bundled player in that space so we can get into that. I'm sure there'll be questions around that later. So when you think about how do I one, think about the customer relationships. Customers don't think about their relationship with T-Mobile US, Inc. as I have three different relationships or three and a half different relationships, they think about it as one. And when you win that trust over demonstrated by NPS, that allows you to expand and give them new products, whether it's connectivity products, or more importantly, as we demonstrated, when you have a platform like TLife, with 24 million monthly active users, meaning they're using that thing four times a month. It allows you a completely differentiated experience. They're not it's not just I interact with my customer base once every couple of years when they come into the store. Now I can interact with them on a multi-monthly basis to introduce them, one, into new products like T-Mobile Visa, but also help them understand how we can expand in a win-win a more for more construct the relationship with them and that's what gives us the confidence to in think about ARPA expansion the way we are. So it's really fundamentally how the customer It's how we're thinking about the relationships. And honestly, when you think about it, just focusing on postpaid phones and postpaid phone ARPUs is one small portion of the postpaid service revenue line and doesn't really co