Uniti Group Inc. (NASDAQ:UNIT) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 3, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Kenny Gunderman - President and Chief Executive Officer

Paul Bullington - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Senior Vice President

Conference Call Participants

David Barden - Bank of America

Gregory Williams - Cowen

Frank Louthan - Raymond James

Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley

Michael Rollins - Citi

Operator

Welcome to Uniti Group's Third Quarter 2022 Conference Call. My name is Gigi and I will be your operator for today. A webcast of this call will be available on the company's website, www.uniti.com, beginning today, and will remain available for 14 days. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]

Forward-looking statements disclaimer. The company would like to remind you that today's remarks include forward-looking statements and actual results could differ materially from those projected in these statements. The factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in the company's filings with the SEC. The company's remarks this morning will reference slides posted on its website, and you are encouraged to refer to those materials during the call.

Discussions during this call will also include certain financial measures that were not prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Reconciliation of those non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the company's current report on Form 8-K dated today.

I would now like to turn the call over to Uniti Group's Chief Executive Officer, Kenny Gunderman. Please go ahead, Mr. Gunderman.

Kenny Gunderman

Thank you. Good morning everyone. Starting on slide three. Our results for the third quarter were once again strong as the demand for our mission-critical fiber infrastructure continues to grow. We achieved our sixth consecutive quarter of elevated new sales bookings, which we now consider the new norm.

As importantly, we also had another strong quarter of gross install activity with a mean time to deliver of less than 100 days. Consistent bookings balanced between anchor and lease-up along with installs that can be turned up quickly and our industry-leading monthly churn of 0.2% demonstrate that our strategy is sound and that we're executing on it well.

To reiterate, our strategy continues to focus on buying and building mission-critical fiber infrastructure and then leasing infrastructure to anchor customers in the 5% to 10% cash yield range and additional lease-up customers, driving cumulative cash yields above 10%. This strategy has resulted in Uniti becoming the second largest independent fiber operator in the country with 134,000 route miles and a long runway for profitable growth.