Uniti Group Inc. (NASDAQ:UNIT) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 29, 2024 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Kenny Gunderman - Chief Executive Officer

Paul Bullington - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Greg Williams - TD Cowen

Frank Louthan - Raymond James

Michael Rollins - Citi

David Barden - Bank of America Securities

Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley

Operator

Welcome to Uniti Group's Fourth Quarter 2023 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. Participants on the call will have the opportunity to ask questions following the company's prepared comments.

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 this call. Discussions during the call will also include certain financial measures that were not prepared in accordance with the 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, and thank you for joining. Starting on slide three, I'd like to begin with a review of 2023, and particularly some highlights of a very busy fourth quarter. During the year, despite a challenging backdrop, we successfully refinanced $3.1 billion of debt, resulting in our current business plan now being fully funded having no significant debt maturities until 2027, and over 95% of our debt being fixed rate. We accomplished this while continuing to demonstrate the resiliency of our core recurring Fiber business, with top line growth of 5% in 2023, including Uniti Leasing lease up, and Uniti Fiber enterprise and wholesale growth of 20%, 15%, and 9%, respectively, with continued declining capital intensity.

Just as importantly, by addressing our balance sheet, we afforded ourselves the ability to focus on strategic matters. As we foreshadowed during our third quarter call, we recently sold some non-core assets that included our remaining tower portfolio, our remaining investment interest in Bluebird Network, and our sale leaseback with CableSouth, for total proceeds of $87 million, and almost 10 times blended EBITDA multiple. Also, during the fourth quarter, we decided to largely exit the non-core one-time equipment sale business.