Lumen Technologies Inc (LUMN) 2020 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to CenturyLink's Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, August 5, 2020.

您好，歡迎參加 CenturyLink 2020 年第二季度收益電話會議。 （操作員說明）謹此提醒，本次會議將於今天（2020 年 8 月 5 日星期三）錄製。

I would now like to turn the conference over to Valerie Finberg, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Valerie.

我現在想將會議交給投資者關係副總裁瓦萊麗·芬伯格 (Valerie Finberg)。請繼續，瓦萊麗。

Thank you, Franz. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the CenturyLink Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. Joining me on the call today are Jeff Storey, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Neel Dev, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

謝謝你，弗朗茲。大家下午好，感謝您參加我們的 CenturyLink 2020 年第二季度財報電話會議。今天和我一起參加電話會議的還有總裁兼首席執行官傑夫·斯托里 (Jeff Storey)；以及執行副總裁兼首席財務官 Neel Dev。

Before we begin, I need to call your attention to our safe harbor statement on Slide 2 of our 2Q '20 presentation, which notes that this conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the statements on Slide 2 and the risk factors in our SEC filings, including the cautionary statements and risk factors related to COVID-19.

在我們開始之前，我需要提請您注意我們 20 年第 2 季度演示文稿幻燈片 2 上的安全港聲明，其中指出本次電話會議可能包括受某些風險和不確定性影響的前瞻性聲明。所有前瞻性陳述均應與幻燈片 2 上的陳述以及我們向 SEC 提交的文件中的風險因素結合考慮，包括與 COVID-19 相關的警示性陳述和風險因素。

On the call today, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, which are reconciled to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release. All of our earnings materials are available on the Investor Relations section of the CenturyLink website.

在今天的電話會議上，我們將提及某些非 GAAP 財務指標，這些指標與我們的收益新聞稿中最具可比性的 GAAP 指標進行了調整。我們所有的收益材料都可以在 CenturyLink 網站的投資者關係部分找到。

Please note that effective as of the beginning of 2020, we elected to change the presentation of certain taxes related to specific revenue-producing transactions, including federal and certain state USF regulatory fees to present all such taxes on a net basis. Additionally, comparisons to prior periods are on a year-over-year basis, unless noted, and certain metrics exclude transformation costs and other special items as detailed in our earnings materials.

請注意，自 2020 年初起，我們選擇更改與特定創收交易相關的某些稅費的列報方式，包括聯邦和某些州 USF 監管費，以按淨額列報所有此類稅費。此外，除非另有說明，否則與前期的比較是按年比較，某些指標不包括轉型成本和我們的收益材料中詳述的其他特殊項目。

Finally, I want to remind everyone that the FCC's quiet period rules are in effect for both the FCC spectrum Auction 105 and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Auction 904. Therefore, any comments we make around spectrum or RDOF, will be very limited.

最後，我想提醒大家，FCC 的靜默期規則對 FCC 頻譜拍賣 105 和農村數字機會基金拍賣 904 均有效。因此，我們圍繞頻譜或 RDOF 發表的任何評論都將非常有限。

With that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

這樣，我就把電話轉給傑夫。

Thanks, Valerie, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. On today's call, I'll provide my thoughts on our second quarter results, the market demand we see for dynamic, robust fiber-based services that are at the heart of CenturyLink and how we continue to position the company to grow as we meet that demand. After that, Neel will provide an overview of the quarter, and then we will open it up to your questions.

謝謝瓦萊麗，也謝謝大家加入我們。在今天的電話會議上，我將闡述我對第二季度業績的看法、我們對作為CenturyLink 核心的動態、強大的基於光纖的服務的市場需求，以及我們如何在滿足這一需求的同時繼續使公司發展。要求。之後，尼爾將概述本季度的情況，然後我們將回答您的問題。

I'll start with the solid results we delivered in the second quarter. Our team has done an incredible job of maintaining direct engagement with our enterprise customers. We've begun to see our customers adapt to the new normal of COVID-19 and resume their digital transformation efforts. They see that using next-generation technologies enable them to adapt their business models more rapidly and are working to take advantage of tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning across distributed compute resources and high-performance networking. This translates into greater demand for transport services, hybrid WAN connectivity, network-based security, edge computing and managed services as enterprises adjust to a more data-dependent and distributed operating environment.

我將從我們在第二季度交付的可靠成果開始。我們的團隊在與企業客戶保持直接互動方面做得非常出色。我們已經開始看到我們的客戶適應 COVID-19 的新常態並恢復他們的數字化轉型工作。他們發現，使用下一代技術使他們能夠更快地適應其業務模式，並正在努力利用人工智能和機器學習等跨分佈式計算資源和高性能網絡的工具。隨著企業適應更加依賴數據和分佈式的運營環境，這意味著對傳輸服務、混合廣域網連接、基於網絡的安全性、邊緣計算和託管服務的需求更大。

This new normal has also increased consumers' need for digital services and the demand for data shows no signs of slowing. The economic effects of the pandemic create uncertainty for our customers, partners, the company and the market in general. But the pandemic has also highlighted the absolutely essential and durable nature of CenturyLink services and infrastructure in an all-digital world. Now more than ever, businesses realize that to thrive, they must acquire, analyze and act on data and deliver the digital applications and experiences that people need.

這種新常態也增加了消費者對數字服務的需求，並且對數據的需求沒有放緩的跡象。疫情的經濟影響給我們的客戶、合作夥伴、公司和整個市場帶來了不確定性。但此次疫情也凸顯了 CenturyLink 服務和基礎設施在全數字世界中的絕對必要性和持久性。現在，企業比以往任何時候都更意識到，要蓬勃發展，他們必須獲取、分析數據並根據數據採取行動，並提供人們所需的數字應用程序和體驗。

As you can see on Slide 4, we own the critical infrastructure, everything from the extensive fiber network to the deep peering and interconnection relationships required to deliver customers' agile, scalable, secure network infrastructure that is easily and flexibly consumed.

正如您在幻燈片4 中看到的，我們擁有關鍵基礎設施，從廣泛的光纖網絡到為客戶提供易於靈活使用的敏捷、可擴展、安全的網絡基礎設施所需的深度對等和互連關係。

I'm proud of how responsive our employees have been to customers and how they have delivered with speed and urgency. This agility is key to our strategy and is underpinned by our ongoing transformation from a telecom service provider to a leading technology company, providing network and network-supported technology solutions to today's digital market.

我為我們的員工對客戶的響應速度以及他們的交付速度和緊迫性感到自豪。這種敏捷性是我們戰略的關鍵，也是我們從電信服務提供商向領先技術公司不斷轉型的基礎，為當今的數字市場提供網絡和網絡支持的技術解決方案。

We all know how well positioned our infrastructure is, but our value proposition is more than having great infrastructure. I frequently talk to employees about how our relationships with customers must be rooted in CenturyLink's capabilities to drive their success rather than the mindset of speeds and feeds and circuits of a typical telecom company. As a technology company, we combine our deep infrastructure strength with a digital operating environment that enables our customers to turn their data and connectivity into a strategic advantage. We integrate network, compute and operational technologies with managed services to simplify their business operation. Capabilities like orchestration services help them control the thousands of widely-distributed devices and digital assets they now have to manage.

我們都知道我們的基礎設施的定位有多好，但我們的價值主張不僅僅是擁有良好的基礎設施。我經常與員工談論我們與客戶的關係必須植根於 CenturyLink 推動客戶成功的能力，而不是典型電信公司的速度、饋送和電路的思維方式。作為一家技術公司，我們將深厚的基礎設施實力與數字化運營環境相結合，使我們的客戶能夠將他們的數據和連接轉化為戰略優勢。我們將網絡、計算和運營技術與託管服務相集成，以簡化他們的業務運營。編排服務等功能可幫助他們控制現在必須管理的數千個廣泛分佈的設備和數字資產。

The COVID-19 crisis didn't create this need, but it has certainly amplified and accelerated it. And you can see this in our second quarter results with improving revenue trends, led by revenue growth in Enterprise, solid performance in IGAM on a constant currency basis and growth in consumer broadband.

COVID-19 危機並未創造這種需求，但它無疑放大並加速了這種需求。您可以在我們第二季度的業績中看到這一點，收入趨勢不斷改善，其中企業收入增長、IGAM（按固定匯率計算）的穩健表現以及消費者寬帶的增長帶動了這一點。

In the second quarter, in addition to improved revenue performance, we saw sequential and strong year-over-year growth in sales for both IGAM and Enterprise, somewhat offset by the anticipated decline in wholesale and SMB.

在第二季度，除了收入表現有所改善外，我們還看到 IGAM 和 Enterprise 的銷售額同比強勁增長，但在一定程度上被批發和 SMB 的預期下降所抵消。

While SMB sales haven't been as robust as Enterprise and IGAM, SMB revenue results were in line with prior quarters, demonstrating the resilience and importance of our services to these customers even in the face of the pandemic. We continue to believe we have tremendous opportunity and have made changes in our leadership and go-to-market approach to improve our performance in this segment.

雖然 SMB 的銷售不如 Enterprise 和 IGAM 那樣強勁，但 SMB 的收入結果與前幾個季度一致，這表明即使在面對大流行的情況下，我們的服務對這些客戶的彈性和重要性。我們仍然相信我們擁有巨大的機會，並且已經改變了我們的領導地位和進入市場的方法，以提高我們在這一領域的業績。

In the coming months, you will see us expand our efforts to grow our small business customer base, delivering a broader digital experience in our more than 170,000 fiber-fed on-net buildings.

在接下來的幾個月中，您將看到我們加大力度擴大小型企業客戶群，在超過 170,000 座光纖饋送的聯網建築中提供更廣泛的數字體驗。

Let me give you some color around our quarterly sales growth and funnel outlook by highlighting a couple of examples. As the pandemic hit the U.S. near the end of the first quarter, the priority for customers, like most of us, was to manage the crisis in front of them. Other than requirements for emergency connectivity, conversations about network expansions or future transformations understandably paused in the early days.

讓我通過強調幾個例子來為您介紹我們的季度銷售增長和渠道前景。隨著第一季度末疫情席捲美國，像我們大多數人一樣，客戶的首要任務是應對眼前的危機。除了緊急連接的要求之外，有關網絡擴展或未來轉型的討論在早期就暫停了，這是可以理解的。

But as customers have moved beyond the first wave of crisis response, we've seen a marked change in their engagement and increased urgency in their dialogue about longer-term digital transformation of their work environment and data platforms. It's a pivot we have noticed across our customer base and it's one of the key drivers in the growth of our sales funnel.

但隨著客戶已經度過了第一波危機應對階段，我們看到他們的參與度發生了顯著變化，並且他們關於工作環境和數據平台的長期數字化轉型的對話也變得更加緊迫。這是我們在客戶群中註意到的一個支點，也是我們銷售渠道增長的關鍵驅動力之一。

These discussions are about more than just network. As I noted earlier, this is about using our technology platform to provide services in new and effective ways to meet the evolving needs of our customers. For example, we recently announced a contract with the State of Arizona to provide network connectivity and managed IT services that will support all state government agencies and transform how the state delivers services to its citizens.

這些討論不僅僅涉及網絡。正如我之前指出的，這是利用我們的技術平台以新的有效方式提供服務，以滿足客戶不斷變化的需求。例如，我們最近宣布與亞利桑那州簽訂合同，提供網絡連接和託管 IT 服務，為所有州政府機構提供支持，並改變該州向公民提供服務的方式。

CenturyLink had previously won an AZNet contract, the type of connectivity contract that telecom companies frequently win. But because of our full range of solutions, we were able to expand our relationship beyond the network to include critical capabilities such as cloud-based integrated security, automation and cloud orchestration. This is the CenturyLink of the future, a company that delivers digital technology solutions to our customers, differentiated through our world-class fiber infrastructure.

CenturyLink 此前曾贏得 AZNet 合同，這是電信公司經常贏得的連接合同類型。但由於我們提供全方位的解決方案，我們能夠將我們的關係擴展到網絡之外，包括基於雲的集成安全、自動化和雲編排等關鍵功能。這是未來的 CenturyLink，一家為客戶提供數字技術解決方案的公司，通過我們世界一流的光纖基礎設施脫穎而出。

If you consider the increasing demand across all customer verticals to move massive data sets as quickly as possible to widely distributed processing resources, our infrastructure is very well aligned to meet this shift in requirements. By combining just 100-or-so of our existing technical spaces with our deeply distributed fiber network, we can serve around 95% of U.S. Enterprise locations within 5 milliseconds of latency.

如果您考慮到所有客戶垂直領域日益增長的需求，即盡快將大量數據集轉移到廣泛分佈的處理資源，那麼我們的基礎設施非常適合滿足這種需求轉變。通過將大約 100 個左右的現有技術空間與深度分佈的光纖網絡相結合，我們可以在 5 毫秒的延遲內為大約 95% 的美國企業地點提供服務。

Further, as operators of one of the largest and most interconnected networks in the world, we enable our customers to efficiently and effectively collect, process and move their data seamlessly across public clouds, private clouds, public data centers, company-owned data centers and the various work locations of the enterprise, whether in employees' homes or in the office. And I see examples of this in our business every day.

此外，作為世界上最大、互聯程度最高的網絡之一的運營商，我們使我們的客戶能夠在公共雲、私有云、公共數據中心、公司擁有的數據中心和企業的各個工作地點，無論是在員工家裡還是在辦公室。我每天都會在我們的業務中看到這樣的例子。

Turning to Slide 7 for a few examples. One of our customers, a food manufacturing facility, relies on CenturyLink to host their robotics control application. We built wireless connectivity across the factory floor, collect manufacturing data and distribute it in real time to the manufacturer suppliers across the country. All of this is delivered over our network with CenturyLink providing network security for the entire stack of applications on our platform.

請參閱幻燈片 7 中的幾個示例。我們的客戶之一是一家食品製造廠，依靠 CenturyLink 來託管他們的機器人控制應用程序。我們在整個工廠車間建立了無線連接，收集製造數據並將其實時分發給全國各地的製造商供應商。所有這一切都是通過我們的網絡提供的，CenturyLink 為我們平台上的整個應用程序堆棧提供網絡安全。

Similarly, we support online gaming customers that require very low latency and great connectivity to end users. Our edge compute capabilities and our deep global Internet peering have made CenturyLink an excellent platform to meet their needs.

同樣，我們支持需要極低延遲和與最終用戶良好連接的在線遊戲客戶。我們的邊緣計算能力和深入的全球互聯網對等互連使 CenturyLink 成為滿足他們需求的優秀平台。

As a final example, a large U.S. retailer leverages our edge platform to move extensive compute resources from each store to our secure edge compute facilities, relying on our extremely low latency fiber network for connectivity, reducing their cost and complexity, while also improving performance of their data processing solutions. One customer has estimated 25% to 30% operational savings as a result.

最後一個例子，一家美國大型零售商利用我們的邊緣平台將大量計算資源從每個商店轉移到我們的安全邊緣計算設施，依靠我們極低延遲的光纖網絡進行連接，降低其成本和復雜性，同時還提高了性能他們的數據處理解決方案。一位客戶預計由此可節省 25% 至 30% 的運營成本。

Supporting the deployment of 5G networks is another source of demand that we've seen gain traction. We continue to partner with our wireless customers to provide the fiber to run their 5G networks. It's long been obvious the key to effective wireless services is an extensive fiber network and the breadth and depth of our fiber infrastructure supports our ability to meet these needs. We've seen a few wins, but the volume of request is beginning to increase and we are ramping our own capabilities to support the nationwide deployment to 5G. The alignment of our fiber and other infrastructure assets, the evolving market needs and our team's exceptional execution resulted in a solid quarter for our Enterprise business.

支持 5G 網絡的部署是我們看到的另一個需求來源。我們繼續與無線客戶合作，提供光纖來運行他們的 5G 網絡。長期以來，顯而易見，有效無線服務的關鍵是廣泛的光纖網絡，而我們光纖基礎設施的廣度和深度支持我們滿足這些需求的能力。我們已經取得了一些勝利，但請求量開始增加，我們正在增強自己的能力，以支持全國范圍內的 5G 部署。我們的光纖和其他基礎設施資產的協調、不斷變化的市場需求以及我們團隊的卓越執行力為我們的企業業務帶來了穩健的季度業績。

Turning to consumer. As I said before, where we invest, we will grow, and you can see that in the second quarter broadband revenue, which grew year-over-year and sequentially. We remain disciplined, continuing with our micro-targeting strategy and funding our expansion, while also focusing on better penetration in areas already served. Year-to-date, we've added more than 200,000 new homes patched to our fiber footprint and have approximately 2.2 million homes addressable today.

轉向消費者。正如我之前所說，我們在哪裡投資，我們就會增長，你可以看到第二季度寬帶收入同比和環比增長。我們保持紀律，繼續實施我們的微觀目標戰略並為我們的擴張提供資金，同時也注重在已經服務的領域更好地滲透。今年迄今為止，我們已新增超過 200,000 個新家庭安裝了光纖覆蓋區，目前約有 220 萬個家庭可供使用。

During the quarter, we added 42,000 1 gig and above customers, a record for us since we began expanding our Fiber to the Home efforts. I recently read a social media post comparing CenturyLink gigabit services to those of one of our large, very capable cable competitors. The writer got it all right. Our price per bit was lower, the pricing was simpler, and the lack of congestion, better upstream speed and lower latency of our network was better than the cable alternative. Everything about the experience made CenturyLink a clear winner in this writer's analysis.

本季度，我們增加了 42,000 個 1 gig 及以上客戶，這是自我們開始擴大光纖到戶工作以來的記錄。我最近讀到一篇社交媒體文章，將 CenturyLink 千兆位服務與我們一家實力雄厚的大型有線電視競爭對手的服務進行了比較。編劇說得對。我們的每比特價格更低，定價更簡單，並且我們的網絡沒有擁塞、更好的上行速度和更低的延遲，優於電纜替代方案。在筆者的分析中，有關這段經歷的一切都使 CenturyLink 成為明顯的贏家。

While this was a blog on our consumer services, the same benefits extend to our small business customers. We've been clear that our principal strategic focus is our Enterprise business, but we also embrace the consumer opportunity, and are very encouraged by the returns we see in consumer and small business fiber deployments.

雖然這是關於我們消費者服務的博客，但同樣的好處也適用於我們的小型企業客戶。我們明確表示，我們的主要戰略重點是企業業務，但我們也擁抱消費者機會，並對我們在消費者和小型企業光纖部署中看到的回報感到非常鼓舞。

We've all been affected by the COVID-19 crisis, both at home and at work. CenturyLink is no exception, and it certainly has changed how we think about work-from-home and the distributed workforce. What has not changed is our long-term strategy, our long-term focus on the customer or the time lines of our ongoing digital transformation efforts.

無論是在家裡還是在工作中，我們都受到了 COVID-19 危機的影響。 CenturyLink 也不例外，它確實改變了我們對在家工作和分佈式勞動力的看法。沒有改變的是我們的長期戰略、我們對客戶的長期關注或我們正在進行的數字化轉型工作的時間表。

I continue to be impressed by our team members, how they're managing through the pandemic to deliver for our customers. And we remain in the primarily work-from-home environment with roughly 75% of our employees working from home and 25% working from work. We are currently planning a broader return to the office and we'll follow a phased approach and will be fact-based by location in our decision-making.

我們的團隊成員如何在疫情期間為客戶提供服務，給我留下了深刻的印象。我們仍處於主要在家工作的環境，大約 75% 的員工在家工作，25% 的員工在辦公室工作。我們目前正在計劃更廣泛地重返辦公室，我們將採取分階段的方法，並將根據地點的事實來製定決策。

While a few specific employees may return earlier, I've told employees not to expect to return to the office before early fall. Like many of our customers, the crisis has accelerated our digital transformation and changes to our staffing model. Frankly, I don't expect we will ever return to work-from-work approach we had prior to the pandemic.

雖然一些特定員工可能會提前返回辦公室，但我已告訴員工不要期望在初秋之前返回辦公室。與我們的許多客戶一樣，這場危機加速了我們的數字化轉型和人員配置模式的變化。坦率地說，我不認為我們會回到大流行之前的工作方式。

Finally, I'll touch on our capital allocation strategy. We believe we have the right balance in investing for growth, reducing leverage and returning more than $1 billion per year in dividends to shareholders. I believe the actions we have taken in the past have put us in a good position for weathering COVID-19 and the economic downturn and we will continue following the objectives we've laid out for you. We continue investing in the business. We have reduced our leverage to 3.7x and have no significant near-term maturities and our ability to support our dividend speaks for itself with a payout ratio in the 30s.

最後，我將談談我們的資本配置策略。我們相信，我們在增長投資、降低杠桿率和每年向股東返還超過 10 億美元的股息方面取得了適當的平衡。我相信，我們過去採取的行動使我們能夠很好地應對 COVID-19 和經濟衰退，我們將繼續遵循我們為您制定的目標。我們繼續投資該業務。我們已將槓桿率降低至 3.7 倍，並且沒有重大的短期到期日，我們支持股息的能力不言而喻，派息率在 30 左右。

However, I don't believe CenturyLink's current market valuation properly reflects where we are as a company. Although we certainly have legacy businesses, the depth and capabilities of our fiber network, the strong demand for our services across both enterprise and consumer segments, the ongoing efforts to transform and fundamentally change the nature and cost of our service delivery model, the strength of our balance sheet and our relatively low dividend payout ratio makes us excited about our opportunities to transform and grow our business. Our focus is to drive toward that reality.

然而，我認為 CenturyLink 目前的市場估值並不能正確反映我們作為一家公司的狀況。儘管我們確實擁有傳統業務，但我們光纖網絡的深度和能力、企業和消費者領域對我們服務的強烈需求、持續努力轉型和從根本上改變我們服務交付模式的性質和成本、我們的實力我們的資產負債表和相對較低的股息支付率讓我們對轉型和發展業務的機會感到興奮。我們的重點是推動這一現實。

In summary, we are pleased with the continued improvement in our revenue trajectory and the positive effects of our transformation into a technology company focused on building a platform for critical digital services. While the ongoing pandemic and economic environment creates near-term uncertainty, we believe our solutions and approach to the market are enabling our success and position us well for long-term growth. We are excited about the opportunity to help our customers embrace the fourth industrial revolution and digitally transform their businesses.

總之，我們對收入軌蹟的持續改善以及我們轉型為專注於構建關鍵數字服務平台的科技公司所產生的積極影響感到高興。雖然持續的流行病和經濟環境造成了短期的不確定性，但我們相信我們的解決方案和市場方法正在使我們取得成功，並為我們的長期增長奠定了良好的基礎。我們很高興有機會幫助我們的客戶擁抱第四次工業革命並實現業務數字化轉型。

With that, I'll turn it over to Neel to discuss our financial results.

接下來，我會將其交給尼爾討論我們的財務業績。

Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. We had a solid quarter, especially with the full quarter impact from a global pandemic and economic uncertainty. I'll start with our financial summary on Slide 8.

謝謝杰夫，大家下午好。我們度過了一個穩健的季度，特別是考慮到全球大流行和經濟不確定性對整個季度的影響。我將從幻燈片 8 上的財務摘要開始。

We have seen steady improvement in total revenue performance over the last 5 quarters, primarily driven by Enterprise, IGAM and our consumer broadband business. We also had strong year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter revenue growth in our Enterprise segment. We saw continued progress on cost transformation initiatives achieving $110 million of incremental annualized run rate adjusted EBITDA savings during the quarter and delivered solid EBITDA and free cash flow, especially with higher COVID-related expenses and inefficiencies related to operating in the current environment.

我們看到過去 5 個季度的總收入表現穩步改善，這主要是由 Enterprise、IGAM 和我們的消費者寬帶業務推動的。我們的企業部門收入也實現了強勁的同比和環比增長。我們看到成本轉型計劃持續取得進展，本季度實現了1.1 億美元的增量年化運行率調整後EBITDA 節省，並實現了穩定的EBITDA 和自由現金流，特別是在與新冠病毒相關的費用增加以及當前環境下運營效率低下的情況下。

We made good progress on our deleveraging and refinancing initiatives and pleased with our resulting interest cost savings. We also continued to lean in to capital spending during the quarter, driven by customer upgrades and supported by strong leading indicators. The connectivity services we provide are critical, and our revenue is largely recurring and highly diversified. Our second quarter results highlight that our business is resilient.

我們的去槓桿和再融資舉措取得了良好進展，並對由此帶來的利息成本節省感到滿意。在客戶升級的推動和強勁領先指標的支持下，本季度我們還繼續傾向於資本支出。我們提供的連接服務至關重要，我們的收入主要是經常性收入且高度多元化。我們第二季度的業績凸顯出我們的業務具有彈性。

Turning to revenue. On a year-over-year basis, for the second quarter 2020, total revenue declined 3.4% to $5.2 billion, compared to a decline of 5.6% in the second quarter of 2019. Sequentially, total revenue declined 0.7%. On our first quarter earnings call, we mentioned that about $1 billion or 5% of our annualized total revenues are from highly impacted industries. We did not see a material change this quarter.

轉向收入。與去年同期相比，2020 年第二季度總收入下降 3.4%，至 52 億美元，而 2019 年第二季度下降 5.6%。隨後，總收入下降 0.7%。在第一季度財報電話會議上，我們提到約 10 億美元或我們年化總收入的 5% 來自受影響嚴重的行業。本季度我們沒有看到重大變化。

Moving to Slide 9, in revenue by business segment. On a year-over-year basis, international and global accounts, or IGAM, revenue declined 3.2% and declined 0.7% on a constant currency basis. On a sequential basis, IGAM declined 1.8% and was roughly flat on a constant currency basis. In addition to currency headwinds, our international business across Europe, Latin America and Asia experienced reduced levels of activity from COVID-related shutdowns.

轉向幻燈片 9，按業務部門劃分的收入。與去年同期相比，國際和全球賬戶（IGAM）收入下降了 3.2%，按固定匯率計算下降了 0.7%。 IGAM 環比下跌 1.8%，按固定匯率計算大致持平。除了匯率不利因素外，我們在歐洲、拉丁美洲和亞洲的國際業務還因新冠肺炎相關的停工而導致活動水平下降。

Moving to our Enterprise segment. On a year-over-year basis, revenue increased 1.7%. This compares to a decline of 1.8% in the second quarter 2019. On a sequential basis, Enterprise grew about 1%. During the quarter, we upgraded the network infrastructure for several customers and saw strength in collaboration and related services.

轉向我們的企業部門。收入同比增長1.7%。相比之下，2019 年第二季度下降了 1.8%。Enterprise 環比增長了約 1%。本季度，我們為多個客戶升級了網絡基礎設施，並看到了協作和相關服務的優勢。

We see that customers are buying again, mostly focused on their immediate needs as they operate in the current environment. As Jeff mentioned, both IGAM and Enterprise sales orders grew year-over-year. Our sales teams continue to have good discussions with customers, indicating an acceleration of their digital strategies. We are cautiously optimistic and encouraged by the leading indicators for both Enterprise and IGAM.

我們看到客戶再次購買，主要關注他們在當前環境下運營時的即時需求。正如 Jeff 提到的，IGAM 和 Enterprise 銷售訂單均同比增長。我們的銷售團隊繼續與客戶進行良好的討論，這表明他們的數字化戰略正在加速推進。我們對 Enterprise 和 IGAM 的領先指標感到謹慎樂觀和鼓舞。

SMB revenue decreased 6.1% year-over-year, primarily driven by continued declines in legacy voice services. This compares to an average decline of 7.1% over the last 4 quarters. As we mentioned last quarter, the current situation is likely to have a disproportionate impact on this segment, and we are monitoring and working closely with our customers.

中小企業收入同比下降 6.1%，主要是由於傳統語音服務持續下降所致。相比之下，過去 4 個季度平均下降 7.1%。正如我們上季度提到的，當前的情況可能會對這一領域產生不成比例的影響，我們正在監控並與客戶密切合作。

We also noted that SMB had exposure to highly-impacted industries of less than 10%, with approximately $1.6 billion of annualized revenue from customers with less than 50 employees. This dynamic is largely unchanged in the second quarter.

我們還注意到，中小企業對受影響較大的行業的敞口不到 10%，來自員工人數不足 50 人的客戶的年化收入約為 16 億美元。這種動態在第二季度基本沒有變化。

Over the long term, we believe SMB represents a growth opportunity for us. We continue to invest in our product capabilities and customer experience improvement initiatives. It's a large addressable market and expect customer propensity to switch and our traction to increase when businesses return.

從長遠來看，我們相信中小企業為我們帶來了增長機會。我們繼續投資於我們的產品能力和客戶體驗改善計劃。這是一個巨大的潛在市場，預計當企業回歸時，客戶傾向於轉換，我們的吸引力也會增加。

Wholesale revenue decreased 6.3% year-over-year. This compares to an average decline of 7.5% over the last 4 quarters. Sequentially, we saw a decline of 1%. With respect to wholesale, we continue to expect these customers to optimize spending with other vendors in this environment. However, as Jeff mentioned, we are seeing some traction with carriers as they invest in 5G.

批發收入同比下降6.3%。相比之下，過去 4 個季度平均下降 7.5%。隨後，我們看到下降了 1%。就批發而言，我們繼續期望這些客戶在這種環境下優化與其他供應商的支出。然而，正如傑夫提到的，我們看到運營商在投資 5G 時受到了一些關注。

Turning to consumer on Slide 10. For the second quarter of 2020, revenue declined 5.3% year-over-year compared to 8.1% in the year ago quarter. On a sequential basis, revenue declined 0.8%, primarily driven by ongoing legacy voice revenue declines, offset by growth in broadband.

轉向幻燈片 10 上的消費者。2020 年第二季度，收入同比下降 5.3%，而去年同期下降 8.1%。收入環比下降 0.8%，主要是由於傳統語音收入持續下降，但被寬帶增長所抵消。

Broadband revenue now represents 55% of our consumer revenue, up from 47% in the second quarter 2019. Go forward performance will be largely driven by our execution around our Fiber to the Home investment strategy and driving up penetration of our competitive assets. Broadband revenue for the second quarter 2020 grew 1.1% year-over-year. On a sequential basis, broadband grew 0.6%. In the second quarter, we saw a net loss of 29,000 total broadband subs. In speeds of 100 meg and above, we added 68,000 subs. Our customers that are participating in the Keep Americans Connected Pledge have been subtracted from the sub numbers that I just mentioned.

寬帶收入目前占我們消費者收入的55%，高於2019 年第二季度的47%。未來業績將在很大程度上取決於我們圍繞光纖到戶投資戰略的執行以及提高我們競爭性資產的滲透率。 2020年第二季度寬帶收入同比增長1.1%。寬帶環比增長 0.6%。第二季度，我們看到寬帶用戶淨流失 29,000 名。在 100 兆及以上的速度下，我們添加了 68,000 個低音炮。我們參與“讓美國人保持聯繫承諾”的客戶已從我剛才提到的子數字中減去。

I'll also note that besides our investments in Fiber to the Home, we are also investing in self-service capabilities as part of our digital transformation efforts. In addition to a better customer experience, these capabilities are a key component of our cost transformation plan.

我還要指出的是，除了對光纖到戶的投資之外，我們還對自助服務功能進行投資，作為我們數字化轉型工作的一部分。除了更好的客戶體驗之外，這些功能也是我們成本轉型計劃的關鍵組成部分。

Turning to adjusted EBITDA on Slide 11. For the second quarter 2020, adjusted EBITDA was $2.174 billion compared to $2.269 billion in the second quarter 2019 and $2.243 billion in the first quarter of 2020. During the quarter, we increased our bad debt expense by $25 million against accounts receivable due to the possible and expected economic implications of the pandemic. We also incurred higher expenses such as overtime as we work to install expedited services for customers. In addition, we experienced some timing delays for cost transformation initiatives early in the quarter.

轉向幻燈片11 上的調整後EBITDA。2020 年第二季度，調整後EBITDA 為21.74 億美元，而2019 年第二季度為22.69 億美元，2020 年第一季度為22.43 億美元。在本季度，我們的壞賬費用增加了25 美元由於這一流行病可能和預期的經濟影響，應收賬款將減少 100 萬美元。當我們努力為客戶提供加急服務時，我們還產生了更高的費用，例如加班費。此外，本季度初我們的成本轉型計劃出現了一些時間延遲。

Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 41.9% compared to 42.2% in the year ago quarter. As you think about sequential EBITDA performance, keep in mind that COVID only impacted our first quarter results by 2 or 3 weeks versus a full quarter global impact in the second quarter.

本季度調整後 EBITDA 利潤率為 41.9%，去年同期為 42.2%。當您考慮連續 EBITDA 表現時，請記住，新冠疫情僅對我們第一季度的業績產生了 2 到 3 週的影響，而第二季度則對全球產生了整個季度的影響。

As of the end of the second quarter, we achieved approximately $620 million of annualized run rate adjusted EBITDA transformation savings compared to $510 million as of the end of the first quarter 2020. As we indicated last quarter, we saw some challenges early in the second quarter. But as the economy reopened, we gained good traction, and we were pleased with the run rate savings we achieved as we exited the quarter.

As of the end of the second quarter, we achieved approximately $620 million of annualized run rate adjusted EBITDA transformation savings compared to $510 million as of the end of the first quarter 2020. As we indicated last quarter, we saw some challenges early in the second四分之一.但隨著經濟重新開放，我們獲得了良好的牽引力，我們對本季度結束時實現的運行率節省感到滿意。

We remain confident in our 3-year transformation plans, and we continue to expect to achieve the $800 million to $1 billion in annualized run rate adjusted EBITDA savings. Integration and transformation costs and special items incurred in the second quarter 2020 impacted adjusted EBITDA by $89 million and free cash flow by $63 million.

我們對 3 年轉型計劃仍然充滿信心，並繼續期望實現年化運行率調整後 EBITDA 節省 8 億至 10 億美元。 2020 年第二季度發生的整合和轉型成本以及特殊項目影響調整後 EBITDA 8900 萬美元，自由現金流影響 6300 萬美元。

For the second quarter 2020, capital expenditures were approximately $1 billion. This compares to second quarter 2019 CapEx of $800 million. During the quarter, we augmented capacity for our customers and supported higher traffic on the network. We are leaning in, in continuing to invest in our customers, our capabilities, and long-life fiber infrastructure assets.

2020 年第二季度，資本支出約為 10 億美元。相比之下，2019 年第二季度的資本支出為 8 億美元。在本季度，我們增強了客戶的容量並支持了更高的網絡流量。我們致力於繼續投資於我們的客戶、我們的能力和長壽命光纖基礎設施資產。

In the second quarter 2020, the company generated free cash flow of $803 million, this compares to free cash flow of $956 million in the second quarter 2019. The year-over-year change in free cash flow was primarily driven by higher capital expenditures, offset by lower interest expenses. Given our cash flow profile, as I just mentioned, we are investing in the business, supported by positive demand drivers and leading indicators.

2020 年第二季度，該公司產生了 8.03 億美元的自由現金流，而 2019 年第二季度的自由現金流為 9.56 億美元。自由現金流的同比變化主要是由資本支出增加推動的，被較低的利息支出所抵消。鑑於我們的現金流狀況，正如我剛才提到的，我們正在積極的需求驅動因素和領先指標的支持下投資該業務。

Turning to capital markets activity on Slide 12. Since announcing our 3-year plan to delever to a target range of 2.75x to 3.25x net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA, we have reduced net debt by $2.5 billion. During the second quarter, we paid down $500 million in debt obligations and refinanced $1.2 billion of debt at lower rates. We have refinanced $18 billion over the past 12 months and reduced and extended maturities through 2025 by around $14 billion.

轉向幻燈片 12 上的資本市場活動。自從宣布我們的 3 年計劃，將淨債務與調整後 EBITDA 的比率降至 2.75 倍至 3.25 倍的目標範圍時，我們已將淨債務減少了 25 億美元。第二季度，我們償還了 5 億美元的債務，並以較低的利率為 12 億美元的債務進行了再融資。過去 12 個月，我們已再融資 180 億美元，並將期限減少並延長至 2025 年約 140 億美元。

Turning to Slide 13. We are lowering our GAAP interest expense to $1.7 billion from $1.8 billion. We are also updating our cash interest expense to a range of $1.65 billion to $1.7 billion from our previous range of $1.75 billion to $1.8 billion. The midpoint of guidance represents a savings of about $450 million relative to 2018 cash interest expense. The reduction is driven by our deleveraging and refinancing activities, coupled with a low interest rate environment.

轉向幻燈片 13。我們將 GAAP 利息支出從 18 億美元降低至 17 億美元。我們還將現金利息支出從之前的 17.5 億美元至 18 億美元調整為 16.5 億美元至 17 億美元。指導中值表示相對 2018 年現金利息支出節省約 4.5 億美元。這一減少是由我們的去槓桿和再融資活動以及低利率環境推動的。

To summarize, our results highlight that our business and the products we sell are resilient. Our customers are accelerating their digital strategies. Our sales funnel is improving, and we're cautiously optimistic about the demand drivers. Our balance sheet and liquidity position are strong. We continue to execute on our capital allocation policy we laid out early last year, investing in the business to improve revenue trajectory, returning over $1 billion to shareholders through the dividend, with a payout ratio expected in the 30s and deleveraging to our target leverage range of 2.75 to 3.25.

總而言之，我們的結果凸顯了我們的業務和我們銷售的產品具有彈性。我們的客戶正在加速實施他們的數字化戰略。我們的銷售渠道正在改善，我們對需求驅動因素持謹慎樂觀態度。我們的資產負債表和流動性狀況強勁。我們繼續執行去年初制定的資本配置政策，投資該業務以改善收入軌跡，通過股息向股東返還超過 10 億美元，預計派息率在 30 多歲，並將槓桿化至我們的目標槓桿範圍2.75 至3.25。

With that, we'll open it up for your questions. Franz, will you please explain the process?

這樣，我們將打開它來回答您的問題。弗蘭茲，請您解釋一下整個過程好嗎？

(Operator Instructions) And our first question will be from the line of Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley.

（操作員說明）我們的第一個問題將來自摩根士丹利的西蒙·弗蘭納里（Simon Flannery）。

First one, I guess, you gave updated interest expense guidance, but you didn't reinstate the EBITDA or free cash flow guidance. Is there any color you can give us around the second half? It sounded from your commentary that things had really reverted in terms of sales picking up and the digital transformation momentum. So any color you could give us around how we should think about the puts and takes in the second half?

第一個，我猜，你提供了更新的利息支出指導，但你沒有恢復 EBITDA 或自由現金流指導。下半場你能給我們什麼顏色嗎？從您的評論中可以看出，在銷售回升和數字化轉型勢頭方面，情況確實已經恢復。那麼你能給我們一些關於我們應該如何思考下半場的看跌期權的顏色嗎？

And then Jeff, you talked about the undervaluation of the company. There's been a lot of interest on the strategic side, both in the industry broadly and your options. Any updates you can provide us on potential angles there?

然後傑夫，你談到了公司的估值被低估。人們對戰略方面非常感興趣，無論是在整個行業還是在您的選擇方面。您可以向我們提供有關潛在角度的任何更新嗎？

Sure, Simon. So in terms of the rest of the year, the way I would characterize it is, like Jeff mentioned, and I did in my comments as well the leading indicators that we see in the business are very positive. Our funnel was strong. We had a good sales quarter, but there's still a lot of uncertainty. And so therefore, we didn't feel, at this point of time, it was appropriate to reinstate guidance as such. But the overall indicators are still positive.

當然，西蒙。因此，就今年剩餘時間而言，我的描述方式是，就像傑夫提到的那樣，我在評論中所做的以及我們在業務中看到的領先指標都非常積極。我們的漏斗很強大。我們的銷售季度表現不錯，但仍然存在很多不確定性。因此，我們認為目前不適合恢復指導。但總體指標仍向好。

In terms of free cash flow, we still feel good about our payout being in the 30s. If you think about the dividend as a percentage of free cash flow. And so that gives you some sense that we feel that our free cash flow is going to be fairly resilient even in this environment.

就自由現金流而言，我們對 30 多美元的支出仍然感到滿意。如果您將股息視為自由現金流的百分比。因此，這讓您感覺到，即使在這種環境下，我們的自由現金流也將具有相當的彈性。

And Simon, with respect to your second question, we don't talk about strategic alternatives or that type of thing. We are focused on performing as a company, and you see that in our second quarter results. We're focused on investing in growth, and you see what we've done with respect to revenue and sales in the second quarter for IGAM and Enterprise and consumer broadband. And so we're going to continue to focus on that.

西蒙，關於你的第二個問題，我們不談論戰略選擇或類似的事情。我們專注於作為一家公司的表現，您可以在我們第二季度的業績中看到這一點。我們專注於增長投資，您可以看到我們在第二季度 IGAM 以及企業和消費者寬帶的收入和銷售方面所做的工作。因此我們將繼續關注這一點。

You've seen what we've done over the last couple of years in improving our EBITDA performance and making sure that we're investing and providing a great customer experience. And so when I think about the market valuation being wrong, I look at the business that we are. And I think that we're a very strong company, offering exactly what our customers need with -- that they're going to need in the future. It's not just what they need today, but it's also what they need tomorrow. And so we'll continue to focus on executing against that business plan.

您已經看到了我們在過去幾年中為提高 EBITDA 績效以及確保我們進行投資並提供出色的客戶體驗所做的努力。因此，當我認為市場估值錯誤時，我會審視我們的業務。我認為我們是一家非常強大的公司，能夠準確地提供客戶所需的東西——他們將來會需要的東西。這不僅是他們今天需要的，也是他們明天需要的。因此，我們將繼續專注於執行該業務計劃。

And then we're always open, and I've said this a number of times, but actively consider, are there other ways for us to release the value within CenturyLink. So we'll continue to focus on that, but primarily focused on us growing our business with our customers, investing in our growth and returning a good dividend to our shareholders.

然後我們總是開放的，我已經說過很多次了，但是積極考慮，我們是否還有其他方式來釋放 CenturyLink 內部的價值。因此，我們將繼續關注這一點，但主要關注與客戶一起發展業務、投資於我們的增長並向股東回報豐厚的股息。

Our next question will be from the line of Batya Levi with UBS.

我們的下一個問題將來自瑞銀集團的巴蒂亞·萊維 (Batya Levi)。

Can you talk -- provide a little bit more color on the sequential strength that you saw on the Enterprise trends? I believe voice and collaboration revenues were up sequentially. Anything to call out there? And how much of the sequential performance do you think was related to the current environment because of the outbreak versus new sales?

您能否談談您在企業趨勢中看到的連續強度？我相信語音和協作收入連續增長。那裡有什麼要喊的嗎？您認為，由於疫情爆發與新銷售，連續業績有多少與當前環境有關？

And I had a second question on the expenses. You mentioned that there were some higher expenses in the quarter, any quantification of that? I think you said bad debt was $25 million, but what are some other buckets that increased the expenses in the quarter that could come off in the second half?

我還有關於費用的第二個問題。您提到本季度的費用有所增加，對此有何量化？我想你說過壞賬是 2500 萬美元，但是還有哪些其他項目增加了本季度的支出，而下半年可能會減少？

So Batya, in terms of the sequential trend, I think the key point is, like Jeff mentioned, it is really changing how companies operate. So if you think about the strength we saw in voice and collaboration, you mentioned, that exactly is the point, that you need a lot more connectivity for a higher level of collaboration. So we did see request for a lot of upgrades that helped the quarter.

因此，巴特亞，就連續趨勢而言，我認為關鍵點是，就像傑夫提到的那樣，它確實正在改變公司的運營方式。因此，如果您考慮一下我們在語音和協作方面看到的優勢，您提到，這正是重點，您需要更多的連接才能實現更高水平的協作。因此，我們確實看到了對本季度有所幫助的大量升級請求。

We did see strength in collaboration. Over time, customers may meet those needs in different ways, but the key point from our perspective is that we have a broad range of products. And even if, going forward, the customers choose to meet that same collaboration need in a different way, we have the products to support that need.

我們確實看到了合作的力量。隨著時間的推移，客戶可能會以不同的方式滿足這些需求，但從我們的角度來看，關鍵是我們擁有廣泛的產品。即使未來客戶選擇以不同的方式滿足相同的協作需求，我們也有產品來支持該需求。

In terms of higher expenses, $25 million for bad debt. We also had over -- a fair amount of overtime during the quarter for installing expedited services. And as you can imagine, in this environment, with all the physical constraints, we're not exactly operating in the most efficient way. So I would say there's probably in the low tens of millions of additional cost embedded in the organization operating in this environment.

就較高的費用而言，壞賬為 2500 萬美元。本季度我們還需要大量加班來安裝加急服務。正如您可以想像的那樣，在這種環境下，由於所有的物理限制，我們並沒有以最有效的方式運作。因此，我想說，在這種環境下運營的組織可能會產生數千萬美元的額外成本。

Got it. Just a quick follow-up on the Enterprise commentary. Looking out to second half, you did mention positive leading indicators and the funnel is strong. But should we expect some of that pickup in voice and calibration actually stays flat or comes down, offset with others? So can Enterprise stay stable in the second half?

知道了。只是對企業評論的快速跟進。展望下半年，您確實提到了積極的領先指標，而且漏斗很強勁。但我們是否應該期望語音和校準中的一些拾取實際上保持平坦或下降，與其他拾取相抵消？那麼企業下半年能否保持穩定呢？

Well it's hard to say. I think in terms of the whether the voice and collaboration will continue, like Jeff mentioned, even as we look at our plans, we're not contemplating coming back to the office 100%. So it's going to be a different environment in terms of how businesses will operate.

嗯，這很難說。我認為，就聲音和合作是否會繼續而言，就像傑夫提到的那樣，即使我們考慮我們的計劃，我們也不會考慮 100% 回到辦公室。因此，就企業運營方式而言，這將是一個不同的環境。

So there's a lot of unknowns in terms of how quickly things reopen, the impact on the economy for the rest of the year. But in general, we feel pretty good that the collaboration trends will continue, whether they show -- continue to show up in legacy products or some of that will transition to new or more strategic services in customers, as customers accelerate their own digital transformation, those are all things that we'll work through.

因此，就重新開放的速度以及今年剩餘時間對經濟的影響而言，還有很多未知因素。但總的來說，我們認為協作趨勢將繼續下去，無論它們是繼續出現在傳統產品中，還是隨著客戶加速自己的數字化轉型，其中一些將過渡到客戶的新的或更具戰略性的服務，這些都是我們要解決的問題。

And Batya, to add to that, it's awfully difficult for us to predict timing of a particular customer transaction or this or that. But I'll tell you that what we see in the market is that post-COVID types of products and services that our customers are going to need are exactly aligned with the digital transformation efforts that we see them taking today. And so we will continue to focus on working with those customers.

Batya，補充一點，我們很難預測特定客戶交易的時間或這個或那個。但我要告訴你的是，我們在市場上看到的是，我們的客戶所需的後疫情類型的產品和服務與我們今天看到的他們所採取的數字化轉型努力完全一致。因此，我們將繼續專注於與這些客戶的合作。

We think the sales funnel is growing. We've had improved sales over the second quarter of last year and some sequentially. And we're really very excited about our opportunities to meet our customers' needs. It's a little hard to predict. Is that going to fall in the first quarter, third -- when is that going to fall? It's a little bit hard to predict.

我們認為銷售漏斗正在增長。與去年第二季度相比，我們的銷售額有所改善，甚至連續幾個季度都有所改善。我們對有機會滿足客戶的需求感到非常興奮。有點難以預測。第一季度、第三季度會下降嗎？什麼時候會下降？這有點難以預測。

But everything that we've seen and the reaction to COVID, the response since it's really started to get past that first crisis the response from our customers has been very positive for the types of products, services and capabilities we deliver.

但我們所看到的一切以及對新冠病毒的反應，自從第一次危機真正開始過去以來我們的客戶的反應對我們提供的產品、服務和功能類型非常積極。

Our next question is from the line of Frank Louthan from Raymond James.

我們的下一個問題來自雷蒙德·詹姆斯 (Raymond James) 的弗蘭克·勞森 (Frank Louthan)。

Just a follow-up on the question on M&A. I can appreciate you're keeping that kind of close to the vest. But just a quick clarification, are there any sort of debt covenants with your higher rate of debt? Or other structural regulatory issues that would prevent you from divesting any of your consumer business? And then I have a follow-up.

只是對併購問題的跟進。我很欣賞你的保守態度。但我想澄清一下，您的債務率較高，是否有任何形式的債務契約？或者其他結構性監管問題會阻止您剝離任何消費者業務？然後我有一個後續行動。

On the debt side, there is nothing that we couldn't work through. There's always issues that you have to work through. But depending on what the transaction looked like, we could work through that. Keep in mind, like I mentioned, we've refinanced about $18 billion over the last 12 months. So some of the -- in the documentation is changing as well.

在債務方面，沒有什麼是我們解決不了的。總有一些問題需要你去解決。但根據交易的情況，我們可以解決這個問題。請記住，正如我提到的，我們在過去 12 個月內已經進行了約 180 億美元的再融資。因此，文檔中的一些內容也在發生變化。

All right. Great. And then the follow-up, you mentioned some cost savings you were working on that you didn't fully realize because you have to kind of take a step back and handle customer for another pace of customer request, what sort of pace of cost savings do you think you can get back on in Q3 and through the end of the year?

好的。偉大的。接下來，您提到了您正在努力實現的一些成本節約，但您沒有完全意識到，因為您必須退後一步並根據客戶要求的另一種速度來處理客戶，什麼樣的成本節省速度您認為您可以在第三季度直至年底恢復嗎？

So Frank, we're very pleased with where we exited the quarter. So if you look at the savings that we realized in second quarter, exiting the quarter was actually higher than what we achieved in first quarter. So we had a slow start to the quarter for obvious reasons, but we were able to ramp up in the second half of the quarter and exited at $110 million incremental savings.

弗蘭克，我們對本季度的結束情況感到非常滿意。因此，如果你看看我們在第二季度實現的節省，就會發現本季度的節省實際上高於我們在第一季度實現的節省。因此，由於顯而易見的原因，我們在本季度的開局進展緩慢，但我們能夠在本季度下半年加速增長，並以 1.1 億美元的增量節省退出。

So about halfway through the 3-year program, we're at $610 million. So we feel pretty good about the progress.

三年計劃已過半，我們的資金已達 6.1 億美元。所以我們對進展感到非常滿意。

Our next question is from the line of Phil Cusick with JPMorgan.

我們的下一個問題來自摩根大通的 Phil Cusick。

A couple. I appreciate you calling out the fiber network within the business. Maybe it makes sense to give us some kind of idea of fiber revenue mix, fiber revenue growth, fiber capital intensity. Would that be possible over time? Or is it just too buried within the company overall?

一對夫婦。感謝您在企業內部提及光纖網絡。也許給我們一些關於光纖收入組合、光纖收入增長、光纖資本強度的想法是有意義的。隨著時間的推移，這可能嗎？或者它是否太埋藏在公司整體之中？

We'll give that some thought, Phil. I think the reality is we have a large fiber business. We also have a large wavelength business. We have a large IP business. And so it gets into what level of breakdown do we start providing? But that's a good point in terms of us thinking through our disclosures, and we'll give that some more time.

我們會考慮一下，菲爾。我認為現實是我們擁有龐大的光纖業務。我們還有很大的波長業務。我們擁有龐大的知識產權業務。那麼我們開始提供什麼級別的細分？但這對於我們思考我們的披露來說是一個很好的觀點，我們將給予更多時間。

And fiber is the core of everything we provide. So essentially, all of our revenue, or the vast majority of our revenue rides on fiber. But we'll give you some thoughts with regard to breakdown.

纖維是我們提供的一切產品的核心。因此，從本質上講，我們所有的收入，或者說我們的絕大多數收入都依賴於光纖。但我們會給你一些關於故障的想法。

Sort of -- yes, and I think there, that's the -- where the problem lies. Because it's hard for us on the outside to say, "Okay, there's a great fiber asset here when many of the revenue streams in the company are still declining." But it would help to clarify if you could see -- if we could see sort of some kind of breakdown.

是的，我認為這就是問題所在。因為我們局外人很難說：“好吧，當公司的許多收入來源仍在下降時，這裡有大量的纖維資產。”但這將有助於澄清你是否能看到——如果我們能看到某種崩潰。

Maybe another one, if I can. The small business versus medium business, you've talked about this in the past. Is small still acting like consumer? Or maybe worse usage from -- than consumer? And medium acting more like enterprise? And getting sort of quickly better here?

如果可以的話，也許還有一個。小型企業與中型企業，您過去曾討論過這個問題。小仍然表現得像消費者嗎？或者也許比消費者更糟糕的使用？媒體的行為更像企業嗎？並在這裡快速變得更好？

Yes. So specific to the quarter, I think we didn't really see a performance difference as such. So we have about -- last quarter, I mentioned about $1.6 billion of revenues data from customers less than 50 employees. So that sequentially declined mid single-digit millions. So fairly stable in this environment.

是的。具體到本季度，我認為我們並沒有真正看到績效差異。上個季度，我提到了來自員工人數少於 50 名的客戶的約 16 億美元的收入數據。因此，這一數字連續下降了數百萬個位數。所以在這個環境下相當穩定。

But to your broader question, I think we are taking a closer look in terms of how we serve the really small end of small business. And that you're right, it's more aligned to consumer. And then more of the mid-market is more aligned to our enterprise strategy.

但對於你更廣泛的問題，我認為我們正在仔細研究如何為小型企業的真正小規模客戶提供服務。你是對的，它更符合消費者的需求。然後更多的中端市場更符合我們的企業戰略。

And I mentioned in my comments that I think we have a great opportunity with our small business customers. We know the opportunity with Enterprise customers we know the opportunity with our medium-sized customers. And I think there's a good opportunity with our small business customers.

我在評論中提到，我認為我們與小型企業客戶有很好的機會。我們了解企業客戶的機會，也了解中型客戶的機會。我認為我們的小企業客戶有一個很好的機會。

We have more than 170,000 fiber-fed on-net buildings. We're going to those customer segments with a more -- with a broader digital experience, a deeper digital experience for them. And so I think there's a good opportunity as we bring those things together and deliver for the customers. But so far, Neel's comments about what we've seen are pretty accurate.

我們擁有超過 170,000 座光纖饋送的聯網建築物。我們將為這些客戶群提供更廣泛的數字體驗、更深入的數字體驗。因此，我認為當我們將這些東西整合在一起並為客戶提供服務時，這是一個很好的機會。但到目前為止，尼爾對我們所看到的情況的評論是相當準確的。

I mean I remember when the Time Warner Telecom deal happened, there was a bit of a -- took the company's eye off the ball on some of those smaller business customers that TW Telecom had, had.

我的意思是，我記得當時代華納電信交易發生時，公司的注意力從 TW Telecom 擁有的一些小型企業客戶身上轉移了。

What does the sales process look like for that type of customer today?

如今此類客戶的銷售流程是什麼樣的？

Well we'll try and get into more of this in the coming months and spend more time on it. But what we want it to be is a digital experience. When the customer -- especially if they're in a fiber-fed building, when the customer gets into the building, we give them the capabilities to turn on services rapidly -- instantly, if possible. We give them the ability to learn about our services and explore our services in a digital way. And we really simplify the overall process.

好吧，我們將在接下來的幾個月裡嘗試更多地了解這一點，並花更多的時間。但我們想要的是數字體驗。當客戶——特別是當他們在光纖饋送的建築物中時，當客戶進入建築物時，我們為他們提供快速打開服務的能力——如果可能的話，立即打開服務。我們讓他們能夠以數字方式了解我們的服務並探索我們的服務。我們確實簡化了整個流程。

And we recognize that they're mass-market customers more than customized customers. And we'll deliver the mass market solutions to them so that we can add them quickly, efficiently and at scale through a digital service delivery model.

我們認識到，他們更多的是大眾市場客戶，而不是定制客戶。我們將為他們提供大眾市場解決方案，以便我們可以通過數字服務交付模型快速、高效、大規模地添加它們。

Key thing to underline, Phil, takeaway to what Jeff just mentioned, Phil, in terms of the difference now, is if you think about Level 3 acquisition of Time Warner, the really smaller end of the base, we didn't really have the scale to serve that customer base profitably. But today, with our consumer processes that we have, we have the scale to really address that business in a very profitable way, especially when you layer on a digital strategy.

菲爾，要強調的關鍵是傑夫剛才提到的，菲爾，就現在的差異而言，如果你考慮對時代華納的第三級收購，那是基地真正較小的一端，我們真的沒有擴大規模，為該客戶群提供有利可圖的服務。但如今，憑藉我們現有的消費者流程，我們有能力以非常有利可圖的方式真正解決該業務，特別是當您採用數字策略時。

Our next question is from the line of Mike McCormack with Guggenheim Partners.

我們的下一個問題來自古根海姆合夥人公司的邁克·麥科馬克。

Jeff, maybe just a quick follow-up on your thoughts about, call it the new normal, whatever you want to call it, but what does that mean for corporates longer-term if we see the corporate office footprint starting to shrink down and potentially having data centers catch more of those servers instead of having them located at corporate headquarters? Does that have the long-term impact on the Enterprise business?

傑夫，也許只是快速跟進您的想法，將其稱為新常態，無論您想如何稱呼它，但如果我們看到公司辦公室佔地面積開始縮小並可能對企業長期意味著什麼讓數據中心容納更多這些服務器而不是將它們放置在公司總部？這對企業業務有長期影響嗎？

And then I guess, secondly, you mentioned the technology transformation, which I guess shouldn't surprise any of us. But with respect to SD-WAN adoption, a couple of your peers are saying they're seeing a pretty strong acceleration there. Are you seeing the same thing? And what, if anything, should we expect the impact on margins to be?

其次，我想你提到了技術轉型，我想這不應該讓我們任何人感到驚訝。但就 SD-WAN 的採用而言，一些同行表示他們看到了相當強勁的加速。你看到同樣的事情了嗎？如果有的話，我們預計會對利潤率產生什麼影響？

Sure. With respect to where do I think corporations are going? Will they become more distributed? Work-from-home? Fewer office locations? I do think they'll become more distributed. I do think that they will recognize that they need to locate their compute resources in different places, some in the public cloud, some in private data centers, some in our edge compute facilities, but they'll do that based on the application and the performance that they're looking out at out of that application and the network to provide it.

當然。我認為企業將走向何方？他們會變得更加分散嗎？在家工作？辦公地點更少？我確實認為它們會變得更加分散。我確實認為他們會認識到他們需要將計算資源定位在不同的地方，一些在公共雲中，一些在私有數據中心，一些在我們的邊緣計算設施中，但他們會根據應用程序和他們正在關注該應用程序和提供它的網絡的性能。

So I do think it will become more widely distributed. What does that mean for our Enterprise business? I think it means good things because our Enterprise business is focused on making sure that we deliver network and network-supported technologies to our customers to support that hybrid networking topology and making sure that we're matching our capabilities to the type of application they have.

所以我確實認為它會變得更廣泛。這對我們的企業業務意味著什麼？我認為這意味著好事，因為我們的企業業務專注於確保我們向客戶提供網絡和網絡支持的技術以支持混合網絡拓撲，並確保我們將我們的功能與他們擁有的應用程序類型相匹配。

The thing that's most important is connectivity and bandwidth and latency. And so we will -- it will give us opportunities to make sure that we have more places to go to, more ways to use our deeply interconnected network. You can look at every major data center, you can look at public clouds and private clouds and eyeball networks. We operate a very deeply interconnected network, and that's a competitive advantage.

最重要的是連接性、帶寬和延遲。因此，我們將——這將為我們提供機會，確保我們有更多的地方可以去，有更多的方式來使用我們深度互聯的網絡。你可以看看每個主要的數據中心，你可以看看公共雲和私有云以及眼球網絡。我們運營著一個緊密互聯的網絡，這是一個競爭優勢。

With respect to SD-WAN, is it growing? Or not growing or VPNs? We think that there is a great opportunity for hybrid WAN. This is not an SD-WAN solution. It's not a VPN solution. It's a hybrid WAN solution, and we're continuing to work with our customers to roll out those capabilities and a more distributed workforce, a more distributed operating environment feeds into that hybrid WAN capability as well.

SD-WAN 是否在增長？或者VPN不增長？我們認為混合廣域網有很大的機會。這不是 SD-WAN 解決方案。這不是 VPN 解決方案。這是一個混合廣域網解決方案，我們將繼續與客戶合作推出這些功能，並且更加分散的員工隊伍、更加分散的操作環境也將融入到混合廣域網功能中。

Our next question, from the line of David Barden with Bank of America.

我們的下一個問題來自美國銀行的大衛·巴登（David Barden）。

So if I look at the quarter, I would say, this is just my numbers, but I was thinking about 85% of it of the beat on revenue was voice, another 15% was consumer broadband. And I think both of those kind of, in retrospect, we could have anticipated.

因此，如果我看一下這個季度，我會說，這只是我的數字，但我認為收入增長的 85% 是語音，另外 15% 是消費者寬帶。回想起來，我認為這兩種情況都是我們可以預料到的。

But the rest of the business is kind of in line. And I know that kind of talking to your peers, installations and turning bookings into billings was a question mark over the whole quarter. If you could kind of address how you see that book-to-bill relationship in second quarter and how you see it evolving into the third quarter?

但其餘業務都在排隊。我知道，與同行的交談、安裝以及將預訂轉化為賬單在整個季度都是一個問號。您能否談談您如何看待第二季度的訂單與賬單關係以及您如何看待它在第三季度的演變？

And then I guess, Jeff, just -- you kind of mentioned this idea of kind of work from work is definitely changing forever, and I agree with that. You've got an $800 million to $1 billion kind of cost-cutting target. Have you had an opportunity to kind of sit down and think about how that evolves in terms of magnitude for the business going forward?

然後我想，傑夫，你提到了這種工作中工作的想法肯定會永遠改變，我同意這一點。你有一個 8 億到 10 億美元的成本削減目標。您是否有機會坐下來思考未來業務的規模如何發展？

Sure. I'll start, and Neel, feel free to add in. Book-to-bill, I don't -- I haven't listened to our competitors' earnings calls. I don't know if they said about service delivery. I'm very confident in our service delivery. Our team has done a great job through this. I think on the second quarter call, I made a comment either in the prepared remarks or in the questions, about customers putting things on hold, that they're going into the COVID pandemic and they were concerned and basically said, "Don't mess with the network. Don't touch it. Let's focus on operating, while we figure this out."

當然。我先開始，尼爾，請隨意補充。按訂單計算，我沒有——我沒有聽過我們競爭對手的財報電話會議。不知道他們有沒有提到服務交付。我對我們的服務交付非常有信心。我們的團隊在這方面做得非常出色。我想在第二季度的電話會議上，我在準備好的發言或問題中發表了評論，關於客戶將事情擱置，他們即將陷入新冠病毒大流行，他們很擔心，基本上說，“不要弄亂網絡。不要碰它。讓我們專注於運營，同時解決這個問題。”

So things went on hold. We call that long-term customer hold. That has continued to reduce. What we've seen is post that crisis response is our customers not getting back to normal, but moving back that direction. And so we don't see the long-term customer hold. I think our service delivery team is second to none, and they haven't created -- we don't have any particular bottlenecks. They're doing a really good job of turning up capabilities. And so that book-to-bill process for us is pretty typical.

於是事情就擱置了。我們稱之為長期客戶持有。這一數字還在繼續減少。我們看到的是，危機應對措施是我們的客戶沒有恢復正常，而是回到了原來的方向。因此，我們看不到長期客戶的持有。我認為我們的服務交付團隊是首屈一指的，他們沒有創造——我們沒有任何特定的瓶頸。他們在發揮能力方面做得非常好。因此，從訂單到賬單的流程對我們來說是非常典型的。

Now we do still have some long-term customer hold because not everybody has stopped. But I wouldn't have called it out this quarter as an issue like I might have last quarter.

現在我們仍然擁有一些長期客戶，因為並不是每個人都停止了。但我不會像上季度那樣在本季度指出這個問題。

On the second issue and from work for work and have we estimated for our own transformation? Are there -- what's that mean from a cost savings perspective? We are quite looking at it that way. We look at our transition back-to-work, and we step back from what does the transition look like? And we say, what is work of the future look like? How do we want to do business in CenturyLink? And where do we think it's best and optimized to do so?

關於第二個問題，從工作到工作，我們對自己的轉變有沒有預估？從節省成本的角度來看，這意味著什麼？我們就是這樣看待它的。我們審視重返工作崗位的過渡，並回顧過渡是什麼樣的？我們問，未來的工作是什麼樣的？我們希望如何在 CenturyLink 開展業務？我們認為在哪裡這樣做最好、最優化？

And so right now, we're in the middle of that effort to make sure that we look at what the future of work within CenturyLink looks like, what mix of it should be done in the office, what mix of it should be done remotely, how do we think about that, how do we think about the jobs, did the jobs change as the products and services are evolving?

所以現在，我們正在努力確保我們了解 CenturyLink 內部工作的未來是什麼樣子，哪些工作組合應該在辦公室完成，哪些工作組合應該遠程完成，我們如何看待這個問題，我們如何看待工作，工作是否隨著產品和服務的發展而改變？

And so our transformation efforts are really longer-term looking at how do we think about the business going forward. And we haven't looked right now and said, "Well should we change any of our expectations on the existing targets that we put out there?" We basically said, what are we trying to build as a company? What's the best way to do that? And then how do we transition to that as we move back from a work-from-home environment?

因此，我們的轉型工作實際上是長期的，著眼於我們如何看待未來的業務。我們現在還沒有考慮並說：“我們是否應該改變我們對現有目標的期望？”我們基本上說，作為一家公司，我們要打造什麼？最好的方法是什麼？那麼，當我們從在家工作的環境中恢復過來時，我們如何過渡到這種情況呢？

Now my color in the prepared remarks, so basically, just to say, I don't expect to go back to the way it was. And I don't expect our customers to go back to the way it was. And I frankly think that's good for CenturyLink overall, as we look to support our business and we look to support our customers.

現在我在準備好的評論中表達了自己的觀點，所以基本上，我只是想說，我不希望回到原來的樣子。我也不指望我們的客戶會回到原來的狀態。坦率地說，我認為這對 CenturyLink 整體來說是件好事，因為我們希望支持我們的業務，我們希望支持我們的客戶。

Our next question is from the line of James Ratcliffe with Evercore ISI.

我們的下一個問題來自 Evercore ISI 的 James Ratcliffe。

Two, if I could. First of all, can you talk about the returns you're getting on consumer and SMB fiber deployments? Any metrics you can give us on that? And how those compare to the effectively the returns on your stock price at current levels?

兩個，如果可以的話。首先，您能談談您在消費者和中小企業光纖部署中獲得的回報嗎？您能給我們提供任何相關指標嗎？與當前水平的股價實際回報率相比如何？

And secondly, as you think about continuing to lower your interest cost, how do you allocate that sort of the cash flow that frees up between delevering versus, say, investment?

其次，當你考慮繼續降低利息成本時，你如何在去槓桿化和投資之間分配釋放的現金流？

So James, on your second question, I think we -- it's really aligned to the capital allocation plan that we announced last year. So we're targeting to get to 2.75 to 3.25 within 3 quarters. So last quarter, I said given the uncertainty and some of the speed bumps we're hitting along the way, it will take us a quarter or 2 longer. But we're allocating that cash to delevering. We've already done $2.5 billion since we announced that plan, $0.5 billion first half of this year, so we're on track there.

詹姆斯，關於你的第二個問題，我認為我們——它確實與我們去年宣布的資本配置計劃保持一致。因此，我們的目標是在 3 個季度內達到 2.75 至 3.25。因此，上個季度，我說過，考慮到不確定性以及我們一路上遇到的一些障礙，我們將需要更長的四分之一或兩個季度的時間。但我們將這些現金分配給去槓桿化。自從我們宣布該計劃以來，我們已經完成了 25 億美元，今年上半年完成了 5 億美元，所以我們正在步入正軌。

And like you've seen, we're investing in the business, and then the rest of it is going to the dividend. And our dividend is, right now, at about $1.1 billion of cash.

正如您所看到的，我們正在投資業務，然後其餘部分將用於股息。目前，我們的股息約為 11 億美元現金。

In terms of your returns, not -- they vary. But in general, I would say, there's a couple of things. One, the returns we see are good because we have a micro-targeting approach, as you've heard Jeff talk about in numerous occasions. We don't really go out and build an entire city. We really go pick the neighborhoods where we can get high returns because it's a function of population density or home density and the cost to build.

就你的回報而言，不是——它們各不相同。但總的來說，我想說，有幾件事。第一，我們看到的回報很好，因為我們採用了微觀目標定位方法，正如您在許多場合聽到傑夫談論的那樣。我們並沒有真正出去建造一整座城市。我們確實會選擇可以獲得高回報的社區，因為它是人口密度或房屋密度以及建造成本的函數。

So typically, aerial plan. So things that we're building right now are very high return.

通常是空中計劃。所以我們現在正在建設的東西回報率非常高。

And I'd also add to that, if you think about small business, and obviously, as we build fiber networks for consumer customers, we passed a lot of small businesses. The best opportunity are for the small business customers and the buildings we already have on-net. And those are higher returns because we're not building fiber for them. The fiber is already there. We've got therefore our Enterprise customers, our wholesale customers or some other need. And so those are higher returns as we look at them. And those investments are really about driving penetration as opposed to building infrastructure.

我還要補充一點，如果你考慮小型企業，顯然，當我們為消費者客戶構建光纖網絡時，我們通過了很多小型企業。最好的機會是針對小型企業客戶和我們已經在網上擁有的建築物。這些都是更高的回報，因為我們沒有為他們建造光纖。纖維已經在那裡了。因此，我們有企業客戶、批發客戶或其他一些需求。因此，從我們的角度來看，這些回報率更高。這些投資實際上是為了推動滲透，而不是建設基礎設施。

Our next question, from the line of Nick Del Deo with MoffettNathanson.

我們的下一個問題來自 Nick Del Deo 和 MoffettNathanson。

You spoke a number of times throughout the call about how customers are increasingly focused on digital transformation and how that could benefit the company over time.

您在整個電話會議中多次談到客戶如何越來越關注數字化轉型，以及隨著時間的推移，這將如何使公司受益。

If that trend is sustained, should we expect a change in the pace at which certain legacy services roll off? And if so, how do you feel about your ability to take legacy costs out?

如果這種趨勢持續下去，我們是否應該預期某些遺留服務的推出速度會發生變化？如果是這樣，您對自己消除遺留成本的能力有何看法？

I -- as I look at digital transformation, that certainly is a broad term, but it also includes things like artificial intelligence and machine learning and big data and taking advantage of the data within the network. And all of that is incremental. That's not in lieu of something that they're doing today.

當我看待數字化轉型時，這當然是一個廣泛的術語，但它還包括人工智能、機器學習、大數據以及利用網絡內的數據等內容。所有這些都是漸進的。這並不能取代他們今天正在做的事情。

So a big part of the digital transformation is new opportunities for us as our customers are adapting to virtual reality and augmented reality and really the fourth industrial revolution. And so that's good opportunity for us.

因此，數字化轉型的一個重要部分是我們的新機遇，因為我們的客戶正在適應虛擬現實和增強現實以及真正的第四次工業革命。這對我們來說是一個很好的機會。

There are certainly products that are declining, and we see that, and we'll continue to see that. But I don't think that -- and there are aspects of our -- helping our customers evolve in digital transformation that could affect those products. But my goal is not only to help CenturyLink -- existing CenturyLink customers go out and transform digitally, but it's my goal to go out and get other companies' customers to digitally transform. And that brings new business to us. It brings the profitable, high-margin business that we're focused on to the company.

當然有些產品正在下降，我們看到了這一點，而且我們將繼續看到這一點。但我認為，我們幫助客戶進行數字化轉型的某些方面不會影響這些產品。但我的目標不僅是幫助 CenturyLink——現有的 CenturyLink 客戶走出去並進行數字化轉型，而且我的目標是走出去並讓其他公司的客戶進行數字化轉型。這給我們帶來了新業務。它為公司帶來了我們專注的盈利、高利潤業務。

And so yes, is there some aspect of it that can harm our legacy? Yes, but there's far more opportunity for us than downside.

那麼，是的，它的某些方面是否會損害我們的遺產？是的，但對我們來說，機會遠多於負面影響。

Yes. I think just to add to Jeff's is -- and yes, we can take cost out faster on the legacy platforms. It helps with our network simplification, it helps in terms of how we rightsize our real estate portfolio. So yes, we can do that to offset any impact from higher erosion on legacy products. But the key point, like Jeff mentioned, is we've never seen it be like-for-like.

是的。我認為，只要添加到傑夫的基礎上，是的，我們可以在遺留平台上更快地降低成本。它有助於我們的網絡簡化，有助於我們如何調整我們的房地產投資組合。所以，是的，我們可以這樣做來抵消對遺留產品的更高侵蝕的任何影響。但關鍵的一點是，正如傑夫提到的，我們從未見過類似的情況。

Got it. That's helpful. And Neel, just to go back to some of the higher costs you talked about in the low tens of millions in overtime and other costs that you mentioned. I guess, first, is that net of COVID-related savings like lower T&E expense? And second, should we think of those costs as kind of sticking around for the duration of the pandemic? Or do you expect them to subside in coming quarters?

知道了。這很有幫助。尼爾，回到您提到的一些較高成本，例如加班費和您提到的數千萬美元的其他成本。我想，首先，這是扣除與新冠疫情相關的節省（例如較低的差旅費用）後的淨額嗎？其次，我們是否應該將這些成本視為在大流行期間持續存在？或者您預計它們會在未來幾個季度消退嗎？

We run a fairly large global business, so a lot of pluses and minuses. The low tens of millions is kind of our high-level estimate of the net effect of the inefficiencies that we have. We can specifically point to overtime, which obviously, we track, but there are other costs. So that's kind of the cost number we have at this point. And it's probably there for a little bit as we operate in this environment until we are back to a more new normal mode, if you will.

我們經營著相當大的全球業務，因此有很多優點和缺點。低數千萬是我們對效率低下的淨影響的高級估計。我們可以特別指出加班，顯然我們會跟踪加班，但還有其他成本。這就是我們目前的成本數字。當我們在這種環境下運行時，它可能會存在一段時間，直到我們回到更新的正常模式（如果你願意的話）。

Our next question, from the line of Michael Rollins with Citi.

我們的下一個問題來自花旗集團的邁克爾·羅林斯。

I was just curious if you could talk a little bit more about the outlook for capital spending for this year? And as you're looking at the business plan developing for next year, I noticed that it was up in the second quarter and year-to-date. And if you can sort of frame where that spending is going and how the allocation may evolve over the next 12 to 18 months?

我只是好奇您能否多談談今年資本支出的前景嗎？當您查看明年制定的業務計劃時，我注意到第二季度和今年迄今的業務計劃有所增加。您能否大致了解一下支出的去向以及未來 12 至 18 個月內分配情況如何演變？

Michael, for us, it's really going to be success-based. So we -- our capital spending during the quarter, like I mentioned, we had a fair amount of upgrades that we did for our customers. We had higher capacity on the network, and we're continuing to invest in building out infrastructure.

邁克爾，對我們來說，這確實是基於成功的。因此，正如我提到的，我們在本季度的資本支出為客戶進行了大量升級。我們的網絡容量更高，並且我們將繼續投資建設基礎設施。

Like Jeff mentioned, in the first half of this year, we built 200,000 fiber homes enabled in consumer. So for us, we'll continue to monitor it in terms of the funnel and the leading indicators that we see. If we see positive traction, we'll continue to invest. If we don't, we'll pull back. That's going to be our approach.

正如傑夫提到的，今年上半年，我們建造了 20 萬個消費者光纖家庭。因此，對於我們來說，我們將繼續根據我們看到的漏斗和領先指標對其進行監控。如果我們看到積極的推動力，我們將繼續投資。如果我們不這樣做，我們就會撤退。這將是我們的方法。

And Franz, I believe that was the last question. So before I wrap up today's call, I want to leave you with a couple of key thoughts -- a few key thoughts.

弗蘭茨，我相信這是最後一個問題。因此，在結束今天的電話會議之前，我想向大家留下一些關鍵的想法——一些關鍵的想法。

As customers increasingly rely on CenturyLink's fast and secure platform, we saw strong improvement in revenue performance and growth in the sales during the quarter. While we still see uncertainties related to COVID-19, we're optimistic about our ability to drive revenue growth in the core areas of our business, and we're focused on reducing costs for the legacy services we provide.

隨著客戶越來越依賴 CenturyLink 快速、安全的平台，我們看到本季度收入業績和銷售額的強勁增長。儘管我們仍然看到與 COVID-19 相關的不確定性，但我們對推動核心業務領域收入增長的能力持樂觀態度，並且我們致力於降低我們提供的遺留服務的成本。

Our liquidity position is strong, enabling us to invest through this cycle to meet long-term demand where we see opportunities to do so. Our approach to capital allocation is serving us well as we continue to invest in the business, make progress on our deleveraging objectives and support the dividend with comfortable payout ratio in the 30s.

我們的流動性狀況強勁，使我們能夠在這個週期中進行投資，以滿足我們認為有機會這樣做的長期需求。我們的資本配置方法對我們很有幫助，我們繼續投資業務，在去槓桿化目標上取得進展，並以 30 多歲的舒適派息率支持股息。

We continue to drive our transformation initiatives. We see the results in improved customer experience, better alignment with how our customers want to interact with us and lower costs. And as always, we remain very focused on growing free cash flow per share over the long term.

我們繼續推動轉型舉措。我們看到了改善客戶體驗、更好地符合客戶希望與我們互動的方式以及降低成本的結果。一如既往，我們仍然非常注重長期增加每股自由現金流。

So I want to thank you all for joining today's call and for your interest in CenturyLink, and I wish everyone that you continue to have good health and success.

因此，我要感謝大家參加今天的電話會議以及對 CenturyLink 的興趣，並祝愿大家繼續身體健康並取得成功。

Operator, that concludes the call.

接線員，結束通話。

Thank you. We would like to thank everyone for your participation and for using CenturyLink's conferencing service today.

謝謝。我們衷心感謝大家今天的參與和使用 CenturyLink 的會議服務。

This does conclude the conference call. We ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day, everyone.

電話會議到此結束。我們要求您斷開線路。祝大家有個美好的一天。