Lumen Technologies Inc (LUMN) 2023 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Lumen Technologies Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Tuesday, August 1, 2023.

您好，歡迎參加 Lumen Technologies 2023 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 2023 年 8 月 1 日星期二錄製。

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike McCormack, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

現在我想將會議交給投資者關係高級副總裁邁克·麥考馬克 (Mike McCormack)。請繼續。

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining Lumen Technologies' Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. On the call today are Kate Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Chris Stansbury, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

大家下午好，感謝您參加 Lumen Technologies 的 2023 年第二季度收益電話會議。今天參加電話會議的是總裁兼首席執行官凱特·約翰遜 (Kate Johnson)；克里斯·斯坦斯伯里（Chris Stansbury），執行副總裁兼首席財務官。

Before we begin, I want to call your attention to our safe harbor statement on Slide 2 of our second quarter 2023 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 cautionary statements on Slide 2 and the risk factors in our SEC filings.

在我們開始之前，我想提請您注意我們 2023 年第二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含前瞻性聲明，但會受到某些風險和不確定性的影響。所有前瞻性陳述均應與幻燈片 2 上的警示性陳述以及我們向 SEC 提交的文件中的風險因素結合考慮。

We will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures reconciled to the most comparable GAAP measures, which can be found in our earnings press release. In addition, certain metrics discussed today exclude cost for special items as detailed in our earnings materials, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of the Lumen website.

我們將提及與最具可比性的 GAAP 指標相一致的某些非 GAAP 財務指標，這些指標可以在我們的收益新聞稿中找到。此外，今天討論的某些指標不包括我們的收益材料中詳細說明的特殊項目的成本，這些材料可以在 Lumen 網站的投資者關係部分找到。

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

這樣，我就把電話轉給凱特。

Thanks, Mike. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. In a few minutes, I'm going to turn the call over to Chris as usual. But first, I just want to give you a quick overview of our transformation progress.

謝謝，邁克。大家好。感謝您今天加入我們。幾分鐘後，我將像往常一樣將電話轉給克里斯。但首先，我只想向您快速概述一下我們的轉型進展。

This quarter, we added 2 big leaders to the Lumen executive team. Kye Prigg, an experienced telecom exec, steeped in both driving large-scale network transformations and leading big teams, joined us last month as EVP of Enterprise Operations; and Ana White, an experienced CHRO with an impressive track record of culture renovation in tech companies, joined us as our Chief People Officer. These additions round out what I believe to be the most talented team in the industry, and I couldn't be more excited to see the positive impact of both of these 2 new kids bring to Lumen.

本季度，我們在 Lumen 執行團隊中增加了 2 位重要領導者。 Kye Prigg 是一位經驗豐富的電信高管，致力於推動大規模網絡轉型和領導大型團隊，上個月加入我們，擔任企業運營執行副總裁； Ana White 是一位經驗豐富的首席人力資源官，在科技公司的文化革新方面有著令人印象深刻的記錄，她加入我們擔任首席人事官。這些補充完善了我認為是業內最有才華的團隊，看到這兩個新成員給 Lumen 帶來的積極影響，我感到非常興奮。

All right, turning to the transformation work itself. I'm going to use the framework we introduced at Investor Day on June 5. To refresh your memory, we're pursuing a 3-part plan to deliver on our north star: first, secure the base; second, drive commercial excellence; and third, innovate for growth. Each of these 3 parts of the plan will require hard work, and they're going to take time to deliver results. But I'll share several positive early indicators, which give us confidence we're on the right path.

好吧，轉向轉型工作本身。我將使用我們在 6 月 5 日投資者日推出的框架。為了讓您記憶深刻，我們正在製定一個由三部分組成的計劃來實現我們的北極星目標：首先，確保基地安全；第二，推動商業卓越；第三，創新促進增長。該計劃的這三個部分都需要努力工作，並且需要時間才能取得成果。但我將分享一些積極的早期指標，這些指標讓我們相信我們正走在正確的道路上。

And I'm going to start with securing the base. This is about intentionally migrating customers from legacy telecom platforms to modern ones, to stem churn and deliver fundamentally better customer experiences. Success here drives higher customer lifetime value to Lumen.

我將從保護基地開始。這是有意將客戶從傳統電信平台遷移到現代平台，以阻止客戶流失並從根本上提供更好的客戶體驗。這方面的成功為 Lumen 帶來了更高的客戶終身價值。

While it will be a multi-quarter journey to yield material financial results with this new motion, our recent results are noteworthy. For example, we've been building out a scaffolding for our voice migration program over the past couple of months. We staffed up with great talent, significantly growing the dedicated team. Then we instituted a "no seller left behind" enablement program, giving our reps a winning sales playbook, AI-enabled sales targeting and digital tools to enable quick creation and delivery of customer-focused sales content. And we give our sales managers tooling to enable deep data-driven inspection of the funnel across the life cycle, with analytics to feed learning into the process. This newly dedicated team, with their new digital tools and sales content, they've only been in place fully since June 1 of this year. And in less than 60 days, we've seen material increases in pipe and close rates and probably, more importantly, a quadrupling of the dollar value of wins from June to July.

雖然這項新動議需要多個季度才能產生實質性的財務業績，但我們最近的業績值得注意。例如，在過去的幾個月裡，我們一直在為我們的語音遷移計劃構建一個腳手架。我們配備了優秀人才，顯著壯大了專業團隊。然後，我們制定了“不讓任何賣家掉隊”的支持計劃，為我們的銷售代表提供了成功的銷售手冊、支持人工智能的銷售定位和數字工具，以實現快速創建和交付以客戶為中心的銷售內容。我們為銷售經理提供工具，使他們能夠對整個生命週期的漏斗進行深入的數據驅動檢查，並通過分析將學習融入到流程中。這個新成立的專門團隊及其新的數字工具和銷售內容自今年 6 月 1 日起才完全到位。在不到 60 天的時間裡，我們看到管道和成交率大幅增加，更重要的是，從 6 月到 7 月，勝利的美元價值翻了兩番。

I'm happy to share that we also had 2 record-breaking voice migration deals in terms of dollar value. They both closed in July, and they're basically confirming our hypothesis that we're likely to see our migration efforts yield greater customer lifetime value.

我很高興與大家分享，我們還達成了兩項破紀錄的語音遷移交易（按美元價值計算）。他們都在 7 月關閉，他們基本上證實了我們的假設，即我們可能會看到我們的遷移工作產生更大的客戶終身價值。

We're also seeing material progress in learning from our focus on migrating customers from VPN to SD-WAN and SASE. Great customers like Nissan and W.E. Bowers are choosing to work with Lumen because of our new customer-centric approach and our long-term orientation around customer lifetime value. It just shows that when we focus, we win.

我們還看到，我們在專注於將客戶從 VPN 遷移到 SD-WAN 和 SASE 方面取得了實質性進展。像 Nissan 和 W.E. 這樣的大客戶Bowers 選擇與 Lumen 合作，是因為我們以客戶為中心的新方法以及我們圍繞客戶終身價值的長期定位。這只是表明，當我們專注時，我們就贏了。

Now I'll move on to the second part of our 3 prime strategy, driving commercial excellence, which is all about consistent execution across all of our core businesses. And success here looks like growing at or greater than market rates wherever we compete.

現在我將繼續討論我們三大戰略的第二部分，即推動商業卓越，這就是我們所有核心業務的一致執行。無論我們在哪裡競爭，這裡的成功似乎都以高於或高於市場的速度增長。

In our Mass Markets segment, we've added approximately 250,000 fiber-enabled locations year-to-date in 2023, and we're confident that we can meet or exceed our plan of $500,000 for the year. With the fiber enablement factory delivering predictable output now, we're well positioned to nearly double our current Quantum Fiber footprint to over 7 million locations in the next 4 years. And as I've shared in the past a couple of times, the federal BEAD program could potentially represent enablement and economic upside, but it's not currently forecasted in our model.

在我們的大眾市場領域，到 2023 年，我們已增加了約 250,000 個支持光纖的地點，我們有信心能夠達到或超過今年 500,000 美元的計劃。隨著光纖支持工廠現在提供可預測的產量，我們已做好充分準備，在未來 4 年內將目前的量子光纖足跡增加近一倍，達到超過 700 萬個地點。正如我過去幾次分享的那樣，聯邦 BEAD 計劃可能代表賦能和經濟上行，但目前我們的模型中尚未預測到這一點。

In our Business segment, we're building a program to drive commercial excellence that uses all the same tools I just described in our voice migration program, and we've built a hiring engine to go after tech sales talent. We're using AI in our sales platform to drive more automated and informed seller activities. And we use data and analytics to create winning formulas to help our managers coach our salespeople. This programmatic focus is driving better results in a small mid-market pilot where we deployed these tools and saw an 80% reduction in sales cycle time and an 85% shortened customer onboarding time. Additionally, our opportunity win rates in this channel, they've increased 160% since the start of the year, and we've seen 50% year-over-year increase in new logo acquisitions for our Grow products.

在我們的業務部門，我們正在構建一個計劃來推動商業卓越，該計劃使用我剛剛在語音遷移計劃中描述的所有相同工具，並且我們已經構建了一個招聘引擎來尋找技術銷售人才。我們在銷售平台中使用人工智能來推動更加自動化和知情的賣家活動。我們使用數據和分析來創建獲勝公式，以幫助我們的經理指導我們的銷售人員。這種程序化重點在小型中型市場試點中取得了更好的成果，我們部署了這些工具，發現銷售週期時間縮短了 80%，客戶引導時間縮短了 85%。此外，自今年年初以來，我們在此渠道中的機會獲勝率已增加 160%，並且我們看到 Grow 產品的新徽標採購量同比增加了 50%。

One thing I mentioned at Investor Day was our belief that emerging technology trends, such as AI and data-driven services, will lead to large-scale demand increases for our Grow products. We are seeing early signs of this with second quarter wins in tech, retail, manufacturing and financial services. Again, the consistent themes in these wins at customers like QuikTrip and Provident Bank is that Lumen's focus on customer experience and their business outcomes was a key differentiator in the selection process. We think this focus is part of the reason why our Grow product sales trend returned to year-over-year growth for the first time in 4 quarters.

我在投資者日提到的一件事是，我們相信人工智能和數據驅動服務等新興技術趨勢將導致對我們 Grow 產品的需求大規模增長。我們看到了這一點的早期跡象，第二季度科技、零售、製造和金融服務領域取得了勝利。同樣，QuikTrip 和 Provident Bank 等客戶贏得這些客戶的一致主題是，Lumen 對客戶體驗及其業務成果的關注是選擇過程中的關鍵差異化因素。我們認為這種關注是我們的 Grow 產品銷售趨勢四個季度以來首次恢復同比增長的部分原因。

Now let's talk about innovating for growth. And there are 2 key pieces to this part of our strategy: to build a digital enterprise and to innovate new capabilities in our network to drive more value for customers. While we're making material progress in both areas, this quarter is all about 2 breakthrough innovations that we brought to market.

現在我們來談談創新促進增長。我們戰略的這一部分有兩個關鍵部分：建立數字化企業並在我們的網絡中創新新功能，為客戶帶來更多價值。雖然我們在這兩個領域都取得了實質性進展，但本季度我們向市場推出了兩項突破性創新。

The first is ExaSwitch, our new on-demand 400-gig-capable optical interconnection platform, that we announced in mid-June. It's an amazing piece of technology that's strategically important as we position our network and infrastructure at the center of connectivity. Created in partnership with Google, Microsoft and another large hyperscaler, this platform leans into the growth tailwinds that we talked about at Investor Day, tailwinds like Gen AI and Edge Cloud, by enabling the low latency and flexibility customers are going to need as network demands increase with explosive data growth. ExaSwitch is a great example of the new Lumen strategy coming to life. We're using our intellectual property and innovating side-by-side with customers and partners to create differentiated technology in an on-demand digital fashion to untap more value from our crown jewel, the network.

第一個是 ExaSwitch，我們於 6 月中旬推出的新的按需 400 GB 光互連平台。這是一項令人驚嘆的技術，具有重要的戰略意義，因為我們將網絡和基礎設施置於連接的中心。該平台是與穀歌、微軟和另一家大型超大規模提供商合作創建的，通過支持客戶根據網絡需求所需的低延遲和靈活性，利用了我們在投資者日討論的增長順風，例如 Gen AI 和邊緣雲等順風。隨著爆炸性數據增長而增加。 ExaSwitch 是新 Lumen 戰略落地的一個很好的例子。我們正在利用我們的知識產權，與客戶和合作夥伴並肩創新，以按需數字方式創造差異化技術，從我們皇冠上的寶石——網絡中挖掘更多價值。

The second big breakthrough innovation this quarter was announced yesterday. Lumen launched its flagship capability on its Network as a Service platform. It's called Lumen Internet On-Demand, and it's offered in limited availability and is already oversubscribed. This is the first and a very important step toward the company's bold vision to disrupt the telecom industry. By offering customers radical flexibility in how they buy, use and manage networking services, Lumen is cloud-ifying traditional telecom. We've been preparing for this moment for a long time, building a world-class telecom network with state-of-the-art fiber, broad coverage and unsurpassed route diversity and scalability. Lumen's NaaS offering takes that next step to deliver on our customers' networking dreams, the ability to fire up any port with any service at any time. It's your network, your way, with the Lumen NaaS platform.

昨天宣布了本季度的第二項重大突破性創新。 Lumen 在其網絡即服務平台上推出了其旗艦功能。它被稱為 Lumen Internet On-Demand，數量有限，並且已經超額認購。這是該公司實現顛覆電信行業的大膽願景的第一步，也是非常重要的一步。通過為客戶購買、使用和管理網絡服務的方式提供極大的靈活性，Lumen 正在將傳統電信雲化。為了這一刻，我們已經準備了很長時間，致力於建設一個世界一流的電信網絡，擁有最先進的光纖、廣泛的覆蓋範圍以及無與倫比的路由多樣性和可擴展性。 Lumen 的 NaaS 產品邁出了下一步，以實現客戶的網絡夢想，即隨時通過任何服務啟動任何端口的能力。 Lumen NaaS 平台是您的網絡、您的方式。

So I hope that it's clear we're playing to win here. The team and I are super excited by our position and progress, and we'll be sure to keep you updated on our road map as we advance our Network as a Service platform and capabilities.

所以我希望很明顯我們在這裡是為了贏球。我和團隊對我們的地位和進展感到非常興奮，隨著我們推進網絡即服務平台和功能，我們一定會及時向您通報我們的路線圖。

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Chris.

這樣，我會將電話轉給克里斯。

Thank you, Kate, and good afternoon, everyone. As Kate described, our turnaround is underway, and we're very excited with what lies ahead. Our teams are energized. We're pleased with our progress on the Quantum build, with fiber enablements outpacing our first quarter result, and we expect further acceleration in the third quarter. This gives us confidence that we will meet or exceed our plan of 500,000 locations in 2023.

謝謝凱特，大家下午好。正如凱特所描述的，我們的轉變正在進行中，我們對未來的發展感到非常興奮。我們的團隊充滿活力。我們對 Quantum 構建的進展感到滿意，光纖支持超過了我們第一季度的業績，我們預計第三季度將進一步加速。這讓我們充滿信心，相信我們將在 2023 年達到或超過 500,000 個地點的計劃。

Our Grow product group's performance was solid this quarter, and when excluding the divested businesses and foreign currency impacts, it grew year-over-year at a similar rate compared to our first quarter's performance.

我們的增長產品組本季度的業績表現穩健，在排除剝離業務和外匯影響後，其同比增長速度與第一季度的業績相似。

I'll now discuss in more detail the financial summary of our second quarter. As I did on our first quarter earnings call, I'll reference our financial performance primarily on a sequential basis for better comparability as the year ago period included the impacts of our divested LATAM and ILEC 20-state businesses. We're again providing supplemental information of these discrete impacts in our footnotes, where applicable, in our earnings presentation and, on a separate page, in our financial trending schedule. When these impacts of the divestitures and commercial agreements are excluded from results, our year-over-year growth rates are substantially better than the GAAP reported rates.

我現在將更詳細地討論第二季度的財務摘要。正如我在第一季度財報電話會議上所做的那樣，我將主要按順序參考我們的財務業績，以便更好地進行比較，因為去年同期包括我們剝離的拉丁美洲和 ILEC 20 個州業務的影響。我們再次在腳註（如果適用）、收益報告以及財務趨勢表的單獨頁面中提供這些離散影響的補充信息。當資產剝離和商業協議的這些影響被排除在業績之外時，我們的同比增長率大大高於公認會計準則報告的增長率。

Our second quarter total revenue declined 2.1% on a sequential basis to $3.661 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.229 billion in the second quarter with a 33.6% margin. Free cash flow was negative $896 million in the second quarter, including $938 million of taxes paid related to our 2 divestitures last year. We've now paid all of the transaction-related taxes for those divestitures. As a reminder, our 2023 free cash flow guidance excludes the impact of these taxes.

我們第二季度的總收入環比下降 2.1% 至 36.61 億美元。第二季度調整後 EBITDA 為 12.29 億美元，利潤率為 33.6%。第二季度自由現金流為負 8.96 億美元，其中包括與去年兩次資產剝離相關的 9.38 億美元稅款。我們現在已經為這些資產剝離支付了所有與交易相關的稅款。提醒一下，我們的 2023 年自由現金流指引不包括這些稅收的影響。

Next, I'll review our detailed revenue results for the quarter. On a year-over-year basis, reported revenue was down 20.6%, with the impact of the divestitures and commercial agreements representing approximately 72% of the reported decline.

接下來，我將回顧本季度的詳細收入結果。報告收入同比下降 20.6%，其中資產剝離和商業協議的影響約佔報告收入下降的 72%。

Within our 2 key segments, Business revenue declined 2% sequentially to $2.897 billion and Mass Markets revenue declined 2.3% sequentially to $764 million.

在我們的 2 個關鍵細分市場中，業務收入環比下降 2% 至 28.97 億美元，大眾市場收入環比下降 2.3% 至 7.64 億美元。

Within our enterprise channel, which is our Business segment excluding wholesale, revenue declined 1.8% sequentially. Our exposure to legacy voice revenue continues to improve and is now less than 11% of enterprise channel revenue and is down approximately 50 basis points sequentially. Large enterprise revenue declined 1.3% sequentially in the second quarter. Large enterprise revenue trends were similar to the first quarter year-over-year when excluding the impact of divested businesses driven primarily by declines in harvest due to legacy voice and partially offset by stronger trends in Grow due to demand for cloud, colocation and IP.

在我們的企業渠道（即不包括批發的業務部門）中，收入環比下降了 1.8%。我們對傳統語音收入的敞口持續改善，目前不到企業渠道收入的 11%，並且比上一季度下降了約 50 個基點。第二季度大型企業收入環比下降 1.3%。大型企業的收入趨勢與第一季度同比相似，排除了剝離業務的影響，這主要是由於傳統語音造成的收益下降造成的，並被雲、託管和 IP 需求帶來的強勁增長趨勢部分抵消。

Public sector revenue declined 3.7% sequentially. Excluding the impacts of our divested businesses, public sector trends worsened year-over-year, primarily due to lower other revenue, which includes nonrecurring equipment and IT solutions. Declines in Nurture and Harvest products also contributed to the declines, with a partial offset by accelerating growth within Grow driven by IP, Voice over IP and wavelengths. As a reminder, we had a contract expiration at the end of the year-ago quarter, which is impacting the year-over-year comparisons for public sector grow products by approximately $10 million.

公共部門收入環比下降 3.7%。排除我們剝離業務的影響，公共部門的趨勢同比惡化，主要是由於其他收入減少，其中包括非經常性設備和 IT 解決方案。培育和收穫產品的下降也導致了下降，但 IP、IP 語音和波長驅動的 Grow 的加速增長部分抵消了下降。提醒一下，我們的合同在去年同期末到期，這對公共部門種植產品的同比影響約為 1000 萬美元。

Mid-market revenue declined 1.6% sequentially. Excluding the impacts of our divested businesses, there was a similar level of year-over-year decline compared to last quarter. Strength in Grow products was driven primarily by broadband, IP and UC&C and was partially offset by lower legacy voice revenue within Harvest.

中端市場收入環比下降 1.6%。排除我們剝離業務的影響，與上季度相比，同比下降程度相似。 Grow 產品的實力主要由寬帶、IP 和 UC&C 推動，但部分被 Harvest 傳統語音收入的下降所抵消。

Wholesale revenue declined 2.4% sequentially. Excluding the impacts of our divested businesses, trends worsened year-over-year. As with public sector, the accelerated decline rate was primarily due to lower other revenue. Recall that in the second quarter of last year, we benefited by approximately $25 million related to a nonrecurring IT professional services agreement that was provided in connection with the now divested 20-state ILEC assets. Separately, we lapped the benefits from certain carrier contract discount expirations which we previously identified in the year-ago quarter. We expect our wholesale channel will likely continue to decline over time, and it is an area we manage for cash.

批發收入環比下降 2.4%。排除我們剝離業務的影響，趨勢逐年惡化。與公共部門一樣，下降速度加快主要是由於其他收入下降。回想一下，去年第二季度，我們受益於與現已剝離的 20 個州 ILEC 資產相關的一次性 IT 專業服務協議相關的約 2500 萬美元。另外，我們還享受了我們之前在去年同期確定的某些承運人合同折扣到期帶來的好處。我們預計我們的批發渠道可能會隨著時間的推移而繼續下降，而這是我們管理現金的領域。

Now moving to our business product life cycle reporting. Grow products revenue grew 0.9% sequentially. As I mentioned earlier, excluding the impacts of our divested businesses, this quarter's results showed a similar level of strong year-over-year growth to the first quarter of this year. While results can vary in any given quarter, we expect continued strength in this area as we execute on our overall pivot to growth. Grow now represents approximately 39% of our Business segment and carried an approximate 83% direct margin this quarter. Accelerating Grow product growth is a key focus of our strategy, and we continue to be pleased with these early results.

現在轉向我們的業務產品生命週期報告。種植產品收入環比增長 0.9%。正如我之前提到的，排除我們剝離業務的影響，本季度的業績顯示出與今年第一季度類似的強勁同比增長水平。雖然任何特定季度的業績都可能有所不同，但我們預計，隨著我們全面轉向增長，該領域將繼續保持強勁勢頭。 Grow 目前約占我們業務部門的 39%，本季度直接利潤率約為 83%。加速 Grow 產品增長是我們戰略的重點，我們對這些早期結果仍然感到滿意。

Moving on to Nurture and Harvest. We continue to expect headwinds in these categories as we take proactive steps to migrate customers to newer technologies. This improves our customers' experience and provides an uplift in lifetime value of those customers for Lumen. And as Kate mentioned, securing the base is hard work and will take some time to be reflected in our results.

繼續培育和收穫。當我們採取積極措施將客戶遷移到更新的技術時，我們仍然預計這些類別會遇到阻力。這改善了我們客戶的體驗，並為 Lumen 提升了這些客戶的終身價值。正如凱特提到的，確保基地安全是一項艱苦的工作，需要一些時間才能反映在我們的成果中。

Nurture products revenue declined 4% sequentially due to continued pressure in VPN and Ethernet services. Nurture represents about 30% of our Business segment and carried an approximate 68% direct margin this quarter.

由於 VPN 和以太網服務的持續壓力，Nurture 產品收入環比下降 4%。 Nurture 約占我們業務部門的 30%，本季度直接利潤率約為 68%。

Harvest products revenue declined 3% sequentially. Recall that Harvest is an important part of our business and generates cash to fuel our growth initiatives. Harvest represents approximately 25% of our Business segment and carried an approximate 81% direct margin this quarter.

Harves 產品收入環比下降 3%。回想一下，Harvest 是我們業務的重要組成部分，可以產生現金來推動我們的增長計劃。 Harvest 約占我們業務部門的 25%，本季度直接利潤率約為 81%。

The subtotal of our Business product revenue, including Grow, Nurture and Harvest, collectively declined 1.7% sequentially and 14.8% on a year-over-year basis. The impact of the divestitures and commercial agreements accounted for approximately 68% of the reported decline.

我們的業務產品收入小計（包括成長、培養和收穫）總計環比下降 1.7%，同比下降 14.8%。資產剝離和商業協議的影響約佔報告下降的 68%。

Other products revenue declined 6% sequentially. Our other product revenue tends to experience fluctuations due to the variable nature of these products. Within other, we have deemphasized low-margin equipment and changed our sales commission structure, which will continue to impact comparisons to prior periods. These changes are focusing our sales efforts on products that provide a better customer experience and stronger returns for Lumen.

其他產品收入環比下降 6%。由於這些產品的可變性，我們的其他產品收入往往會出現波動。除此之外，我們不再強調低利潤設備，並改變了我們的銷售佣金結構，這將繼續影響與前期的比較。這些變化使我們的銷售重點集中在能夠為 Lumen 提供更好的客戶體驗和更高回報的產品上。

Moving on to Mass Markets. Revenue declined 2.3% sequentially. Our Mass Markets fiber broadband revenue grew 3.3% sequentially and represented approximately 31% of Mass Markets broadband revenue. Also note that our exposure to legacy voice and other services revenue continues to improve with a nearly 40 basis point reduction sequentially.

轉向大眾市場。收入環比下降 2.3%。我們的大眾市場光纖寬帶收入環比增長 3.3%，約佔大眾市場寬帶收入的 31%。另請注意，我們對傳統語音和其他服務收入的敞口繼續改善，環比減少了近 40 個基點。

During the quarter, total fiber broadband enablements were approximately 130,000, bringing the total fiber-enabled locations to approximately 3.4 million as of June 30. We are focused on penetrating our deployed fiber assets through our simplified Quantum Fiber broadband product to maximize subscriber and ARPU growth. In the second quarter, we added 21,000 Quantum Fiber customers. This brings our total Quantum Fiber subscribers to 877,000. We expect to add subscribers at a faster rate in the second half of the year with our significant increase in Quantum marketing. Our marketing plans are ramping in conjunction with our conversion of the CenturyLink Fiber brand to Quantum Fiber later in the third quarter of this year, potentially further benefiting subscriber growth as more potential customers can benefit from our world-class Quantum digital experience.

本季度，光纖寬帶啟用總數約為 130,000 個，截至 6 月 30 日，啟用光纖的地點總數約為 340 萬個。我們致力於通過簡化的量子光纖寬帶產品滲透已部署的光纖資產，以最大限度地提高用戶和 ARPU 增長。第二季度，我們增加了 21,000 名 Quantum Fiber 客戶。這使我們的 Quantum Fiber 用戶總數達到 877,000 名。隨著量子營銷的顯著增加，我們預計下半年將以更快的速度增加訂閱者。隨著今年第三季度晚些時候將 CenturyLink Fiber 品牌轉換為 Quantum Fiber，我們的營銷計劃正在不斷推進，這可能會進一步有利於用戶增長，因為更多潛在客戶可以從我們世界一流的 Quantum 數字體驗中受益。

Fiber ARPU increased both sequentially and on a year-over-year basis to approximately $61 in the second quarter. New customers are seeing the value and quality of Quantum Fiber, with most choosing our flagship symmetrical gig and, in some cases, multi-gig service, benefiting our fiber broadband ARPU, which grew both sequentially and year-over-year.

第二季度光纖 ARPU 環比和同比均增長至約 61 美元。新客戶正在看到量子光纖的價值和質量，大多數人選擇我們的旗艦對稱演出，在某些情況下選擇多演出服務，這使我們的光纖寬帶 ARPU 受益，該 ARPU 連續增長和同比增長。

As of June 30, our penetration of legacy copper broadband was approximately 11%, highlighting the significant share-taking opportunity as we accelerate the Quantum Fiber build. Our Quantum Fiber penetration stood at approximately 26%. And as we expand our footprint, we expect penetration to fall as we increase our addressable market at a higher rate than new customers are at. Our Quantum Fiber 18-month penetration rate of the 2021 vintage was at approximately 20%. The performance of our 2021 vintage continues to track below that of 2020 at these milestones, and I expect the same will be true of our 2022 vintage. This performance was the catalyst for us to reevaluate our Quantum build enablement targets during the fourth quarter of last year, refocusing our efforts on locations that provide the best opportunity and returns for Lumen. We expect that our 2023 vintage will exhibit stronger performance given our more disciplined approach to our build.

截至 6 月 30 日，我們傳統銅質寬帶的滲透率約為 11%，這突顯了我們在加速量子光纖建設過程中所面臨的重大份額收購機會。我們的量子光纖滲透率約為 26%。隨著我們擴大業務範圍，我們預計滲透率會下降，因為我們以高於新客戶的速度增加目標市場。我們的 2021 年量子纖維 18 個月滲透率約為 20%。在這些里程碑上，我們 2021 年份的表現繼續低於 2020 年，我預計 2022 年份的情況也會如此。這一業績促使我們重新評估去年第四季度的 Quantum 構建實現目標，將我們的努力重新集中在為 Lumen 提供最佳機會和回報的地點。鑑於我們的釀造方法更加嚴謹，我們預計 2023 年年份酒將展現出更強的性能。

That said, our Quantum Fiber NPS score remains greater than positive 60, an indication of the quality, value and superior service that Quantum Fiber delivers. Quantum Fiber is an all-digital prepaid product that features simplified pricing with no contracts, helping reduce call center volumes and supporting our very strong NPS scores.

也就是說，我們的 Quantum Fiber NPS 分數仍然高於 60，這表明 Quantum Fiber 提供的質量、價值和優質服務。 Quantum Fiber 是一款全數字預付費產品，具有簡化定價且無合同的特點，有助於減少呼叫中心數量並支持我們非常高的 NPS 分數。

Now turning to adjusted EBITDA. For the second quarter of 2023, adjusted EBITDA was $1.229 billion compared to $1.811 billion in the year-ago quarter. The second quarter of last year included $398 million related to the divested businesses, and the second quarter of this year included a negative impact of $51 million from divestiture-related commercial agreements. These items represent approximately 77% of the year-over-year decline. Adjusted EBITDA benefited during the second quarter from a year-to-date adjustment related to a carrier settlement. Given legal agreements, I will not be able to comment further on this settlement.

現在轉向調整後的 EBITDA。 2023 年第二季度，調整後 EBITDA 為 12.29 億美元，而去年同期為 18.11 億美元。去年第二季度包括與剝離業務相關的 3.98 億美元，今年第二季度包括與剝離相關商業協議產生的 5100 萬美元負面影響。這些項目約占同比下降的 77%。第二季度調整後的 EBITDA 受益於與承運人和解相關的年初至今的調整。鑑於法律協議，我將無法對此和解進一步發表評論。

Special items impacting adjusted EBITDA this quarter totaled $102 million. Our second quarter 2023 adjusted EBITDA margin, including special items, was 33.6%.

本季度影響調整後 EBITDA 的特殊項目總計 1.02 億美元。我們 2023 年第二季度調整後的 EBITDA 利潤率（包括特殊項目）為 33.6%。

Capital expenditures for the second quarter were $796 million.

第二季度資本支出為7.96億美元。

In the second quarter, the company generated free cash flow of negative $896 million. As previously noted, this includes $938 million of taxes paid related to our 2 divestitures that closed last year.

第二季度，該公司自由現金流為負8.96億美元。如前所述，這包括與我們去年完成的兩項資產剝離相關的 9.38 億美元稅款。

Now moving on to our financial outlook. We're reducing our estimate for stock-based compensation expenses to approximately $65 million for the full year 2023. We are reiterating all of our guidance metrics.

現在轉向我們的財務前景。我們將 2023 年全年的股票薪酬支出預估減少至約 6500 萬美元。我們重申了所有指導指標。

Now before we go to Q&A, I'd like to take a moment to address recent media reports regarding lead sheet cables in telecommunication networks. We began phasing out lead sheet cables from our network infrastructure during the 1950s. And based on our initial analysis, we currently estimate that less than 5% of our approximately 700,000-mile copper network contain lead, of which we believe the majority is buried in conduit-based infrastructure. We thoughtfully manage our network to ensure the health and safety of our employees and the communities we serve. We also regularly assess our safety protocols and meet established regulatory and scientific standards related to potential lead exposure for workers.

現在，在我們進行問答之前，我想花點時間來解決最近有關電信網絡中鉛板電纜的媒體報導。 20 世紀 50 年代，我們開始從網絡基礎設施中逐步淘汰鉛板電纜。根據我們的初步分析，我們目前估計，在我們約 700,000 英里的銅網絡中，只有不到 5% 含有鉛，我們認為其中大部分埋在基於管道的基礎設施中。我們精心管理我們的網絡，以確保我們的員工和我們所服務的社區的健康和安全。我們還定期評估我們的安全協議，並滿足與工人潛在鉛暴露相關的既定監管和科學標準。

Moving forward, we're committed to working with independent experts, regulators and our industry peers to maintain our positive track record of safety and compliance.

展望未來，我們致力於與獨立專家、監管機構和業界同行合作，以保持我們在安全和合規方面的良好記錄。

With that, we're ready for your questions.

至此，我們已經準備好回答您的問題了。

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

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

Chris, if I could just stay on the lead issue, have you had any discussions around remediation? And any sense of what sort of amounts that might take to do some of this for whatever aerial or underwater plants you might have?

克里斯，如果我可以繼續討論主要問題，您是否就補救措施進行過任何討論？對於您可能擁有的任何空中或水下植物來說，需要多少資金才能做到這一點？

Yes. So I guess, first of all, I think it's very early for that. Again, we spent a lot of time just determining how much lead is in the system. And the good news is it's quite small. But beyond that, we don't really think there's any meaningful way to estimate what that would be at this point. And so we will continue to, as we said, work with regulators and outside experts as this moves forward. But again, we feel good about our network and the fact that a lot of it is conduit-based and subterranean.

是的。所以我想，首先，我認為現在還為時過早。同樣，我們花了很多時間來確定係統中的鉛含量。好消息是它很小。但除此之外，我們並不認為有任何有意義的方法來估計目前的情況。因此，正如我們所說，隨著這一進程的推進，我們將繼續與監管機構和外部專家合作。但我們再次對我們的網絡感覺良好，事實上，其中很多都是基於管道和地下的。

And then just one more housekeeping, on the EMEA transaction, could you just update us on the timing? I think you've got a decision out of Europe coming up in the next few weeks here. What's your latest thinking on it?

然後，還有一項有關 EMEA 交易的內務處理，您能否向我們通報最新的時間安排？我認為歐洲將在接下來的幾週內做出決定。您對此有何最新想法？

We're still on track. I mean, I would say at this point, it would be great if we could close this year. I think it's a little too early to call that. But as we said, it was going to be late this year, early next year, and we're still on track for that.

我們仍然在正軌上。我的意思是，我現在想說的是，如果我們能在今年結束的話那就太好了。我認為現在這麼說還為時過早。但正如我們所說，這將是今年年底、明年初，我們仍在朝著這個目標邁進。

The next question comes from the line of Batya Levi with UBS.

下一個問題來自巴蒂亞·萊維 (Batya Levi) 與瑞銀 (UBS) 的關係。

First, maybe on the enterprise trends, can you provide more color on what you're seeing from the macro environment and if there is any change in the sales funnel versus bookings? And on the EBITDA side, you're tracking above your guidance so far. How should we think about some of the puts and takes in expenses and pacing of new investment in the second half?

首先，也許在企業趨勢方面，您能否提供更多有關您從宏觀環境中看到的情況以及銷售渠道與預訂是否有任何變化的信息？在 EBITDA 方面，到目前為止，您的追踪結果超出了您的指導。我們應該如何看待下半年的一些支出和新投資的節奏？

Batya, I'll have the first part, and I'll let Chris have the second piece. So the macroeconomic environment remains complex and tough. We still see slow decision-making. We're still working on training our sellers to be focused on business outcome selling, which is a new motion for them, but one that's deeply appreciated when we can connect how our network can help deliver fundamentally new business outcomes for customers. So in all of the places that I talked about driving commercial excellence, we're seeing better motions and more progress from a selling perspective while there's work to be done.

巴特亞，我要第一部分，我要讓克里斯來第二部分。宏觀經濟環境依然複雜嚴峻。我們仍然看到決策緩慢。我們仍在努力培訓我們的銷售人員專注於業務成果銷售，這對他們來說是一項新舉措，但當我們能夠了解我們的網絡如何幫助為客戶提供全新的業務成果時，我們將深切讚賞這一舉措。因此，在我談到推動商業卓越的所有地方，我們從銷售角度看到了更好的行動和更多進展，同時還有工作要做。

But do you want to hit on EBITDA?

但你想提高 EBITDA 嗎？

Sure. So Batya, on the EBITDA, to your point, we did come in a little stronger, and that relates to what I mentioned in terms of a year-to-date adjustment for that carrier negotiation. And we'll continue to get some benefits from that as we go forward. But that was contemplated in our guidance for the year. And as we've said, and what we've said at Investor Day, we do have higher OpEx and investments in the back half of the year as we're staying very aggressive and committed to our turnaround plan. So we kept guidance where it is for a reason. And again, we'll be spending more in the back half to support those plans.

當然。因此，Batya，就 EBITDA 而言，就您的觀點而言，我們確實表現得更強一些，這與我提到的運營商談判的年初至今的調整有關。隨著我們的前進，我們將繼續從中獲得一些好處。但這是我們今年的指導中考慮到的。正如我們所說，以及我們在投資者日所說的，我們在今年下半年確實有更高的運營支出和投資，因為我們保持非常積極的態度並致力於我們的扭虧為盈計劃。因此，我們將指導原則保留在原處是有原因的。再說一遍，我們將在下半年投入更多資金來支持這些計劃。

Great example is we just got the voice migration team in place on June 1.

一個很好的例子是我們剛剛於 6 月 1 日組建了語音遷移團隊。

Yes. So there's been a lot, so tune into that. Yes.

是的。所以有很多，所以調整一下。是的。

Just one more quick follow-up on the EMEA sale. Can you provide an update on how we should think about the proceeds? Would that mainly go towards paying down the term loan? Or would you consider splitting it across other issues?

這只是 EMEA 銷售的又一快速跟進。您能否提供有關我們應如何考慮收益的最新信息？這主要是用來償還定期貸款嗎？或者您會考慮將其拆分到其他問題上嗎？

It definitely will go to reducing leverage, and we've got a lot of flexibility under our agreements into how we use that. So we're evaluating that now to see what the best use is. But it's definitely going to be leverage reducing.

這肯定會減少槓桿，而且根據我們的協議，我們在如何使用槓桿方面擁有很大的靈活性。所以我們現在正在評估它，看看什麼是最好的用途。但槓桿肯定會減少。

The next question is from the line of Michael Rollins with Citi.

下一個問題來自花旗集團的邁克爾·羅林斯 (Michael Rollins)。

Just curious, as you look at the opportunity to save customers by migrating them sooner to more strategic technology, can you give us a sizing of what that amount is in terms of the percent of revenue a quarter or year, just to get some sense on the quantum of opportunity? And then if there's other metrics that you could share on some of the progress broadly across the entire customer stack, that would be great.

只是好奇，當您尋找通過更快地將客戶遷移到更具戰略性的技術來拯救客戶的機會時，您能否給我們一個按季度或年度收入百分比計算的金額大小，只是為了了解一下機會的大小？然後，如果您可以在整個客戶堆棧中廣泛分享一些進展的其他指標，那就太好了。

Yes, Mike, it's Chris. I'll take a shot at that. If you look at our Harvest bucket, we said that, that was about 25% of the business segment. I'd say that's the opportunity. I mean the reality is those are products that we really no longer sell. There's very limited use cases where those legacy products are being sold. Quite frankly, we don't compensate our sales force to sell those things because we're focusing on next gen. So I think between what's in Harvest and then the VPN and Ethernet piece that's in Nurture, you take those 2 pieces of the business, it's actually over 50% of what we sell today, that's the opportunity set as we go forward. The Harvest piece, the legacy voice obviously has, I would say, more movement in it. the VPN will take place over a longer period of time, but both of those, I think, would be good products.

是的，邁克，是克里斯。我會嘗試一下。如果你看看我們的 Harvest 桶，我們會說，這約佔業務部門的 25%。我想說這就是機會。我的意思是，現實是我們真的不再銷售這些產品。銷售這些遺留產品的用例非常有限。坦率地說，我們不會為銷售這些產品而向銷售人員提供報酬，因為我們專注於下一代產品。所以我認為在 Harvest 中的內容和 Nurture 中的 VPN 和以太網部分之間，你拿走這兩個業務部分，它實際上超過了我們今天銷售的 50%，這就是我們前進的機會。我想說，《收穫》的作品，傳統的聲音顯然有更多的動感。 VPN將在更長的時間內出現，但我認為這兩者都會是很好的產品。

And I think the big change, we're always talking about, okay, what's different. We funded a team to go after this business in a dedicated fashion. It's no longer a hobby. It's no longer an option. It's how they get paid. We've given them all the tools and the playbooks to do so, and we're starting to get some return from that.

我認為重大變化，我們總是在談論，好吧，有什麼不同。我們資助了一個團隊專門從事這項業務。這不再是一種愛好。這不再是一個選擇。這就是他們獲得報酬的方式。我們已經為他們提供了實現這一目標的所有工具和手冊，並且我們開始從中獲得一些回報。

The next question comes from the line of Greg Williams with TD Cowen.

下一個問題來自 Greg Williams 和 TD Cowen 的對話。

First one is just the idea of perhaps securitizing some debt. One of your peers, Frontier, is in the midst of raising quite a bit by securitizing stabilized fiber homes, and they can raise a ton of capacity on these homes, solving their capital runway. As I think about your 2027 maturities, I'm wondering, is this something you could explore? Or are there covenants or limitations that would preclude that?

第一個可能只是將一些債務證券化的想法。你的同行之一，Frontier，正在通過將穩定的光纖房屋證券化來籌集相當多的資金，他們可以為這些房屋籌集大量的容量，解決他們的資本跑道問題。當我想到你們 2027 年的到期日時，我想知道，這是你們可以探索的嗎？或者是否存在可以排除這種情況的契約或限制？

And then just the second question is, on your copper subscribers, in your Mass Markets, you lost 93,000 copper DSL subs. Is this just migration intentional by you guys or losing gross adds or fixed wireless pressure or maybe all of the above? I'm just curious of the cadence from here.

第二個問題是，在您的大眾市場中，您的銅質訂戶失去了 93,000 個銅質 DSL 子用戶。這只是你們故意的遷移還是失去了總增加或固定無線壓力或者可能是以上所有？我只是對這裡的節奏感到好奇。

So on the first one -- it's a great question. We're, obviously, addressing our capital structure so that we can continue to support our strategy, and the things that are working is paramount, and it's something we've been focused on for some time. I would say that securitization is an option. There's other options as well. I think some options are closer in, some options are further out. But as we go forward, I think figuring out ways to capitalize what is a very intensive investment in the consumer business is something that we've got to explore and we are exploring.

所以關於第一個問題——這是一個很好的問題。顯然，我們正在解決我們的資本結構問題，以便我們能夠繼續支持我們的戰略，而有效的事情是至關重要的，這是我們一段時間以來一直關注的事情。我想說，證券化是一種選擇。還有其他選擇。我認為有些選項更接近，有些選項更遠。但隨著我們前進，我認為找出方法來利用消費業務中的大量投資是我們必須探索並且正在探索的事情。

As it relates to the copper subs, the reality is that a lot of our Quantum builds is really in markets where we don't have a lot of copper subscription remaining. So our best guess is that this is really being driven by some pressure from fixed wireless, which is not unanticipated.

由於與銅潛艇相關，現實情況是，我們的許多 Quantum 構建實際上是在我們沒有大量銅訂閱剩餘的市場中進行的。因此，我們最好的猜測是，這實際上是由固定無線的一些壓力驅動的，這並非意料之外。

The next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan with Raymond James.

下一個問題來自弗蘭克·勞森（Frank Louthan）和雷蒙德·詹姆斯（Raymond James）的對話。

Just sticking on the Quantum side, can you give us an idea of what kind of success you're having with the SMB side with winning back some customers there? And then on ExaSwitch and the Network as a Service, can you kind of walk us through what are some of the major aspects of those products that you were doing that other carriers aren't necessarily doing or might not be able to replicate?

僅關注量子方面，您能否告訴我們您在中小企業方面取得了哪些成功並贏得了一些客戶？然後，關於 ExaSwitch 和網絡即服務，您能否向我們介紹一下您正在做的這些產品的一些主要方面，而其他運營商不一定做或可能無法複製？

So I'll take the first one, and then Kate can do ExaSwitch. As it relates to SMB, it's definitely an opportunity area for us with Quantum. The product is going to play very well in that regard. I would also say, though, Frank, that that's not been the primary focus as we're ramping enablements. It really has been more on the consumer side. But the team is working on SMB pricing, and it's a huge opportunity for us just given the share we've lost to cable over the years. So more to follow on that.

所以我會選擇第一個，然後 Kate 可以做 ExaSwitch。由於它與中小企業相關，這對我們昆騰來說絕對是一個機會領域。該產品將在這方面發揮非常好的作用。不過，弗蘭克，我還要說，這並不是我們增強支持的主要焦點。確實更多的是在消費者方面。但該團隊正在研究中小企業定價，考慮到多年來我們輸給有線電視的份額，這對我們來說是一個巨大的機會。因此還有更多後續內容。

Okay. In NaaS -- we're pretty excited about the NaaS platform for a couple of different reasons. The first is we know that our customers are demanding digital experiences, and the notion of sort of cloud-ifying networking and delivering fundamentally more friction-free buying, usage, management and support of these platforms is the way to go. I think what's different is we are committed to the long term. What you saw yesterday was the first step in a multiyear plan to really show up in this fundamentally different way with our customers. We think it's going to help us capture more share in legacy telecom markets but also sets us up really well for all of the adjacent markets that we see a lot of potential growth in. And if you add ExaSwitch to the storybook, it becomes a very compelling opportunity to capitalize on some of these growth areas like Gen AI and cloud.

好的。在 NaaS 方面——出於多種不同原因，我們對 NaaS 平台感到非常興奮。首先，我們知道我們的客戶需要數字體驗，而云化網絡的概念以及從根本上為這些平台提供更加無摩擦的購買、使用、管理和支持的概念是正確的出路。我認為不同的是我們致力於長期發展。您昨天看到的是多年計劃的第一步，真正以這種根本不同的方式向我們的客戶展示。我們認為這將幫助我們在傳統電信市場中獲得更多份額，同時也為我們在所有相鄰市場中的發展奠定了良好的基礎，我們看到這些市場有很大的增長潛力。如果你將 ExaSwitch 添加到故事書中，它就會成為一個非常好的選擇。利用 Gen AI 和雲等一些增長領域的絕佳機會。

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

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

First, another question on NaaS, recognizing that you plan on offering a broader suite of services through that platform over time, not just what you announced yesterday, what's the use case for something like DIA build hourly? When I think about some of the other use cases that have been successfully enabled by NaaS across the industry like cloud connectivity, it feels like there's maybe more of a natural variable consumption dynamic to it. So I'm curious about how you think that attribute ports to other services.

首先，關於 NaaS 的另一個問題，認識到您計劃隨著時間的推移通過該平台提供更廣泛的服務套件，而不僅僅是您昨天宣布的服務，DIA 每小時構建之類的用例是什麼？當我想到 NaaS 在整個行業中成功實現的一些其他用例（例如雲連接）時，我感覺它可能有更多的自然變量消費動態。所以我很好奇您如何看待將端口歸因於其他服務。

So you know how I think about this? I think about it the same way when the world went to cloud. You're going to have customers who go after optimization, and they spend a lot of time managing for cost. Originally, a lot of the naysayers in the cloud market were like, "Oh my gosh, this is the end of tech." And we know that, that is simply not true. We know the overall demand is going to be very, very significant for more and more and more bandwidth at zero latency. And that's what NaaS positions us well to do. I think, frankly, the complexity around trying to optimize to match our demand patterns, there's just too much friction in that. And that's what we saw in cloud. And so I'm kind of using that as a model on our head.

那麼你知道我是怎麼想的嗎？當世界轉向雲時，我也以同樣的方式思考這個問題。您將擁有追求優化的客戶，他們會花費大量時間來管理成本。最初，雲市場的許多反對者都說，“天哪，這就是科技的終結。”我們知道，這根本不是真的。我們知道，對於零延遲、越來越多的帶寬的總體需求將非常非常大。這就是 NaaS 使我們能夠很好地做到的事情。坦率地說，我認為，嘗試優化以匹配我們的需求模式非常複雜，其中存在太多摩擦。這就是我們在雲中看到的。所以我有點用它作為我們頭上的模型。

The first couple of use cases for NaaS, it puts us into I don't want to say new markets but new places in the market where we haven't been able to show up in the past. So we're pretty excited about our ability to become ubiquitous and frictionless.

NaaS 的前幾個用例，它讓我們進入了我不想說的新市場，而是市場中我們過去無法出現的新地方。因此，我們對變得無處不在且無摩擦的能力感到非常興奮。

Okay. And then separately, Chris, you noted in your prepared remarks that you're looking to rebrand CenturyLink Fiber to Quantum Fiber later this quarter and you're ramping up your marketing spend, too. Can you dimension what sort of penetration rates you have in those old CenturyLink Fiber markets and help us understand what sort of uplift you might get over time? And what's the magnitude of the marketing spend increase you're planning? How substantial is this?

好的。另外，克里斯，您在準備好的發言中指出，您希望在本季度晚些時候將 CenturyLink Fiber 更名為 Quantum Fiber，並且您還將增加營銷支出。您能否衡量一下您在舊的 CenturyLink Fiber 市場中的滲透率，並幫助我們了解隨著時間的推移您可能會獲得什麼樣的提升？您計劃增加多少營銷支出？這有多大？

Yes. So I don't want to get into specifics around kind of penetration on the CenturyLink brand. But I would tell you, and it's no secret, CenturyLink does not have the best brand in the marketplace, and the Quantum experience is just fundamentally different because of its all-digital nature. So if you think about that, we think there's a sizable opportunity there beyond just the efficiency of trying to carry 2 brands, one technology stack, one consumer experience, it works well for everyone.

是的。因此，我不想詳細討論 CenturyLink 品牌的滲透情況。但我要告訴你，這已經不是什麼秘密了，CenturyLink 並沒有市場上最好的品牌，而 Quantum 的體驗由於其全數字化特性而具有根本的不同。因此，如果你考慮一下這一點，我們認為除了嘗試攜帶 2 個品牌、一種技術堆棧、一種消費者體驗的效率之外，還有相當大的機會，它對每個人都很有效。

As it relates to the marketing, I don't want to give specific dollars. What I would tell you is that to date, until we really got the build factory scaling, our marketing was limited to local efforts like door hangers, right? And now as we get the build factory ramping, it gives us the ability in specific markets to scale our marketing as well, and we think that will have a nice benefit on driving subscription growth.

由於它與營銷有關，我不想給出具體的金額。我要告訴你的是，迄今為止，在我們真正擴大建造工廠規模之前，我們的營銷僅限於門衣架等本地工作，對嗎？現在，隨著我們建造工廠的擴大，它也使我們有能力在特定市場擴大我們的營銷規模，我們認為這將對推動訂閱增長產生很大的好處。

The next question comes from the line of David Barden with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

下一個問題來自美國銀行美林證券的大衛·巴登 (David Barden)。

I guess the first one, Chris, I mean, I know you're expecting this question, if you can talk a little bit about what this group of Level 3 bondholders is asking for from you guys. I think we understand on our side of the fence that there's been a letter sent to you guys. You guys said that, "We're getting ready for the quarter. We can't comment." So if, now that the quarter's over, you have a comment, it will be super helpful for us to hear that.

我想是第一個，克里斯，我的意思是，我知道你在期待這個問題，如果你能談談這組 3 級債券持有人對你們的要求。我想我們都知道有一封信寄給了你們。你們說，“我們正在為本季度做好準備。我們無法發表評論。”因此，既然本季度已經結束，如果您有任何評論，這對我們來說將會非常有幫助。

And then I guess, second, more of a business question maybe for Kate. Kate, you, at the Analyst Day, talked about this 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 people buying in, people not buying in, people in the middle, having to be won over. Specifically with respect to the sales force, could you talk a little bit about where we are in terms of, on a scale 0 to 10, full strength with the sales force that you think needs to be in place to execute on your plan to get enterprise services and others moving in the right direction?

然後我想，第二，對於凱特來說，這可能更多是一個商業問題。凱特，你在分析師日談到了 1/3、1/3、1/3 的人買入，人們不買入，中間的人必須被爭取。具體來說，關於銷售隊伍，您能否談談我們在 0 到 10 級的情況下，您認為需要到位的銷售隊伍來執行您的計劃，以實現您的目標？企業服務和其他服務正朝著正確的方向發展嗎？

Sure. I'll go first, and then I'll turn it over to Chris because the second question about sales force is kind of a little bit easier. We're seeing exactly what we expected to see. When you institute new comp plans, new sales platforms and processes, a deeper level of inspection, it's not for everybody. And as we go out to the marketplace and get tech talent that we have relationships with, that help us with those adjacent markets and the stories and narratives and value propositions that we need to be fluent in, that's the exchange that we're making.

當然。我先回答，然後將其交給克里斯，因為有關銷售人員的第二個問題稍微容易一些。我們所看到的正是我們所期望看到的。當你制定新的薪酬計劃、新的銷售平台和流程、更深層次的檢查時，並不適合所有人。當我們走向市場並獲得與我們有關係的技術人才時，他們可以幫助我們了解鄰近的市場以及我們需要熟練掌握的故事、敘述和價值主張，這就是我們正在進行的交流。

In terms of our evolution, gosh, it's still early innings, right? I mean, we've just had the strategy in place for a couple of months. We've done a really, really good job hiring in sales with. I think the number that I saw earlier today was 295 net new -- or sorry, new salespeople that's not net. It's a new salesperson number. Getting all those people up to speed with all the tools and enablement materials that they need, some of them coming from markets that they need to learn some of the telecom, that's going to take a little bit of time.

就我們的進化而言，天哪，現在還處於早期階段，對吧？我的意思是，我們剛剛制定了幾個月的策略。我們在招聘銷售人員方面做得非常非常好。我想我今天早些時候看到的數字是 295 名淨新員工，或者抱歉，新銷售人員不是淨新員工。這是一個新的銷售人員號碼。讓所有這些人快速掌握他們需要的所有工具和支持材料，其中一些來自他們需要學習一些電信知識的市場，這將需要一些時間。

So I'm excited about where we are because, as I discussed, we're starting to see fruits of the labor. We also have low-hanging opportunities because in the past, we haven't used sales platforms, data and analytics and AI, in the way that I think modern sales forces do. So I hope that our ramp is quicker. I do think it takes a bit of time for somebody to get to full productivity. And so we'll be leaning in and trying to accelerate that as often as possible. But more to follow as we can report on the fruits of the labor of the sales team over time.

所以我對我們所處的位置感到興奮，因為正如我所討論的，我們開始看到勞動成果。我們也有一些唾手可得的機會，因為過去我們沒有像現代銷售人員那樣使用銷售平台、數據和分析以及人工智能。所以我希望我們的坡道能夠更快一些。我確實認為某人需要一些時間才能充分發揮生產力。因此，我們將盡可能地努力加速這一進程。但還有更多後續內容，因為我們可以報告銷售團隊隨著時間的推移所取得的勞動成果。

And as it relates to the debt questions and the rumors that have been swirling in the market over the last few weeks, I want to step back in addressing the question. And just to reiterate, Kate talked about the progress that we've been making against the strategy. We had really exciting news yesterday with NaaS. And the reason the debt conversation is so important is we've got to get the debt structure righted, our capital structure righted, so that we can fund what we think is a very bright future.

由於它涉及債務問題和過去幾週市場上流傳的謠言，我想退後一步來解決這個問題。重申一下，凱特談到了我們在該戰略方面取得的進展。昨天我們收到了關於 NaaS 的非常令人興奮的消息。債務對話之所以如此重要，是因為我們必須調整債務結構，調整我們的資本結構，這樣我們才能為我們認為非常光明的未來提供資金。

So with that, we obviously understand the obligations of our credit instruments, and we don't believe that there's been any default under those debt agreements. We remain focused, as we said before, on addressing the upcoming maturities through '27, and we want to do that in a manner that benefits the company and all of its stakeholders. So just without getting into specifics, I'd say that we're open to engaging with our stakeholders to achieve that. And as we previously indicated, we're going to continue to assess other options to address upcoming maturities and the overall capital structure.

因此，我們顯然了解我們的信貸工具的義務，並且我們不認為這些債務協議存在任何違約情況。正如我們之前所說，我們仍然專注於解決 27 年即將到來的到期問題，我們希望以有利於公司及其所有利益相關者的方式做到這一點。因此，在不談具體細節的情況下，我想說的是，我們願意與利益相關者合作以實現這一目標。正如我們之前指出的，我們將繼續評估其他選項，以解決即將到來的到期日和整體資本結構的問題。

And our next question comes from the line of Bora Lee with RBC Capital Markets.

我們的下一個問題來自 RBC Capital Markets 的 Bora Lee。

First, understanding any impact that's still to be determined, back on the lead cabling issue, is there any residual responsibility for the ILEC assets divested to Apollo?

首先，了解仍有待確定的任何影響，回到主要佈線問題，剝離給阿波羅的 ILEC 資產是否有任何剩餘責任？

And then second, you've spoken about trimming the number of SKUs, starting with cleaning up perhaps some legacy variations and then moving on to more substantive reductions. Can you just update us on where you are in that process and how that's been impacting your sales process?

其次，您談到了削減 SKU 的數量，首先是清理一些遺留的變化，然後繼續進行更實質性的減少。您能否向我們介紹一下您在該流程中的最新進展以及這對您的銷售流程有何影響？

Okay. Yes, I'll take the first one. The ILEC sale was a stock sale. So all assets and liabilities were sold with that. And as it relates to our network, we talked about it in my prepared remarks, less than 5% of our 700,000-mile copper network contain lead, and most of that is conduit-based and subterranean. So we don't think that this is a major issue for us, and it's something we'll continue to work on and monitor.

好的。是的，我會選擇第一個。 ILEC 的出售是股票出售。因此，所有資產和負債都隨之出售。由於它與我們的網絡有關，我們在我準備好的發言中談到了這一點，我們 700,000 英里的銅網絡中只有不到 5% 含有鉛，其中大部分是基於管道和地下的。因此，我們認為這對我們來說不是一個主要問題，我們將繼續努力解決和監控這一問題。

And regarding the simplification efforts that we have, we still have our evergreen simplification process. We're identifying projects and programs and activities that we stop every day. The SKU simplification was a part of that. It was a major step forward in preparing for, frankly, an ERP implementation that is going very well and is on target and on budget and preparing us to be able to implement streamlined digital enterprise processes for sales and inventory and ordering and all of the things. So the initial reduction was the easy step. The compression beyond that sort of low-hanging fruit becomes more complex as it's tied to products that are existing in our order and billing systems that would just need more work and more time to be able to simplify further.

至於我們所做的簡化工作，我們仍然有常青的簡化流程。我們正在確定每天停止的項目、計劃和活動。 SKU 簡化是其中的一部分。坦率地說，這是為 ERP 實施做準備邁出的重要一步，該實施進展順利，符合目標和預算，並使我們能夠實施簡化的銷售、庫存、訂購等數字化企業流程。 。所以最初的減少是很容易的一步。除了這種容易實現的目標之外的壓縮變得更加複雜，因為它與我們的訂單和計費系統中現有的產品相關，而這些產品只需要更多的工作和更多的時間才能進一步簡化。

And we have no further questions at this time. Mike, I will turn the call back to you.

目前我們沒有進一步的問題。邁克，我會把電話轉回給你。

Terrific. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Have a great night.

了不起。謝謝大家今天加入我們。祝你度過一個愉快的夜晚。

We would like to thank everyone for your participation and for using the Lumen conferencing service today. This does conclude the conference call, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day, everyone.

我們衷心感謝大家今天的參與和使用 Lumen 會議服務。電話會議到此結束，我們請您斷開線路。祝大家有個美好的一天。