joining us now to discuss is pascal Darroch, a
senior executive vice president and chief financial officer at A
T and T. Thank you so much for joining
us this morning. Now it seems the company dodged
most of the effects of inflation with this report.
What do you think helped drive these numbers? Hey
, good morning, asian morning, everybody. Look
, we've been on a long term strategy where we
are investing in our businesses uh, at fairly meaningful
levels and we have reenergized growth in the two areas
we've identified as priorities one, our wireless business and
five G. Uh, if you look uh,
the last several core quarters, we quarter after quarter
, we continue to drive subscribers. And not only
are we driving subscriber gains were also increasing our our
poo on our, on our wireless product on fiber
, simply put when we have fiber, we are
able to win share, we're able to take share
from, from our cable competitors. And uh,
fiber importantly is coming at a much more attractive profit
margins and our food than our historical legacy copper products
. So, oh no, those two priorities were
investing in them. And we are driving improvements in
our cost structure. All those things are driving to
improve profits and improve and expectations of growth and earnings
and free cash flow even in this uh, economic
backdrop. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned fiber because
this year the company stated, it aims to build
out fiber broadband services to four million homes. You
mentioned the profit margins when it comes to a priority
like this. So investors want to know where is
the company at when it comes to those efforts.
Look, we feel really good about our momentum and
building out fiber and uh, you know, during
the first several quarters, we've added several million fiber
locations and we, we expect to continue to grow
fiber locations. Uh, we, we've put out
publicly that over the next several years we will get
to 30 million plus fiber locations passed. And when
you think about fiber, one of the things that
were that really excites us is when we look out
5 to 10 years from now, fiber will be
the only technology that consumers will find acceptable. You
know, our forecast suggests that you will see meaningful
increases in uh, consumption of bandwidth and the only
technology that is able to handle those in an economical
way with symmetrical speed is fiber. And uh,
so we feel really good about the product and we
, we are the largest provider of fiber in the
country and we can do it more efficiently than than
anyone else. And we feel really good about the
prospects for the long term. We are building an
infrastructure for the next several decades. It's really exciting
and I think especially um, flipping from the investor
side to the consumer side, we hear a lot
about fiber fiber optic network and commercials and things like
that. But you talk about this really visionary future
that's meant to take place when it comes to the
progression of tech for decades. So just touch base
with us for what consumers can expect from some of
these developments with the fiber optic network. You think
about things like being able to autonomous vehicles, you're
not gonna be able to have autonomous vehicles without five
G. In our fiber optic, which is underpinned
by our fiber optic network, you're gonna, you
know, the ability to do things like robotics and
remote Surgeries are all things that are going to be
empowered by 5G and our fiber network. And I
think we are just in the very, very early
innings of that and I think it's a really uh
, is really exciting for the future for consumers.
Pascal Darroch, senior executive vice president and chief financial
officer at A. T and T. Thank you
so much for joining us.