Takeaways from Management Meeting Following 1Q26 Results

Research evidence excerpt

Takeaways from Management Meeting Following 1Q26 Results

quarter remained as competitive as management has seen, with it highlighting that FWA and

fiber operators have leaned aggressively into lower entry pricing, extended price locks, and

promotional incentives. Competition in the West in particular was said to have shifted

considerably with the expansion of FWA availability and fiber overbuilders further intensifying

market dynamics. As a result, gross add activity was muted while churn was elevated y/y.

Against this backdrop, OPTU has focused on simplifying and establishing a more consistent and

competitive product with, in our view, a fairly aggressive pricing structure with the goal that it will

drive improved sales conversion, and together with better marketing execution and base

management, provide the right roadmap to improve subscriber trends over time. This will,

however, weigh on broadband ARPU from gross adds in the near-term. Notably, simplification

does not mean abandoning the hyper-local go-to-market approach, though that had created

execution complexity across sales training and marketing – instead, the company has now

unified pricing/packaging across the footprint and channels, while still leaning into local sales

teams, events, media deployment, and community relationships.

From our perspective, while we acknowledge management’s focus on improving broadband

trends along with the recent shifts in promotional activity to support volume growth, we’re mindful

of the challenging backdrop and widen our estimates for broadband net losses for 2Q26 by 20k

to 55k and for 2026 by 15k to 245k.

Mobile acceleration and continued penetration of the broadband base

Mobile line net adds came in at 52k (the best quarterly performance in six years), accelerating