Earnings Labs

T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Jul 31, 2015

$185.32

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the T-Mobile U.S. Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. Following opening remarks, the earnings call will be open for questions via conference line, Twitter or text message. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Nils Paellmann, Head of Investor Relations for T-Mobile U.S. Please go ahead, sir.

Nils Paellmann - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you. Welcome to T-Mobile's second quarter 2015 earnings call. With me today are John Legere, our President and CEO; Braxton Carter, our CFO; and other members of the senior leadership team. Let me briefly read the disclaimer. During this call, we make projections and statements about the future performance of the company, which are based on current expectations and assumptions on Form 10-K includes risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Reconciliations between GAAP and the non-GAAP results we discuss in this call can be found on the Investor Relations page of our website. Let me now turn it over to John. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us and Roger, we already have your message that you don't upgrade that next quarter. But welcome to second quarter Un-carrier earnings call as well as open Twitter conference. And once again, we're also providing a live video stream. So, you can watch all the action here in Seattle, if I just had to remind both Braxton and Mike they were on camera, because of the things that they were doing here on the side. We're generally going to go with the same Q&A approach – sorry, my mic wasn't on. So, just assume all the things I said before this were humorous and helpful. We'll generally go in the same Q&A approach as last quarter. And to accommodate your questions, the call will last and I say this up to 90 minutes. We certainly won't keep you that long and left there is a burning desire for asking questions. We'll take the questions on Twitter, text, and on the phone, so whichever style works for you. So as you probably know,…

Operator

Operator

And we'll go to Mike McCormack with Jefferies. Please go ahead, sir.

Michael L. McCormack - Jefferies LLC

Management

Great, thanks. And Braxton, I certainly appreciate the disclosure on the leasing impact, and also the true definition of free cash flow. So, much appreciated on that. I guess, on the first question, thinking about handset postpaid ARPU, you guys are making really good progression there. Just trying to get a sense for your thoughts on the back half, particularly as we have continued Data Stash reversal maybe in the fourth quarter more heavily, against fourth quarter potential promotions? And how we should be thinking about that progression of improvement in the year-over-year declines? And then the second question is on the secondary handsets. The JUMP! On Demand product or program should result in decent volumes coming back at you. I just want to get a sense for how comfortable you are, valuation for those secondary handsets coming in, and the available channels for you guys have to resell those into? Thanks. J. Braxton Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP: Sure, Michael, first of all, let me thank you for the comments. I mean, we pride ourselves on being more transparent than all the other carriers. I don't know that anybody is really disclosing the non-cash impacts of leasing programs or rollover programs, and we think that transparency is important. And specifically on cash flow, we are at an inflection point. And when you look at cash flow from operations that we have very clearly laid out and improved our disclosures, you'll be able to track the progress on a quarter to quarter basis. And I think the appropriate way to look at it – this is a proxy for true operational cash flow. So taking into account, all changes in working capital, versus a simple free cash flow computation. But we do think it's appropriate to exclude…

Operator

Operator

And from UBS, we have John Hodulik. Please go ahead.

John C. Hodulik - UBS Securities LLC

Management

Okay. Great. Thanks, guys. Couple questions, maybe a follow-up on the A-Block for Neville. Can you give us a sense for how many POPs you'll have covered with A-Block by year-end, especially pulling in New York and L.A.? And then, you may not want to answer this, but do you expect sort of support for band 12 in the next iPhone release, and is that why you pulled those networks forward? And if so, what kind of a boost do you think, or does it help as you look out to 2016 in terms of network performance and subscriber growth? So that's it on that topic. Then real quick on the margins, you've reached a new level here on margins. If we look out to the second half, is that 30% level sustainable? Thanks. Neville R. Ray - Chief Technology Officer & Executive VP: Let me take the first piece, then John. So the licensed area we have with our band 12 A-Block licenses is just shy of 190 million POPs, covered people. We won't get all of that done this year, but I tell you, we will get damn close. We're well over 100 million right now. The number is kind of around 130 million. You add L.A., New York, Atlanta, markets like Seattle, Sacramento, these are all big markets coming on between now and the end of the year, and we will get very close that number. So we're accelerating our plan inside 2015. You're totally right, the benefits in terms of customer performance, what this means in terms of speed, this is capacity, too, it really sets us up for a great customer experience in 2015. But probably more importantly in 2016. And we're driving very, very hard on the handset front. My goal is to have…

John C. Hodulik - UBS Securities LLC

Management

Okay. Thanks, guys. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Great. Let's stay on the phone for one more. Operator?

Operator

Operator

And the next is Ric Prentiss with Raymond James. Ric H. Prentiss - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thanks. Morning, guys. J. Braxton Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP: Morning, Ric. Ric H. Prentiss - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Hey, obviously, very nice growth, and I'll echo the comment about really appreciate you're going to provide the JUMP! On Demand benefit in the future. That's really important for us. You guys have a history of obviously taking care of the customer, listening to what they want. We're one month in, but what do you (23:41) take rate will be, and where will that head? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Are you asking about JUMP! On Demand specifically, Ric? Ric H. Prentiss - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Yes, specifically JUMP! On Demand leasing. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, we expect it to be the most popular option on the eligible devices. We've launched JUMP! On Demand on all of our superphones, the iPhones, the Galaxies, the flagship LG phone. It's the most flexible way to get a new smartphone from T-Mobile, and really it's pretty obvious. I mean, you've got absolutely no payment due upfront, not even sales tax. It's a simple by-the-month payment, and there's no way to ever pay more than the sales price on the phone. So you get all of the benefits of ownership as well, and a lot more flexibility along the way, because we're the only ones in the industry offering upgrade rights throughout your journey with that phone, anytime you want to move to the next one, with zero cost or penalty or fee associated with the upgrade. So we don't see why it shouldn't be the default choice…

Operator

Operator

From Goldman Sachs, we have Brett Feldman. Brett Joseph Feldman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Operationally, over the last few quarters, the reduction in churn has been a big success. It's been a big part of the growth of subs, and a big part of what's happening with EBITDA. And so, that inevitably becomes the number one concern for a lot of people, which is, are we going to see that metric go up? Will people who are coming off all the EIP commitments and jump back out into the market? Or have you already taken measures to essentially mitigate the risk that, the success you were having two years ago, getting people to sign up to commitments, leads to risk over the next few quarters that they might leave? J. Braxton Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP: Yeah, Brett. Great question. Let me put a couple facts out there, and then we can also look at some of the things that we've recently done with Un-carrier Amped. First and foremost, we've been doing EIP for over four years now, and looking at cohorts during this entire period, the bear thesis that there is a significant uptick in churn after the 24 month period is absolutely false. And something that we have not seen in any of the cohort analysis that we've done. And I think it is pretty simple to understand why. That's kind of a thought that comes out of the old contract paradigm. But with devices, very few people actually wait two years now to upgrade their phones, especially with the industry innovation that we introduced with JUMP!, and now the JUMP! On Demand. So that's factor number one. Secondly, absolutely the reductions in churn, which I think is a hallmark of this quarter and…

Operator

Operator

Roger Cheng from CNET. Please go ahead, sir.

Roger Cheng - CNET

Management

Hey guys, how are you doing? J. Braxton Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP: Hey, Roger. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I like that Macklemore (35:07)

Roger Cheng - CNET

Management

You're not getting tired of it? All right, well. Let me ask about the customer growth. Obviously, I'm obsessed about customer growth. What is the mix going to be down the line? Obviously, you're seeing with AT&T and Verizon the mix is more tablets, more connected devices. Do you see phone customers still being the majority of your mix of customer growth for the next couple quarters out? And just a follow-up, in terms of that other segment, do you see any other opportunities in M2M other connected devices as well? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Very good. And as I hand that to Mike, I'll just add the snarky introduction that just to remind people that are dialing into the call, that aren't as steeped into looking at these numbers as others, is when you move from right now in the industry from postpaid and prepaid subscribers, to tablets and connected devices, right now in the AT&T and Verizon world, let's be clear, those are no ARPU or minimal ARPU free tablets and $1 ARPU connected cars. So, that's the main reason that they are kind of looked at that way. The evolution of which, we have shown our ability to target tablets when we choose to and we're very confident that we can use that going forward. But Mike, if you want to go through the mix there in some of Roger's question.

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Management

Yeah, Roger. It's a great question. I just don't think, it's a matter of mix at our competitors. It's a matter of what they can do. And so, in an environment, where they simply can't get positive phone net adds anymore. And haven't been able to find success in that for many quarters. They've turned their intention to lower value types of products that they can acquire. And I'll be doing the same thing if I was there. So, it's really a matter of what they can do. They hit this kind of terminal size where their phone churn, although the churn rates are fairly good, some of the best in the industry, their size is churning out so many customers that we are feeding on, others are feeding on. That they just can't out run that with their gross adds. They don't brand value propositions that are attracting enough people on the front end to refill the churn on the back end. And that has to do with their size and it has to do with the fact that what they have to offer isn't resonating with the public as well as it needs to. And so they've turned to these lower value things as John said. Our strategy is really different. Ours is simply to focus on the highest value customer segments that's big families, it's postpaid, it's monthly recurring prepaid customers and go win in those segments, because our brand's resonating with the customers who use wireless the most to our most engaged in the industry. And that's why you see, not only our customer numbers at the best in the industry, but you see the underlying help of the business. Our churns hitting record low, our average billings per user at a record high, our customers are more engaged with our products and are actually buying more from us, and therefore paying us more than at any time in the history of our company. So, really shows you that, we just have a very different strategy and ours is really working when it comes to attracting high quality, high value customers.

Roger Cheng - CNET

Management

All right. Thanks. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. I think Michael Rollins is next.

Operator

Operator

Michael Rollins from Citi Bank. Please go ahead, sir.

Michael I. Rollins - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the question. First, I was wondering if you could size the amount of cost of service that's left from the MetroPCS network in the Q2 results, so we could think about what's going to come out, as you finish shutting down that network? And then the second question I had was, can you talk about how successful the sales team is at attaching additional features and options to your base rate plan? As we look at our current rate of promotions, and try to think about the ARPU translation for that, could you maybe give us a little bit of a bridge of how you start with these great plan offers, but what customer spending may ultimately look like, on average of course? Thanks. J. Braxton Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP: Yeah, Mike. So, on the MetroPCS synergies starting to flow through the results. They are certainly starting to flow through the results. And you're seeing a reduction in cost of service. And remember, the real reduction is actually larger than the decrease that you're seeing in cost of service, because we are continuing to expand the geographical breadth of our network. But needless to say, we will not be at run rate until the very end or early next year on the plus $1.5 billion of cash synergy, which is about a $1 billion worth of OpEx until 2016? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. On the attach question, it's really pretty straightforward, Mike, and it's one of the things that really makes our model work. And think about it, us being in excess of 80%. And we talked about average billings per user and average billings per account being at all-time high, ARPU being a…

Operator

Operator

We have Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley. Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Great. Thank you. Just carrying on from that theme of the porting ratios. You've had the iPhone for a couple of years now. You've got some attractive new offers for the iPhone related to the ability to upgrade to the new device. Can you just give us some color on where the iPhone is in terms of your mix of your subscriber base, and what you see as the opportunity? There must be a lot of 5s coming off to your contracts over the next few months, and your ability to sort of disproportionately benefit from that with some of your new offers? Thanks.

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Management

Hey Simon. It's Mike. Yeah, I can only be somewhat helpful there. We don't break down our base by device. But let me give you a little bit of color. Overall, we believe that our penetration of iPhones is the lowest, and that means our opportunity is the highest. And we really see that as a source of strength for us going forward. Overall in our flow rate, you see iPhones and the main competitive device, Samsung Galaxy devices, being roughly speaking equivalent in their flow rates right now, in our business. And so, it really is more an issue of the base than it is an issue of the flow. And with a smaller iPhone base it means we're less vulnerable to switching at the time of big iPhone launches, and it means we have a bigger opportunity to gain switchers at the time of iPhone launches. And as John said, we can't say whether or not there's a big iPhone launch coming, but if there is one, we would see it as a real opportunity for us. And particularly, with the great work that Neville's doing to get 700 megahertz rolled out in low-band spectrum, if we can get to a point this year, where all of our devices have our complete network, that's a real opportunity for us to continue to build network perception, take share and continue to improve in our churn trajectory. Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: And related to that, how are you addressing retail expansion? You can presumably hit a lot more communities now, with a full marketing effort than – given the 700 and the full LTE coverage? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: One thing that we're avoiding is waiting to see if any other really crappy retail stores go bankrupt and are offering us relabeling their store. We don't think that that's a highly effective strategy. But in general, Mike do you want to -

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Operator

Yeah, we are doing two kinds of expansion – three kinds of expansion here. Number one is we are continuing to roll out our MetroPCS format nationwide. And we've seen amazing success adding MetroPCS dealers in cities across the country, and that's really helping our prepaid performance. Secondly, in our T-Mobile flagship store format, we have two approaches. We have a company store approach, and we have an exclusive dealer approach that's almost like a franchise model, because we make no distinction. We take direct control of the training, of the people, et cetera. And we see an opportunity to continue to roll out additional T-Mobile doors into that new footprint. I mean, think of it, a million extra square miles of LTE coverage this year, thanks to low band and other initiatives that we have under way. That really does open up new areas, where there's marketable territory for us to go and plant a stake in the ground. And finally, it's about online. Let's not lose side of the fact that it's 2015, purchasing in wireless is getting simpler as there's less overall fragmentation of volume of smartphones. People have a good idea what they're looking for. So we have a great opportunity to continue to expand our distribution online and welcome more and more people to our family digitally as well. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. And, Simon, I'd just to wrap up your questions, because as you asked your first question about the iPhone I was actually just came back from vacation and I was sitting there, because three years ago right now is when I was contemplating, coming in in a month or two as the CEO of T-Mobile. And I sit back and I think that it was…

Operator

Operator

We have Jonathan Chaplin with New Street Research. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research LLP

Analyst

Thanks very much. Just a quick question on the platform that Google has rolled out with you guys and Sprint. Two quick questions around that. First of all, I think the product has launched very recently. I'm wondering if you've seen any early trends that are worth commenting on? I'm wondering how you think about the risk of this sort of a project with Google? And then I'm wondering if you'd offer the same kind of platform, or offer Comcast the same opportunity to use a platform like that? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I mean, a few things. First of all, it's too – it's early. I mean it's a very early – the process is moving deliberately but slowly, the application time is slow, but it's moving out. And I would say the anecdotal feedback I've gotten from customers that are using it is, I thought this was something they're doing with both you and Sprint, because my phone never moved to the Sprint part, which is sort of what we expected, and you laugh, but I think that is happening. So a significant portion of the roaming is going to the best network capability, which is ours. Second is, this is very profitable for us. So this isn't a gift game. It's a profitable business we're excited about it. And third, in the combination of all of what you are talking about, I have been clear that the difference between us and dumb and dumber and the other carriers is, we don't see any of these industry evolutions, as a threat. We see them as a logical progression of that industry structure continuum that we outlined in a way they use our reach on the mobile side to other players that…

Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research LLP

Analyst

To my understanding is that there is some limit on how much Google can sell on that platform. Did you guys put that in place, just because you wanted to see how the product would evolve? Or are there risks that you want to protect against as well? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Peter is turning his microphone on.

Peter A. Ewens - Executive Vice President-Corporate Strategy

Analyst

Hey, it's Peter there, we don't have any limits what Google can sell on their platform.

Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research LLP

Analyst

Got it. Thank you. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That was an emphatic screen from Peter Ewens, by the way. Just so you know. That was arms waving – that was after we woke him up. Thanks for your question. And I fear, operator that we need to go the next question and I think it's Walt Piecyk [BTIG LLC].

Walter Piecyk - BTIG LLC

Analyst

Can you hear me now? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

Walter Piecyk - BTIG LLC

Analyst

Are you guys there? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Walt. We're here. We've been waiting for this, Walt.

Walter Piecyk - BTIG LLC

Analyst

Do not fear anything. Your ad budget, I mean obviously you guys doing good job on social media which is largely free. But the ad budget looks like it was up year-on-year. Can you give us a sense of kind of what's behind that in the quarter and how you think about it in the second half of the year as you're launching some of these 700 megahertz parts? And then also as you came, when you look at 2016, as you launch 700 megahertz in some of these additional markets, it kind of changes the types of customers that you can go after, as you're lighting up different types of neighborhoods. Does the ad strategy change at all in that regard? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. As I toss the ball to Mike to talk about the ads rate, I want to tell you about it, in your lead-in question, you talked about how successful we are in social media, and I want you let you know that in order for the company to do that, I personally have to spend huge amounts of time experimenting with the new vehicles. And I will tell you that that includes hours of my life that I had to spend on Periscope, watching you and your children play Trivial Pursuit, or drive down the seat and have your children ask you, Dad, are we almost there. And I want to let you know that with those things that I do, it's very clear that the board and the compensation committee need to step up, and save me better, because it's taking years of my life, but – Mike do you want to talk about the ads?

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Operator

Well, yeah, I mean, every quarter is a little different. I can't give too much of the secret sauce here, but I will say that this is one area where we're proud and most quarters to be a solid number four. We are very efficient in how we go about acquiring customers, especially when you put the lens on it, that shows how our share of overall growth ads in the marketplace compares to our competitors. And how we're rolling up all of the net adds in the industry and yet, we're in most quarters of solid number four, when it comes to investing in marketing. Just so to the strength of our brand and to the premise of your question, the fact that we're using our community and the fact that we've created a consumer revolution and put our brand on the side of the customer, we're getting an amplification out of our dollars that are competitors, just simply can match. Now that being said, this is seasonal business. Every quarter is a little bit different. We do tend to take a few moments through the year and really investing get behind this business. And although, if you've noticed, but we tend to do that a little bit counter cyclically to our competitors. We don't necessarily invest in the times when it looks the most expensive to us, because we can fish during other times of the year. That's been the pattern the last year or two. I try not to be predictable. The last thing you asked about was about regional plays. And yeah, absolutely, we see real opportunity in certain markets where the network conditions show that we can beat anybody, and those are places where we're investing disproportionately, because we know that the network is really surpassing what our competitors can offer and we want to shine a light on that through advertising. So, there is certainly a regional overlay to this. That's greater now than it was a couple of years ago when we were more one-size-fits-all nationally.

Walter Piecyk - BTIG LLC

Analyst

And Mike, do you respond to the porting ratio. I mean, can you give a little bit more kind of color on the ebb and flow of porting ratios and maybe what percentage of growth ads they actually are representing these days?

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Operator

Yeah, absolutely. The only color I'll give you is that the movements that we've been seeing, our best evidence as we look at switcher data and we have lots of ways of getting out real switching versus porting, which is just a subset. And what it looks like to us is that there hasn't been any real shift in switching. John, threw Verizon a little bone there and said, it looks like they've made a little bit of progress in porting in July. There is no evidence that they've actually made progress on us in switching overall. And what's happening is more of the switchers are port, and because they're bribing customers to port. But it's not actually to us looking like it's resulting in a significantly higher number of switchers. So that's really important. Again, several quarters in a row now, we've rolled up all of the net adds on postpaid phones and more than the other three combined. And we're confident that the strategy is working. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay.

Walter Piecyk - BTIG LLC

Analyst

All right. Great. Thanks.

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Operator

You bet. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Real, just quickly. Just – I am reading all the Twitter questions, including the ones that are annoyed saying that I'm not taking any Twitter questions. And some of that is just so – you'll know that the Twitter questions so far are overlapping quite well with what the call-in questions are taking. But @TechSpot is annoyed that I'm barely taking Twitter questions. So I apologize. Although, I do like annoying people, but not somebody whose name is "Tech." And @TechSpot, I would just say you had a couple of questions that I thought were covered and I'll just tick them for you right now, to prove that you are not being ignored. Neville did talk about how many bad 12 POPs will be covered, and we said, we will approach 190 million by the end of the year. I think we've – the update was that virtually everything we need to do that has been cleared or we have a pathway to do it. So, that's the deployment schedule. And there was a question that was harder to answer, because it's a long discussion about what are your plans for improving indoor signal in non 700 megahertz areas, including more 700 megahertz purchases in both thing. I mean, obviously, we've got a significant infill strategy and modernization strategy that's going on along with the deployment of 700 megahertz, which has a tremendous overlap with where our customers are so far. Obviously, more 700 megahertz purchases is something we've been very clear and deliberate about, which also leads into a longer discussion about the broadcast auctions, and the criticality for carriers like us and our commitment to be successful in purchasing the 600 in what would be the end of first quarter broadcast auction to take place. So are we cool now? I really do love you. Okay. Now that I've already proved I'm not ignoring you, I'm going to ignore you and go back to the next call in question which was – I think it's Phil Cusick [JPMorgan].

Operator

Operator

And your line is open.

Philip A. Cusick - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks, John. So the typical pushback we get on T-Mobile aside from David Barden's tome is that you're going to run out of capacity. So Neville, can you help us think about not this year necessarily when you are deploying 700, but the next couple of years when there's not a lot of spectrum at least for sale from the government and useable. How do you think about capacity and should we be thinking about CapEx ramping up? And sort as part of that what does the secondary spectrum market look like? Are any of the 700 holders getting a little more reasonable on selling what they have? Thanks. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And Phil, as I hand it over to Neville, wouldn't you ask that exact same question to all of the other carriers. And...

Philip A. Cusick - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

I would, but you don't hear about them. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right, that's right, because I think the media has been dominated in the last week around speculation about running out of spectrum by Verizon. So I think this is just to put out there, when you get to the medium to long-term, absolutely everybody needs new sources of supply. Not just us, and we've been clear about it. We all have different paths and we feel very comfortable and we are still in a superior position as it relates to supply per customer as defined by megahertz POP. Neville, why don't you through that? Neville R. Ray - Chief Technology Officer & Executive VP: Thanks, John. Hey, Phil I mean, we could talk on this for a while. But I'll be punchy and quick as I can on this. It's obviously an important topic and discussion for the industry, there is a lot of growth. But we are very well positioned for that growth. I'd tell you, we're in the midst of a great execution on a great plan for growth in this company. The isn't a surprise to us. But why are we different? Most spectrum per customers than Verizon and AT&T, right out of the gate. We have less than half of our spectrum that we own committed to LTE today. That number is about 40% right now. So we have a lot of LTE growth ahead of us. The MetroPCS execution that's been referenced to couple of times on the call. Just simply outstanding, it's delivered two things, one the most dense network in the U.S., and two of the best mid-band contiguous spectrum position. The compounding nature of those two things is the envy of all of our…

Craig Eder Moffett - MoffettNathanson LLC

Analyst

Thank you, gentlemen. I take that to be a sign of your highly developed targeted marketing capabilities. I'm going to see if I can slip in two questions as my birthday present. First, you've talked a lot about the 700 band, but not about other spectrum bands. There's been – obviously, there was a lot of talk during the quarter about DISH Network and their AWS4 band. I wonder if maybe Neville could comment on how you see the other spectrum band might be out there in the private market, relative to the 600 spectrum. And then, second, if you could just update us on your small medium business initiatives and what kind of traction you are seeing in the SMB segment? John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay, I'll attempt to have Neville give a short answer on that first one, running the risk that we could be here till tomorrow, and then Mike can give you an update on the small business. Neville R. Ray - Chief Technology Officer & Executive VP: No short answers from me, John, I can't help it. No, I'll keep this one brief. I mean, obviously there's a secondary market out there, and the DISH folks have a fair volume of spectrum that's yet to be brought to market. It has as to come to market at some point in time. And there's a good midband portfolio there. It faces obviously some risks and issues around standardization and timelines and equipment. And so when you look at how you're going handle and grow a very fast-paced business like ours today and in 2016 and 2017, those assets, they're further out for us. So hence my comments on all the things we're doing with the asset base that we have.…

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Operator

Yeah, Craig, the story on small business is short and simple. It's going really well. As you know, we plunged ourselves into the space with Un-carrier 9 early this year. And I think we've said a couple of times we've seen our business at retail in particular, more than double in flow rate since then, and that's holding up. So we're really delighted with that. Overall, across all channels including sales channels, our flow rate's up about 50%. So the results are across the board. And financially, we're seeing good quality customers coming in. So while we made a big investment in pricing and in simplicity, in the value propositions that we rolled out with Simple Choice for Business, what we're seeing is that customers are coming in, they're attaching with high end phones, they are attaching data, our cost of sales is going down. And so we've really got a nice beginning to a long-term strategy here. The second thing I'll say is Un-carrier 9 was not the end of the strategy. It was a firing gun. It was a start. And each subsequent move now is designed to attract not just consumers, but small and medium businesses as well. And Mobile Without Borders is a great example of this. We've seen real business uptake from small and medium businesses, and in fact big enterprises that do businesses across the borders and want a different proposition for their employees. 10 gigs for All, our signature offer and promotion of the back-to-school season, amazingly appealing to small businesses who don't want to have to worry about whether or not they're parceling out the right amount of data to each employee, because the 10 gigs for each employee is so attractive. So a nice start, the team's done an amazing job, but a lot of late legs for this strategy over time. John J. Legere - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Let's take the next – let's see. The messages coming in on text, the only other one that's come in is would you consider a partnership with various cable companies. And I think I've already covered that, which is obviously we look at everything from a customer standpoint, and if there's something that's beneficial to them, which I believe there ultimately is, we're interested on their behalf. So that kind of kills those questions, the Twitter messages I'm keeping an eye on, but let's go to another one on the phone.

Operator

Operator

We have Joseph Mastrogiovanni with Credit Suisse. Joseph A. Mastrogiovanni - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. Two if I could, maybe first a follow up to Mike's earlier question related to the PCS synergies. Just what's left to do to achieve the full run rate there? And then switching gears if I could, you've had nationwide VoLTE available for roughly year now. Can you just talk about the consumer response to the VoLTE and maybe the differences that you've seen compared to traditional voice as it relates to quality of service? J. Braxton Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP: Sure, really quickly on the MetroPCS synergies, we have now as of July 1 shut down all the legacy CDMA networks. But the accounting rules tell you, you have to completely decommission those networks before you can start recognition of the synergy. And that's typically a four- to six-month time period. So it will take the balance of the year to get to full run rate. And, remember, some of our largest markets, Miami, New York, were shut down at the very tail end of June. Neville R. Ray - Chief Technology Officer & Executive VP: So real quick on VoLTE, tremendous progress, first to launch nationwide. This is an interesting step. If you look at the VoLTE core volume on our network, it's 2x what we have on GSM. So it's a huge piece of growth on voice calling for us. Everything pretty much we now sell on LTE is VoLTE capable. It's a big part of our future. VoLTE is not just about the customer experience on voice and fast setup times. It's about how do you really move into a complete and holistic kind of IP ramp up…

G. Michael Sievert - Chief Operating Officer

Operator

Yes, absolutely. Two or three quick ones. First on that one – that person asked when are the update to retail POS systems and other communications technology coming. I'd say this is an area where we're really, really excited about. We are rapidly rolling out tablet-based activation and care systems to our retail stores and in fact, redesigning our retail stores, so that we don't have those big counters separating our people from their customers. Our people want to be working collaboratively with customer side-by-side. They're actually doing a redesign of the entire retail format to enable Tablet-based selling and activation. The second thing we're doing is we're rolling out a breakthrough technology, developed by Neville's team called Grand Central. And this is an automated tech support solution that allows our people to go in and with single clicks, diagnose issues on people phones and instantly solve them. It is really exciting, we're using it in our care tech support. We're rolling that out to retail soon. And then next year, we've got a completely new system that's much faster and dramatically reduces the activation time. So lots of excitement there. Another questioner asked, what's going on with machine-to-machine. Because overall, you saw that we gained 2.1 million net ads this quarter. But one category if you saw in our disclosures was negative by a small number, negative 33,000 and that was machine-to-machine customers. And that one is pretty simple. We went out to our customer base this quarter and notified them that we are going to be putting more of our emphasis starting in 2016 on our LTE network and dedicating more spectrum to LTE and less to our 2G and edge networks. And that's caused some customers to have devices out there that they are looking at for…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the T-Mobile U.S. second quarter 2015 conference call. If you have any further questions, you may contact the Investor Relations or Media Department. Thank you for your participation. And you may now disconnect. Have a pleasant day.