A major reason for the Verizon purchase was giving Frontier the scale to operate more efficiently, and McCarthy said that has been happening. Since buying the CTF properties Frontier has been aggressively cutting costs. "We expect this process to increase efficiency and improve internal resource utilization by reducing our reliance on contractors." "We remain on track to roll out our consumer-friendly FiOS self-installation process in the second half of the year, which we expect will improve customer satisfaction by providing customers the ability to complete FiOS installation on their own schedule," said McCarthy. One of the biggest pain points in getting cable is waiting for a technician to come hook up your service. In Q2, customer churn improved to 2.24% (1.95% for Frontier Legacy and 2.69% for CTF operations) compared to 2.37% in Q1 2017 (1.95% for Frontier Legacy and 3.01% for CTF operations). Combined Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPC) came in at $80.38, slightly down from $80.62 in the previous quarter. He also noted that "the impact from the account cleanup is now entirely behind the company, and we are focused on getting voluntary churn back to benchmark level." In the past two quarters the CEO blamed some of his company's customer loss on former Verizon customers who had never paid being removed. "We continue to make good progress at stabilizing our consumer business, highlighted by the churn improvements in CTF FiOS as well as stable ARPC," said McCarthy. MCarthy and Frontier CFO Perley McBride shared much more during the company's earnings call with analysts following the release of the Q2 numbers.įrontier has been losing video subscribers as well as broadband customers. That's certainly putting a bright spin on the results.
"In particular, we improved churn in our California, Texas, and Florida (CTF) market, saw progress in our commercial business, and continued to reduce costs, which resulted in increased adjusted EBITDA margins." "We were pleased with the progress we made during the second quarter as we executed well on a number of key initiatives stabilizing operations," he said. He was no different in his remarks in the Q2 earnings release (courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence). The broadband losses are particularly bad because most pay-TV providers have seen losses in video, but have added internet customers.įrontier has been steadily getting smaller, but CEO Dan McCarthy has become very good at seeing the positive. Again, the company not only lost 70,000 pay-television customers, it also dropped 100,000 broadband subscribers. In Q2, Frontier saw its total customer base drop from 5.2 million the previous quarter to 5.08 million. That has become normal operating procedure for the company since it spent $10.54 billion buying Verizon's ( VZ 1.10% ) wireline business in California, Texas, and Florida. Frontier Communication ( FTR ) finished another quarter where it saw its subscriber count fall.