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T-Mobile US, Inc.

TMUS β€’ NasdaqGS

$168.18
β–²1.73 (1.04%)β€’ REGULAR

T-Mobile US, Inc.

$168.18
β–²1.0%
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TMUS Q3 2025 Earnings Call

October 23, 2025 at 12:00 AM

Company
TMUS
Quarter
Q3 2025
Date
October 23, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Speakers
2
Word Count
~10,625

Transcript Content

Jon Freier
Yeah, thank you, Mike, and thank you, Mike Rollins. You know, the overall dynamics is pretty consistent relative to the overall promotional activities that are happening in the markets. What you're seeing with us is this overall widening differentiation that both Mike and Trini have talked about that more and more people are realizing that there's a far better experience with the network at T-Mobile in addition to our long-held fame of value. And then, of course, what we're seeing is more opportunities in our top 100 markets and then, of course, in our smaller markets rural areas where we have continued growth out there. So, you know, this promotional construct that we've been using has been really resonating, which is, you know, our new plans on our experience, more experience beyond plans, some of our no trade up to a certain value in terms of what you're getting with us. All of those promotional constructs are working really, really well. But the overall, you know, environment is just generally being consistent. And then like what Mike said just a few moments ago, more switching in the marketplace against that backdrop is definitely helping to fuel our overall momentum in the marketplace. And, of course, with lower churn and better retention that you're seeing from T-Mobile coupled with higher gross ads, that's producing the overall volume that you're seeing in the marketplace. So we feel really good about what happened in Q3, obviously. We're seeing that momentum continue into Q4 so far, and that's reflected in the numbers and the guidance that you heard from both Trini and Peter just a few moments ago. So all of that's going incredibly well. We're excited about it. It's going against our plans, and that's what's, you know, really happening out there in the marketplace. Mike Sievert (CEO): How is it affecting customer lifetime values, the state of the competition out there?
Jon Freier
Yeah, our CLVs have been very, very resilient. So, you know, when you look at, we look at this, we don't report, obviously, CLVs, and we don't look at this on a daily or a weekly basis, but we certainly look at it and monitor these very, very carefully on a monthly and quarterly and ongoing basis. But overall, CLVs are holding very, very constant. As you're seeing, you know, premium plan adoption, customers self-selecting up that rate card continuing to increase, churn continuing to decrease relative to, you know, what others have seen in the marketplace. So overall, CLVs are holding very, very steady across the entire portfolio. Mike Sievert (CEO): It's interesting because, you know, one of the critiques that some people have in the industry is they cherry pick one metric, such as a device promotion and a broad CLV picture for customers and talk themselves into saying, well, competition's overheated. But that's not our experience. That might be an experience at some other companies I don't know. But it's not our experience. And I think it's important to see because it's overall, you know, an equation of how long does the customer stay? What else do they buy from us? how deep does their relationship become, how do we monetize that relationship, how efficiently can we serve them, and so on, and all those. Even Peter has been forced to admit that our ARPA guidance needs to be increased yet again, you know, and that's saying something, so. Kathy Au (Head of Investor Relations): All right. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Next question. null (Operator): The next question will come from Craig Moffitt with Moffitt Nathanson. Please go ahead. Craig Moffitt (Analyst β€” Moffitt Nathanson): Hi, thank you. Mike, let me be on the long list of people saying congratulations on a remarkable run, and Serena, congratulations on stepping into the new role. And while I have all of you, let me also say happy birthday to Kathy. Happy birthday. Kathy Au (Head of Investor Relations): Thanks, Greg. Craig Moffitt (Analyst β€” Moffitt Nathanson): I want to ask about the iPhone cycle. There's been a lot of talk about this being certainly not a super cycle, but at least a more normal and more robust cycle than the last couple of years. Are you seeing that? Do you think that that's likely to have carryover into the fourth quarter? and if so, what kind of opportunities does that create and what kind of cost does it create in terms of accelerated number of subsidies that you would have to give for retention as well as customer acquisition? Srini Gopalan (COO): Okay, great. Thanks for the question, Craig. So we're seeing, this has been our best iPhone performance. We're seeing a strong cycle. Now, to your questions of what does that land up meaning for promotions and spend and the rest of it. Look, the heart of it is every time there's a new device, people sort of reassess their choice and that's one of the big drivers to our momentum in the last quarter. And when people reassess their choice and differentiation has widened, you see the kind of performance you saw in the last quarter. As we look at Q4, our momentum into Q4 is continuing to be strong and that's driven are raising our guide on postpaid phones and so we're feeling really good about where we are in q4 now one of the one of the really nice things when you drive volume through widening differentiation rather than simply promoting is you can drive volume at the same point as deliver the outsized financial results we've delivered this quarter so we're feeling really good and that's reflected in kind of our guide for Q4, not just in terms of what we're saying on volumes, but also what we've said in EBITDA, and importantly, free cash flow. Kathy Au (Head of Investor Relations): Great. Thank you so much. Operator, let's do one more question on the phone, and then we'll turn to social. Mike Sievert (CEO): All right. I'm wondering, too, could we make it a hard-hitting question for John about the network? I said in my opening remarks, by the way, you know, this is my 50th one of these. And in the era where we had me and John and Braxton and Neville, Neville did all the talking because nobody could understand that we might actually be able to build a leading network. So he was always explaining it. So poor John's going to sit here because everybody's like, yeah, yeah, you guys have the best network. We're convinced. Anyway, sorry. You don't have to ask about the network. I'm just kidding. Eric Lubchow (Analyst β€” Wells Fargo): Eric Lubchow with Wells Fargo. Oh, great. Well, appreciate it. And thanks, Mike and Srini, you know, for all the comments. I guess I will try to, you know, touch on the network, uh, given that prompt, um, you know, maybe you could talk a little bit about, um, you know, you, you know, your spectrum positioning today, obviously one of your competitors announced a large deal. There's another block of spectrum AWS three that's speculated out there. So certainly seems like they're, uh, you know, they're, they're coming with more spectrum soon. You talked about, you know, not just defending, but extending your lead over the next couple So you talk about, you know, what, what you're, where you're still deploying spectrum, maybe where there are opportunities to add given the balance sheet strength you have and other things you're doing on the technology side within the network to help extend the lead. That'd be great. Mike Sievert (CEO): Thank you. I love it. Eric, all kidding aside, that's actually, that's a really important question. And maybe we start with Srini, you know, characterize what you saw in those transactions, maybe what our thinking, our thought process is and was. And then maybe we can talk, have here from John too, because while Spectrum's the lifeblood, we're the leaders here and intend to remain the leaders and extend our leadership. There's a lot more to network leadership than spectrum. But first and foremost on spectrum, Serena. Srini Gopalan (COO): So we love our current spectrum position. We not only have more spectrum than anyone else, we have better spectrum than anyone else. Now, that drives a lot of decisions. And we see ourselves as kind of incredibly responsible caretakers of your investment in us. And therefore, the way we think when spectrum comes up, and there's been quite a few secondary market transactions on Spectrum, we go through kind of the rigorous analysis of what is better. Is it better to buy the Spectrum or is it better to densify? And our answer in all of those cases was it was cheaper for us to densify than pay the price that was being asked in those secondary market transactions. Now, other people might have to make different choices. And in some sense, the fact that they have to make different choices is a reflection of the gap in our Spectrum position. And that's the way we've thought of a lot of the conversations that have happened to date. Now, let me be also kind of crystal clear on one thing. My intent is not just to defend our spectrum leadership, but to grow it. And the good news is we see several opportunities to do that in the coming years, whether that's other kind of strategic secondary opportunities or whether it's the auctions that will come by. And we feel in a very, very good place to go out and defend and even expand our Spectrum lead. But like Mike said, building the world's best network is a lot more than Spectrum. And, John, maybe you can talk a bit about that.
John Saw
Absolutely. First of all, you know, I'm glad that there's actually not that many questions on the network because I think the network speaks for itself. It is our product, and you can see its impact on customer acquisition and customer retention. So absolutely pleased to be where we are. A couple of words on our network leadership, and Shunny, you're right, that it's more than spectrum. It starts with our sell sites. We have more sites than the competition. And the greed of our sites are actually the densest as well. Built like a layered cake with the right technology and with the best propagating low-band and mid-band spectrum. Now, we were also the first to roll out our 5G standalone network, and our competition is just now getting started on it. And with this standalone network, we have launched new capabilities like Slicing that is actually powering new services like T-Priority for first responders and Supermobile. We were also first to roll out a 5G advanced network earlier this year. And with that, we have actually unlocked new capabilities ahead of our competition, like low latency, application aware, called L4S, better performance on uplink and downlink. It is not surprising at all to us that, you know, the latest smartphones released to the market performs best on our network. like Srini said, 90% faster on the iPhone 17 than one of our comparators. And not to leave our Androids, the Samsung S25 is more than 100% faster than that same comparator. And by the way, and I can go on and on, but one thing, the Apple Watch this year that was released this year actually runs on our 5G Advance network using a new format called 5G Rate Cap, which is actually, for the first time, 5G optimized for wearables, which means longer battery lives, lower latency, and higher throughputs than those LTE watches that is running on our comparators network. I can go on and on, but, you know, Eric and Mike, this is, you know, we won't stop. And with these assets and these capabilities, we are going to maintain and extend our lead for years to come. Kathy Au (Head of Investor Relations): Great, thanks so much, John. Operator, let's actually take our final question from the phone, please. null (Operator): Yes, ma'am. That will come from Cannon. Vin Kachuar with Barclays. Please go ahead. Kannan Venkateshwar (Analyst β€” Barclays): Thank you. Maybe she gave me one on the balance sheet and Peter, for you as well. But broadly, when we think about the differences between the different operators right now, one of the biggest advantages you guys have versus your peers is you have massive balance sheet capacity and your peers are now more constrained. It might be useful to get your perspective on how you could leverage that position. I mean, you could obviously drive a more aggressive go-to-market strategy using that, but you could also use that balance sheet in other ways, like you mentioned, spectrum or fiber or something. So it would be good to get some perspective on how you view your position from a balance sheet perspective and how you plan to use that. Srini Gopalan (COO): Thanks, Kanan. Look, we're delighted we have the strength in the balance sheet. And the way we think about it is strength in balance sheet does not take away our responsibility to be incredibly thoughtful stewards of your capital. So we do have strength in the balance sheet. That doesn't translate into, therefore, let's go do a bunch of things which don't make sense from a capital allocation perspective. One of the most rigorous processes we follow is how we thoughtfully allocate capital, right? Now, you've talked about fiber. We will continue to pursue a capital light strategy. And fiber, because it brings us a bunch of other skills that our partners bring to the table. Go to market, we will focus that based on what CLVs make sense, not because we have more balance sheet strength. From a spectrum perspective, we'll again follow the rigorous process of buying spectrum that makes sense from our portfolio perspective, buying Spectrum, where it passes our test of it's better to buy than to build. So love the balance sheet strength, but let's be clear, we're not gonna be any less responsible because we're strong. Mike Sievert (CEO): I love that, and you know, the other thing that didn't come out in our Spectrum discussion is sort of our speculation about the future. I mean, one of the things that has happened this year is that auction authority has been restored to the FCC by Congress, along with a mandate to make a large amount of spectrum available. And spectrum prices, as always, will be a function of supply and demand. We see a lot of supply coming. Prices right now in the market are a function of low supply and a function of a once in a generation sort of existential threat faced by our benchmark competitors at the time of the C-band auction created by T-Mobile that pushed prices to unprecedented levels and that's where they stay. That will probably change over time. That's our bet. And, you know, the difference between us and others is that they might be in a business place where they need to act right now at these elevated prices where we have the ability to be patient and pick our moments on spectrum. And we see those moments coming. So we, as Srini says, we will not just defend but extend our lead over time. And certainly, you know, entering those with a strong balance sheet's an element of it. And I just love your point that, you know, then, like now, we will be thoughtful and we will be great stewards of your capital. So hopefully that helps. Kathy Au (Head of Investor Relations): Thanks, Mike. All right, that's all the time we have today for questions. Mike, before I turn the call back over to you, I'm first going to hand the mic over to Srini for just a couple of brief comments. Mike Sievert (CEO): I don't know if you guys are watching, I don't know if you're watching this instead of listening to it, they just brought us all champagne. Is that because of our quarter? It must be because of our quarter. It's got to be because of our quarter. Mike Sievert (CEO): I mean, it's 9 o'clock. Mike Sievert (CEO): Yeah, it's 9 o'clock, it's what we do. Srini Gopalan (COO): Mike, look, I just wanted to say thank you so much. You've shown us what the Uncarrier Spirit truly is like. You've shown us what it is to make bold bets. You've shown us the kind of grit that turns ambitious goals into everyday wins. And for me, thank you for everything. Thank you for everything you've done to this team. And personally, thank you for being a great friend, thought partner, and also just a wonderful human being and I'm really looking forward to continuing to work with you Mike Sievert (CEO): in our next chapter all right thank you guys hopefully over the last hour what you saw is what I told you a month ago that this company is in great hands we heard mostly from Srini today that wasn't accidental we wanted you to hear his voice and his vision for the future you are going to be an exceptional leader for us and for this company and of course you're gonna have the benefit of of being backed by the best management team in American business. So you guys, it's been an honor and a privilege of a lifetime to be the CEO, and I look forward to continuing to support this team in my new role. I promise we don't plan to spend the day running your company day drinking. Thanks for joining the call, everybody. Cheers. Kathy Au (Head of Investor Relations): Cheers. Thanks, guys. null (Operator): Thank you. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the T-Mobile's third quarter, 2025 earnings call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a pleasant day.