Asset Sales and Plan for Greater Investment by Lumen Technologies Inc’s (NYSE: LUMN) Put Onus on Management to Return to Sales Growth

Lumen’s fiber holdings make it one of the biggest communications infrastructure providers in the U.S., and its extensive network is matched by few other companies. However, technological advances continually improve networking efficiency and enable less costly solutions to store and transport data. Consequently, even in Lumen’s business services segments, which account for over 70% of total revenue, we think revenue is likely to continue declining. Lumen’s business customers will continue to benefit from the ability to use shared, rather than private, networks and technological advancements that require less bandwidth and enable more efficient routing.

Lumen’s intention to sell a substantial portion of its incumbent local exchange carrier, or ILEC, business should relieve the firm of a big chunk of its fastest-declining revenue (voice) and lower-quality consumer Internet revenue. While the divestiture alone should moderate the firm’s sales declines, it will also result in significantly lower cash flow, which will be further diminished because the firm expects to ramp up investment in its remaining business.

Financial Strength

Lumen Technologies Inc’s (NYSE: LUMN) continued strengthening its financial position in 2020. In 2020, the firm paid down nearly $2 billion in debt and refinanced $13 billion in debt to push out maturities and reduce interest rates. At the end of 2020, the firm had $400 million in cash, $32 billion in debt, and a net debt/adjusted EBITDA ratio of 3.6. Less than $7 billion of the debt now matures before the end of 2024. With the free cash it generates, we project Lumen has the ability to reduce debt materially while also having a substantial amount of cash to return to shareholders and not scrimping on any capital investment needs. It reliably pays about $1 billion in annual. While the firm is set to sacrifice well below 30% of EBITDA between these transactions and the expiration of CAF-II funds the firm has been receiving. Its dividend for the year 2020 is marked at 10.3 % while in 2019 it was 7.6 %.

Bull Says

After selling much of its ILEC business, Lumen may be able to return to sales growth over the next few years rather than face perpetual decline.

Lumen has further shifted its business away from the declining consumer and toward the enterprise, which leaves it with a better chance for future top-line growth.

The explosion in data use, particularly mobile, could make fiber assets much more lucrative than they have historically been, and Lumen’s fiber holdings place it in the top two or three in the U.S.

Company Profile

Lumen Technologies Inc’s (NYSE: LUMN) is one of the United States’ largest telecommunications carriers serving global enterprises with 450,000 route miles of fiber, including over 35,000 route miles of subsea fiber connecting Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Its merger with Level 3 further shifted the company’s operations toward businesses (over 70% of revenue) and away from its legacy consumer business. Lumen offers businesses a full menu of communications services, providing collocation and data center services, data transportation, and end-user phone and Internet service. On the consumer side, Lumen provides broadband and phone service across 37 states, where it has 4.5 million broadband customers.

(Source: Morningstar)

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