Altice USA renews business services strategy amidst Q2 slowness

Altice USA has reset its business services strategy. In June, the service provider brought a new leadership team set on driving service and revenue growth.

“We are renewing our strategy around B2B with an experienced new leadership team as of June, which brings a regimented focus on growing our B2B business through expanding our product portfolio, refining our go-to-market strategy, improving conversion rates through better onboarding, and converting business customers to fiber utilization in a more meaningful way,” said Dennis Matthew, CEO of Altice USA, during the second quarter earnings call.

While renewing its focus on B2B is compelling, segment revenues dipped 1.9% year-over-year to $364.7 million. SMB and other revenue were down 2.0% YoY in Q2 2023.

Business services and wholesale revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, was $364,704 and $728,345, respectively, and $371,613 and $739,243 for the three and six months ended June 30, 2022, respectively. 

Likewise, Lightpath's revenue dipped 1.4% YoY in Q2 2023. Altice USA said that “Lightpath’s revenue decline is driven by Sprint early termination revenue in the prior period of approximately $2.3 million” and “excluding this early termination revenue, Lightpath revenue would have grown 1.1% in the second quarter of 2023.”

Scaling fiber voice
Expanding its business voice service offerings is one area where the new B2B services team is making progress.

Matthew said the new B2B team had been working on expanding the business services “product portfolio, having enabled single-line business-hosted voice connections versus requiring multiple lines, which resulted in an immediate take rate.”

He added that we “continue to scale our fiber voice capabilities to offer multiline services to customers of all sizes.”

Altice USA will also extend the new voice solutions, including broadband and mobile bundle, to business customers across the West. Matthew said Altice USA “will launch a business services Optimum Complete bundle later this year, bringing the best value proposition of mobile and broadband services to our business customers.”

Enhancing wireless backhaul, E-Rate
Besides beefing up its business services line, Altice USA is seeing potential in wireless backhaul and E-Rate. This comes at a time when Altice USA reported lower backhaul revenue attributable to wholesale customers and lower contract termination fee revenue.

“Other areas of opportunity within B2B include the growth we see in fiber circuit sales to Tier 1 and Tier 2 wireless carriers, reinforcing our superior network quality as a trusted partner to some of the nation’s largest wireless carriers,” Matthew said.

Additionally, the service provider is seeing gains in the E-Rate segment. “We also saw solid win rates on e-rate bids for the upcoming school year, providing integral connectivity services for local K through 12 education segments,” Matthew said. 

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