Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

T-Mobile is making leadership changes, including the departure of Mike Katz and the
rebuilding of the Un carrier spirit. The company is seeing progress in enterprise and
small-sized businesses, but the success of T-Mobile for Business is unclear. The
speakers discuss the potential for growth in the mobile business and the importance
of maintaining a fixed cost versus variable cost decision.The potential for disruptive companies to move into themobile space, with T-Mobile and Charter expected to see strong growth. TheSo we got some leadership changes taking place across the industry. Most recently, T Mobile where Mike Katz is stepping away after two decades. Coming on board at T Mobile as their new chief enterprise officer is Chris Sambar, who will be leadingthe SMB enterprises and government businesses. What we are observing here at T Mobile is with Srini Gopalan, a rebuilding, and we talked about thiswhen Srini came on board, a rebuilding of the Un carrier into a company that is even more focused
now on execution than it was ever before.With Greenie now being deeper in the saddle, and we saw like half a dozen of senior execs already leaving, the senior leadership team is like three quarters new.We see that Sriniis putting his team in place. You know, Andre Almeida, who came from Europe, oneof his close lieutenants of Srini's lieutenants, he ran the expanded enterprise group that not only hasbusiness init, but also like key ads and the Al efforts. He is now moving over as the president of marketing.It will be very interesting of how Andre will do that.They hired Chris Sambar, who, up until about two years ago, was at AT&T, a highly respected executive, a terrific leader, straight sho-ter, great executor, one of the architects and implementers of AT&T's FirstNet success story. For the last two years, he was like the COO of a storage company, and
now he's coming back to telecom. With Chris, T Mobile is getting a terrific executive. When we look at T Mobile for Business, they're making progress. They're growing. For somebody like Chris to come in, there's only upside,you know? In comparison, it's a huge number as a multiple. In absolute numbers, we always knew it was like.modest, but you have to start somewhere. And so, Andre is handing over that portfolio, and | think Chris will execute very well here. Yes. It will. Yeah. Well, let's see exactly where Chris takes this. On his farewell LinkedIn post or his goodbye to T Mobile LinkedIn post, Katz mentioned that he startedas ajunior in college as anin store sales rep. And with him, T Mobile and you have to give TMobile a lot of credit for rewriting telecom and, as they like to say, changing wireless for the better.He has a big role in this. He was also instrumental in forging the MVNO between the cable companiesand T Mobile for the business side. He never got enough credit for this. He was kind of the unsunghero here. | watched this over like five years happening, and how this slowly progressed forward.And without him, T Mobile would not have closed that MVNO agreement. You know, the cable companies just recently, and | don't think there was a big announcement about it,
they fully launched on T Mobile. | would say that the cable guys the cable guys are coming for small and mid.Now that
they have an offer where they can address up to a thousand lines, | would expect that the cable companies will get a lot, lot stronger in business on the mobile side.So, it will be an increasingly crowded space where three very disruptive companies, T Mobile witha new leader, Charter and Comcast, especially a Charter that will have absorbed Cox soon, play the.business market You know, we mentioned it before, T Mobile made about six monthsago the opposite decision of adding more company owned stores. For me, more company owned stores means you're more bullish that you have pretty consistent traffic where you put them.Whereas the variable decision, you don't know if it goes up or down, and you only want tocompensate for performance is when you move towards mobile.And from the T Mobile front, a branding perspective, you own the overall experience. So youyou are making sure that your employees are giving those customers exactly what they want.Obviously, you need the foot traffic to make that happen first and foremost. But, yeah, it's an.interesting divergence.At AT&T, about a month ago, Pascal Desroches announced he'll be retiring from a CFO position at the end of the year, and he will be replaced by Jennifer Beery. She's an AT&T alum,most recently CFO and COO at McAfee. Thoughts on Pascal stepping down?
Well, Pascal was the right man at the right time. He came in with John Stankey taking over as CEO,and he established a different tone than John Stevens had. Pascal really established faith and trust
and transparency back into the AT&T numbers. Under John Stevens, they changed how they reportedthe number almost every quarter. And it was so difficult to reconcile of what's actually going on in the
company and what the numbers said.
And as a result, none of the analysts trusted really AT&T's numbers. And a result, the stock traded ata discount of where it should trade. Pascal, who is a great person, really simplified how the company
was reporting, made it a lot more transparent, which also helped the company then to fully
demonstrate the success it has made over time, and how the company has focused on thefundamentals that has made AT&T an American icon. John Stankey refocused the company's strategyonconvergence. And Pascal told the story very successfully to Wall Street and investors.We did some work around investor relations. And one of the things that's also very interesting is
about half of AT&T's shareholders are retail shareholders. And what came out of that work that we did is that PASCAL restored the trust of small investors in the company. Investor Relations typically only deal with the massive investors, which is only half of the universe. And so, you know, Jennifer is coming in.She worked for John Stankey also before. When you go back when Jennifer worked for John the first
time around, John was very effusive about the qualifications of Jennifer. And I'm sure it hurt him when she stepped away. And what you need inthe relationship between the CEO and the CFO is a trusting relationship, you know, next to the COO. It's the most critical relationship you have.| always like to say the CEO is the brain of the company. The COO is the heart in Jeff McAlfresh. Hemoves the blood through the organization. The CFO is the lungs. They supply the oxygen that the
heart needs to push the blood through and to supply also the brain with oxygen.John gets back somebody he knows, he trusts, and based on what he said inthe past, admires and really gets along with.