Verizon EVP and CFO Matt Ellis, who’s leaving the post on May 1, provided an update on the carrier’s strategic priorities this week at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. Ellis will be replaced by Tony Skiadas as the board looks for a long-term replacement. Additionally, Verizon Business CEO Sowmyanaryan will move over the lead the consumer business, and Kyle Malady, formerly head of global networks and technology, will step into the top job for the Verizon Business Group.
Ellis told Morgan Stanley’s Simon Flannery that Sampath created momentum in the business group and will bring that to consumer. “Sampath will bring that same operational focus to the consumer side now.” Malady, Ellis said, has “been involved in lots of our business customer interactions over the past few years. So this is a fairly natural step…As our enterprise customers are making those moves, having somebody leading that group who knows the technology and the network side inside out is–[it] makes a lot of sense.”
With new group CEO, it’s all about “operational focus” for Verizon Consumer Group
With regard to the consumer business, Ellis said gross add volumes are picking up–still not where the company wants them to be—and he called out new service revenues flowing from the 1 million fixed wireless access net adds from 2022. He also noted price increases and payment patterns consistent with what was observed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg temporarily led the consumer business after the departure of Manon Brouillette who lasted less than a year in the role. Ellis said the goal with the consumer business is “being focused on a few key things rather than trying to do too many things, and then focus on execution…So I think you’ll see Sampath getting very much back to the basics of what made Verizon Wireless the biggest and best performing carrier in the U.S. We know what that looks like. We know how to do it and narrow back down those things that we’re going to be very focused on.”
Verizon Business Group “seeing more green shoots start to come through on the private network side”
In previous investor-facing communications, Verizon has identified private networks and mobile edge computing, and the combination of the two, as key vectors for 5G monetization. At the same, the company has acknowledged that these new revenues have not materialized as quickly as initially expected.
Ellis said that in the back half of 2022, “We really started to see a little bit of a shift in the amount of [private networks] deals that we were getting through with some of our larger enterprise customers. And now it’s a small number and not as high as I’d like it to be.”
He continued: “The pace of adoption is something that’s probably going to take a little longer than we’d like. But in terms of the scale of the opportunity, still very much believe there is something significant there…For me, the question is more of when, not if. It’s absolutely going to be there. And the good news is with some of the customers that we’ve had—we’ve been live with the product at their premises for a little while now—we’re seeing a validation of their initial use cases that they used to justify making the investment on their end.”
Click here for a transcript of Ellis’s comments from the Morgan Stanley event.
