Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sebastiano Petti, and I cover the Telecom Cable and Satellite Space at JP Morgan. I want to introduce Chris Guttman-McCabe, Chief Regulatory and Communications Officer of Anterix. Chris, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Did I do it? You are. There we go. Thank you, Sebastiano. How are you? Of course. Good afternoon. Yeah, thanks again for joining us. Anterix sits at a unique intersection of spectrum policy, utility, modernization, and critical infrastructure. There's a lot going on, happening on each of those fronts. As you think about the next 12 months- 18 months, what are management's top priorities, whether that's advancing customer utility customer deployments, working through regulatory milestones, or something else? I guess, where do you see the biggest sources of potential upside or risk to the business from here? Yeah. Thank you. First of all, thank you for having us, we are excited to be here. You know, when you look around the hotel and you see the unbelievable amount of capital that is being deployed and to be deployed, it's really a testament to your position and your company's position in the marketplace. We're, again, we're excited to be here. For those that don't know, Anterix is, we're a wireless technology company. As Sebastiano said, we really sit at the intersection of telecommunications, technology, the grid, modernization of the grid. You know, as we, as we jump around and we pop into some of the talks like this, I think it's really fair to say Anterix is at the intersection of a lot of what is being discussed here, whether it's modernization of the grid, whether it's the integration of AI into all of the sectors of our economy, whether it's data centers and/or load growth, and it's direct-to-device. You know, part of what we do at Anterix is we enable the communications connectivity for the critical infrastructure sector that is really going to enable all of that evolution. As we look forward and we look out to the next six months, I would say we have three areas of focus. One is continuing to execute, continuing to drive spectrum contracts, that's paramount. We have a 10 MHz spectrum asset that we're working to monetize on behalf of our shareholders, 5 MHz by 5 MHz. That's number one. Number two is beginning to investigate other opportunities and product opportunities, we have a new chief product officer, and we're looking to introduce annual recurring revenue, really improve our top-line revenue, and do it in a way that takes advantage of the position that we have with our current customer base and our future customer base. I would say simultaneously to investigate other uses and users of our spectrum. Today, we announced the grant from the FCC of an experimental license to utilize our spectrum, our 900 MHz spectrum, with Lynk Global to investigate direct-to-device satellite connectivity. We're excited about that, and we are gonna, you know, full steam ahead on all, really all three of those priorities. Great. Definitely want to come back to the Lynk announcement and continue to elaborate on some of the other items that you noted. Starting with the 5 MHz by 5 MHz Report and Order from the FCC, so it largely mirrored your original petition. Were there any conditions, whether it be build-out requirements or timeline obligations embedded in the order that investors should be aware of or that, you know, could constrain your flexibility? No. There, there's really, it was a very magical Report and Order, if I may use those terms. It was, it aligned with really exactly how we had petitioned the FCC, we're very excited about how it came out. In fact, one of the more creative elements in the Report and Order was the movement of our band of spectrum to what's called flexible use, which actually opens up the opportunity for satellite direct-to-device. That to me was one of those nuggets that you find embedded in a, in a government report, in this case, an FCC Report and Order, that really opens the door to a lot of flexibility. Super excited about that. As far as build-out, as far as the rules, they are exactly as we petitioned the FCC. We think we have a lot of flexibility, a lot of optionality as to how to move forward and monetize the spectrum. Yeah. Wanna come back to the optionality as well. Thinking about one of the things that we get questions on from the investment community is just the implied asset valuation. The expansion from 4 MHz to 10 MHz increases your monetizable spectrum per county by, call it, 67%. Sure. Elena referenced an implied asset valuation range of $2.5 billion-$7 billion at 10 MHz. Can you walk us through the key assumptions underlying that range and where you believe, you know, actual pricing is likely to fall? I'm gonna make a plug for your recent report because a lot of it is contained right in that report in terms of how to get to an applied valuation, fantastic job to you and the team. Thank you. When Elena, our CFO, talked about that range of valuation, $2.5 billion - $7 billion, when we look at pricing our spectrum asset, when we have an opportunity in front of a potential customer, we kind of look at the two, some people call them goalposts. I think it's the two edges of the fairway since we just had the PGA Championship yesterday. One is the 600 MHz auction pricing, and the other one is the AWS-3 auction pricing. If you take that 600 MHz auction pricing and you apply it to 10 MHz and to our remaining spectrum that we have yet to monetize, that's where you get the $2.5 billion. If you take the upside, the AWS-3, the higher pricing, a little bit more competition in that auction, and you apply that's where you get the $7 billion. If you look at some of the other transactions, the private market transactions that we've seen, particularly for low-band spectrum, and there was a Columbia Capital to T-Mobile, there was a Comcast to T-Mobile, those are up in the $3 per MHz-POP. They provide an upside that is even beyond, you know, the $2.5 billion-$7 billion. That's sort of how we look at it. We get to determine our price, and we tend to have our price fall between those two guardrails, you know, and we go down that fairway, somewhere between that, what would be $2.5 billion-$ 7 billion. That price, and it's, it's turned out to be about $1.70 a MHz-POP if you, if you look at our 11 contracts so far. That's five to six times what we're currently trading at, right? We're trading at, with a little bit over a $1 billion market cap, we're trading at about $0.33 a MHz-POP right now. There's a lot of upside, there's a lot of headroom. We do have, we have 11 customers who are building these networks across 18 states. We think there's a lot of opportunity to continue to, you know, to move that number up and also to continue to monetize our asset. Great. From a clearing cost perspective, you've indicated you're still within the original, I think, 3 MHz by 3 MHz guidance issued roughly seven years ago. As you move to 5 MHz by 5 MHz, can you help us understand the marginal clearing cost profile? You've mentioned having already blended in some of the incremental 2 MHz by 2 MHz over the past year, but how should we think about the remaining investment required from here? Yeah. I want to focus for a moment on a portion of your question, which is, I do think one of our company's superpowers is the ability to really clear the spectrum and bring it to market, and ultimately have a cost basis that is just fantastic. The teams that execute both on the analysis and also on the actual clearing itself happen to flow up through me, the corp dev team and the spectrum teams. I feel quite blessed. They picked a number. They did their analysis and identified a number almost seven years ago, and with years of clearing, they were still on target to hit that number. You know, as you said, Sebastiano, we began, as we got closer to a Report and Order, we began to clear for 5 MHz by 5 MHz, not just for 3 MHz by 3 MHz. You know, at the moment, we have about 90% of the counties in the country cleared for 3 MHz by 3 MHz. When you move to 5 MHz by 5 MHz, we're probably closer to 40% are cleared for 5 MHz by 5 MHz. What we have determined is that, anytime we speak, publicly, like in an event like this, we're speaking to our analysts, we're speaking to our investors, but we're also speaking both to our potential customers and our potential incumbents. We've made a determination. We're not gonna talk in detail about clearing costs or margin on our spectrum because we think it just creates an environment that might be more difficult for us than it needs to be. Where we zero in is, we have an incredibly valuable asset. It just grew by 2/3. We have an incredible opportunity to drive value to our shareholders. There is significant margin in the 3 MHz by 3 MHz, there is significant margin in the 5 MHz by 5 MHz. by 5 MHz. Some areas will be more difficult to clear than others, we are very comfortable and optimistic that we're gonna clear it in a way that drives a really healthy margin and absolute value for our shareholders. Got it. You touched on the Lynk Global experimental license that was approved by the FCC today to explore the use of satellite D2D in Anterix's licensed 900 MHz broadband spectrum. Can you help us maybe understand the architecture that is being tested and helping us link connecting directly to devices operating on your 900 MHz? I mean, what would be maybe what would a commercial arrangement look like if the experiment succeeded? Yeah, let me Do you mind if I go back to just give a sense of what we're- Absolutely. ... what we're testing? As we look at opportunities in the enterprise space for direct-to-device, right? There's a lot of talk about the consumer space for direct-to-device, but as an entity that is focused on providing connectivity to the enterprise space, what we are investigating is the direct connection from a low Earth orbit satellite, in this case Lynk Global, because we happen to have our spectrum in their band or their satellites have our spectrum in their receivers. We're testing the direct connectivity from the satellite to a range of devices. The reason we say a range of devices is we want to see, to get to your ultimate question, what would a product look like across the enterprise community? We're testing a land mobile radio device, we're testing a smartphone, we're testing a Toughbook, we're testing a bunch of different edge devices and routers, sort of high-end routers, so that any type of enterprise entity paying attention, watching, and looking at what we're gonna report will be able to say, "Oh, that's, you know, that's our type of connectivity. That's what we do." We're doing it across about a half dozen different geographies for the same reason. When you say sort of what the product could look like, that's where that word, you're gonna maybe hear me say it even one more time, optionality comes into play. You know, could we ultimately have an integrated product with Lynk? Certainly. Could it be a Lynk product? It could. Could it be an Anterix product? Might it be with another satellite provider? It might. Lynk is a great partner, and we're excited to move forward with them. It doesn't foreclose other opportunities. But when we look at it, we could see a satellite product that is primary connectivity in areas where our 900 MHz hasn't been built out, and sort of a resilient, redundant play, almost like a satellite overlay, in areas where it has been built out, where you would want to make sure, you know, and utilities are a great example for this. They love the belt and suspenders approach, so if they have terrestrial connectivity and, you know, if something were to happen, you have satellite backup. That's sort of an element of what we're testing. Okay. Maybe help us think about, you know, what is a potential timeline for this experimental phase, and I guess maybe what are some of the milestones that need to be achieved before, you know, becoming more, you know, a commercial launch or maybe a joint go-to-market effort? This is traditional in an experimental license request, we asked for one year, we were granted one year. We will begin testing soon. Lynk has those devices that I referenced, and both companies will have presence in the locations where we begin to test. We'll work through that in the next couple months. I don't think it's going to be one year. I think we're talking in the next few months, and maybe even couple months. Obviously we will, you know, have commercial discussions with Lynk about what it will look like. There's a moment, and it's happening very soon, where we take this regulatory approach, and we hand it over actually to our product team. Ross Spero was brought on as our Chief Product Officer about four months ago. It'll be Ross's task to, you know, to the extent that we move forward, it'll be his task to really turn it into a product that is beneficial to our shareholders and our customers. You mentioned that you know, this agreement with Lynk doesn't necessarily foreclose you from, you know, other opportunities or speaking to others. Have you had conversations with others in terms of, you know, in dialogue with other satellite or LEO operators? How about if I say clearly there is a lot of activity in the direct-to-device space, and there are other providers out there. Our focus in the near term is on the great relationship with Lynk and on, you know, ensuring that this, you know, we move forward and we really prove out this proof of concept. The next step for any of these bands of spectrum that haven't originally been designated for, supplemental coverage from space is to go back to the FCC. For us, what we're doing is we're gathering a wealth of information with Lynk to be able to go back to the FCC and make the case for this band, to be, you know, designated for satellite use. As for the others, it's a very identifiable group. I happen to run corporate development as well, so, you know, we listen to all sorts of, you know, inbound discussions about use of our spectrum. And, and any... Is that fuzzy enough? No, that's perfect. As you think about D2D, I mean in your traditional business with utilities and IOUs, do you think of them as a threat longer term though? I think that the future for D2D is a little bit unknown. I think, you know, you and I probably six months ago wouldn't have anticipated a future where these low Earth orbit satellite companies were trying to secure spectrum, right? Right. I think that's a new reality. I know at Anterix we were waiting for the outcome of the Report and Order to begin the process of investigating this satellite connectivity. I look at it like, the outcome could definitely be a product that is of value to our customer base, and the outcome could be that a satellite company wants access to our spectrum, the remaining spectrum in its entirety, or some blend of both. That's why, you know, when we say optionality, there it is the third time. When we say optionality, we truly mean it. Like we are open to investigating any path that drives value to our shareholders, including continuing down the path where we are, right? We have a pristine balance sheet. We have no debt. We have more than sufficient cash, both, you know, in the bank, collected and to be collected. We don't have any pressure to act in a way that isn't sensible. I think we all look at this investigation as something that's very compelling, and we're excited to see where it goes. Okay. I want to talk about the deal momentum at Anterix. I think you've described the recent pace as a, quote, "deal a week." Can you help us understand what has structurally changed in the sales cycle that is driving this acceleration? Is it the 5 MHz by 5 MHz approval, the closure of the AnterixAccelerator program, approved points from existing deployments, or some combination of all of the above? I think it's probably the last. I think it's a little bit of all of the above. With 11 customers, right, it certainly will be easier for the 12th to make a decision. It was easier for the 11th than it was the 10th. Each one is an additional proof point, whether it be just the type of utility that is contracting, the geography that they're contracting to, or the use cases that have justified building a private network. I think sort of all of the above, we certainly don't have to convince any utility of the value of private connectivity anymore. Certainly they are experiencing a new reality. I mean, it's front and center throughout the conference, right? It is data centers, it's load growth, it's distributed energy. You know, there are a whole bunch of companies here, that will help, you know, guarantee, power and connectivity, fiber, tower. The reality that the utilities are facing is really calling for, absolutely for private, secure broadband networks. I think you noted that the next 10 customers will come faster than the first 10. I guess, what gives you that conviction, and are there specific friction points that have been eliminated that were bottlenecks for the first cohort? Our goal is absolutely to pick up the pace of contracts. We think that will help unlock, you know, the value of our asset and ultimately our stock price. You know, we were aware of two friction points. That awareness was brought to us by what we call our Utility Strategic Advisory Board. We have 11 CIO-level executives, obviously some of them are customers, and they help ensure that we are helping them to drive to, you know, an ROI to value. One of the things they brought up was access to towers. We worked with Crown Castle, we launched a product called TowerX. That product, we sit in the middle between Crown Castle and our customer base, we add scale in both directions. Crown Castle has access to 11 customers across 18 states, those customers, some of them are deploying only in a county, even if they're a big utility. Some of them just serve a, you know, a very large county. We, we have negotiated a master lease agreement on their behalf with the tower company, Crown Castle in this case. We did a very similar thing with subscriber identification modules, SIMs. We worked with a very large SIM provider to procure and ultimately to manage those SIMs and to help provide an environment for roaming and a progression from public network to private network. Those are two that are were sticking points ultimately after a utility had contracted. You know, anytime we find something like that, we put resources to solving the problem, and sometimes like these two, it results in us actually bringing a product to market. Great. A lot of focus, I mean, I guess maybe some of the focus has waned to some extent, but obviously there was a lot of focus with Grain Management after their announcement to buy T-Mobile spectrum, and then utilize it, you know, to go after the utility community. Recently they've updated their filing to focus on direct-to-device. Help us think beyond Grain. Are there other competitive threats that are on the horizon, whether it be CBRS, where we could see, you know, increases to power private 5G or other maybe low-band spectrum holders that could create friction in your utility pipeline or maybe slow down some of the decision-making? Yeah. Let me just take an element of the Grain issue, because I think it goes all the way back to our first question that we talked about. I'm generally a glass-half-full person, right? As I look at Grain and potentially coming to market to compete with us and/or going to satellite, one of the more compelling elements of that investigation is, he, they felt comfortable spending $3.6 billion to buy an asset that they would drive a PE return for just because they were securing low-band spectrum. To me, that confirms our thesis, right? That their, that low-band spectrum has an inherent value and an unbelievably inherent scarcity that I think makes our asset really valuable. Whether or not we see David Grain in the utility space or he goes direct to satellite or he holds the asset and waits for it to continue to appreciate as spectrum assets always do, I think that's, you know, that's gonna be interesting to watch. When I think of competitors, we have worked diligently to be more than just a spectrum company. You know, we've created, I think we have about 155 companies that build products for our spectrum and services. You know, we've gone out of our way to work with the standards bodies continuously to drive chipsets, to drive modules. At the recent DistribuTECH event, we had about four dozen different use cases in our booth. We had our partners in, stationed in our booth showing what they're doing with the spectrum from a technology development perspective. You know, their utility can always choose a different communications capability, but I don't think it matches what we're offering, right? You could do network slicing. You're still beholding to the carrier's deployment plans, to their evolution plans. You know, you're still getting a portion of their spectrum, and it doesn't provide the same, you know, five -nines reliability. You also don't get to capitalize it. Right. Put it into your rate base. I think we just look at, you know, there are other opportunities for utilities to connect their devices. I just don't think they're comparative to what we're offering. Okay. Back to where we started for a moment, just thinking about valuation, even with shares having rerated over the last several months, at today's share price, you touched on earlier, the implied valuation is just of $0.33 is a steep discount versus your the blended average of your announced transactions to date. What do you believe is causing this persistent discount and what do you see as maybe near-term catalyst that could close the gap? I think the catalysts that are currently helping to close the gap, right? Because I think we've seen, you know, more than a doubling in the share price in the last four months or so. I do think it's the movement to 5 MHz by 5 MHz, the investigation of satellite and direct-to-device. The closing of four contracts, the hard work that was done to reduce our, you know, our burn rate. I think all of those both enhance investors' view of our spectrum asset and our investment thesis. I think we need to continue to get the message out that from a just a pure spectrum perspective, we're trading at a fraction of any comparable analysis, right? You could pick the lowest comparable, and we're still, you know, a third of that, right? Right. You pick a more reasonable, and we're, you know, we're a fifth or a seventh or an eighth. I think be continuing to show up and really get that message out, and then really work to drive some additional top-line revenue such that we look more interesting on a Bloomberg terminal type of, you know, so that when you take a look, you see top-line revenue, and you see recurring revenue. There is an absolute focus in the company on that as well. I think those two will help really to unlock that disparity. We're not being viewed, for better or for worse, as a spectrum asset. I think we're being viewed as an operating company. Right. You know, our business, there's a lumpiness to our, you know, to our closing of contracts and bringing in revenue. We're working on trying to smooth that out, accelerate contracts, get more top-line recurring revenue, but at the same time to really message around, you know, the underlying asset provides such significant downside protection, just even at the, you know, the amount that it's, that it's valued at now. I think some of the new product solutions should probably help with the top-line dynamic there. Yeah. Scott described the strategic review as passively active with continued inbound interest. Given the 5 MHz by 5 MHz approval and the expanded asset value range of $2.5 billion-$7 billion we talked about, has the profile of potential acquirers or partners changed at all? I guess, are you seeing any interest from infrastructure funds, towers, companies, or strategic acquirers outside the traditional telecom universe? That's a tough one to answer. What I'll say is, I think we all at Anterix love Scott's passively active, right? Because it makes sense. As a public company, you have to listen to anything that comes in. You can dismiss certain things if it doesn't make sense. At 5 MHz by 5 MHz, I believe we are more appealing to, you know, a range of entities, whether it be funds or strategic partners or, you know, spectrum companies. Whether that changes the ultimate outcome, you know, that's gonna be up to those entities and our board. I think passively active still makes sense as a way to describe it. You know, obviously we're at a better share price than we were when we began that process. Right. Could a premium on that be more compelling? It could. We'll see. Okay. We'll be on the lookout there. Yeah. Your customer base today is primarily investor-owned electric utilities. On the April call, I believe you referenced water and waste, wastewater systems, transportation and logistics, and industrial IoT as potential verticals. How should we think about that, about the optionality of value embedded in some of these non-utility verticals that I just kind of listed off? Yeah. That have not necessarily been contracted? I guess, is there a framework for when these become more material contributors to the business? What 5 MHz by 5 MHz really gives us is the ability potentially for a customer to serve multiple entities within its footprint, right? I think just that additional capacity opens up that world. I think satellite-directed device connectivity potentially opens up a range of others in the enterprise sector. Imagine if you could wake up tomorrow and you have, you know, a satellite connectivity to, you know, the entire remaining country that we haven't yet monetized. I think that opens up some opportunities. And then I really do believe we're going to see more broader enterprise sector interest now that we're at 5 MHz by 5 MHz. MHz by 5 MHz. It's just more easily understood by those folks in the connectivity community. It's a more traditional 3GPP sort of designation. We are perfectly set at 3 MHz by 3 MHz. We have it standardized for LTE and for 5G, but we also already have 5 MHz by 5 MHz standardized for 5G in our band. Okay. Just touching on the deal pipeline again, just with the AnterixAccelerator program, you've indicated that the program window is now closed to new entrants, but that active deals showing good faith will be honored. How many deals remain active within the framework, and what is the range of contract sizes you're seeing? So one of the things that's new about AnterixAccelerator is we've begun to put companies on notice that were part of it, that, you know, it's time to finalize those agreements, and that that price won't remain out there permanently. I think we've been asked multiple times by the investor community, was that program gonna come to an end? We've begun to notify participants that the window is closing on that particular price. As we, as we think and as we look forward, what we did there, and I think this is incumbent on, you know, on the leadership of a public company, we investigated different paths to try to move contracts more quickly. We were looking at sort of price elasticity, right? What we found is for some of them, it was important. Not all, but for some companies it was. Those companies that remain, there is a range of deal sizes all the way up to 9 figures, right? We've talked about that. That's nothing new. Collectively, it aggregates up to the full complement, the full $250 million. There are a range of entities in the program still, but that window is not open permanently. Got it. I guess real quick, lastly, I think there's a two operating company IOU, you know, a fairly large one that is still in active negotiations. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Without naming the counterparty, can you characterize where those discussions stand today and the remaining milestones? Robust discussions still, and continues to move forward. I, you know, sort of stay tuned, I guess is how it how I would characterize it. Great. Well, I guess, that's a great place to end it. Chris, thank you again for your time today. Thanks for having me. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.