访谈开场与Lumen的业务转型

Bloomberg: You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. It is time for another edition of the CFO briefing. This week we are joined by Chris Stanbury, chief financial officer and EVP of the Louisiana-based publicly traded global communication services company Lumen Technologies. Market cap of about $6.88 billion. Shares so far this year up more than 25%. Also with us here in the studio is Nina Trentman, a Bloomberg News senior editor. She writes the CFO briefing newsletter. You can subscribe to it at bloomberg.com/cfo-briefing. Chris is featured in the most recent edition of the newsletter. Chris joins us from Denver. Chris, welcome. The company divesting non-core assets, for example, earlier this year announcing the sale of its mass market residential fiber unit to AT&T for $5.75 billion in cash. Now what you're planning to do is leasing existing fiber routes to hyperscalers and social media companies to transport AI traffic between data centers. I want to know how big of an opportunity is it to lease to these hyperscalers?

Bloomberg: 您正在收听彭博商业周刊，由Carol Masser和Tim Stenc在彭博广播电台为您呈现。又到了CFO (Chief Financial Officer: 首席财务官) 简报时间。本周我们邀请到了Lumen Technologies的首席财务官兼EVP (Executive Vice President: 执行副总裁) Chris Stanbury。Lumen Technologies是一家总部位于路易斯安那州的全球通信服务上市公司，市值 (Market cap: 公司所有流通股的总市场价值) 约为68.8亿美元，今年以来股价上涨超过25%。同时在演播室的还有彭博新闻社高级编辑Nina Trentman，她负责撰写CFO简报通讯，您可以在bloomberg.com/cfo-briefing订阅。Chris是最新一期通讯的特邀嘉宾。Chris从丹佛与我们连线，欢迎您。公司正在剥离非核心资产，例如，今年早些时候宣布以57.5亿美元现金将大众市场住宅光纤部门出售给AT&T。现在你们计划做的是将现有的光纤线路租给超大规模云服务提供商 (Hyperscalers: 拥有庞大基础设施和计算能力的云服务公司) 和社交媒体公司，以传输数据中心之间的AI (Artificial Intelligence: 人工智能) 流量。我想知道，将这些线路租给超大规模云服务提供商，这会是一个多大的机遇？

AI多云世界与网络转型

Chris: Thanks for having me today. It's been quite a journey at Lumen over the last three and a half years, and what we see as an opportunity and have seen really through our transformation is the AI multicloud world that's being developed right now. The network of yesterday wasn't built to support it. And if you really think about the economics of AI and the economics of a GPU, you want to keep that GPU fed as much as it can consume so that they're spinning constantly, and that's where you get the economic benefit. So the problem with the network that has existed so far is that as those data loads get spread further and further away as data centers are in search of power and cooler temperatures, there's latency problems and there's access problems. It takes a long time for networking to adjust. So what we're doing is building a mesh that basically goes anywhere to anywhere where the customer on demand can move those workloads where they need them in super low latency manner. So that's the big change, and so it's not just hyperscalers, it's really the full connectivity between the hyperscalers running those clouds, the hyperscalers obviously building those AI algorithms, and large enterprise customers who are on the AI journey now and will be using it much more heavily in the future.

Chris: 感谢邀请。过去三年半Lumen经历了一段不平凡的旅程，我们看到并贯穿我们转型的一个机遇，就是目前正在发展的AI多云 (AI Multicloud: 将人工智能工作负载部署在多个云提供商的环境中) 世界。过去的网络并非为支持它而构建。如果你真正思考AI的经济效益和GPU (Graphics Processing Unit: 图形处理器，专门用于高速并行计算的处理器) 的经济效益，你会希望GPU能够尽可能多地处理数据，使其持续运行，这样才能获得经济利益。因此，现有网络存在的问题是，随着数据负载为了寻找电力和更低的温度而分散到越来越远的数据中心时，会出现延迟 (Latency: 数据从源头传输到目的地所需的时间) 和访问问题。网络调整需要很长时间。所以我们正在做的是构建一个网状网络，基本可以实现任何地点到任何地点，客户可以按需以超低延迟的方式将工作负载 (Workloads: 在计算机系统上执行的任务或进程) 移动到他们需要的地方。这就是巨大的变化，所以它不仅仅是针对超大规模云服务提供商，它实际上是超大规模云服务提供商之间——他们运行这些云，显然也构建这些AI算法——以及目前正在迈向AI之旅并将在未来更大量使用AI的大型企业客户之间的全面连接。

债务重组与财务结构优化

Nina: Chris, thanks for joining us again. It's great to chat. Just wondering, with the AT&T deal and also what you've done in capital markets in recent weeks, you've really improved your financing structure, you're saving hundreds of millions in interest expenses a year. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Nina: Chris，再次感谢您的到来，很高兴能与您交流。我想知道，通过与AT&T的交易以及最近几周在资本市场的运作，你们确实改善了融资结构，每年节省了数亿美元的利息支出。能和我们谈谈这方面的情况吗？

Chris: If you go back in time when we all joined Lumen and saw this opportunity, the balance sheet was not our friend. We had a lot of debt. Half that debt was due in one year. It was due in 2027, and that was job number one. We really needed to strengthen the foundation of the company so that we could go do the things that we're executing against today. So that was really accomplished through a couple of things. One is we did the largest out-of-court debt restructuring (庭外债务重组: 在法庭外与债权人协商调整债务条款) in history. That's not quite two years ago. And that allowed us to push those maturities out a bit, but at a significant expense. Our annualized interest expense at that point was about $1.4 billion. But from there, we saw in the middle of those negotiations, we saw this opportunity with the hyperscalers. And soon after that debt negotiation was completed, we signed $8 billion worth of deals, and that has grown since. That allowed us to monetize an asset that has been in the ground for 25 years, which is conduit (管道: 用于铺设光纤电缆的地下通道) that we can blow fiber through to meet the needs of the hyperscalers in a fairly short period of time versus building new. And that's really the core enduring advantage of this business. And then we layer the digital on top of that. But the cash from those deals allowed us to refinance and delever. So, we've made a number of moves so far this year, and with the sale of the consumer fiber business to AT&T, when that closes, our debt will be down to just over $13 billion, and our interest expense on an annualized basis will be about $700 million. So, in a two-year period, dramatically reshaping both the quantum of debt as well as the maturity curve. And now that balance sheet is a real asset for us as we invest in the AI multi-cloud world.

Chris: 回溯到我们加入Lumen并看到这个机会的时候，公司的资产负债表对我们并不友好。我们背负着大量债务，其中一半在一年内到期，也就是2027年。那曾是我们的首要任务。我们确实需要巩固公司的基础，才能去执行我们今天正在做的事情。这主要通过两方面实现。首先，我们进行了历史上最大规模的庭外债务重组，那是在差不多两年前。这让我们能够将那些到期债务延后一些，但代价不菲。当时我们每年的利息支出约为14亿美元。但从那时起，在这些谈判中，我们看到了超大规模云服务提供商带来的机遇。在债务谈判完成后不久，我们签署了价值80亿美元的协议，此后这个数字还在增长。这使我们能够将地下埋藏了25年的资产——管道——变现，我们可以在其中铺设光纤，在相当短的时间内满足超大规模云服务提供商的需求，而不是新建。这确实是这项业务的核心持久优势。然后我们在此基础上叠加数字化服务。但这些交易带来的现金使我们能够进行再融资并去杠杆化 (Delever: 降低公司的债务水平)。所以，今年到目前为止我们已经采取了一系列举措，随着将消费者光纤业务出售给AT&T的交易完成，我们的债务将降至略高于130亿美元，每年利息支出将约为7亿美元。因此，在两年内，我们大幅重塑了债务总量和到期曲线。现在，随着我们投资AI多云世界，这份资产负债表对我们来说是一项真正的资产。

基础设施投资立法的影响

Nina: I'm actually wondering about the investments. Of course, there's a lot of capex (Capital Expenditure: 资本支出，指用于购买、改进或延长资产寿命的资金) that's required in a business like yours. We've seen earlier this year the one big beautiful bill act that was passed, which tries to encourage investment in, including in capital investments, by allowing you as CFO to depreciate certain investments faster. Do you think this will make an impact as you're thinking about future investments in your business here in the US?

Nina: 我想问一下关于投资的问题。当然，像你们这样的企业需要大量的资本支出。今年早些时候，我们看到通过了一项“一揽子美丽法案”，该法案试图通过允许您作为首席财务官更快地折旧某些投资来鼓励资本投资。您认为这会对贵公司在美国的未来投资决策产生影响吗？

Chris: Definitely. If you go back to the 2017 legislation, the big problem with that legislation is it created an unequal playing field between say, more service-oriented or asset-light (轻资产: 业务运营所需固定资产投入较少的公司) companies and asset-heavy (重资产: 业务运营所需固定资产投入较大的公司) or infrastructure companies. And if you look at where the administration is focused today, it's clearly around infrastructure. That's where I think the US has the biggest challenges, really, is in making sure that we don't get too far behind with our infrastructure. So the recent legislation has leveled that playing field, and that was around two things. The first is that there was interest deductibility limits (利息可抵扣限额: 公司在计算应税收入时可以扣除的利息支出的上限) that used to exist that have been relaxed dramatically because again, asset-heavy infrastructure companies tend to have higher leverage (杠杆: 负债与股本的比率，反映公司财务风险). And then to your point, the ability to accelerate depreciation (折旧: 资产价值随时间推移而减少的会计处理) to help on the tax side is significant. That reduces the risk that companies that are investing in infrastructure take on when they make those kinds of investments. So, it's absolutely an opportunity for us.

Chris: 毫无疑问。如果你回顾2017年的立法，那个法案最大的问题在于它在服务导向的轻资产公司和重资产或基础设施公司之间制造了一个不平等的竞争环境。如果你看看政府现在的关注点，显然是在基础设施领域。我认为美国在这方面面临的最大挑战，确实是确保我们的基础设施不会落后太多。所以最近的立法已经拉平了竞争环境，这主要体现在两方面。首先是过去存在的利息可抵扣限额已经大幅放宽，因为重资产的基础设施公司往往拥有更高的杠杆率。其次，正如您所说，加速折旧以在税收方面提供帮助，这一点非常重要。它降低了投资基础设施的公司在进行这类投资时所承担的风险。所以，这绝对是我们的一个机会。

访谈总结

Nina: Chris, going to have to leave it there, but you got to come back and join us once again. And I do remind everybody that Chris is featured in the most recent edition of the CFO briefing newsletter. You can sign up for it at bloomberg.com/cfo-briefing. We've been speaking with Chris Stanberry, CFO and EVP of Lumen Technologies. Also joining us here in the studio, Nina Trentman, Bloomberg News senior editor. Sign up for that CFO briefing newsletter.

Nina: Chris，我们今天就聊到这里，但您一定要再回来和我们聊聊。我再次提醒大家，Chris是最新一期CFO简报通讯的特邀嘉宾。您可以在bloomberg.com/cfo-briefing订阅。我们今天与Lumen Technologies的首席财务官兼执行副总裁Chris Stanberry进行了交流。同时在演播室的还有彭博新闻社高级编辑Nina Trentman。请大家订阅CFO简报通讯。