Dec. 24 at 9:54 PM
$LUMN exit consumer fiber in the first half, hopefully first quarter of 2026, pay off super priority debt, net down to
$13 billion, and leverage will be 3.7-3.9x ebitda, the first step to a bbb+ bond rating. No principal will be due until 2029. As AI/HPC demand grows and supply follows, much more data will be moved, and lumen's cloud 2.0 will funnel all of the traffic to new AI/HPC data centers built out over the next half decade. Even better than Porsche, where there is no substitute, with Lumen, there is no alternative. Current NaaS revenue is growing 30% quarter over quarter, at a 28 to 32% ebitda margin. I predict continuing qoq ebitda growth 6 months after ATT closes, and yoy ebitda AND yoy revenue growth 15 months after ATT (late 2027). When the volume of data moved through the lumen network doubles in 2026 and doubles again in 2027, the market may realize this is indeed a growth stock with an unassailable moat.
