Aug. 18 at 6:38 PM
$LUMN
Is Lumen a dying telecom company with a lot of debt
(at June 30, 2026: Long-term debt ~
$13.21B
Year-end 2025:
$17.44B
So debt has fallen by roughly
$4.2B in six months)...
...or a temporarily misunderstood fiber/digital-network infrastructure company?
I lean toward the 2nd interpretation, provided the FCF improvement continues.
There's another important point IMO: market isn't giving LUMN much credit yet for the actual strategic transformation. Strategic revenue reaching 53% is meaningful because this is the higher-value enterprise/digital-networking side of LUMN.
Big question: LUMN's debt after the fiber sale +what the
$1.9–2.1B FCF actually means for equity value per share. That calculation could tell us whether
$6 is genuinely very cheap or merely reasonably cheap.
$13B debt
~
$1.9B cash
$3.1–3.3B 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance
$1.9–2.1B 2026 FCF guidance
~
$650–750M net cash interest guidance.
+eliminated a significant amount of expensive/super-priority debt, save ~
$300MIO/year interests...
