 Hello, everyone. Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I am Keeley Dorian and joining me today, we have Phil Oliveiro from Light Path. Phil, thanks for being here. Welcome to JSA TV. Thank you so much, Keeley. Good afternoon. I'm so glad to be here with you today. Yeah. Let's jump right in. You guys have had a big, big day. Huge, huge news went out the door just today for a brand new market for Light Path. Can you tell us about all of the things you have going on in Miami? Yeah, I would love to. I guess I should say, by the way, bienvenido a Miami. The last time I actually talked to JSA, it was with Jamie at ITW in April of this year. We were talking about the new Light Path with Altice and Morgan Stanley ownership and the new management team and what we've been up to in our first 16 months. We talked about the growth that we're starting to see in our fiber expansions in areas adjacent to our footprint, and a new market expansion that we've done in Boston. I dropped a hint at the time that we were evaluating and planning more expansions for later this year. I'm happy to say that we're now officially launching our newest market, Miami, as we talked about. You might ask, why Miami? Because we looked at a bunch of different markets, and Miami actually offered some unique characteristics and advantages for us and for our customers. First off, it's a big tier one market in the United States and with New York and Boston will now be operating in three of the top 10 markets in the United States. So it's a big market first off. But just as importantly, it has really robust business sector growth. So the pie, as you could say, is growing, which is always nice too. Interestingly, when we started looking at it as well, a good portion of this growth is actually coming from Northeast companies moving or growing in the region down in Miami and certainly throughout Florida. Further, when we looked at it, about 15 percent or actually just over 15 percent of the addressable customer prospects in Miami are already customers of light path in the Northeast, as I said, because a lot of them are there already or growing their businesses there. So we saw that and we thought, well, that's a really good interesting market for us. We also saw by the way that over the last decade or so, there's been a lot of fiber service provider consolidation. So we saw an opening for an agile competitor who is willing to invest and grow in a network in Miami in the Miami area, and to provide outstanding customer service to customers into this rapidly expanding market. So we've got a really top-notch project team, including some recent local sales and outside plant construction leaders that have been working for a while now on the initial network build, which will consist of 135 miles of underground fiber, and it's going to be rolled out in phases. We've actually been able to accelerate this rollout by a purchase of some conduit assets. So that's good. It'll also focus initially on the Central Business District, and you'll see that in the press release, there's a map of the Central Business District there. That's going to launch in January of 2023, and we're building rings to the north and west, and north up to about Hollywood, Florida, and west past the airport, Miami International Airport, and those two will be done in April, and then we've got further expansions, about 80 miles of further expansions that will come in after those two. So that's kind of the initial footprint. We're looking to connect a couple of data centers to main data centers initially. We've got six more planned, and many more being discussed with customers. And if this sounds familiar, it's actually a very similar formula to what we employed in Boston. That is an asset acquisition to help us accelerate entry into the market, followed by a series of expansions. Although I will say the one thing we did learn from our expansion into Boston was that it would be really better to kick off expansions, these 80 miles that I just talked about, which are kind of the second wave, to kick off those sooner rather than later. As we know, we're gonna need to be in these key areas to effectively serve customers in this market. So we found there really wasn't any benefit to waiting in Boston. And as a result, we're gonna kick these off very quickly as we get into the market. Let's see, we're also installing all of the latest technologies in Miami that we're using in our Northeast network. And we're gonna offer all of the services that we offer here in the Northeast, including dark fiber, optical transport, switched ethernet, internet, SD-WAN, and managed and security solutions. We will have voice like we do in the Northeast, be available later in 2023 after we secure all the regulatory approvals. And I'm gonna take a breath, I promise. We'll connect this Miami network diversely back to our 20,000 mile, 13,500 on-net location network in New York and Massachusetts with connections from Miami on the one side, going back through Dallas, Chicago, and over to New York. And on the other side, completely diverse, Miami through Atlanta to Ashburn and up into the New Jersey area and into our network there. So, a great network coming in Miami, great connectivity back to our existing network here in the Northeast, but super excited about it. Such an exciting day, and I can assure you that people are here to hear from you. So you take as long as you need to with answering anything here, but I love it, it just seems like you have a really good touch point with your customers to recognize that they're in one spot and they need to be in that other spot and to that avail, the Lightpath network has just taken off. You've really done a lot to expand your footprint as this is the second major market expansion and in recent history. So can you just walk us through some of those other larger builds that you've accomplished? Of course, of course. Yeah, I think Kili, if I summed it up, I think we think at Lightpath to be successful in this business, you have to be willing and able to invest in growing and upgrading your network. Not to mention your processes and systems and of course your people, which we're doing, but today we're talking about the network part, but so as far as new market expansions like Miami, as we mentioned, we launched Boston in June of 2021, so just over a year ago. But Boston wasn't a one and done event, nor will Miami be. In Boston, for example, we started with 80 miles of network there and are now up to 200 miles. And we'll continue to add and densify our roots in the greater Boston area. So that's just gonna be an ongoing thing, just like it will be in Miami here. I mean, again, it's important for us and for our customers to, for us to invest in that network and continue to grow it and provide additional reach and so on. So that was one of the big ones that we did last year. We also purchased and are lighting a 300 mile alternate and diverse route to Ashburn, Virginia, home of a lot of data centers from New Jersey that'll be ready by the end of this year. To be honest, it would have been sooner, save for some supply chain issues. So, you know, we're not immune. It's certainly something that certainly everybody in the industry is dealing with, but looking forward to that coming online in later this year. And so that was a new market expansion Boston and a long haul route to connect us down to data centers in Ashburn. As far as edge out, kind of from our existing territory and just kind of edging out or adjacent expansions, we're building a 70 plus mile route in Western Connecticut. That'll connect and augment our network in Katona, New York down to Norwalk Connecticut and Trumbull Connecticut and many points in between. And we've been adding over 100 miles of network in Queens and New York. That's an ongoing process. It's a big, a big build. And we've already added over 50 miles of network in Princeton, New Jersey. These were two areas that again, we're adjacent to our footprint and in like path, let's call it like path 1.0. It wasn't necessarily a big focus to expand our footprint and so on. But these are two great markets just right in our backyard, so to speak that we decided to put some real good money and time and effort to work to really help serve more customers in more places. Absolutely. And speaking of customers, you really had a lot of traction during this growth phase with them. So why do you think that is? And why do you think that enterprise customers are coming on board choosing like path as well as carriers and hyperscalers? Yeah, it's a really good question. I'm gonna get to the answer in a sec, but let me just give you some stats. So we've seen about 90, 90% increase in sales bookings in 2022 versus what we saw in 2020 the year before we started this new like path 2.0 version, let's call it. So incredible growth. And yes, it's coming from traction with enterprises, carriers and hyperscalers. And by the way, as we're installing those sales bookings we're forecasting really high single digit revenue growth due to that. So that's good. We're starting to see again, the customers embrace these investments and expansions and so on. And they're telling us with their ongoing orders that this is important to them. And what's unique as you mentioned in the marketplace is that we're seeing traction in all of these areas, enterprise, carriers and hyperscalers. And I think that's at least in part because our management team and folks we brought in came from different companies. And of course, all the great folks we had at Light Path to begin with, we've come from different companies that were successful in a few of these areas, but not all again, some were good at enterprise and maybe carrier, some were good at hyperscaler maybe not so good in enterprise. But together, we've been able to get traction really in all of these areas. Again, the hospitals, the financial institutions, the large carriers, the wireless carriers, the wireless carriers and wireless carriers and so on. And if you can achieve that being successful in all of these areas it makes justifying these aggressive expansion plans that we've been doing so much easier as you have more customers who can benefit from these expansions and more sources of revenue to turn these into sound investments. So I didn't answer your question yet the good question you started with which is why our customer is across the board choosing Light Path. And if I had to sum it up I think that our investments really in upgrading and adding to our fiber network. And again, our processes and systems and adding capabilities in people. Quick aside, we doubled our customer facing sales and support staff. Really doing all of those things allows us to offer great customer service. We're very consultative. We don't just come in and say, hey, we offer this widget please buy the widget. And if you don't like the widget it comes in maybe green or black. We try to again understand more about what you're looking for. Hey, you're looking for a specific route. You're looking for specific latency. You're looking for a specific redundancy or diversity or you want two entrances into your building to really make sure that your traffic that we're gonna carry is secure. And we're also due to this investment we're also and also the investment of people we're very responsive. But we know that these links that we're providing to customers are their lifelines and it's what allows their business to operate. And so again, that ability to offer great customer service consultative and responsive service coupled with the better reach and an upgrade in our networks that allows us to offer the latest service offerings I think is really why I think all of these customers are choosing my path and I'll go one step further and just say for the carriers and hyperscalers I think that's maybe a little bit new for traditional light path. Newer point of emphasis let's say as I think the notion of enabling carrier competitors by selling them services or selling our raw materials, let's call it like dark fiber was not necessarily a focus previously at light path but again, it is now a core competency of our collective team that has worked with and understands the unique needs of these customers. And it's frankly an area that we're interested in continuing to grow. Absolutely, just always going back to the customer and what is it that they need and how can you help them grow? Absolutely. So I hate to even ask this question because you have so much that you're already working on but what is ahead for light path in the coming year and beyond? I hope at least it's a small and short vacation for you, your whole team sounds like they do. No rest for the wicked. No, we've got lots of good still plans coming up. I think you can tell we're focused on growing our business by investing in and expanding our presence, right? So serving the connectivity needs of those enterprises I talked about, government entities, schools, medical, financial institutions, wireless, wireline carriers, hyperscalers, that's our focus really. And none of these is a side business. We're totally vested in serving all of these customers and we're clearly not done investing and expanding. And as I mentioned earlier, our customers can continue to tell us with their feedback as well as their ongoing orders that they like what we're offering and really want it in more places. So we'll continue to do our evaluations on interesting next growth markets. And as you can see, we're not constrained by geography. So whether it be East, the East part of the US, the South, the West, the North parts of the US, we'll work with our customers as you just mentioned to help us understand where else we can serve them. And that's really gonna drive us for the next chapter. Sounds good. Well, we'll look forward to an update then on that. But in the meantime, where can everybody go just to learn more and keep tabs on all of the things that you have coming up? Yeah, so this venue is open my eyes to the fact that LinkedIn does a lot more things than just how's ongoing sort of virtual resumes. So you can follow us on LinkedIn and keep up with all the great announcements of where we're going. But certainly likepathfiber.com, our website lists all of those too as well as how to contact us for your business and how we can potentially help you too. Well, Phil, thank you so much for your time here. It has been a pleasure speaking with you and learning about all of the great things that you're working on. And thank you to our viewers as well for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcast then. Until next time, happy networking.