whats the other 16 states worth?
i have been asked that question alot. the answer is we really dont know for sure. i am going to give an answer that will not be entirely accurate and hope somebody does better than me at this.
if you assume they sell the remaining ilec states and go back to being just "lvlt" with more assets, you can guess on some of this. Last year i have lvlt earning about 2,500 in ebitda after you pull out latin america. if you assume that wall streets estimates for 2023 are right you have 5,300 for all of lumen. Back out the 2,500 from Lvlt and you are left with 2,800 of ebitda from anything not under the lvlt umbrella. Sell that for 6.5 times ebitda and its worth 18,200 before tax. ANd there will be tax on that since Lumen has used up its nol's. sell it for 7 times and its worth 19.6.
in reality some portion of the non lvlt business is gonna stay with lvlt. large enterprise for sure and wholesale. This would decrease the 2.8b in ebita but its the best guess i have for now.
take the 2.5b of lvlt ebitda thats left and it would produce cash of 1.9b. back out capex of 1.1b for lvlt and you are left with 800 million of free cash flow. if you assume after the buy back 800m shares , you have a buck of cash flow for a six dollar stock with maybe 6 billion in debt. only 141m of the debt is due before 26.