thinkith,

While I agree with you that the Company was going to eventually need to pivot to a sales-oriented CEO from an ops-oriented one...the recent financial and operational results clearly demonstrate that doing so at the present time is premature.

 

[As I've said before, despite my having little disagreement with Storey's policies/initiatives, the Board's decision to jettison him was clearly justified.] 

 

While the company has been transformed tremendously in the past few months (closing the Latin American assets, the Brightstream sale, announcing the disposal of the European assets....all of which should have been immediately undertaken in 2017 as soon as the CenturyLink merger was consummated or even in 2019 when Storey assumed the CEO position imo), there is going to be a minimum of another nine months (or more) of operational disruption/uncertainty just as a result of the disposals.   That is one of the main reason's that I'm not happy with picking Kate as the next CEO...the other being I think she has essentially zero experience in running what is still mostly a competitive commodity-type business (with heavy regulation thrown in) at this point.  I do agree with you that she is going to look great with just a few dark fiber sales and doing a stock buyback.  (I warn however that the amount of stock buybacks she will be able to do will be resisted by creditors and credit ratings organizations given the still too high leverage.)

 

As to your question whether the gov't would allow LUMN's US network to fall into foreign hands...I think the clear answer is no (and LUMN's recent inroads into the gov't market make it even less likely). 

 

VG