Industry Spotlight: Integra Telecom’s Kevin O’Hara

January 22nd, 2013 by · 26 Comments

kevin-ohara-integra-telecomOne of the bigger comeback stories over the past year or two in telecom and internet infrastructure has been that of Integra Telecom and its CEO Kevin O’Hara.  While many still think of the western regional network operator in terms of its traditional CLEC roots, the company has been taking new advantage of its deep fiber assets and is finally emerging as a fiber power in its own right. Kevin O’Hara recently sat down for a quick Q&A with Telecom Ramblings to talk about where Integra is at and where it’s going.

TRs: Since joining Integra Telecom, you’ve helped drive a dramatic change in the company’s approach to the market. What drew you back into the fiber business?

KO: What intrigued me from the beginning were the underlying assets. I had a conversation even before joining the board about the willingness of the company to separate out the Electric Lightwave assets, as in my opinion they were being underutilized. That led to further conversations that over time led to an invitation to join the board as part of a pretty significant changeover on the board as a result of the restructuring. All of the folks that came in from the industry had a similar point of view. We had this amazing set of assets that had been underutilized. What should we do to take greater advantage of them? I think this is one of the most underappreciated set of assets in telecom today.

TR: Not so long ago the financial guys had some doubts about the vulnerability of Integra’s traditional CLEC business, what’s changed?

KO: In a nutshell, Integra was founded as a traditional CLEC focused on the small and medium business market. It was very much TDM-based voice and access services, and they differentiated themselves based on customer experience – the local touch, if you will. The fear was that we were right square in the crosshairs of cable at the low end of the market, which is dominated by the single-connection, faster, cheaper customer.

We’ve undergone a very pronounced change from being a very traditional SMB-based CLEC to become much more of a facilities-based provider. Our main focus and priority is extending our fiber footprint to serve our target customers. The foundation for everything is still providing superior customer experience. But we’ve transitioned from selling to single-location businesses to selling into larger multi-location businesses with a particular emphasis in healthcare, government, and education.

TR: How far has that transformation progressed now? What’s on the horizon?

KO: The quality of our underlying revenue has changed dramatically over the last 12-18 months. Only 8% of our revenue today comes from that sub $200/month customer, and even churn there is only about 2% for us. For customers over $1000/month, that’s now 61% of our revenue. 70% of our sales today are coming from multi-location businesses.

We’ve done a lot of work this year and we’ve started to be much more proactive in communicating with the financial community. Who Integra is today, what we’re doing, and what we think we’ll look like tomorrow are all very different from the historical perception of the business. We’re absolutely not declaring victory and there’s an awful lot of heavy lifting ahead of us, but what we’ve done this past year is to take the downside off the table and focus on driving the upside in 2013.

TR: Where do you see your near term opportunities coming from?

KO: We estimate we have only about 12% total share out of the buildings we have on-net, the implication being that we have a tremendous amount of available revenue opportunity from existing customers and others in the same building with very low incremental capital. We also estimate that there are an additional 16,000 buildings within 2,500 feet of our networking, representing nearly $3 billion of annual addressable telecom spending.

TR: In the past 18 months Integra has boosted its on-net building count by 50%. Do you expect to accelerate that effort further, and if so what’s the limiting factor?

KO: We have been adding a number of buildings, but even so the contribution from our sales force has been rather limited. We have some folks that have really figured it out, but the majority have not yet and we think there is a tremendous opportunity to accelerate that rate. Right now capital is not our constraint, it’s a case of getting our sales organization more comfortable selling the more sophisticated services available over a fiber network. As we get them all contributing over the next few quarters or a year, we have an opportunity to go much faster than we have been.

If we double the number of buildings that we add to the network, my guess is we’ll find some additional downstream pressures but right now it’s very workable. As you know from observing the industry, even though we think we’ve got a good process in place if we really ramp it there will be weak spots to circle around and fix. But right now the limit is sales.

TR: How important is Ethernet-over-Copper for you currently?

KO: We’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and capital on deploying a pretty broad Ethernet-over-copper footprint, although we’re pretty much where we want to be now. Today we can serve about 400,000 businesses, and a majority of those with the new fully symmetrical 60Mbps services. And on the wholesale side we’re actually seeing more traffic coming through from carriers wanting to terminate on our EOC footprint than infrastructure sales.

TR: I have had difficulty tracking Ethernet-over-Copper in the market in a meaningful way, as most of the public statements go no further than the number of LSOs on-net. What do the economics look like for you?

KO: We happen to be in a market where our loop costs and certain other factors are pretty favorable. So our gross margins on EoC are in the neighborhood of 60% and our EBITDA margins are also very attractive. We have a threshold of 30% IRR for anything that we do. There’s a slightly different dynamic between EoC and fiber, as fiber is more capital intensive with a higher margin, but we’re comfortable that our EoC delivers that kind of return.

TR: This past year you have also had a series of product announcements, what has been driving the portfolio expansion?

KO: What was interesting when I got here was that there was a tremendous asset base and a fair amount of resident technology embedded in the network. But much of it hadn’t been productized. Obviously we used wavelengths for our own backbone transport purposes, but we didn’t have a wavelength product. In 2011 we invested millions to enable Ethernet into the network, but hadn’t developed a complete Ethernet service portfolio or standardized our Ethernet access offering. This work is now complete, and 50-60 percent of all new sold orders are now Ethernet enables and this ratio continues to grow month over month. And obviously we had dark fiber, but we didn’t have a dark fiber product. We were kind of hamstrung, and set out this year to productize these capabilities and fill in other gaps as well. We now have all those products in our mix as well a hosted VoIP product, a managed VoIP product, and a cloud-based firewall service that has been a great differentiator for us.

TR: Consolidation has played a big role in the US fiber sector over the past few years, but Integra Telecom hasn’t played a direct role. Are there M&A opportunities for you now, either as buyer or seller?

KO: It’s a complicated question. Before I became CEO there had been talk of using M&A as a way to address some of the opportunities out there. But you’re talking to someone with a lot of experience in that area, and M&A isn’t always the answer. It creates other challenges along the way and it isn’t easy. When I took over as CEO, I thought our foundation was fantastic but the execution left something to be desired. I didn’t know what the future of the company held, but I believed that if we didn’t fix the underlying business we would have little say or control over it.

So my initial focus has been 100% internal on blocking and tackling, converting the strategy we had into a business. If we could execute, then our options would open up. To the extent that somebody might decide to come and take us out, at least it would be on better terms. To the extent that opportunities were presented to us, we’d be in a better position to take advantage.

So 2012 was in some terms a bit frustrating as we had to stay on the consolidation sidelines, but we really did need to get our house in order first. Along the way there were one or two assets that came on the market that really fit us well that we weren’t able to take advantage of, an obvious example being Black Rock Cable up in Washington. Going forward we won’t have to pass on such opportunities, but we’re still focused on the blocking and tackling. Anything we do at this stage would involve complementary, digestible businesses that incrementally improve our position. But we aren’t looking to transform ourselves with one deal.

TR: Have you been finding any opportunities in the wireless backhaul market?

KO: The market is there, the demand is there, but the economics are still difficult for us. If you look at our cost of capital this year and the cash on cash paybacks where a lot of those deals were going, we have just had better uses for our capital. In a world of unrestrained capital or where our investors had intentionally put money in for that kind of return expectation, maybe things would be different. But we are not opportunity-constrained. That being said we did probably add 100 towers this year. We just tend to be much more discriminating about which business we take on right now.

TR: How has the sustained weakness in the overall economy affected Integra over the past year?

KO: I don’t want to say we’re immune, because we certainly aren’t. But because telecom spending in our footprint is dominated by healthcare, government, education — those don’t have the same sort of macroeconomic headwinds faced by the financial or manufacturing sectors. One way to get a gauge of the economic environment is to watch churn and pricing. Our churn in the last year has been sub 1.2% and our pricing has not just been flat but slightly positive. That points to stability in the macroeconomic environment.

TR: Thank you for talking with Telecom Ramblings!

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Industry Spotlight · Metro fiber

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26 Comments So Far


  • ABC says:

    Why didn’t you ask him how bad he screwed up at LVLT? They haven’t recovered since. Stubbed toe…lol. A decapitation more like it.

  • Anonymous says:

    asolutely noy the cause of Level 3 issues, the issue was strategic. You cannot buy 7 companies and internally attempt to intgegrate, change and consolidate Work flow system, attempt to migrate all databases into new system, search out and manage synergies, lay off 75% of the people and lose tribal knowledge etc etc etc. In fact having been there I would say Level 3 was a far better positioned to emerge form the strategic/operationl mess and builindg a factory then they are now. The real question with Level 3 is 8 acquistion in the fold and heavy interation complete why cant they figure out how to leverage the assets and make a profit. My belief is post Ohara regime has been given a 4-5 tear opportunity and have failed to create a factory capable of selling and deploying services, have not become focused in anyone area and demonstrated they know what they want to be, ask yourself what is Level 3 core business and the answer maybe everything but they do nothing well or better then others.

    KOH still have Level 3 I would state far far better then they are today. ( along with some of teh other talent drin due to leadership team created and not including the LEvel 3 alumni, look around and see how many successes are ther from that group in industry today) It may be a fluff interview but you hear a focused defined startgey for a company with excecution, Level 3 pre 7 M&A was jsut that focused andknew who ethey were, given time KOH would returned to that type of company.

  • Anonymous says:

    By the way overconfidence in ability to digest all M&A was an Ohara mistake and he had to operationally signup for miscue. My point is no matter who was in charge that was a mess, a mess that only time would heal and did. Post healing what has happened to Level 3 in past 5 years is criminal lack of exceution on the cadilac of networks in industry. Who owns that…..

  • I’d just say that this was 5 years ago now, and KOH has plenty of company when it comes to fault for Level 3’s mistakes over the last 15 years. The question ought to be about what’s been learned from that integration implosion than about how can we beat folks over the head with it. KOH did talk about how that past experience affects his outlook in response to the question about M&A possibilities for Integra.

    • en_ron_hubbard says:

      Agreed– plenty of blame to go around. For me, the major take away from your interview is KO’s view that he had to transition away from the very small end of the market because it is going away to cable providers. This I think is true and has real implications for CLEC’s that don’t have the fiber assets that Integra does. It is very difficult to compete with the ubiquity of cable and their network cost advantages.

    • Anonymous says:

      easier to be a critic than to step up and lead

  • CarlK says:

    Well, at least Kevin didn’t wax on about funny “funnels” and the ease of growing by “doubling” percentage addressable markets already attained as part of this shtick. He was always a super bright, laser beam focused guy, that much I will give him.

  • Anonymous says:

    Do you believe based on conversation Integra is a flip project for KOH ?or do you think if he demonstates success further capital willbe avalable and he will go big or bigger. KOH is a big dreamer the prize XO woul match with vision for Integra

    • en_ron_hubbard says:

      It really isn’t up to him to decide flip or not. The company is controlled by its old creditors through a restructuring in the 2009 period. Typically it would be the case that creditor groups would seek liquidity in a short time frame (holding equities isn’t really their business). However in this case I saw that Goldman recently sold out of their position to a longer term PE investor so the plan may not be typical. Anyway, the old creditors are sophisticated folk and Integra is still not a growth story– which it needs to be to maximize any exit value.

  • Dan Caruso says:

    Congratulations to KOH and the resurgence of Integra. It is good to see him featured on Telecom Ramblings…and it is uplifting to see several LVLT and MFS alumni working together at Integra. Zayo is a competitor, customer, and supplier of Integra and we are encouraged by their progress under Kevin’s leadership.

    • Grant Lewis says:

      You are a class act.

    • CarlKJ says:

      Dan, how was it that KOH along with yourself weren’t tied up in “NON COMPETE” agreements by LVLT before letting you wreak havoc in the competitive market place for them?

      As “The Bearon Business” and a Warren E. Buffett protege, you learned well from “The Oracle” that letting Mrs. B. go on her lonesome after selling The Nebraska Furniture Mart and then competing directly X the street was bad for WEB’s business. He learned a valuable lesson from that earlier oversight in his business career.

      Long ago and far away, my hands became tied for a period of many years before being enabled to go back into the business we sold.

      Were Walter Scott and Jim Crowe sleeping during this important class room LESSON, or is there something more that inquiring minds must know?

  • Dan Caruso says:

    Carl K — it has been so long ago for me (2003?) I don’t recall what my non-compete was… I’m sure it kept me on the sidelines for a while…

    I don’t see us as creating havoc. Instead, we (along with LVLT, Integra, and several others) are bringing scale, financial discipline, and supply/demand balance to the industry of bandwidth production.

    • Heh, indeed, I’ve never seen a 10 year non-compete… 🙂

      • CarlKJ says:

        Don’t let him get away so easy, Rob. He “started” competing a very long time ago! Remember the ICG asset he should have charged more for versus that whopping almost 20:1 multiple in 2006?

        Same story for The Fighting Irishman, KOH, except it will be harder for him to “FLIP” out at 20:1 because it’s “NOT fairly easy to grow enterprise sales from one percent to two percent” in a short time period, at least when he is in charge of a “SALES ORGANIZATION!”

        Just keep playing the sweet music to my WAY LONG EARS and get that bandwidth “SUPPLY” balanced! 🙂

  • CarlKJ says:

    “Bandwidth production” based upon size, scope, scale, financial discipline as well as “balance” related to supply and demand are “MUSIC” to my WAY LONG EARS, Mr. Caruso. Danke! 🙂

  • Anonymous says:

    Integra press release today concerning Digital realty trust data centers, Seems along with Telecomramblings interview and a string of internal press releases they are attempting very hard to get noticed for new strategy. I wonder if th footprint in the Northwest will provide large wholesale growth, it is not the Northeast corridor.

  • CarlK says:

    Every time I see that smiley picture of KOH streaming X the top of Telecom Ramblings, I think about the character, “Fire Marshall Bill,” played early in his career by comedian Jim Carrey, and how he not only burnt himself, but the entire underlying ownership structure whom he convinced that “inflection points” were right around the corner!

    Almost 5.5 years later, the days KOH talking sales post integration live in infamy for (3) owners. Jim Crowe called it a “stubbed toe,” but (3) owners know differently. imo

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-wQ2QaP7wM

  • Anonymous says:

    One may say Kevin Ohara, Searchlight, and the Integra team are busy. I dont know the terms of existing loans but it appears the interest currently paid will be reduced and Integra will improve free cash flow number.

    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-02-07/integra-telecom-said-to-set-rate-on-780-million-of-term-loans

  • Anonymous says:

    Funkhouser needs to join integra. With Pook and pang

  • Anonymous says:

    So KOH gets new private equity investor, then refinances debt , and all along has cleaned house of legacy Integra leadership and looks to have 100% his own team now in place now.

    Is this the sign of a flip it play for KOH or sign of a company positioning for growth ? Looks like a foundation is being built to grow from and Integra may be a future player in M&A activities.

    • Anonymous says:

      Opening a new NOC in Denver. Expanding the long haul network foot print. Moving it’s head quarters from Portland to Vancouver Washington.

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