Lumen Technologies CEO On Consumer Business Sale As A ‘Defining Moment’ For Company’s Enterprise Pivot

‘We’re focused on serving public and private enterprises as the trusted network for AI,’ Lumen CEO Kate Johnson said during the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 and full-year earnings call Tuesday evening. The company also touched on the close of its $5.75 billion sale of its consumer business to AT&T Monday and its new CRO, Cisco veteran Jeff Sharritts, which the company revealed Tuesday.

Lumen Technologies, via the $5.75 billion sale of its consumer business, is going all in on the enterprise, according to Lumen President and CEO Kate Johnson.

“This marks the defining moment for Lumen, completing our pivot to become a simpler, stronger, enterprise-focused, technology infrastructure company. … We’re focused on serving public and private enterprises as the trusted network for AI, and our 2025 results clearly demonstrate the power of this focus,” Johnson (pictured) said during the company's fourth-quarter 2025 and full-year earnings call Tuesday evening.

Lumen Technologies Monday announced that AT&T is now the owner of its 11-state mass-market fiber-to-home business. According to the terms of the deal, Lumen has retained the core infrastructure used for enterprise customers, while Dallas-based AT&T now has about 95 percent of Lumen’s Quantum Fiber, about 4 million fiber locations and about 1 million subscribers. Lumen will keep enterprise fiber customers and mass-market copper-based customers, the companies said.

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, Lumen will continue its plan to return to revenue growth via its strategic enterprise services, including Network as a Service (NaaS) and the Lumen Connected Ecosystem. Introduced in July. the Lumen Connected Ecosystem lets customers purchase, provision and manage their network services as easily as they do their cloud solutions, such as NaaS, according to the company.

“I’d like to reiterate our belief that there’s an urgent need for structural change in network architectures and business models to more closely align with customer needs in a multi-cloud, AI-first world. This is the investment thesis behind our three-pilar strategy as we build the backbone for AI, cloudify and agentify telecom and expand our Connected Ecosystem,” Johnson said.

Ahead of its fourth-quarter 2025 and full-year earnings call, Lumen revealed that it’s bringing on 24-year Cisco veteran Jeff Sharritts as its new chief revenue officer. Sharritts, who spent 24 years at networking giant Cisco Systems, will lead Lumen’s commercial strategy, including the acceleration and growth team, with a focus on deepening customer relationships, effective Feb. 4, Lumen said.

Johnson called Sharritts “uniquely suited to help us drive commercial scale” during the conference call.

Fourth-Quarter 2025 And Full-Year Financial Results

Lumen categorizes its portfolio of business services into three segments. The Grow segment, which includes the carrier’s higher-margin offerings, such as SASE, security, cloud and UC collaboration services, stayed flat during the quarter. The Grow segment accounted for 52 percent of the company’s total business revenue during the final quarter of the year, according to Chris Stansbury, Lumen’s executive vice president and CFO.

Lumen’s Nurture segment includes VPN Data Networks and Ethernet services and accounted for 23 percent of its business during the quarter but declined 18.3 percent. The Harvest segment, which houses the carrier’s legacy services, including voice, represented 14 percent of Lumen’s fourth-quarter 2025 business revenue and declined 19.6 percent.

Lumen’s Large Enterprise segment dipped 0.8 percent to $758 million during the fourth quarter compared with revenue of $764 million a year ago. The midmarket enterprise segment declined 11.1 percent to $472 million in the fourth quarter compared with $531 million in fourth-quarter 2024. North American Enterprise Channels dipped 8.9 percent to $1.69 billion from $1.85 billion a year prior. Overall, Lumen’s total Business segment revenue dipped 8.6 percent, totaling $2.43 billion in the fourth quarter compared with $2.66 billion a year ago.

Public sector revenue slipped 17.8 percent year over year to $457 million compared with $556 million in fourth-quarter 2024. Overall in 2025, public sector revenue climbed 2.15 percent.

For the fourth quarter of 2025 that ended Dec. 31, Lumen surpassed Wall Street’s expectations with reported total revenue of $3.04 billion, which represented a decline of 8.7 percent compared with $3.33 billion in the year-ago period. The company reported a net loss of $2 million for its most recent quarter compared with net income of $85 million for the same period a year prior.

For the full-year 2025, Lumen posted revenue of $12.40 billion in 2025 compared with $13.11 billion in 2024. Lumen reported a net loss of $1.74 billion for the full-year 2025, compared with the reported net loss of $55 million for the full-year 2024.

The company’s stock was down 5.26 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday to $8.46.