Shentel Reports 5,900 Broadband Adds, Revenue Misses
The company is aiming to hit 600,000 fiber passings by 2027.
Feb. 20, 2025 – Shenandoah Telecommunications Company added 5,879 broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, the company reported Thursday.
The company, which goes by Shentel, serves 176,465 homes and small business subscribers, largely in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. The company has 65,140 fiber subscribers under its Glo Fiber brand, with another 111,325 in its “incumbent broadband markets,” which are largely cable but include some fiber passings built out by Horizon, the Ohio-based phone company Shentel purchased last year. The net additions came almost entirely from Glo Fiber markets, with incumbent areas remaining flat.
Over 2024, Shentel built out to 97,000 additional Glo Fiber locations, plus another 6,000 as part of grant-funded build outs, for a total of 346,000. The company has received funding from the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, state-level American Rescue Plan Act grants, and the NTIA’s Middle Mile program.
The company’s footprint encompasses 585,340 locations. COO Ed McKay said the company was still on track to hit 600,000 fiber passings by the end of 2026.
It was “a record year for fiber construction, with our engineering and construction teams adding over 103,000 new fiber passings and more than 1,400 new route miles of fiber,” McKay said.
Once that build out is done, McKay said the company will scale back spending on network expansions.
“We expect our capital intensities to decline dramatically once we’ve substantially completed our Glo Fiber buildout and government grant projects in 2026,” he said. He said the company expected to spend 50 to 20 percent of its revenue on capex in the long term – compared to more than 90 percent in 2024.
The company reported $85.41 million in revenue, which missed investor expectations. Shentel stock was down more than 16 percent Thursday afternoon. Executives said the Horizon acquisition and increased fiber subscribers were boons, but video cord cutting, a small hit from the end of the Affordable Connectivity program, and T-Mobile disconnecting commercial backhaul circuits hurt the bottom line.
