Lumen Technologies reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $2.899 billion as the company continued its shift toward enterprise, cloud, and programmable networking services. Business revenue totaled $2.444 billion, with Strategic revenue rising 9% year over year to $1.246 billion and officially surpassing Legacy revenue, which declined 14% to $1.198 billion.
The company reported a net loss of $200 million, nearly flat with the $201 million loss recorded in the year-ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, excluding special items, reached $849 million, compared with $929 million in Q1 2025, while adjusted EBITDA margin excluding special items remained stable at 29.3%. Lumen generated $756 million in free cash flow excluding special items, up from $354 million a year earlier, helped by cash proceeds tied to its Mass Markets Fiber-to-the-Home divestiture.
Lumen also announced an agreement to acquire Alkira, a cloud networking company founded by the team behind Viptela. The deal will combine Lumen’s physical fiber infrastructure and programmable network with Alkira’s cloud-native Network-as-a-Service control plane. Lumen said the acquisition supports its strategy to offer a single digital platform for enterprises building AI-ready, multi-cloud network environments.
- Total Q1 2026 revenue: $2.899 billion, down 9% year over year
- Business revenue: $2.444 billion, down 3% year over year
- Strategic business revenue: $1.246 billion, up 9% year over year
- Legacy business revenue: $1.198 billion, down 14% year over year
- Large Enterprise revenue: $778 million, up 1% year over year
- Public Sector revenue: $506 million, up 5% year over year
- Wholesale revenue: $648 million, down 8% year over year
- Mass Markets revenue: $455 million, down 31% year over year
- Adjusted EBITDA excluding special items: $849 million
- Free cash flow excluding special items: $756 million
- Cash and equivalents at quarter-end: $1.625 billion
- Updated 2026 free cash flow outlook: $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion
“Our strategy is working and we continue to progress towards our key financial goals we set out at Investor Day,” said Lumen CEO Kate Johnson. “The planned Alkira acquisition accelerates our digital platform strategy by extending the programmable capabilities customers need to support AI workloads.”
