All right. Merci, Frédéric. We have Cogeco next. Frédéric, this is your first appearance at our conference. I remember last year, the day after the conference, this is when you got your job as CEO. I think the next day or two days after the conference. Welcome to Scotiabank.
Thanks for having me. Good morning, everyone. That is correct. It's next week that.
It's been a year.
That I'm celebrating my one year as CEO.
A lot has changed in the industry, but you also have been very active to make changes within Cogeco to restructure and reposition the company to forward-looking and improve the operations. Maybe we can start with that. In the first year that you've been on the job, what are your biggest achievements that you believe you have made? How should we think about the transformation within Cogeco as you look over the next two years going forward?
Sure. Good question. Very shortly after I became CEO, almost a year ago, we outlined five priorities at the operational level for Cogeco. Those five priorities are still the same today. To your question about the progress we have made, I am pleased to report some solid progress on them. First, we said we would increase synergies across the enterprise. Since we said that, we merged our Canadian and American businesses. These two businesses used to be run essentially as two independent companies, each with its own president, management team, but also each with different systems, vendors, and products. As of September 1, those two businesses are merged. The merger is going well. Employee engagement is still very high. We have reaped a lot of organizational synergies from that.
Now the next phase is to start consolidating systems, products, and vendors where the next phase of synergies will come. That was priority number one. Priority number two was, of course, wireless. We've now, over the past year, launched wireless in the United States. We've signed deals to launch wireless in Canada. We have all the building blocks now to launch wireless in Canada. The launch plan is on track. We're measuring time to launch in quarters, not years. I'm pleased to report that we did what we call a hand-raiser campaign within our wireline customer base in Canada. We just told our wireline customers, we're about to launch wireless. Are you interested? The response that we got from that campaign was ahead of our expectations. Stay tuned. Third priority, advanced analytics.
We've created a centralized data scientist team to better manage ARPU, amongst other things, build predictive models to be more refined in how we price things. Fourth priority, digital. We are growing our Axio digital brand, mostly on network, so at a good margin. We've launched an AI chatbot with Google in both countries. We are continuing to accelerate the percentage of sales and service interactions that are done via digital means, where we lagged competition in the past. Last but not least, network expansion. We are approaching the end, the natural end of a wave of investment in rural network expansions. We are done with our American programs. We've built rural doors in Quebec with great penetration success. We are completing the Ontario program. That phase of our expansion should be completed in about 18 months.
Great. You mentioned wireless because this is something I'm going to touch on. First, we heard Rogers, for example. They're making a push into your area in Oakville. They're making a push in Quebec as well with fixed wireless. Bell also is trying to gain market share. How are you competing against these changes or these additional pressure points that you're seeing in your marketplace in Canada on broadband market share? First, let's maybe.
Yeah. The Canadian competitive environment, I would say, has been elevated for quite some time. We're seeing some green shoots of improvements, which I'll get to in a second, to touch on the various points that you raised. First, FWA is not impacting us at all in Canada. When we have more time, I can explain why we think that is. The U.S., a separate story, but in Canada, not really impacting us. We also see in Canada that our competitors' fiberization waves seem to be mostly completed. Where we are in Canada is we have multiple growth vectors for customer growth. We have our core brand, Cogeco, which resonates very well with the rural customers, probably better sometimes than the big brands from Montreal or Toronto. We have the Axio digital brand. We have network expansion.
Because of all that, we're able to consistently grow PSUs in Canada.
I want to remind also the audience, our audience here, that your quarter ended three days ago. We need to be careful about talking about short-term recent results. I do not want to get you in trouble.
Thank you for that.
OK. Still, I'll push on. When we think about your Canadian cable business, can we expect the top line of the Canadian business to grow in 2025? For 2025, is your objective to keep it, to hold the line?
Yeah. As you've mentioned, we're in our blackout period. We've given guidance in the past. I'll just.
We're on '25.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I would say more generally in Canada is we tend to grow market share in areas where our competitors don't have fiber. We hold our market share quite well in areas where our competitors have fiber. That, I would say, is on the volume front. On the ARPU front, we're still able to realize rate increases, which we've announced one recently, and it went OK. More than that, I'll just.
We'll disclose more in our Q2 results. Yeah.
On wireless, a lot of excitement, I guess, within Cogeco about the potential for wireless in Canada, as you mentioned. What should we expect that business to provide you long term? Is it profit growth, free cash flow growth, or mostly churn improvement is what you're aiming for?
Yeah. I'll answer your question, actually, both for Canada and the United States, because we've launched in the United States wireless as well. Frankly, our economic model is very similar for both, which right now we tend to be a cable MVNO. When you talk to some of the cable MVNOs in the U.S., they pretty much all tell you the same thing, which is you have to be patient for the first two, three years, as slowly you start gaining penetration. Over time, wireless does become a material game changer to your business, primarily. Some of these players in the States have been doing it now for nearly 10 years. It is significant for them by now, primarily through the benefits on the wireline business. To your question, it's primarily about churn reduction on the wireline business.
There is a fair amount of discounting that we do today on wireline at retention. Customer calls us, wants a better price. Once you have wireless in your toolbox, you can actually give a good deal on wireless, which reduces your overall discounting. Overall, we, of course, do not want to lose money with the wireless business standalone, and we expect benefits to come on the wireline side in both countries.
You see the subsidization of the wireless from within the cable business, which a cost that you would have invested in to retain a customer. Now you're reallocating that cost to provide him a wireless service.
I wouldn't quite call it subsidization, because subsidization could imply that we're losing money on wireless. We're not going to lose money on wireless on a variable basis. It is going to be there. It is going to be in our toolbox. Plus, the main benefits will come in our wireline business.
A recent development in the U.S. with Comcast, I'm not sure if you saw their decision to be more aggressive with wireless, use it more as a tool to go and get a new customer, but offering it at a much reduced price, which is not what you're talking about, because you're talking about not losing money with wireless. In your thinking, you're not there yet, where you give a free line, a free wireless line just to keep the customer happy.
Yeah, yeah. I think I did see that. I think what you've got to do is separate what's a short-term introductory offer or launch offer or promotional offer versus what is the long-term pricing on wireless. I can see players for a few months give a really good deal. Ultimately, our strategy is to cover the cost that we have to pay per gigabyte, per gigabit to our network providers.
OK. You mentioned in Canada, fixed wireless is not an issue, but in the U.S., it is. Can you talk about the rate of the impact from FWA on your U.S. business? Is it continuing to increase or has it stabilized?
It's stabilized, but we want it to calm down. The good news is the three big players in the U.S. that offer FWA, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, they generally give us what their targets are. They make their targets public in terms of FWA loading for the next four years or so. We can look at it. Everyone in this room can look at it. If you add it all up, you conclude that over the next four years, their loading intensity on average should be about 2/3 what it was in previous years. There should be a little bit of tapering off of FWA in the U.S. To be completely honest, we have not seen that yet. We're waiting to see it.
Because it hit you, FWA came into your territory a little bit later than some of the other markets in the more urban areas.
Yeah. Typically, the players offering FWA, it's not only about urban versus rural. It's on a postcode by postcode or zip code by zip code basis. Do we have enough capacity to sell FWA? By and large, FWA is present in most of our footprint and has been for quite some time.
OK. Ohio has been an area where you have had some trouble with the integration of some of your billing and ERP systems and rebranding and all that. How should we think about that region? It looked like it's stabilizing last quarter that you reported. Again, I don't want to get you in a tough position, but can you repeat maybe what your views are on Ohio?
Yeah. We bought a significant business in Ohio almost three years ago. Just at the time we were getting ready to integrate it, we faced a perfect storm of three things. First, that's exactly the time where the big U.S. players started launching FWA. Ohio, which was already a three-player fixed line market, became a five or six-player market with FWA. Second, it happened also at the same time that we were rebranding our U.S. business. It used to be called Atlantic Broadband. We rebranded it to Breezeline because we were not only in the Atlantic anymore. The rebranding did not help because customers had to get used to a new name. Plus, we faced operational issues with the integration. This is before my time. Since then, we have significantly improved that business.
Customer satisfaction, or NPS, has improved more in that state than I've ever seen in the five countries where I've worked in telecom. Ohio is now the state or province where we have the highest customer satisfaction. Add on top of that wireless, add on top of that some improvements that we're bringing to marketing, blocking, and tackling. We think it's realistic that one day we might have positive customer movements in Ohio, especially given that our market share has dropped to a relatively low level in recent years due to the issues I was talking about.
OK. Maybe I'll ask you on satellite, because I get that question a lot recently. Is satellite starting to become a threat to cable operators that are in rural areas or in areas where you thought you're going to expand your network, and now you're having a second thought about maybe expanding because satellite has already started making inroads in those areas?
First part of the question, no. Second part of the question, a little bit. To the first part of the question, is satellite a threat to our existing business? No, we're not seeing it. We're not feeling it. I think there are a number of reports that say that satellite is quite limited in its ability to grow capacity. The second part is interesting because there's the BEAD program in the United States, B-E-A-D, which is $42 billion of subsidy to build networks in even more rural areas than we are today. We are not that interested in that program because the economics just don't make sense for us. It may be that satellite is a better way of covering those super rural areas, like the one house on top of a mountain that would cost you $50,000 to build.
Satellite may be a good answer for those programs. It may be that we choose to not participate in those types of things, let Elon Musk take some of them. Those programs are so big that that's going to keep him busy for quite some time.
OK. The same question applies maybe also for the Canadian business, because as a government, the government has embarked on subsidizing a private company to launch Internet coverage as well in Canada. The reason I'm asking is because we've seen network expansion as a strategy that Cogeco has embarked on the last couple of years. It has helped you grow your subscriber base to offset some of the market share effect from the traditional players like Bell and so forth. How should we think about network expansion at Cogeco, both in Canada and the U.S. going forward?
Yeah. The difference in Canada is that the rural fiber builds with much more attractive government subsidies than what we see in the U.S. Those programs are either complete or almost complete. Most of Quebec is covered now. You do not have that many homes left that do not have good Internet in Quebec. We were a big participant in that. We have reached penetration levels way ahead of our expectations. We are not seeing satellite impact that because it is fiber. Imagine you are bringing fiber to a village that did not even have good Internet before. Those customers are connected. They are going to stay with us. We are finalizing similar programs in Ontario now. Those programs will conclude in the next 18 months. We will then focus on loading those customers onto those fiber rural programs. The good news is cash flow will go up.
CapEx will go down with the termination of those programs.
OK. When we think about your CapEx plan for the next couple of years, you also have potentially upgrades that you need to do on your network. DOCSIS needs continuous improvement all the time. Not all the time, but you need to continue to improve it to face the fiber expansion of your competitors. How should we think about your CapEx budget for the next couple of years in dollars or in capital intensity ratio?
Sure. I'll answer your question about CapEx, but maybe I'll talk about our value creation story at a higher level as well. Look, we're very lucid about the challenges in the industry. We are realistic about top-line growth and what top-line growth is realistic and not. Therefore, for the next two, three, four years, our value creation will come through good capital allocation, disciplined capital allocation, and conservative balance sheet management. Now, let me elaborate. We are targeting to grow cash flow by about $150 million over the next two years. That will come primarily from CapEx reduction, to your question. The CapEx reduction will come from the finalization of those rural builds in Ontario. Just the fact that the builds are completed, you'll see CapEx go down, cash flow go up, plus just generally conservative CapEx management. You touched on network upgrades.
We're also finalizing a phase of network upgrades where about 100% of our network in the U.S. has 1 gig, 90% in Canada. We even offer 2 gig speeds in some places. We are in good shape from a network perspective. Again, that will allow us to grow the cash flow by about $150 million over two years, which lets us continue to grow the dividend every year. Our dividend payout ratio is already below 30% if you exclude those programs, reduce the debt significantly, and possibly restart buybacks depending on market conditions at that point.
I have my own views on stock buyback, but I'm not going to interject here. We've seen a lot of focus from investors on balance sheet management. You have been one of the good companies in Canada where balance sheet leverage has been a focus and has been declining. What's your objective? What is a good target that you'd like to achieve in terms of leverage and beyond which you might begin to do buybacks?
Yeah. Our target, I think Patrice has said publicly, is around three turns, which we're well on track to achieve. I don't remember if we said the exact timing, but we're well on track. At that point, we'll look at the market. We'll make that choice at that point. Do we deleverage even further, or do we start buyback? Too early to tell. Sounds like you have an opinion. I look forward to hearing it in the break. The point is that we have the flexibility to do both. We'll make the right decisions in due time.
Our view is the lower the leverage, the better. That's basically what companies in the U.S. have tried to do. Investors have rewarded them with higher valuation even without making stock buybacks. You still have the cash. You have not invested it in buying back stock. You still get the higher multiple.
Yeah.
You get the best of both worlds.
Yeah. I am sure we will keep talking about that. You make a good point that just purely by deleveraging, you are creating shareholder value. Stay tuned.
Not every shareholder might like what I said. In terms of as we think about the dividend, you mentioned dividend growth is still an important part of returning cash to shareholders. You have had a history of dividend growth over the last 15 years. You have a very good track record. Is the rate of growth in the dividend now might be tweaked given the changes that the industry is facing or the pressure that the industry is facing?
We will keep growing the dividend steadily. I'm not going to put a super precise number on this because it's going to be disclosed in the appropriate time. We have plenty of flexibility, as I mentioned before, to keep growing the dividend and lower the leverage. We already have that flexibility today. With the increase in cash flow that I was talking about earlier, we have even more flexibility.
OK. Now, in terms of regulatory, on the regulatory side, you have been very aggressively positioning that you don't want incumbents to resell fiber in areas where they're not ILEC. And you're not the only one. Bell was also in the same view. Rogers was in basically everybody except TELUS has that view. Let's assume that the CRTC goes ahead and continues on the path and allows incumbents to resell Internet in areas where they are not ILECs on fiber, how that can affect your business long term.
Yeah. Yeah. First of all, you're completely right that we're against this. We think it's completely wrong. First of all, the TPIA, or wholesale regime, I think it's only Canada and Belgium where such a regime exists for wireline. We were OK with it when it was there to help small players start a business. We're a small player ourselves that became a bigger player. When that was the spirit, we were fine with it. Now, the issue is that it's the big players using a loophole in that regime, which was meant for the small players to get even bigger and more dominant. We think that's wrong philosophically. It's about 50% of our wholesale traffic today at Cogeco that goes to the big players. They're now using our own network. It has to stop now. The CRTC must address that loophole.
Now, to your question, what would happen if they don' t address it? I do not even want to accept that they might not address it. Hypothetically speaking, we will deal with it. It is happening today. It is something that is already happening. We do not see the big three making very good margins on that business anyways. We will deal with it. It just has to be addressed.
Is selling wireless now, if that's a tool you have in your pocket now in Canada, is it enough to compete or to offset that pressure that you could see from, let's say, TELUS trying to resell in your area?
Yeah. It's wireless. It's the fact that we have a very successful second brand, which is digital only. It's the fact that we're better than anyone else about cornering the rural and semi-rural market. Our brand resonates better with these customers. It's the fact we're good at sales and marketing execution. It's the fact that our customer satisfaction in those rural and semi-rural markets tends to be higher than competition. It's all those things that make us optimistic about the future.
OK. One last question on the transformation program that you alluded to in the beginning. So far, we have not seen an impact of that transformation initiative on margins because you are reinvesting the fruits of that transformation in your operations to make them more efficient, et cetera, et cetera, and implement AI capabilities, like you mentioned. At which year we could start to see an impact on margins and start to see an improvement in your operating leverage?
Yeah. We announced our three-year transformation program last year. We did some benchmarking. We saw where there were a number of areas where we could improve, even just catching up with competition. I've alluded to before that our percentage of sales and service transactions, for example, done online was lower than the rest of the industry. That's just an example. We're catching up on a bunch of those things. Before the holidays, we did what we called the detailed bottom-up plan, where we had over 200 colleagues, over 150 initiatives now identified, each with a business case, sometimes with some upfront investments, sometimes not. All those initiatives are loaded in systems that we're now tracking every week. We're tracking milestones, KPIs, delivery. We have a total size of the prize, which we're not disclosing, but that we're shooting for as a company within the next three years.
Some of it comes from revenue. Some of it comes from cost. That is going relatively well. The implementation started in January, pretty much. We are a couple of months into the implementation. So far, so good. As it relates to total P&L and all that, I will let Patrice over time give the appropriate guidance. What I can say is that we do see margin improvement being possible in our business. People sometimes say, hey, Cogeco, you already have 50% or 53% margin. Can you really get better? The answer is resoundingly yes because we still see room to be much leaner from a cost perspective.
Great. That's a good place to finish. Thank you, Frédéric.
Thank you very much.
Hoping to see you again next year.
Thanks, everyone.