Good day, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Quebecor Inc's financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2024 conference call. I would like to introduce Hugues Simard, Chief Financial Officer of Quebecor Inc. Please go ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Quebecor conference call. My name is Hugues Simard. I'm the CFO, and joining me to discuss our financial and operating results for the fourth quarter of 2024 and also the full year 2024 is Pierre Karl Péladeau, our CEO. Anyone unable to attend the conference call will be able to listen to a recording by telephone or webcast. Access details are available on our website. The recording will be available until May 29th of this year. As usual, I also want to inform you that certain statements made on the call today may be considered forward-looking, and we would refer you to the risk factors outlined in today's press release and reports filed by the corporation with the regulatory authorities. Let me now turn the floor to Pierre Karl.
Merci, Hugues. And good morning, everyone. So 2024 marks the first complete year of operations after, let's call it, our transformative and game-changing acquisition of Freedom Mobile in April 2023. What a year it was. What a performance we have to show for. Despite being the latest of the Canadian wireless party, the smaller troublemaker who goes to and has forever changed the telecom landscape, our 2024 report card ranks us as the Canadian telecom with the strongest and most resilient cash flow, the best profitability, once again, the measures and consistent capital allocation strategy. In fact, the only Canadian telecom to consistently, quarter after quarter, reduce its debt while steadily growing dividends and wisely buying back its undervalued stock.
The lowest leverage ratio and most solid balance sheet while continuing to invest significantly in our networks and our best of class client experience and to increase our market share across the country. Our financial results speak for themselves with cash flow up 17% in Q4 and 18% for 2024, an EBITDA up 4% in Q4 and 6% for the year, a lower debt and a leverage ratio down to 3.21, I'm sorry, 3.31 times, the lowest of the top four telecom in Canada and the only one with improving credit ratings, including, of course, our investment-grade recognition since last May. We are very proud of our steadily improving performance, the resilient execution of our development plan, and the disciplined management of our operation and balance sheet.
Rarely, as it's been seen in the telecom markets across the world, does the disruptor maintain the best momentum, the strongest cash flow generation capability, the most robust balance sheet, and the only improving credit ratings in the industry. Before turning to the review of our operation, I would like to comment on a few regulatory matters. With respect to the FTTP decision, we believe that access to the FTTP on an aggregated basis across Canada is a step in the right direction to lower-cost internet prices, giving us the opportunity to expand outside Quebec by offering triple-play services, which is wireless internet and television. However, the CRTC must set proper wholesale rates, which consider the actual retail prices of FTTP services.
We are particularly concerned by Telus tactics to try and convince the CRTC that they qualify as a new entrant in the eastern region of Canada. Moreover, the commission interim rates for wholesale fiber set in the fall of 2024 gave Telus much lower rates for the FTTP access in Quebec and Ontario than in western provinces, enabling it to compete aggressively with the established players while we are at a disadvantage in western Canada due to 17% higher rates for the same FTTP access. This unacceptable situation prevents competitors from marketing uniform retail offers in all parts of Canada and prevents Quebecor from creating healthy competition in western Canada by offering a wider range of affordable choices. Quite simply, TPIA rates should be the same coast to coast. Why should western Canadians pay more for internet? Good question.
On the CRTC broadcasting consultations, we will once again be leaning on the CRTC to set a fair and equitable regulatory framework that includes a drastic reduction in the current financial, administrative, and regulatory burdens weighing on our Canadian broadcasters, and that set meaningful financial contribution from foreign online services. For far too long, these powerful entities have enjoyed an undue competitive advantage, allowing them to access the Canadian broadcasting market without contributing to it. While Canadian broadcasters are subject to numerous regulatory obligations, high costs, and a lack of flexibility that impacts their competitiveness and may endanger their long-term perspective. Honestly, I feel like a broken record on this topic. I've been talking about this for so long, I can't even remember when exactly.
I will now review our operational result for the fourth quarter of 2024, starting with the telecom sector. Another solid performance of steadily profitability growth from our telecom operation in 2024, with EBITDA up 1.2% in Q4 and up 4.7% for the year. These results are a testament to the rigorous and disciplined execution of our wireless expansion plan of profitable market share growth across Canada. The innovative and affordable offers we have introduced over the last two years are increasingly resonating with Canadians throughout the country, and we are retaining customers at a level never seen before, despite all the retaliation tactics of our competitors, which bode very well for the future.
In the wireless front, competition continued to massively discount their premium services, offering unreasonable 60% discount during Q4 promotional periods via door-to-door initiatives, simply and stupidly pushing all telecoms revenue down. We responded on all fronts with a disciplined approach of continuing to reduce our operating expenses through better digital execution, more efficient technical and customer service operation, as well as improved synergies with Freedom Mobile. We lowered our equipment subsidies with our BYOD activations, strategically adjusted wireline pricing towards the end of the year, and optimized the positioning of our lineup of brands to mitigate pressure on price.
Our prudent strategy was successful in overcoming these competitive challenges, as shown in wireless, by the remarkable performance of 88,000 net addition in the fourth quarter, 21,000 more than in Q4 last year, the only wireless player to improve, thus ending the year with the addition of 373,000 net new lines in 2024, reaching a total of more than 4.1 million wireless subscribers by year-end, a 10% growth year- over- year. In wireline, all services revenues are trending up sequentially as compared to last year. This continued steady quarter-after-quarter growth in subscribers, market share, and profitability is the result of the convergence of our diverse and complementary lineup of brands and services, strategically positioned to address the different needs of all Canadian consumers, as well as the fruit of long-standing investment in client experience and service excellence.
Speaking of customer experience, Videotron, Fizz, and Freedom Mobile all stand out in the most recent Leger WOW Index released in January 2025, in which Videotron ranked once again as the top telecom provider in Quebec for in-store experience, while Fizz held its position as the Canadian leader in online experience for the sixth consecutive year, and Freedom rose to the third place for online experience. These impressive rankings truly demonstrate our continuous efforts to exceed customer expectations and our unwavering commitment to unparalleled customer experience, both in-store and on our digital platform. Furthermore, the most recent annual report released on January 15 by the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, the CCTS, clearly shows how our three brands continue to outperform the industry in customer satisfaction.
While the volume of complaints logged by the CCTS for the industry as a whole jumped by a sizable 38%, Videotron recorded an outstanding drop for the third year in a row, down 14%. As for Fizz and Freedom Mobile, they saw a decrease of 2% and an increase of 6%, respectively. The results achieved by Fizz and Freedom are even more noteworthy given the major expansion of both brands and the substantial growth in their subscriber base. Our long-standing leadership in client experience explained, in large part, one of our most impressive performances of 2024, and this is the continued decrease in mobile churn, which registered as the lowest of our industry in Q4 and is continuing to come down in contrast with our competitors.
Our growth and performance also base, quite simply, on giving Canadian consumers what they want and need at the right price. As an example, Freedom recently added access to cutting-edge 5G+ technology to all its monthly mobile plans, regardless of price. Existing customers with a compatible phone could also see 5G access automatically added to their existing 5G plans at no additional cost, marking a significant step forward in the democratization of high-speed mobile connectivity. Freedom is also expanding the reach of its Roam Beyond offering, allowing users to enjoy the features of their mobile plan in more than 100 international destinations. The first in Quebec to offer international roaming plans, Videotron also brought its international destinations to 100 as part of its Canadian international plan.
Carrying on our expansion plans, Fizz and Freedom also extended their service territory in several Canadian regions throughout MOU agreements. Fizz added new subscription zones in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, giving access to Fizz's 100% digital universe to an additional 2.2 million Canadians. In addition, Freedom enhanced its wireless network in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia in recent months by activating 180 new sites. Videotron expanded its wireless service area in the Gaspésie and Côte-Nord regions and widened its service area in Bas-Saint-Laurent region. Videotron also announced that it will contribute to improving wireless coverage by building at least 37 new mobile phone infrastructures in Abitibi-Témiscamingue and the Laurentians as part of a partnership with the Gouvernement du Québec.
With the growing success of Freedom and Fizz, our consolidated wireless ARPU decreased by CAD 1.93- CAD 34.36 in the fourth quarter, attributable in large part to the diminishing impact of Freedom prepaid services and Fizz entry-level prices, but also due to higher promotional discounts and lower overage revenues as our plans are getting richer to the benefit of all of our consumers. This ARPU decrease has started to diminish recently, and we would have expected this trend to continue going forward had it not been for the creeping discounts and the increasingly aggressive pricing from the Big Three flankers over the past few days. As we have said repeatedly, while we are proud of our continuous improvement of our network, the reality is that we need to maintain a price differentiation.
On the wireline front, which remained unduly competitive throughout the fourth quarter, as I pointed out earlier, we saw our internet customer base decline by 2,000 in the fourth quarter, but with a year-over-year growth of 5,000 for 2024. That said, with our new Freedom Home Internet service just gradually launched earlier this year, and with Fizz TV still in beta mode and currently excluded from our TV figures, we have only just started to scratch the surface of the bundling opportunities, which are significant and for which we have the right strategies in place to deliver growth this year. As I said in my opening remarks, 2024 was the first full year of our transformative and industry-changing expansion plans across Canada.
Our operational and financial results clearly show that we are executing our plan diligently and that our strategies are resonating with Canadian consumers. The clear success of our unique customer-centric positioning forced competitors to retaliate on price, thereby diluting the value of their premium services. Our effective marketing strategies rely not only on great pricing, but also on a second-to-none customer service, a high-performance and reliable network, and thus, quite frankly, a way more enjoyable experience overall. Our mobile growth speaks for itself, and we are extremely proud to be promoting healthy competition with innovative, peace-of-mind plans and affordable prices without compromising on network performance and customer experience. As the Canadian telecom industry continues to evolve after the 2023 seismic change, we are more than ever confident in its prospects and in the solid foundation that we are building.
We have new services about to launch, new territories on which to gain traction, new network technology being put in place, and hopefully, new regulation that will support the performant challenger that we are. Now, turning to the media segment, Quebecor posted an adjusted EBITDA of CAD 11 million in 2024, a favorable variance of CAD 17 million compared to the previous year. Despite the continued and significant decline in our advertising revenues, as seen everywhere else in the global media industry, we were able to improve our earnings. This was largely driven by the return of major production to our MELS studios and the reduction in operating costs resulting from the restructuring plan for our television operations announced in November 2023.
As part of the restructuring, Quebecor Media, Television Studio, and Quebecor Newsroom will be unified under one roof in Montreal. This ambitious project, expected to be completed in the upcoming weeks, will provide our media group with top-tier studios as well as a modern newsroom design to promote collaboration and adaptability, allowing us to streamline improving our industry-leading news operations. Finally, in the sports and entertainment segment, we solidify our leadership in the event markets in 2024 with the acquisition of Evenma, a company specializing in large-scale and corporate events. This positions us to continue to expand our offering, providing a broader range of events and shows across the wider footprint. I will now ask Hugues to review our detailed financial results.
Merci, Pierre Karl. On a consolidated basis in the fourth quarter of 2024, Quebecor recorded revenues of CAD 1.5 billion, a marginal decline of 0.4% from last year. EBITDA reached CAD 589 million of CAD 24 million, or 4%, and cash flows from operating activities increased CAD 57 million- CAD 392 million, a 17% increase compared to the same quarter last year. In our telecom segment, total revenues decreased by CAD 32 million, or 2%, mainly as a result of a declining trend of wireline services and equipment revenues, as we are now renting our Helix devices since the second quarter of 2024, but also by opting for a more disciplined approach on mobile devices, lowering our subsidies and significantly improving our gross margin on mobile devices by more than CAD 20 million.
This effective strategy, combined with our rigorous cost management and synergetic gains from the integration of Freedom Mobile, helped us increase our EBITDA by CAD 7 million, or 1% for the quarter. Our EBITDA margin improved by 2% this quarter and by 0.4% for the year. Telecom CapEx, excluding the acquisition of spectrum licenses, was up by CAD 42 million for the full year, but down CAD 25 million in the quarter due to a favorable impact of governmental credits as we increased our investments in 5G network expansions, growth opportunities, and leased wireline devices. As a result, our quarterly telecom-adjusted cash flows from operations increased by CAD 32 million, or 8%, and by CAD 63 million, or 4%, on a year-over-year basis.
The telecom segment ended the year with a record CAD 1.8 billion in adjusted cash flows from operations. Our media segment recorded revenues of CAD 195 million, or a 5% decrease, and EBITDA grew 10% to CAD 15 million for the quarter. Our sports and entertainment segment revenues increased by 23% to CAD 69 million, and the EBITDA of CAD 11 million for the quarter represents a CAD 9 million increase compared to the same quarter last year. Quebecor reported a net income attributable to shareholders of CAD 178 million in the quarter, or CAD 0.76 per share, compared to a net income of CAD 146 million, or CAD 0.63 per share, reported in the same quarter last year.
Adjusted income from operating activities, excluding unusual items and losses on valuation of financial instruments, came in at CAD 187 million, or CAD 0.80 per share, compared to an adjusted income of CAD 168 million, or CAD 0.73 per share in the same quarter last year. For the full year, Quebecor's revenues were up 4% to CAD 5.6 billion, and EBITDA was up 6% to CAD 2.4 billion. EBITDA from our telecom segment grew 5% to CAD 2.3 billion, an improvement of CAD 105 million over the year before. Quebecor's cash flows provided by operating activities reached CAD 1.72 billion, an 18% increase over 2023.
As of the end of the quarter, Quebecor's net debt-to-EBITDA ratio decreased to 3.31 times, still the lowest of all telecom competitors and operators in Canada. I would also point out that we are the only telecom company in Canada to continue to regularly reduce our debt and strengthen our balance sheet, thanks to our steady and disciplined cash flow generation capabilities quarter after quarter, even after investing CAD 300 million in spectrum, as well as purchasing and canceling 3.6 million Class B shares for a total investment of CAD 115 million. We intend to continue to deliver over the next quarters and operate in the low threes, as we have said before. On November 8 of last year, Videotron issued $700 million of senior notes in the U.S. investment-grade market, yielding 5.7%.
The proceeds were used to repay existing Videotron indebtedness, including the first tranche of the term loan drawings under Videotron's credit agreement maturing on October 3, 2025, and the redemption of Videotron's 5.75% senior notes maturing on January 15, 2026. Our balance sheet remains very strong, with available liquidity of CAD 855 million at the end of the fourth quarter, pro forma the reduction of Videotron's revolving credit facilities from CAD 2 billion to CAD 500 million in January of this year. Our available liquidities are more than sufficient to fulfill our commitments and support our development plans.
Finally, in light of these results and following our plan to distribute between 30% and 50% of our free cash flows, I'm happy to report that Quebecor's Board of Directors declared yesterday a quarterly dividend of CAD 0.35 per share for both Class A and Class B shares, up from CAD 0.325 per share, an increase of 8%. We thank you for your attention and will now open the lines for your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen on the phone, if you'd like to queue up to ask a question at this time, please dial star one on your phone's keypad. The first question is from Stephanie Price from CIBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. You mentioned in your prepared remarks, retaining customers at levels never seen before. Just curious if you can give us any update on churn in the quarter and how you're kind of thinking about customer retention at this point?
Hi, Stephanie. Yeah, churn is, you know, we have come to be the lowest churn of the industry, which is a great achievement for us. As you know, we've talked about this before. We were coming, especially on the Freedom side, from quite a higher point and have been bringing churn down over the past couple of years. And that is true for all the other brands, as a matter of fact. Not only Freedom has come down, Videotron continues to come down on churn, and Fizz also continues to come down. When we blend the three, we are now. I won't give you the number because we don't release it, but we are the lowest of, in Q4, we were the lowest of all four, well, of all, yeah, all four operators in wireless.
Thank you. Then maybe switching over to pricing, Quebecor obviously continues to win market share with Freedom. How do you think about ARPU growth versus volume growth in the coming quarters? I saw that you brought your CAD 39 offer down to CAD 35 as a flash sale. Do you see the opportunity for ARPU declines to moderate in the second half of the year? How should we think about pricing for 2025?
Stephanie, we don't know what will be the outcome of our competitor strategy. I think that I said that we are always ready to make sure that we will be in a position to retain the way that we would like to address the market. We certainly also, again, have some strong experience for our customer service, which makes a difference. So therefore, we consider that as a significant asset. On top of which, and I refer to that also in my prepared remarks, bundling is now something that we have the capacity to move on. Certainly, it's on a TPIA basis. We all know this for the other services. But down the road, we'll see how technology will evolve. We're seeing some fixed wireless technology being implemented.
This certainly is something that we're looking for or we're looking at that position ourselves, I would say, interestingly for the future. So right now, the bundling strategy, not on a facility basis, but on a wireline basis, is something that we're following and that will give us some additional possibilities to get a retention mode and also on an acquisition basis.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Jérome Dubreuil, from Desjardins. Please go ahead.
[Foreign language] . Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is one thing investors are trying to assess right now is for how long you think you can have such high market share gains like we've been seeing in the quarter. So in order to try to assess that, I'm wondering if there are new things that you are implementing right now on wireless that could really keep you going in terms of market share gains.
Merci, Jérome. Well, you know, it's not easy. As you know, we've never been giving guidances. But what we know is the way that we operate, the way that we execute. And this number is certainly not come by chance. It comes because we're working hard. It comes because we're moving in what we consider being the right strategies. So we don't know what will be this year, again, what will be the competitor strategies. We know that we've been executing well, and we look forward to continue the way that we've been delivering it. Maybe it looks simple, but you don't need to reinvent the wheel here. We did it, and we look forward to continue to do it. Other than, as I just said, that with the addition of bundling capabilities, it could be even more favorable.
And if I may. We agree.
Go ahead.
Jérome, you said this morning that you continue to like us as Freedom provides it with solid growth runway. So we agree with that. And we think that barely above 10% market share globally or nationally, rather, there's quite a bit of runway. So we agree with your statement.
All right. Good to hear. And, Hugues, maybe a second one. Last year, you provided kind of an expected payout ratio for the year. Are you ready to provide that this year too?
Oh, on the yeah. Okay. Well, on the cash flow, it gets us down. I guess what you're looking for is our guidance on cash flow, which last year came out at roughly CAD 1 billion because 30% payout, right? So on cash flow, we're looking at stability, as we've said before, for this year. We believe that we're quite confident in terms of our ability to continue to generate that, call it billion-ish. I think we delivered the goods this year, a little over that CAD 1 billion that we had talked about a year ago. And we intend to continue to deliver along those lines.
The good news, Jérome, as you probably know, well, as of today, and I don't know if it will change, but as of today, there is no spectrum auction in the landscape. So the roughly CAD 300 million that we spend in 2024 should not be repeated.
Yep. Understood. Thank you. Merci beaucoup.
Great. Thank you.
The next question is from Matthew Griffiths from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. First one, just on broadband. In the quarter, obviously, some net losses on the broadband side. Just curious if you could share your thoughts if that's driven by maybe you were more price-disciplined in the quarter and so you're happy to give up some of the subscriber growth or whether it was an increase in your competitor's kind of promotional intensity that kind of depressed what you were able to win in the market. And then separately on wireless, so you cover 33 million Canadians with your three brands. I'm just curious if you could share your thoughts on what proportion of the market you think that you're kind of effectively addressing with your brands. I mean, really, particularly outside of Quebec.
I mean, do you think that the combination of Fizz and Freedom gets you like 1/2, 2/3, 3/4? Do you think the premium section of the market is growing, or do you think it's shrinking? Because you made some comments earlier about how the Big Three are diluting their offerings at the high end. So just what you're seeing in the market and where you think you stand to compete effectively and win given your brands. Thanks.
There's a lot of questions here, Matthew.
We only get a chance once every quarter, so we got to take advantage.
Yeah, I understand that very well, so I'll try to do my best and answer them, so on the broadband, well, again, we're the incumbent in our footprint, and we've seen that repricing could be very expensive. We've been seeing this with our competitors, and we decided that we will not follow that route, too, obviously, the compensation of not being able to add some internet subscribers, so should we continue to move in this direction? Obviously, we're not going to give any direction publicly on that for the matter that you understand very well, but I guess that we need to protect our revenues, and this is therefore will be the top priority for us, and where we're not the incumbents as we are in the wireless business, obviously, we have more capability, we have this.
But sometimes we're surprised by the fact that even our competitors are lowering their prices and facing the effect for them to be forced to reprice their base. And we've seen the effect, the impact of that on the way that they've been delivering results for the 2024 year. So we think that we have, and this goes to your second question, how do we see the Canadian market. We think that our brands, Freedom Mobile and Fizz, are the ones that are attracting the larger portion of the market. Is this 75? Is it 35? Is it 90%? What would be the premium market? Is the premium markets shrink or is shrinking? We can even answer positively to this question when we're seeing the flankers' strategy of our competitors.
They are the ones sometimes that are moving to reduce what we can consider being the premium market. Previously, obviously, there was only one market when the three operators were only commercializing their premium brands, but things changed, and what we've been seeing, certainly also the immigration, we'll see where the immigration will go in 2025, is we're certainly seeing this portion of the market growing instead of shrinking, and then therefore, probably to the effect of shrinking the premium market, so to conclude, I would say that we are very well positioned in the largest market share available.
That's great. Thank you so much for the color.
Great. Thank you. The next question is from Drew McReynolds from RBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning. Here, maybe for you, just the normal housekeeping on CapEx for 2025 that you normally provide for telecommunications and maybe the wireless, even, do you see it in Q1. And then the third question here, just in terms of what you're seeing through Q1 here on volume. Jérome just talked about characterizing the market you play in. We clearly saw some moderation of industry volume in Q4. Just wondering what you're seeing from your perspective in Q1 in terms of wireless market expansion and overall volumes. Thank you.
Thanks, Drew. And hi. On your first question, so CapEx guidance for the year, we've talked about this. Last year, we ended up on telecom just a little under 600 and a little over 600 on a consolidated basis. We're looking at 650 as guidance for telecom CapEx this year for 2025 and just slightly higher than that on a consolidated basis. So that should, as we had said, there's nothing new in that message. You will remember that we had said last year that we were going to gradually increase CapEx. And that's what we're doing. I'll let Pierre Péladeau pick up your second question.
Your third question.
Oh, your third question. Yes, that's right.
I think, Drew, you were referring to the Q1 2025.
Yeah. That's correct.
Obviously, I will not going to be able to give you a full disclosure. But what I can say is that you guys are well aware of what is taking place so I would say it's slower than last year, a little bit slower than last year.
Okay. Okay. Love for you to elaborate, but that's fine. Thank you for that. And then here just back on wireless, even for Q4.
We don't give it out. I'm sure you guys will be upset at me now, but we gave it out for a while without really giving it out, and the reason, as I have explained before, we weren't trying to be coy. It's just that we run this business, and especially on the OpEx side, you will all understand that, for example, our client service and our technical services are all run as one company, so if you want to split it out, you have to make allocations, which are in and of themselves estimates, and we felt that this was not reflective of reality and decided to stop doing that, so all I can tell you is that you see the global increase in profitability, and both wireline and wireless are growing, and I'm sure you can work out the split among yourselves.
But we will not be splitting it out any more than having to justify allocations that, for example, you remember last quarter because of stock-based compensation that wasn't allocated evenly throughout some odd number. So we're going to go away from this now and just give you the consolidated, even though.
I'm happy that you're upset at you and not at me.
Oh, they're always upset with me, not you.
No, listen, I understand here. Thanks very much for that.
Thanks, Drew.
All right. Thank you. The next question is from Aravinda Galappatthige from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple from me. First of all, on the adoption of Fizz outside of Quebec in the newer markets, can you just talk to sort of the shape of adoption there and how that compares with what you experienced originally when you launched it in Quebec all those years ago? Are there any different dynamics that you're calling out? And then secondly, with respect to the bundling of Freedom with the internet product, I mean, we've been seeing the advertisements for a while now. Has there been an inflection point in that uptake there? That's worth discussing, or are we still very much sort of talking negligible numbers? Wanted to get your thoughts there as well. Thank you.
Okay. On the Fizz side, well, this is a new brand, and we're not going to spend zillions of dollars to make that brand known. What we're seeing, and this is special also to Fizz because there's some personal reference. You can gain certain gifts if you bring additional customers, so we consider, and this is our experience we have in Quebec, that we're starting slower and we're going bit by bit increasing by the fact that the knowledge of the brand is being expanded and the experience throughout the digital universe is also being better known, so it's slower, but solid, I would say that. Is it comparable to our previous experience? I would say almost, and for Freedom with TPIA, I would say that it's a little bit about the same. Freedom is obviously also known as a mobile brand.
We need to make sure that because our experience in Quebec is that TPIAs have been there for many, many years. We can't say this as strongly in certain areas in Canada. I think of the western part of the country. There, we need to work harder to make sure that the Freedom Mobile First, which was not as strong as it was in Ontario, would be better known, and then our TPIA opportunity will also be known, so we're expecting the same trend, something that will grow, not at a magical rate, but steady rate, bit by bit on an everyday price, I would say, and this is what we're looking for, and this is what we expect to be able to deliver.
Thank you very much. I'll pass the line.
Thank you. The next question is from Maher Yaghi from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
[Foreign language] . I have some follow-up questions on the free cash flow guidance. And just if we step back and take a big picture about 2025, how should we think about your telecom top line and EBITDA? Because the reason I'm asking is you took some price action on Freedom recently with some price increases and repricing, let's say, obviously to stem the decline in ARPU that you're seeing in that business. But as mentioned earlier, we're seeing the incumbents, for some reason, which I still can't get, go back on that tack and reduce prices this week.
One, do you think this is because volumes have been so soft that they're trying to get their quarter in? And if that's the case, why shouldn't we expect that price action or price pressure to continue throughout the year? How should we think about that in terms of you being able to grow top line in telecom in 2025? Is this something you're hoping to achieve, or at this point in time, you see it as more an upside surprise and we should maybe think about top line as flat to down for 2025? That's one question.
The second question I have is on free cash flow. Just wanted to make sure when you said, Hugues, that we should think about free cash flow to be in the same range as last year. You're talking about dollar terms or the distribution rate to be the same. I understood that it's a dollar term. But how should we think about, in that context, the CAD 300 million that you spent on spectrum? How are we reallocating that within the spending pattern in 2025? Thank you.
So I'll start the man with the first one. You guys know those guys much better than we do. You guys should talk to them on a quarterly basis. You should be able to answer the question because honestly, I don't know. I don't know what they have in mind. So again, the only thing I can say is that we will continue as we've been facing this situation for a while. It is. I refer to what your colleague wrote this morning. It's about price aggression, pricing aggression, right? Vince, I mean, wow, we're facing this. And again, we're not going to let our market share, our positioning, moving to the wrong direction. So again, we're reacting and we're improving our customer service.
We're improving our services. We're adding some opportunities. And we're making our brand better known, all those things bit by bit. There's a list of dozen things that we're doing, which is able somewhere to refrain what our competitors are doing. And you are probably right. Sometimes we've been seeing this at the end of the quarter. I don't know. Is their bonus paid on RGU achievements? I don't know. But certainly, it's a little bit weird. But we're used to seeing this. And we will react accordingly. So on the free cash flow, just before Hugues answered, I think it's important again to mention that we are disciplined and we're the only company that is able to reduce our debt. We will continue to do so this year. And our free cash flow is free cash flow.
It means that it's after all expenses. It's after our interest, obviously. It is after our taxes. It is after leases. It is after capital expenditure. It is the money that we're bringing to the bank. This is our definition, and we expect to continue to deliver strong results in 2025. I don't know if you have anything to add, Hugues.
I think you've answered the question. As to allocation, yeah, as there are no spectrum purchases, as Pierre Karl just said, we're looking at reducing our debt more this year than we did in 2024, knowing that where dividends are going. There'll be a slight increase in dividends, but nothing major.
There's no surprise to wait or consider on the dividend policy. I think that we've been talking to you for the last, what, three, four years now. It's well established. The board of directors are completely in sync with that. So we look forward to continuing the same strategy for the years to come.
Exactly. [crosstalk]
On revenue growth, are we to expect revenue growth to turn positive sometime in 2025 on the telecom side?
We expect this to take place.
Thank you.
I would say we expect and we hope a little bit.
Sometime in 2025. Thank you.
All right. The next question is from David McFadgen from Cormark. Please go ahead, David.
Okay. Thanks. A couple of questions. So I was looking at the mobile equipment revenue. I thought it would have been a bit higher. So I guess the reason why it wasn't, is it because you're just seeing more BYOD new adds come on stream?
Yeah, so there's some BYOD, but I mean, it's all about ARPU, right? It's all about prices. Q4 is a competitive promotional quarter, as it always is. And you saw where ARPU, I mean, we are stabilizing ARPU or starting to stabilize ARPU, as you saw, which sequentially is coming down a little bit less than it had been for the past few quarters. But it still is, so obviously, that mathematically just impacts the top line. But we picked up quite a bit, as I said in my remarks, on subsidies to help us increase profitability. But mostly, the top line impact has to do with the pricing, so who knows? As Pierre Karl said, for Q1, where is it going to go? We'll see.
I was talking primarily about mobile equipment revenue. Do you mean that the reason why the revenue.
Mobile equipment, I'm sorry. Okay. I misunderstood your question. On mobile equipment, yes. We lowered it. It was a lower volume on, first of all, and secondly, we were, as I said, on subsidies, a lot more disciplined, so it was, all in all, a much more disciplined quarter in Q4 than the previous one, than the one in 2023.
Okay. And then when we look at the CapEx, you signaled that the telecom CapEx will be CAD 650 million or thereabouts in 2025. Is most of that growth being driven on the wireless side, or are you also increasing CapEx spending on wireline?
It's both. It's both. We are continuing to invest in increasing our investments in wireless. But wireline is also continuing to be we have technological advances that we are working on in wireline on the DOCSIS front. And we will continue to invest in our wireline network in Quebec, for sure. It'll be both, really.
Okay. And then you talked about on the wireless side, you want to have a bit of a price discount relative to the Big Three. Is there sort of a range that you try and stick to? You want to be 10% lower or 20% lower or something like that?
We were comfortable. I'll answer more. We have been, I think if you look back throughout 2024, David, you will see that we have reacted and have tried to maintain a few dollars. It ebbed and flowed a little bit, but yeah, it's sort of a handful of dollars advantage on a monthly package. This is sort of a spot where we were comfortable. If our competition is, as they have tried or as they are trying over the past few days, to diminish, then we feel that we need to maintain that advantage. We've reacted accordingly this morning, as you saw. We'll see how that goes.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Hey, David.
Thank you. All right. The final question is from Tim Casey from BMO. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. I just wonder if we could just revisit a bit the idea of subsidies because, I mean, obviously, there's rate plan competition, but there were some aggressive moves in the fourth quarter with respect to handset promotions. Could you give us an update there on what you're seeing and how you'd react? And then just for Péladeau, you mentioned you're, I guess, contemplating fixed wireless access. Is this a 2025 thing? Is it an outside of Quebec thing? Just any thoughts you could share there would be helpful. Thank you.
Okay, Tim. Well, yeah, what we're seeing is interesting technology. We're not going to, obviously, go full-blown there. In fact, I will go in Barcelona next week. This is the Mobile World Congress. We're going to have the chance to, again, chat and talk with our suppliers. We already saw some interesting implementation. So again, it's not going to be full-blown. This is something that we know that has possibilities, opportunities in the future. We will continue to move in the direction that we've been moving previously.
I think this is something that should be considered as a possibility to grow and some incentives to move forward with our network expansion, which we will do, obviously, because we expect to be, one day or another, a full facility-based wireless operator. This is, I would say, not a weapon, but certainly an asset that we should consider and the toolbox that will be available for the telecom operators in the future.
Tim, on Q4 subsidies, quite simply, we just tried things out. We released, as you saw, our Black Friday end-of-year promotions with a more conservative approach, a little bit on the subsidy front, and felt that we didn't need to be more aggressive to keep our momentum during the quarter. We tweaked it as we went along. It was just as we are building other levers to pull, and I think that's a proof that we are successful in building these other levers. Then, in Q4, which is traditionally a very strong quarter for equipment subsidies, we felt and we were in a position not to be as aggressive. We were then a bit more disciplined, which will, as I'm sure you've understood, certainly help our future ARPU stabilizing and eventually perhaps even growing.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tim. We didn't have any questions from Vince. Is this?
He's on a plane. He sent me a.
Oh, he's on a plane. Oh, wow.
So he couldn't be here this morning.
So we thank you all and wish you a nice spring break and talk to you next quarter. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Quebecor Inc's financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2024 conference call. Thank you for your participation and have a nice day.