Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Quebecor Inc's financial results for the 2022 fourth quarter and full year conference call. I would like to introduce Hugues Simard, Chief Financial Officer of Quebecor Inc. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everyone, and welcome to this Quebecor conference call. Joining me to discuss our financial and operating results for the fourth quarter of 2022, and also the full year of 2022, of course, is Pierre Karl Péladeau, President and Chief Executive Officer. Anyone unable to attend the conference call will be able to listen to a recording by telephone or webcast. Access details are available on Quebecor's website at www.quebecor.com. The recording will be available until April 25th of this year. I also want, as usual, 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 regulatory authorities. Let me now turn the floor to Pierre Karl.
Merci, Hugues, hi, everyone. I would like to start by reiterating our strong commitment to getting the Freedom Mobile acquisition done as soon [as I said Canada in industry department] completes its review and give us the authorization to proceed. Our plans are drawn, we are ready to go. Ready to create real, lasting competitive dynamics in Ontario and Western Canada, bringing the benefits of sound technological innovation and investments, superior client experience, agile commercial strategies, and lower prices to Canadians, as we have done here for Quebecers for more than 12 years. This transaction represents a springboard to a new era of growth for Quebecor, recognizing that after an impressive run in Telecom and wireless growth since our acquisition of Vidéotron in 2000, we are now reaching a natural point in the cycle of slowing penetration of a more mature market.
We are also continuing our efforts to reach wholesale MVNO access agreements with Bell and TELUS, but I have to be honest, our negotiations are difficult, to say the least, with little progress after nearly two years following the CRTC decision mandating MVNOs despite our good faith attempts. That being said, we're not surprised by this situation, having fought Bell and TELUS' delaying tactics on many fronts over the years. With new leadership at the CRTC, however, we expect a quick resolution in line with the repeated public statements from the Minister of Industry, who have been very clear that he wants and intends to achieve real competition in the Telecom market in Canada.
On a related note, as a further proof of our commitment and belief in facility-based competition, we recently made another investment to acquire spectrum with 600 MHz bands in Manitoba and 3,500 MHz band in Quebec, which will further enhance our 5G deployment. On the regulatory front, I feel compelled to repeat that we need the swift adoptions of Bill C-18 to regulate negotiation between web giants and news outlets. Quite simply, as we all know, as has been repeated thousands of times now, these web platforms use the content produced by Canadian news organizations to generate a significant portion of their interaction on their networks and should be required to pay for a fair price for it, period.
Notwithstanding the adoptions of Bill C-11, the CRTC needs to lighten the regulatory burden of Canadian news companies, which are operating in a increasingly precarious environment and are, quite frankly, struggling to stay afloat and soon, if nothing is done, to survive. Local news, and indeed all news, which is vital to a strong and healthy democracy, is suffering from the economic and final weakening of the television industry and of local production, whose survival down the road is at stake. Again, I repeat that the regulatory and financial burden on broadcasting company is no longer sustainable.
We, too, need the same regulatory and commercial freedom as the foreign web giants. Speaking of the difficult broadcasting environment, we communicated TVA Group fourth quarter results last week, which continued to be impacted by the well-established downward trend in television audiences, due in part to multinational subscription video on-demand services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and others, combined with unfair and disloyal competition from Société Radio-Canada, who or which is engaging in a rating race that is not within its mandate and is taking a large share of advertising revenues over and above the fees it charged for a subscription. It charged for a subscription, I repeat, to its streaming service, TOU.TV EXTRA, therefore undermining even more media outlets, their sustainability in our television industry ecosystem.
A compelling example of how all accountability have been lost for the CBC Radio-Canada, advertising is forbidden for the over-the-air radio, allow and alive and kicking on internet radio. It just doesn't make any sense. We can offer many other examples of them going off mandates to this public media. Again, as we have said many times, all levels of government must act before it is too late. No other industry faces competitors that have no accountability. CRTC needs to address Radio-Canada unfair behavior in scooping up advertising dollars, which are conventional network only source of revenue, whereas the public broadcaster is heavily government subsidized. This creates a blatantly uneven playing field for private broadcasters. In addition, there is the highly unfair treatment of all our specialty channels by the distributor, Bell TV.
Unlike all other broadcasting distribution undertakings in Quebec, Bell TV continues to pay fees below the market value of our channels, while continuing to favor its own channels, creating a permanent conflict of interest between its role as a broadcaster and as a distributor of channels which are competing channels. Faced with these circumstances and the lack of regulatory and government intervention, which had been long been evident and which we have repeatedly raised with public authorities, we were forced to take difficult but necessary measures to reduce our operating expenses in all our Media segments, resulting, unfortunately, in the reduction of our workforce in order to restore our financial position and ensure our sustainability.
Notwithstanding these challenging circumstances and market conditions, our continued investment in content strengthened our fall schedule and protected the market share of both TVA network and our specialty channels, which grew their combined market share by 1.5 percentage points to 40.3%. Our major entertainment shows and original series continued to lead the ratings with shows such as Chanteurs masqués, Révolution, and our daily program, Indéfendable, drawing more than 1 million viewers. On a consolidated basis, I am proud to report that Quebecor generated more than $1.44 billion in cash flow from operation in 2022, an increase of 4% over 2021, with Vidéotron improving its cash flow from operation by 9% and its EBITDA by 2% over the year, while maintaining by far the best margin in the industry.
I believe that this KPI is by far the most important and compelling benchmark of a company's true performance compared to its competitors. Turning to the Telecom sector, as you know, competition was very intense during the fourth quarter, both in wireline and wireless. Having long been a promoter of and main contributor to competition and promotional intensity, we dealt with this intense period wisely and with discipline, managing to find the optimal balance between short-term growth and long-term profitability, as demonstrated our increase in ARPU for all our products, a softer yet more profitable wireless RGU growth, as well as significantly reduced customer declines in traditional services, allowing us to return to growth in our wireline services growth margin. As we all know, Telecom prices in Quebec are significantly lower than those charged by the incumbents to all other Canadians.
Bell is probably the most striking example, with its 1.5 gig package offered two weeks ago, $60, recently at $65 here in Quebec, but $80 in the Maritimes, $115 in Ontario and Toronto, and up, believe it or not, to $135 in Winnipeg. On a more contemporary note, we have to point out that this approach is quite the opposite to that our competitors who quite simply bother customers during the highly promotional Black Friday period here in Quebec, as demonstrated by wireless EBITDA growth being triple or more that of our competitors. On that specific note, we were successful in mitigating TV declines, lowering churn rates, and maximizing ARPU by better positioning our brands and optimizing the pricing of our illico and Helix platforms.
In a market characterized by ongoing cord-shaving and cord-cutting, we managed to slow down this trend in both television and wireline telephony for our fourth consecutive quarter. For the year, we reduced the rate of television subscriber declines by more than 28% in wireline telephony subscribers by nearly 25%, resulting in a much improved wireline service growth margin in our work and our first quarterly growth over the last year and a half. In internet access, the year-over-year growth was 63,000 new internet subscribers, which include the acquisition of 37,000 VMedia customers and four-quarter net adds of 1,000 RGUs.
Internet ARPU increased by $1.20 or 2.2% over the same quarter last year and by $0.32 sequentially, again, the result of pricing optimization and better brand positioning, allowing us to overcome the diluted effect of Fizz and lower plan mix. In the wireless segment, we recorded 13,000 net adds during the quarter, which bring the last 12 months growth to 109,000 new lines and our total lines to more than 1.7 million as of December 31st. Once again, for the 14th consecutive quarter, we captured the largest combined share of growth adds in Quebec with 29% for our two brands, Vidéotron and Fizz combined, according to a Léger survey. Consolidated wireless ARPU for the quarter improved by $0.11 or 0.3% over the same quarter last year.
This increase is explained by higher plan mix, especially for Fizz, lower discount, and higher roaming and data usage revenues offsetting the diminishing dilutive effect of Fizz from a consolidated standpoint. Furthermore, our wireless EBITDA increased by 22% in the quarter and 18% year-over-year, our best performance in the last two years and almost triple that of our closest competitor. Clearly, we relentlessly continue to build market share and to successfully navigate an ever-increasing promotional and competitive environment due to the strength and complementarity of our brands, as well as our disciplined everyday low price approach that is ideally confirming Vidéotron as the leader in wireless services in Quebec. OTT video subscribers increased by 35,000 this quarter for Vrai, the first French-language video subscription platform dedicated to exclusive unscripted lifestyle, documentary, and entertainment content.
Since its launch in August 2021, we recorded almost 130,000 subscribers. We're pleased to the continued deployment by our project Operation High-Speed this quarter. Despite the well-known challenging context of this project, we now have 41% of the total kilometers completed. Our best progress since the beginning of this project. We will keep the rhythm and expect to see a significant increase in connected homes in the next few months. For our 5G deployment, we intensified our investment, putting us slightly ahead of our annual targets in terms of operational sites deployed. Turning to our financial results. Our Telecom segment finished a year with $1.5 billion in cash flow from operation, a solid 9% increase compared to last year.
Our cash flow from operation margin stood at 39.2%, improving 3.4% compared to the 35.8% of last year. EBITDA growth was 2%, and EBITDA margin improved by 1.2% to 51.5%. Cash flow from operation for the fourth quarter reached $360 million, an increase of 0.5% over the same quarter last year, with EBITDA growing 2% and EBITDA margin improving by 0.7% to 49.6%. Annual revenues reached $3.7 billion, a 0.4% decrease compared to 2021.
Revenues slightly increased by 0.7% in the fourth quarter as compared to last year, mostly due to higher wi-wireless and internet services revenues and wireless equipment sales, partially offset by lower Helix equipment sales resulting from a slower Helix growth as we optimize our two brands pricing to improve margins. Our cost reduction initiatives are paying off with full-year operating expenses down by 5%, translating into an ever-increasing industry-leading EBITDA margin of 51.5%. Telecom CapEx spending was down $80 million for the full year as compared to last year.
We continue to focus on our strategic priorities as we operate more efficiently by continuing to lower our cost structure while increasing our investment levels on key initiatives such as LTE Advanced, 5G and network extensions, which explain the $8 million increase in the quarter as core CapEx investments are stabilizing as we complete a full cycle of more efficient spending. I will now let Hugues review our financial results.
Merci, Pierre-Karl. On a consolidated basis, for the fourth quarter, Quebecor's revenues reached $1.19 billion, up 0.1% from last year. Revenues from our Telecom segment was up 0.7% to $960 million, mainly due to the increase from mobile services equipment and internet access. Revenues from the Media segment increased 1.4% to $250 million in the fourth quarter, while our Sports and Entertainment segment grew 1.7% to $54 million in the quarter. Our adjusted cash flows from operations decreased by $11 million for the quarter, or 3%, to $359 million, mainly due to an EBITDA decrease. Adjusted cash flows from operations from our Telecom segment grew $2 million or 0.5% to $360 million.
Quebecor's EBITDA was down 3% to $483 million in the quarter, mainly due to the $14 million decrease in EBITDA from our Media segment, which is explained by increased spending on content at the TVA network and on TVA Sports. Our Telecommunication segment, Vidéotron posted EBITDA up $9 million or 2% to $476 million. Quebecor reported a net income attributable to shareholders of $143 million in the quarter, or $0.62 per share, compared to a net income of $161 million or $0.67 per share reported in the same quarter last year.
Adjusted income from continuing operations, excluding unusual items and gains or losses on valuation of financial instruments, came in at $159 million or $0.69 per share, compared to an adjusted income of $158 million or $0.66 per share in the same quarter last year. For the full year, Quebecor's revenues were down 0.5% to $4.53 billion, and EBITDA was down 2% to $1.93 billion. EBITDA from our Telecom segment grew 2% to $1.91 billion for the same period, an improvement of $37 million over last year. As of the end of the quarter, our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 3.20x compared to 3.19x, fairly stable reported as of the end of the fourth quarter last year.
Our balance sheet remains very strong, with available liquidity of over $1.7 billion at the end of the fourth quarter. Pro forma, the redemption at maturity of Quebecor Media's five and three-quarter percent senior notes on January 15th, and the increase of Vidéotron's secured revolving credit facility from $1.5 billion to $2 billion in January of this year. Our available liquidities of $1.4 billion are still more than sufficient to fulfill our commitments and to fuel our development plans. In anticipation of the acquisition of Freedom Mobile, Vidéotron has secured financing commitments from a syndicate of financial institutions for a new secured term credit facility of up to $2.40 billion, comprised of three tranches maturing over four years.
During the full year, we purchased and canceled 8.3 million Class B shares for a total investment of $237 million. Finally, the board declared yesterday a quarterly dividend of $0.30 per Class A and B shares, which represents a payout of 34% of our free cash flows in line with our targets that we had communicated some time ago of staying between 30% and 50%. We thank you for your attention and will now open the lines to answer your questions.
Of course. Just, as a reminder to ask a question, it's, star one. We'll start with the first question we have in the queue. It comes from Maher Yaghi from Scotiabank. Please go ahead, Maher.
[Foreign language] Merci beaucoup, bonne journée. I have two questions for you. The first one is on what Pierre Karl mentioned in his prepared remarks regarding the competitive dynamic on internet in Quebec versus Ontario. Second question on the deal with Shaw and Rogers. First, Pierre Karl, when you know, you were discussing about the competitive dynamic in Quebec versus Ontario. You know, when we saw yesterday your filing on TekSavvy Part 1 application for the off-tariff deals, you mentioned in that filing the pricing dynamic in Quebec, which is very aggressive by BCE. This morning, if you look at the pricing, it's practically half the price in Quebec versus Ontario.
You know, they're offering internet at double the speed that Vidéotron is offering at lower price than you guys have in the marketplace. How long can you sustain that kind of pressure on price before. Because so far you have not, you know, competed aggressively on price. You've accepted some market share losses, but can you continue long-term not be aggressive on price and accept to lose market share to BCE? The second question on the deal with Rogers. Are you still satisfied with the deal that you struck with Rogers? And are you still confident that you have assembled the right elements through the deal to perform better than what we saw Shaw perform on wireless? Thank you.
Good. Thank you, Maher. First of all, I cannot, you know, give you too many things on, you know, the competitive environment other than, you know, everyone knows, which are. I guess that you went on their Bell site and find out, you know, what the different prices are throughout Canada for their internet. I'm not saying that, you know, 1.5 gig is paramount for any type of service. You know, we've been in this business for a very long time. I think that, you know, we did and we offer a great proposal and good deals to our customers. I think that we have significant amount of loyal customers that will appreciate certainly prices.
You need also to incorporate all this within a kind of a bundle perspective. Certainly also of great importance, and this has been well-known for the last 20 years, and it's still something that Bell is not able to deal appropriately. In fact, you know, we're focusing our advertising on this, is customer service. Not everyone is, you know, digital savvy. Our customers are loyal, appreciate, you know, the way that we're supporting them. If there's any things that could happen, we're going to be there. We are the one that will help our customers. This carry what we consider a significant value. Certainly, it's an intangible value, but it's certainly a value, and we intend to continue, you know, to position our customer service as of importance.
The second thing which is of importance also, you know, t he FTTH rates are regulated as the coax prices are regulated to the TPIA. We've been servicing TPIAs for a very long time in Quebec. In fact, most TPIAs other, you know, today, obviously from EBox, which was bought by Bell, have been choosing Vidéotron as their network providers. Why? Because the prices was more interesting, and it was also regulated at a much lower level than the one that was regulated by the CRTC for the FTTH. In fact, the price regulated for FTTH is $128. If you are a TPIA and you want to come on Bell network, this is the price that you would need to pay.
While Bell is selling the same access at $60 two weeks ago, at $65, I think they increased their price about less than a week ago or roughly a week ago. Is this sustainable? I guess it's not sustainable on the other side of the equation. We hope that the CRTC, which is reviewing the FTTH and you know, they established the price of the FTTH according to Bell's arguments. That was their cost to deliver FTTH to customers. According to this logic, each time that Bell is selling an FTTH at $60, they're losing $68, which is obviously doesn't make sense. For which the CRTC will be in a very good position not to continue to do things that doesn't make sense.
You know, we are in a hurry to use our VMedia products, you know, to be able to use FTTH at a much decent price in other territories which are actually, you know, being serviced by VMedia. I think obviously of importance, given the size of the market, the Toronto market and other big markets. That, that goes for the, for the first question. The second one, you know, all the time that had been taken by the different circumstances that this transaction met, from conversation Rogers had with the Competition Bureau, I guess, you know, we were not allowed or we didn't know, you know, what were those discussions.
To the tribunal at the federal level, at the first level, at the federal court, to the second level at the appeal federal court, and then with the approval of ISED. All this time were used to make sure that, you know, we will be able to have what we consider the proper tools to compete efficiently and profitably. I would say that at this stage we're just waiting for the Minister to approve. We believe very strongly that we've been able to meet what I said earlier in my conference call, which is what the Minister is looking for, which are a real competitive environment, lower pricing. We think that we have, I'm not gonna say weapons, but certainly tools to be able to get there. We're expecting, you know, the approval and as I mentioned, we're ready to go.
We look forward to be able also to close the MVNO agreement with Bell and TELUS in front of the CRTC to cover the last element required for an optimized platform.
Thank you, Pierre-Karl.
All right. Next question comes from Stephanie Price, from CIBC. Please go ahead, Stephanie.
Good morning. Thank you. You mentioned in your prepared remarks for the fourth quarter saw some aggressive commercial intensity in wireless as well. Just curious if you could walk us through the current promotional environment there and how we should think about the mix of Vidéotron versus Fizz? Maybe you could talk a little bit about wireless churn as well?
Stephanie, Hugues, we'll answer the your question.
Yeah. The wireless was, as we stated, the wireless competitive environment remained. There's nothing necessarily new about this. You know, it has been, o n the wireless side anyway, I mean, because I think that's your question. If not, we can certainly talk about wireline. Stephanie, if you're more specifically asking about wireless, yes. Not necessarily a general increase in competitive or promotional intensity other than the seasonal increase that is usual every year in Q4, you know, with the Black Friday period, et cetera, et cetera.
Certainly on that front, all competitors with their numerous brands now have certainly continued to be competitive. No, I wouldn't say not any, not materially higher than in previous years and in previous quarters. You're asking about churn. Churn in wireless was indeed a little bit up. Certainly, as it usually is again, there's a seasonal variation that you know of in Q4. Other than that, it certainly is. I'll be honest.
It certainly is an area where we are focusing because as you well know, it's, you know, it's a lot more efficient to, you know, to retain the customer than to have to win him back or win her back. I think the good news in all of this is that when I look at churn, for wireless in Q1 so far, it's, you know, things are back to normal. If, if you had intended then maybe I'll make a few remarks as we're talking about this on the wireline side. You know, wireline churn was stable actually. Yes, we referred and Pierre-Karl answered very detailed.
gave a very detailed response to the, you know, to Maya's question on the wireline side, and Bell's competitive stance, which has increased, it's true, but I think it's important to remind you that our, you know, our churn is stable and that, as Pierre-Karl mentioned, you know, we're not only fighting on price, you know? We're fighting on a number of fronts. You know, and I think we've been rather successful in fighting off Bell, and I certainly wouldn't subscribe to the, to, I think, the hypothesis that we're losing market share to Bell. I think there are obviously, you know, tos and fros on this, as in any competitive environment.
You know, at this point, I think we're on the winning side. Again, let me remind you that, you know, at the end of the day, our objective is margin and profitability, and I think we've been successful. I think our margin in wireline is improving. We have been honest with you guys, I think, and have talked over the past few quarters where we have said, you know, we weren't optimal in how we were positioning our products and, you know, we were selling Helix perhaps as, you know, and not at the right price, compared to its premium status, compared to illico our other internet product, and TV distribution, of course.
Now I think we've finally managed to, you know, to crack that nut and, you know, as, demonstrated by our, wireline margin that, you know, that is finally, you know, coming back online and increasing. I think at the end of the day, I think we've made the right decisions in that competitive environment. I mean, I mean, come on, as we've said, you know, as Pierre-Karl said in his speech, you know, this is something, you know, the competitive environment in Quebec, I mean, we almost created it, so we're certainly comfortable in dealing with it. I think we're showing by our improved profitability that, you know, that we're successful in this.
Sometimes, you know, we're asking ourselves, you know, at the end of the day, you know, our competitors would like to show RGUs increase. Look at the numbers, and I guess that all those ads are certainly not being converted in additional, you know, EBITDA or improved margin to the opposite.
All right. That's helpful color. Thank you. I just wanted to touch on CapEx as well. Vidéotron 2022 CapEx decreased substantially year-over-year. Just curious how we should think about the run rate CapEx in Quebec and if we should think about, you know, any additional investments in 5G and DOCSIS 4.0 prep here.
Yeah. Our CapEx over the year, as we mentioned, you know, we're down $80 million. The run rate, you know, one way to look at it, and I think you'll see it from the Q4 CapEx, you know, which creep back up a little bit as we increased our investments a little bit in LTE and in 5G and in network extensions. Yet, you know, all in all at $450-ish million for Telecom, you know. As we've said last time, and we're, you know, we're holding true on that, we see it as stable going forward for 2023.
You know, at this point, you know, we're comfortable that we've that we've managed to be to be more disciplined and to be to be more efficient in our investments. You know, we've. You know, don't forget that CapEx is also the reduction in CapEx is also very directly linked to our various operating expense reductions. You know, as a lot of our teams, as I'm sure you understand, you know, whether it's There are the obvious ones like engineering and IT and all of this, but even some marketing and some other teams are also capitalized when we, you know, when we undertake projects. You know, we've just been a lot more disciplined as to what do we invest in and how much we invest in each of these projects.
You know what? It's, I think it's turning out, you know, very nicely, and we're able to show, you know, very good improvements in cash. At the end of the day, as Jacques said, that's the import. Whether it's capitalized or not capitalized, I mean, at the end of the day, the money's coming out the door. This is what we've been successful in slowing down.
How much money you have, you know, to pay to reduce your debt and to whatever, repurchase share, if you want to repurchase share, to pay dividends and, you know, reduce your leverage. I think this is, you know, the most important thing. Obviously, without being not at the proper level in terms of technology offered to your customers. This is, will always gonna be a focus, you know, providing the best customer service, but also on top of that, you know, products that fits customers' requirements.
I think you mentioned, s orry, just to add, I think you had mentioned DOCSIS 4.0, Stephanie, is that right?
Yes. Yeah, thanks.
We're obviously on it, you know, and we've been working, you know, with, you know, others in CableLabs and then, and others and know we're certainly on top of that, of that new initiative. It's a bit early for us to be able to comment more. I think more specifically, it's certainly looking, you know, very interesting as a, you know, as the next steps, allowing, you know, coax to be even more performing. We're certainly on it. It's just, it's a bit early.
I would, you know, I don't think it would make sense for us to make any specific comments other than we are certainly working with our peers on this initiative that looks very promising at this point.
Thank you very much.
Next question comes from Matthew Griffiths from Bank of America. Please go ahead, Matthew.
Okay. Thanks for taking the question. Just following up on the CapEx question, but on a different element maybe. In the MD&A, you referenced, like, a review of your strategic priorities. I was just wondering if you could touch on, you know, what was reviewed and what the outcome of that was and what we should think of as your strategic priorities going forward after reviewing them. Just on wireless, you know, you've done a good job, obviously, you know, growing your sub-base, you know, taking advantage of the cable base that you had and introducing Fizz, which is, you know, all digital. I'm wondering if maybe the next step to keep growth going might be to focus on increasing, you know, your retail distribution.
Is that something you would consider or is that something you maybe see as where the competitors might have an advantage? Maybe not, just if you could give me your thoughts, that would be interesting. Thanks.
Okay, Matthew. Well, you know, on the CapEx side, I mentioned it, I mean, you know, we will continue to spend on our wireless network, LTE Advanced and 5G. You know, our footprint is getting bigger every day, every week, every month. You know, despite the fact that, you know, and that was always the question, should we be able, b ut I guess it's not a question anymore, but the question was raised, you know, many times before. Are we gonna be able to monetize 5G? To me, 5G is the next of 4G, which was the next of 3G. You know, we've been seeing, you know, through the years, significant price reductions.
You know, wireless is going lower, it will continue to do so. I guess that, you know, with the introduction of Quebecor with the Freedom, it will help the this trend taking even more place. On the cable side, other than the DOCSIS, which is, as you know, an industrial issue for all our colleagues in the industry. You know, on the digital television, you know, we're very well positioned. You know, we made our investment, we changed certainly, you know, our commercial strategy regarding illico. Maybe at the beginning, we were considering, you know, too much subsidizing. We changed our trend.
I mentioned in my call, in my conference call, in my speech, you know, we have a balance of platforms which fits very well the different kind of customers we have. One of a little bit more money that we're spending is in the network extensions. We're certainly not in Toronto, where we've been this week again, you know. When I see, you know, on, on the Gardiner Expressway, how many buildings, you know, were built in the last 15 years, it was, you know, crazy to me. Where I used to go on King Street at the Sun Media building, and, you know, that changed dramatically. Why I refer that?
In Montreal, we have a lot of construction too, not as much as in Toronto. This is why, you know, our network extension have been increasing. We just don't want to miss, you know, any new construction or any new households that will be available for our services to be offered to the next inhabitants or customer there. We've been seeing, and this is probably gonna continue despite the fact that obviously construction slowed down a little bit because of the economy. You know, we see this as an important factor. The last spending element, which unfortunately we didn't really refer to, and maybe Hugues could give a little bit more detail, is trying to make sure that, you know, we will continue to have a very efficient and respected billing system.
One of our strength was, you know, to have one bill for all our services, cable, internet, and wireline telephony. When we introduced wireless, we were not able to do so as efficiently as we were previously. We need, you know, to invest to get out of our legacy system, which was built, you know, 40 years ago. We're migrating bit by bit, and especially the wireless or the different segment of wireless, to this new platform. We look obviously forward to get significant saving out of, you know, one platform that we will get rid of when the new platform will be entirely efficient. We look forward to get this exercise done. You can imagine IT is of importance and it's expensive. You know, we're spending money there. We think that, you know, we're well-positioned with one partner which work remotely from Canada and having a very competitive platform for doing so.
Do you have any other retail?
I think, we have a question on retail. I don't know if you want to take this.
Yeah. I can answer this with pleasure. You know, we. I think that, you know, historically, we've been using all the retail platforms, well, all the commercial platforms available. Obviously, our cable business was pushing us very strongly in the call centers. We have been having people going selling door to door. We've been also strongly involved in retail. You know, 30 years ago, Mr. Chagnon launched, you know, SuperClub Vidéotron, eh? The Vidéotron retail platform was there for a long time. I think that, you know, we've been migrating because can you imagine? They were selling video rentals. It was a previous Blockbuster. We migrate them as commercial platform for selling wireless and other Vidéotron services. We've been doing it very efficiently.
As you know, that's a franchise platform. We own 50/50, 50% corporate, 50% franchise. Our franchisees. In fact, you know, we had this big party two weeks ago, where once a year, you know, we're all together. People come from Saguenay, from Rimouski, from Québec, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, and elsewhere. You know, we continue to focus on this platform, which is. You know, we need to compare the cost of those different platforms, and they're not equal to each other. Each of those platforms have its own mission. This is why we will continue, you know, to use all the platforms as efficiently as possible. We look forward to get this as we've been successfully doing it as another very favorable positioning of our products and our sales force.
Perfect. Thanks. I actually remember having a SuperClub Vidéotron card in my wallet growing up, so it's funny you mentioning it. If I could follow up, just one quick question. You were talking about the billing system, and we've seen, you know, other operators when they touch their billing system, it means touching clients and, you know, you generate a decision point on the side of the customer, which often results in lower net adds. You addressed churn being stable, but I just wanted to double-check that. Is this billing system activity you're doing impacting the net add performance at all, this quarter and maybe for some quarters to come as you work through it?
You know, obviously this is not completely scientific. You know, we consider not this being any effect of on our churn. The churn is related, you know, to very, the intense or the intensity of competition, the Black Friday that we met. Again, you know, we decided that we don't want to play in this game and then therefore continue to be disciplined. On top of which obviously again it's a quite mature market.
All right. Thank you so much.
I know we're introducing it bit by bit. We cannot say that, you know, we have a new wireless billing system. We use the old one. We are looking to migrate it on the new platform, which is actually on beta form.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Pleasure. Next question.
Yes. Next question comes from Jérome Dubreuil from Desjardins. Please go ahead, Jérome.
Thanks for taking my question. The first one is on is on Freedom. I wonder if you can talk a bit about the synergies you are seeing with the rest of your business. I know maybe not a ton of overlap, but if you can discuss maybe in qualitative terms what you're seeing in terms of synergies. That's the first question. The second one would be on the resellers. A lot of M&A activity there recently. I know the last mile connections change might not be easy to switch for the buyers, but should we expect any change in terms of the financial contributions the resellers are making that we could see in your results going forward? Thank you.
Good. With pleasure, Jérome. On the first question. In fact, you know, I just found out that I forgot one portion of my answer about the Matthew's earlier question. What can we bring, you know, to Freedom or what we will bring? The another important segment that we've been using for Vidéotron is even more true for Fizz because it's a complete digital platform, but the e-commerce side of commercial and distribution platform have been strongly used for the last few years. This is certainly something that, you know, we think we will bring to Freedom, opening their selling vehicles.
You probably know, if not, I guess that this is probably not a rocket science secret, I would say, you know, that most of the Freedom assets and services are sold through retail or from retail. We will continue to do so because this is a very performing vehicle. They are certainly not reaching everyone. We look forward to be able to enlarge our capacity to reach customers, and then therefore using what we've been using in Vidéotron, and again, with great success. Other than that, which is obviously of great importance, you can imagine, you know, we're looking forward to increase our RGUs and increase the numbers of our customers. I would say it's the regular type of acquisition.
I mean, you know, procurement, capacity to negotiate better pricing on assets, having better promotion, licenses, having all those things together, and cost-conscious management. I guess that, you know, again, these are recipes for great possibilities. As you can imagine, also being bigger give us more scale to negotiate better roaming charges or roaming costs. We look forward, you know, to get this done as quickly as possible. That will improve our capacity to propose services or offers that will fit even better customers' requirements. We're really bullish, and we hope this transaction will close as soon as possible for Canadians to enjoy much better environment, but they've been forced to suffer for so long. As to your second question, Jérome, on the resellers.
As you know, Bell and some of the others as well as recently as last week have been quite active in acquiring these resellers. Obviously, it's there aren't that many left, you know, to compete against. You know, a couple of points on this. You know, we had, you know, prior to launching Fizz, you know, some years ago, we had certainly looked at the opportunity to acquire and concluded, and I think it was the right conclusion that we would be able to win these customers with Fizz, which we actually did, you know.
We gave them a run for their money, we actually did better than a lot of these resellers that ended up being bought by our competitors that. If you allow me, at very high prices, you know. They paid a lot of money for these resellers. I still would think that our.
That our decision or strategy was the, you know, was the right one. Going forward, you know, I think to answer your question, if that was your question, but you tell me if I'm answering the wrong question. If, you know, as to our performance, I think, you know, we still have all the tools to continue to compete with them, even though the environment might evolve. That's true. The pricing environment, the regulatory environment might evolve over the next years on this. I think we're very well-positioned.
Merci beaucoup.
Merci, Jérome.
Perfect. Next, question comes from Aravinda Galappatthige from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. Two questions. Two from me. With respect to the broadband net adds, the year-over-year variance, I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about what component of that was sort of wholesale. I know that those are lower margins and obviously have a lesser impact. I was wondering if you can talk about that. Secondly, maybe for Hugues on the interest expenses, I was wondering if you can give us some color on what you expect going into 2023. I know that, you know, one of the senior notes of over $1 billion matured in January. Any color around any kind of uptick in interest expenses, you know, would be helpful. Connected to that, with respect to the $2.4 billion facility, Have you disclosed what the terms are in terms of the rates and fixed floating, et cetera? Thank you.
On the broadband adds, Aravinda. A lot of the variation, I'll put it that way, over the past few quarters has to do with the wholesale and the general B2B side of it. Whereas on the residential, if I can call it that, or on the individual side of the business, it's been a lot more stable. You know, I was referring to the churn earlier on being quite stable and our market share against Bell and some of the others in broadband being quite stable as well. Yes, I think if that was your question, yes.
I believe that on the broadband adds, a lot of the variation and the, you know, the decrease, in our net adds and in our growth has to do with the wholesale and the commercial side of things.
Interest rates.
Yes. On the interest expense, we are, you know, I think our interest expense is certainly as you saw from the numbers has come down as we retired over the years some higher coupons, you know, and replaced it with variable or floating debt at a much lower. Even through the various hikes in rates, you know, at this point, we are still retiring debt. Of course, you know, don't forget that we used to, you know, to finance ourselves in the 10 years. Usually, we've been over the years financing ourselves in 10-year increments.
We are retiring debt that was at a much higher coupon than what we're paying today, even in, you know, in floating. As obviously as, you know, we've always believed in the right balance. As the, you know, I'm not saying that high yield is no longer of interest to us, on the contrary. It's just that markets right now aren't, you know, aren't to our liking yet. At some point, you know, we will, when the time is right and the price is right, we'll certainly go back to it.
As to the $2.4 billion facility, we have not given out the detail other than what I can tell you is that it is, you know, bank debt, so it is floating. We've structured it in tranches, three different tranches, the longest being over four years, to give ourselves, you know, more flexibility on that front. At rates that are honestly still today much more favorable than any, you know, high yield that we would be able to get in the market at.
Great. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on wireless. I know that you can't talk too much about strategy here, but are you any closer to or any update you can provide on leadership, you know, new leadership for the, you know, so the Freedom assets whenever the deal closes? Any progress that you can share? Thank you.
I guess it's a little bit early, you know, to answer the question. I think that, you know, we're through our due diligence. You know, we had the chance to meet a lot of people, and what we've been seeing is certainly very positive and enthusiastic. In fact, we again, as I mentioned, you know, we look forward to get the transaction closed and making sure that, as you just mentioned, you know, leadership to be confirmed. We were there. In fact, Tuesday, we met with senior management regarding the, you know, the next step that we would like to move forward with. We're aware, again, very positive of the upcoming weeks and months.
Thank you. I'll pass the line.
All right. Next question comes from Vince Valentini from TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks very much. Thanks for letting the call go longer this time. I know there's a lot of interest in questions. First, maybe just to clarify, Hugues, if wireless EBITDA is up 22%, that would mean your cable or wireline EBITDA was down about 5% year-over-year. Is that, is that fair?
That's fair, but including equipment, right? Services is actually up, yeah, In wireline, including both service and equipment, we are down 3%.
All right. Vince, if you don't mind, can you press star one more time to get back in the queue, please?
Of course. We lost Vince.
There we go. Just give me a moment here.
We lost Vince. Vince is not lost.
Go ahead. Go ahead, Vince.
Sorry.
Hey, Vince, you're not lost, are you?
I'm not lost. Must be Bell sabotaging the line on us here.
It must be.
Yeah, sorry, I didn't quite catch you, Hugues.
Okay.
EBITDA in wireline was only down 3%, not 55?
3%. Yes. From the numbers I'm looking at, yeah. Yeah, 3% including equipment. Yes. Yeah.
Okay. Back to the CapEx. I know we've talked a lot about it, but, I mean, your CapEx intensity was 12% of revenue. That's way below any of your peers. I just wanna make sure that, you know, there's no apples to oranges going on here. Have you done anything different in terms of outsourcing any network functions so that something's being counted as a lease or an OpEx item instead of CapEx? And does that CapEx number include anything you're doing with these rural projects that are with government subsidies? Is there anything you're hiding anywhere else, or is that 12% and $457 million actually what you're spending?
No, no. I can assure you we're not hiding anything, or we're not being creative in accounting in any way, shape, or form. I can assure you of that. That the 12% is really an apples to apples comparison to our or to what we know of our competitors' you know, results in that. As I was, you know, as we were pointing out a little bit earlier, I think it really. I mean.
I know it sounds surprising to you guys, but, you know, you just have to think of the number of projects that people in Telecom work on, you know, and that when you put in more discipline in terms of really going through a very disciplined business case, it is actually quite amazing how many projects you can say, "No, you know what? This is not a good use of time and of money, and we're gonna focus on something else." Or even on each, you know, on each project, you know, do you really need to invest this much in each step of the project, you know? You know, it's a little bit like losing weight, you know.
Just by bringing down the, you know, each, you know, the volume, you know, eating a little bit less of everything, you get there, you know? I know it's a lot, but it is something that, you know, our two networks, both wireline and wireless, we've invested significantly on over the past years. We were in a position, don't forget, contrary to Bell, y eah, well, more specifically contrary to Bell, where we didn't need to invest. We've invested in fiber. I wouldn't leave you with the impression that we don't invest in fiber because we do invest in fiber significantly, we didn't need to invest as much as Bell needed to because we were starting from a very different point.
We can get comparable or very good performance at, you know, with lower investments. All of that in the mix, you know, discipline and more, you know, having an advantage on the, you know, on the fiber to the node as opposed to fiber to the home in many cases, you know, leads us to, you know, to significant decreases in CapEx. As I mentioned earlier, you know, our cost reduction, our teams, just the fact that we're a lot more, you know, that we're re-questioning everything, as to how much time we spend on things, how much money we spend on things, and how many projects we're looking at. It just, you know, it just adds up.
Okay.
Absolutely. You know, it's. Yeah, I think that also, you know, what we've been doing is that we reduce or even, you know, clean up the amount of consultants that was working for the, o bviously, as you can imagine, consultants are there to make them, you know, important or making sure that, you know, they will remain consultants. They're building projects and projects and projects. I mean, do we always need all those projects? At the end of the day, it's management decisions to have a judgment call saying yes or no. You know, we've been seeing a lot of things that took place, which to us was not necessary. Do you really need, you know, as an example, 15 Gartner subscription or a tree will make it, you know?
You know, if you're reducing because those expenses sometimes are also capitalized or, you know, you're capitalizing them or you're making them as an expense, at the end of the day, it's cash. When you are reducing or you're just eliminating those kind of expenses, at the end of the day, you're generating much more cash. We will continue to work on this. We certainly, you know, again, we have the best experience there out of the industry. We will continue to remain the same. I guess our homework had been done, and we look forward now for growth in the wireless sector in Canada.
Okay. Last one on this, then I'll pass the line if you're gonna take any more. A skeptic might say you're being extremely efficient and diligent at reducing your CapEx in your Quebec-based business because you think there's a huge amount you'll have to spend outside of Quebec, and this $450 million will soon jump up to $800 million or $900 million when you have to support Freedom as well. Is there any truth to that, or do you think you can be just as efficient in your new operations?
There's no doubt obviously our CapEx will increase. We know, you know, the status of the Freedom network. There are certainly, you know, many things that will make a customer experience for Freedom down the road much better than what it was before. Automatic seamless handoff is certainly something that we look forward to establish. We were earlier also talking about roaming, adding the capacity to get one network to the other. We have the MVNO, we have the spectrum that we paid for, the obligation to build. Every day, every week, and every month, our network will improve. We do not have shortage of time for doing it. We're not rushed, you know, to do it in six months.
We have in front of us a good period of time, which being disciplined will give us the opportunity to remain efficient. We look forward to again establish ourselves in that kind of environment, which is certainly optimized for properly spending in good technology, in proper places and appropriate systems.
Thanks.
All right. Next question comes from David McFadgen from Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. I got cut off the call, so hopefully this hasn't been asked already. When we look at the wireless net adds, you know, obviously down a fair bit this quarter, but yet your share of the gross adds in the market was still, you know, around 30%. Should we take it that maybe the market's entered a new paradigm where the net adds are just gonna be lower going forward, or this quarter was just an aberration?
No, I think you're, you know, I think you're right. You know, don't forget that just almost mathematically, I'd say, or naturally as, you know, when you have a, I don't know, when we used to be at 10% or 15% market share and, we were cruising at, you know, 30% share of gross adds, then of course, you know. Now we're, you know, as we're close to, you know, 25% market share on, in a four-player market, you know, obviously things change a little bit.
In terms of, one thing you have to say, we are the only ones giving out the net adds for Quebec in our market. I think that's important because it's hard to compare the net adds of our competitors in our market. I think it would be fair to say what you said, that I think going forward, we certainly do not necessarily expect net adds to be as high as they were for us in the other parts of or the earlier parts of our cycle, of our development cycle.
I just, it, you know, it just makes, you know, natural sense that we would, I don't know if I'd use the term plateau, but that our, you know, that our growth would, you know, starts diminishing a little bit. I think that's normal and natural.
Okay. Okay. Can you comment on the relative performance of the Vidéotron brand and the Fizz brand in the quarter?
Both. You know, we don't give out specific numbers. All I can say is that, you know, Fizz, you know, it ebbed and flowed again. You know, don't forget that Fizz started from scratch. It really launched in any segment or segments of the market where we were performing less well with Vidéotron, you know, when we were used to refer to the urban, the younger crowd, the more tech savvy, you know, the more digital savvy crowd. There was an opportunity there for us, you know. We were really successful and Fizz grew very, very well on that.
Now it's normal after two or three years that, you know, we've, you know, that growth is getting increasingly, you know, a little bit slower and increasingly difficult. I think that's just, that's just normal. I think it's again, it, you know, both are growing, to, you know, to be sure. But Fizz, which, you know, we used to say maybe a few quarters ago or last year or a couple of years ago that Fizz was accounting for most of the growth or of the net adds. Now it's, you know, it's more balanced, I would say.
Okay. I don't know if you can answer this question, but, can you comment at all about what ISED wants from you to be able to prove this deal? Like, what assurances do they want?
What's the question, David? I'm not sure I understood. What have we been asked by ISED to deliver, right? Is that what you're asking?
Yeah. I mean, they're, I mean, when you know, read, you know, various articles, it seems like, you know, obviously they want lower prices, and you've said that you know, you tend to do that. What exactly do they want? I think they want some way to force whatever they want. I don't know if you could provide any commentary on that, but it'd be helpful.
You know, I don't feel I don't feel authorized to talk for the minister. In the, in the meantime, you know, I think that he went, you know, public on it, what he's looking for is, you know, you want to have prices that will be lower. He consider, and I guess that it's certainly not really tough, you know, to demonstrate that the prices in Canada are the highest in the world. He thinks that that is his role to provide an environment that will make situation different than what it used to be. Here we are, and he certainly, you know, is in the driver's seat since he's the one that's gonna approve the transaction in the end.
Because all of the previous steps have been over and positively answered. I guess that you should ask the Minister for that, David. We thank you all, and thanks David for your question. We wish you a nice day. We'll talk to you at next quarterly meeting. Thank you very much.
Everyone, this concludes the Quebecor Inc's financial results for the 2022 fourth quarter, conference call and the full year. Thank you for your participation and have a nice day.