Morning, everybody. Thank you for attending CIBC's Eastern Investor Conference. Up next, we've got Rogers. We're very pleased to have Glenn Brandt, CFO of Rogers, here to provide an update. Welcome, Glenn.
Thank you. Thanks very much.
Maybe we'll start out with wireless. Within Canada, the pricing environment appears to be stabilizing. Flanker and fighter brand pricing is up double digits. How do you think about the Canadian wireless environment at this point and kind of heading into Black Friday?
I'll start by saying competitive, but competitive while being, I think, a little bit more stable than we have seen in prior years. Going back into 2024 in particular, the back-to-school season was active but not heavily discounted. The volumes are lighter throughout this year. It started about mid-year last year where the immigration numbers are well down. There's, I would say, less froth in the market in terms of heavy discounting like we had seen back in 2023 and rolling into early 2024. Some promotional activity, I would describe it as being constructive for creating some market activity, but not to the point of being destructive to overall value. We're still leaning in very heavily on our premium brand promotions, but we compete right across the sector. We are from Flanker and prepaid right on through our multi-tier premium brand.
We are focused particularly on holding the base customers, working on churn. Very pleased with churn improvements through this year. You've seen that in the first half. We continue to lean in on that. Still some work to do, but we're at better levels this year than we have been in prior years. Pleased with that progress. I think we've seen some of that with some of the other carriers as well. Overall, I would describe it as being a slower growth market in terms of there's very, very little immigration coming in. We'll still see 3% or approaching 3% subscriber growth in the sector this year. That's approaching a million new customers for the sector. We are following models used by some in the U.S., T-Mobile in particular, with add-a-line promotions, trying to help improve that customer stickiness and reducing churn with multi-line customers.
You can discount a third and a fourth line, and you wind up with an overall customer relationship, particularly if you can bundle it with broadband and other services. You wind up with helping to promote lower churn then as well. We're leaning in on initiatives like that rather than in past quarters where you've seen the sector move to discounting. One of the benefits of our, and I'll make this my last point on it, the benefits of our transaction with Shaw is that the breadth of our wireline market is now coast to coast alongside wireless. We can bundle in every region. Even in the, we have wireline footprint across 60% of the homes in Canada. The largest open spots that we don't have wireline is Quebec and parts of Southern Ontario, Cote d'Ivoire territory in particular. That's 40% of the homes.
Throughout that region, we have fixed wireless capabilities, and we can bundle from coast to coast. That allows us to compete for customers more on bundling discounts and overall customer relationship rather than discounting strictly wireless to try and win nets. You've seen that over the last three and a half years where we have competed very effectively, particularly over the last two years with the Shaw opportunity at West. I'll pause there.
All right, there's a lot to dig in there.
There's a lot there.
Let's start with churn management. Your churn was down year over year. Obviously, it's something Rogers is focusing on. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about the initiatives that you're seeing that see the most churn reduction.
I touched on add-a-line. The more lines you can put on an account, the more services you can bundle, it just becomes a deeper relationship with the customer. There tends to be less churn. There tends to be less capability for our peers to be able to match all of those services at the same level or capability. It starts with add-a-line and with bundling with broadband. Over and above that, we have the Rogers Bank credit card that has shown strong growth over the last several quarters, particularly through 2025. The discounts that we're able to provide through using that points program, using our interchange to help cover the cost of those loyalty points, that helps then provide a discount for our customers on their Rogers services that surpasses what our peers can provide. It's self-funding with the interchange. Leaned in with that. That's helping to deepen the relationship.
As I say, the growth that we're seeing in Alberta and British Columbia with being able to bundle that wireline and wireless, that has also strengthened our ability to manage churn and bring it down. It's a number of different areas, a number of different initiatives, and pleased with the progress, but more to go.
Let's touch on wireline here. You saw a very solid share of internet nets in Q2. How much of it is kind of that Western Shaw presence and how much is that Southern Ontario and Quebec? Where do you see the biggest opportunities going forward?
I think there's a healthy mix across both of those initiatives. We are leaning in on fixed wireless from coast to coast. It's particularly effective in Quebec and in Cogeco territory in Ontario. It's also particularly effective for ease of deployment, ease of purchase from customers. Go online, order a fixed wireless modem, delivered to your door, plug it in within three minutes, you're set up and it's running. I have it on my, I'm in Cogeco territory, west of Toronto, and I have fixed wireless in my house. It runs my office, it runs my Xfinity home service, works beautifully. It's working in areas where we don't have wireline footprint, it's also working for students, for example, even in urban markets. We're finding the fixed wireless is one aspect of that.
Our largest growth markets in wireless are in Alberta and British Columbia, where we are able to bundle our wireless service now with wireline customers we've had through Shaw. We're finding the opposite as well, where we have wireline customers that were on TELUS or other carriers. We're able to pull them in. It's a healthy mix across the two.
In terms of the 5G home internet opportunity, what level of investment do you need to kind of scale that more broadly? How scalable is it here?
With network slicing that we've invested in and provided the capacity, we now have a designated lane that we've made available for fixed wireless. We can also make that available and have it available for emergency services. For our emergency services, we can ensure there is never congestion that prevents rescue crews from having access to their coverage, their service. The same applies for that fixed wireless product. We're able to provide speeds that are very competitive. As I say, I'm able to operate Xfinity products on my fixed wireline or fixed wireless offering, able to provide capacity without crowding the mobile services because we've isolated it. We've got more spectrum than our peers. We're able to deploy it across the infrastructure. We have the most reliable network. I think that's the proof that we're able to balance it and still hold on to those reliability claims. It's working well.
We're pleased with it.
Cable margins obviously continue to see strength from ongoing cost efficiency initiatives. I know you're at 58% right now. Do you see more upside from here?
We've touched 59% previously, and I expect we will do it again. There is more room. All of our businesses are scale businesses. There's more room, but at 59%, 58% for cable, and 64%, give or take, in wireless, 64%, 65%, 66%. We've touched on 66%. At those levels, we're at the very leading edge of global companies. I'm not anticipating large upside. What we're focused on now is ensuring that we are still driving growth. We are still able to find growth in subscribers, growth in revenues and earnings, but also in particular leaning in on our capital intensity and driving growth in free cash flow. There's a balance across each of those. We have a little bit more room to run and some of the efficiencies will drive synergies with the MLSE consolidation.
Once we take out the minority partner there, it will be more modest than what we're able to run with the Shaw transaction as a smaller scale company. We will be operating one of the premier sports and media companies, positive EBITDA, substantially positive EBITDA, substantially positive free cash flow. That's a rare occurrence in sports.
Let's pause there because we're definitely going to get into MLSE. Does anybody have any questions in the audience before we do that? Everybody wants to hear about MLSE, so let's do it. You've now closed the B.C. deal. Can you talk a little bit about Rogers' vision for MLSE and the sports assets?
We closed on the acquisition of B.C. in early July. You all know that, or those interested in Rogers know that. We closed that. We now own 75% effective July 1. We will be consolidating, or we are consolidating MLSE. You'll see that combined with Rogers Sports & Media, and then you'll see further down on our income statement a minority interest line for the 25% minority stake held by Larry Tanenbaum in MLSE. The next step will be negotiating with that minority partner to buy out Larry Tanenbaum. We each have a mutual option. Larry's holding company, Kilmer, has a put option that triggers in early July. We have a call option that triggers in early July 2026.
We've talked with the minority partner as to whether or not there would be any interest in seeing whether or not we could negotiate something sooner, sometime between now and early July or come early July. I expect that option will be triggered. There's a prescribed formula if it goes through on the shareholders' agreement with the mutual options. There's a prescribed formula as to how or exercise as to how valuation is determined. Sometime around this time next year or shortly thereafter, I expect then we would close on acquiring that 25% stake, potentially earlier. We're getting within a half year soon of when that option triggers. Once we take out that 25% stake, the intent will be either at that time or very closely thereafter to bring in minority investors, very substantially institutional investors. It could be private individuals as well.
The intent then will be to bring in private investors to invest alongside and allow us then to ease up on the capital deployment on the OCI balance sheet. We have options wide open to us, whether we keep it private, take it public, spin it out, IPO, or as I say, potentially keep it private. We haven't determined all of those decisions just yet. First things first, we'll focus first on taking out the minority partner and then see what the most viable option is. When we first started talking about this, it seems like we've been talking about it for many quarters, but you know roughly this time last year and on into the first half of this year, particularly when we had announced we would be taking out Bell, I was signaling that we could potentially bring in minority partners by the end of this year.
There's an interest there. We could, or we would be capable of doing it. The right way of doing this is to first buy out the remaining 25% interest. We've spent the last several months talking with our rating agencies. Critical for us was getting to 3.5 x leverage at mid-year before taking out Bell. We got there. We started with the Shaw acquisition at a leverage level of 5.3 times back in April 2023. We got that down to 3.5 x at mid-year. That was important, an important milestone for the rating agencies to see we got our arms around the Shaw acquisition. We've met all of our commitments there in terms of driving synergies, paying down debt, bringing in outside capital with the Blackstone-led deal in late June on our wireless backhaul infrastructure. Those elements were critical to getting leverage from the Shaw transaction down.
The MLSE transaction is now a new separate transaction, and we have time to execute it properly. That's really what's changed over the last three, four months. We have time now to take out the minority before bringing in the outside investment.
Okay. You talked earlier about synergies that you could see from folding the Blue Jays and the Rogers Centre into MLSE. Can you expand on that a little bit? How do you kind of think about this as you roll everything together?
I think the obvious one is the cost synergies. We've got no need for multiple executive offices. We've got professional office infrastructure for the Blue Jays. There's professional infrastructure for each of the teams within MLSE. There's an executive office at MLSE. We've got a head office at RCI that's fully capable of overseeing all of its holdings. There are the obvious areas of just harmonizing and rationalizing those operations. There's a larger opportunity, though, on the revenue synergies. With this acquisition, we will own all of the significant live entertainment venues in Greater Toronto other than live theater. Rogers Centre, Budweiser Stage, Scotiabank Arena, the Ricoh Coliseum, each of those we will own and control. We have a sponsorship for Rogers Stadium up in the north end of Toronto, the old Downsview Air Force Air Base lands.
Each of those areas we will own and control and direct through either our direct ownership or our partnership with Live Nation. It becomes significant for driving concert revenue opportunities. It becomes significant for driving sponsorship opportunities across each of those properties. We see that as being a very substantial part of the synergy opportunity, more on the growth and revenue side or as much certainly as on the cost reduction side. If we had owned MLSE from January 1st, of this year , and consolidated it from January 1st of this year, the EBITDA from the combined media and sports operations within our Rogers Sports & Media line for the full year would have been somewhere in the range of $250 million. There is some improvement in costs reflected in that number that you'll see through the second half of this year that factors into that $250 million.
I expect there is a substantial opportunity of, I'm not going to put a number on it, but of growing that by, if not double, close to it.
Okay.
Over time.
Yeah. Are there any MLSE questions from the audience? Yeah, Gower.
The question is with the institutional partners of the private case. They can happen while they're happening. It's just the chronology, but the sequencing has to be the minority partner and the institutional subsequently are very close to that, right?
Yes.
Discussions can be happening.
We have been discussing with potential investors for several months now, candidly and transparently. Slowed those down some over the last couple of months, still talking with people. What I have found is as soon as we start talking, the excitement level builds. I don't know if we're weeks or months away from taking out the minority partner. There's no sense in wasting their time and energy on spinning things up until we have a sense of that timing. We're now at the point, we're close enough to July that I do expect over the next few months, we'll lean in a little bit more earnestly and be ready for when that opportunity does come. There's a tremendous amount of interest, though, from institutions.
I take it the cost of buying out a Tanenbaum position is way less than the current market value that you've been talking to these institutions about. Is that?
I don't want to start predicting or defining what the perspective and institutions will be coming in. What I would say is the annual growth rate for sports assets is running in the range of 15% annually. If you were asking Larry that question, he'd probably tell you, "I'm going to make sure I get my fair value." My response would be, "We own 75% of MLSE, and whatever his value is, we'll have three times that benefit with the 75% we hold." Depending upon the timing of when we bring in the institutions, they may come in at the same time, might be able to negotiate a better value. They might wind up saying, "You're paying him that. That's the current value," depending upon where it is relative to Forbes and Sportico and other team transactions. It is way premature for me to start speculating on higher, lower, same.
The values that we see are substantial. I think MLSE and Rogers Sports & Media combined, 100% interest across all of that is worth somewhere in the range of CAD 20 billion today. Depending upon the timing of when these transactions happen, every year those values go up by a substantial amount. The opportunity for us is very large.
I've got about five minutes left. Maybe we can flip over to leverage.
Sure.
You've been very focused on reducing leverage with the close of the Blackstone structured equity transaction and the recent data center sale. How should investors think about Rogers' potential leverage as they look out a few years here?
As we stand today, we're sitting at about four times. We were at three and a half or just over three and a half at the end of June. We deployed the capital brought in with the Blackstone-led investment in early July to redeem a significant portion of our outstanding bonds. We wound up picking up an additional $300 million of debt reduction, non-cash, by taking some of the long-dated bonds, a portion of our long-dated bonds that were displaced or replaced by the equity capital that came in. We bought them back at, they were low coupons, long-dated, so they were trading below market. That created a $300 million efficiency or a lift in our deleveraging.
That, combined with the sale of the data centers, I expect that to create somewhere approaching half a billion dollars of benefit through the second half of this year from where we were at the end of June. We factor in closing on Bell in early July. Right now we're sitting at about 4x . I expect to close the year then somewhere in the range of 4x or approaching 4x , call it 3.9 to 4. Each billion dollars of debt reduction lowers our leverage by 0.1. Roughly $10 billion of EBITDA, just shy of that. Every billion dollars of capital that comes in takes 0.1 off of our leverage. When we close on the minority stake in MLSE, that will add something to those levels, but then we will sell down very quickly.
Working with the credit rating agencies, making sure that they understand our plans and our timing and our steps and what have you. That'll give you a run rate over the next several quarters. I expect, as we report third and fourth quarter, to be somewhere in the range of that or just shy of four times over the next two quarters, other than whatever we do with the minority stake in MLSE.
Yeah. How do you think about divestitures here? Are there asset sales that you can continue to do post-Blackstone? How focused are you on that versus closing MLSE and the opportunity you've got there?
It's a question that comes up, and it's one that we leaned in on about two years ago now, just over two years ago, with the intent of selling data centers and real estate. The real estate market is still, I'll be charitable and say, challenged. I think as rates come down, it may come back some. Part of that challenge is the office environment. We're still not all back to work, although I understand Montreal is a little further along than Toronto is with back to office. We're moving back to four days a week in the office effective October, five days a week in the office come February. As more and more of us move back, I think you're going to see more and more take-up of office real estate. Right now, the market, I would say, is very soft. We're not chasing it.
We do have real estate holdings, surplus real estate, some owned, some leased that is beyond what we need. We're not looking at fire-saling it. We're not looking at rushing it. In the meantime, we've found other opportunities to trim the capital on our balance sheet. We sold a Cote d'Ivoire shares. We brought in the Blackstone deal. Those are the two most prominent. We've also sold data centers. I expect that to close hopefully by year-end. We'll find other opportunities here and there. In the meantime, we're leaning in heavily on driving cost efficiencies and working on the MLSE transaction. That is by far the largest remaining opportunity for us. Today, the assets we hold are worth about $15 billion. When we bring in the other 25%, that approaches CAD 20 billion . Monetizing a portion of that is by far the largest opportunity we have.
All right. We are out of time, unfortunately. We'll leave it there. Thank you so much, Glenn.
Thank you very much. Thank you.