Good morning.
All right. Thank you, Glenn.
Thank you.
for coming.
Thank you. Sorry to keep you waiting.
Always a pleasure to have you at our conference.
I appreciate being here. Thanks everybody for attending.
Did you hear the speech?
It's a tough act to follow.
So, you know, I think-
Much material.
I have to say, when I, personally, for, if you know, CRTC speak is very, nuanced. I did hear.
It's one word.
I did hear that. The MVNO regime that they put in place.
Yes. Yeah.
... they see the benefit from it, but now they're waiting to see if the MVNO participant is going to deploy their own network, and to see if that hypothesis comes together.
Yeah
... like planned. Can you tell us, are you seeing-?
Have we seen an example of that anywhere?
I was gonna ask you, have you started seeing, you know, we have Quebecor and Cogeco?
Right
... who are benefiting from the regulatory regime that was put in place. Are you starting to see some additional investments being made by these two players in building up their infrastructure?
I think in your recent research note, you've called out the fact that Quebecor's capital intensity is much lower than others, and we need to match. Okay, but we need networks. Up until now, the regulator and the regulatory framework in Canada has followed through on an owner/operator model, recognizing the value investing in networks. A portion of Quebecor's traffic is carried on other networks. The regulatory rules right now, you're right, they're set up that you can carry for, you know, so long, but after seven years, you need to build your network and you need to, you know, you need to stand on your own. You know, I was only a little bit facetious when I asked, have we seen an example of that anywhere?
The examples we've seen in Europe and in the U.S., which is held out as being a 3 competitor market. Well, okay, it's a 3 competitor market with a lot of MVNOs. I can stand in downtown New York or downtown Boston and have trouble getting 4 or 5 bars of service, or have to stand near a window to get service. That doesn't happen on our network here in Toronto. What we usually see with the MVNO model is that the economics that are set up with those MVNO rates don't encourage capital investment. They wind up permanently instilling a wholesale model. You look at the large carriers in the States, they're all competing for wholesale business.
Mm-hmm.
It's crowding out their retail pricing, but they have nothing left because Mint is going to take the CAD 9 a month customers and pay for wholesale space. You can't reprice the Verizon customer base at CAD 9 a month and still have, you know, that value. You don't get the MVNO operators generally investing in network as a permanent, "Okay, this gives me time to build out my network." You usually instill a permanent MVNO wholesale model. The trick for the regulator is going to be to set the rates appropriately so that Telus and Bell and Rogers and Quebecor, to an extent, to avoid costing, are encouraged to continue to build the world-class networks we have. Wireless and wireline, this applies across both. MVNO is a wireless model, but it applies with TPIA and wireline.
You have got to make sure we continue to encourage the owner/operator model in Canada, that we will continue to invest in those networks. We need them for our economy and to drive connectivity. AI doesn't work without connectivity. We're gonna need more and more capacity, but it's a difficult balance that I haven't seen work in other models, in other markets.
Let me ask you a follow-up on this because you mentioned the research report that we published, which argues that if you don't have that certainty in regulation or that MVNO access is going to eventually stop. And as a company and as an industry.
Mm-hmm
... given the leverage that you have and given the lower growth that we're seeing overall.
Yep
... in subscriber growth, wouldn't it make more sense to pull back on CapEx more aggressively until you have that certainty that MVNO is going to be phased out in time?
We are still committed to an owner/operator model and believe that the country is going to remain committed to that. It has developed world-class networks. You're not going to see us Pull back at the, you know, expense of the networks, waiting for the regulators to decide that those networks are worthwhile. We're gonna lean in and make sure we continue to have world-class networks, and that's what our peers are doing to some extent as well, to make sure that we've got world-class networks to hold up as saying, "This is important." You can bet that our conversations with them talk about the importance of owner/operator, and you can't allow the wholesale market, the MVNO wholesale market, to crowd out our presence in the retail space. We've cut back CapEx from, you know, CAD 4 billion.
We were at 3.7 in 2025. We've guided 3.3-3.5 for 2026. We're pulling it back. We're continuing to invest in those networks because it drives, you know, a key part of our CAD 10 billion of EBITDA that we're looking to drive. That's not a wholesale model. That's a retail model that drives CAD 10 billion of EBITDA. You know, it's managing that balance. You know, to be clear, we're investing in 30%-40%+ data growth every year across wireline and wireless. You have to continue to invest to refresh the network and to carry the growing data. That's the balance you've gotta follow.
The emphasis for us is growing revenue, watching, you know, the prioritizing around where we're investing to drive that growth, and then also, you know, taking advantage of the revenue growth. It brings down the intensity that way. It's a balance.
Okay, talking about revenue growth, can you give us an update on your view about the subscriber growth that we're currently seeing in the marketplace, which has come down over the last three years? You know, where would you put it currently in terms of overall wireless subscriber growth in Canada, and where do you think at the end of the year? Are we still in a normalization mode, or have we touched some kind of a support level?
I think we've seen several quarters now of certainly low or zero population growth in the country. We saw penetration gains lead to 2.5% growth in 2025.
Right.
I think you may see that, maybe move a little closer to 2% and 2.5% for 2026. The first quarter is a very, very light quarter seasonally. It's, it is also a very, very thin quarter for nets because of that zero population growth going on. There is still some growth, but you're going to see it, I expect a little bit lighter, and you see that reflected in our guidance and our commentary around our guidance. I think generally the growth from penetration of 2.5% in 2025, as I say, I think that'll be a little lighter in the range approaching 2% this year.
2% is approximately our estimate.
Yeah.
1.6, 1% to 2%. What do you make about the price discounting that we've seen?
Mm
... early this year? Because, you know, I think everybody was feeling a little bit better, in the second half of 2025-
Yeah
...when we started seeing pricing stabilizing, all of a sudden we started seeing heavy discounting early this year. Rogers resisted, I would say...
We have
... the urge to embark on matching, but you had to, and I, you know, that's-
We pick our spots, but.
You pick. I mean, you have to you know, have to compete. Why do you think this is happening? What's your gut feeling?
Yeah.
My gut feeling is that some companies are running out with negative net adds, and they don't want to finish the quarter with a negative net add number.
I, you know, the Q1, as I say, is always seasonally light. This one is light, I think there's maybe some of that activity. Some of the behavior actually, you know, we saw in the fourth quarter. The back to school season was, I would view, as being constructive. It was competitive, it wasn't, you know, we weren't into the heavy discounting. It was a constructive, competitive market. That was back to school. As we moved through back to school and we got to Black Friday, that's where most of the sector loading happens for wireless. Black Friday came, one of our peers, for the second or third year now, one of our peers, their systems went out for much of Black Friday.
Black Friday had started off with a similar constructive type approach to the market on Black Friday. When their systems came up on the Saturday, that's when the heavy discounting started. I don't know if it was catch-up. I don't know if it was, you know, part of the plan anyways. I'm not gonna talk to my competitor's strategy or that because I can't. What I saw was system went dark, next day heavy discounting. That heavy discounting carried on through the holiday period. If I look at where our nets were through 2025 and where our peers' nets were through 2025, Quebecor had solid year of nets.
Yeah.
We had a strong year of nets. We added, you know, 245,000 nets last year and 100,000 of broadband. We had strong growth all through the year going into the fourth quarter. Some of our peers didn't, so maybe they were playing catch-up and this was part of their plan, or they were recovering from system or other things, I don't know. The discounting started after Black Friday, and you're right, some of it has rolled into January and February, where there's plans that are in the CAD 20 range and, you know, what starts off in, you know, 20 or 30 GB, 25 GB, 30 GB, 40 GB has grown in some cases to 60 GB and more. Few of us load anything more than 20 or 30 GB anyways.
You start getting into, you know, at least for the near future, essentially unlimited plans down in the CAD 20 or the CAD 25 plan range. That's not constructive. You know, not that long ago, those were wholesale rates. We look at it and we say, "That's just not the market we're in. That's not where we're competing." Some of these plans are for 5G services.
Mm-hmm
... at those prices.
Right.
We have been steady and consistent with our strategy. Most of our loading in the 4th quarter was on our Rogers premium brand. We use our premium brand and the services available on our premium brands to try and move customers up. We compete in the prepaid space, but we do it selectively. We do it with, you know, as I say, we pick our spots so that we don't leave the open lane for our peers to our competitors to go after. We generally come in with a timed offer. We pull it back out, or we choose to just take a pass and say, "Okay, you know, we're not gonna get those net adds this weekend." That's fine. We'll focus on postpaid. We've been consistent with that strategy, continue to be. I think you're right.
I think, right now the net loading is very low and I dare say for some of us, it'll be a very, very thin quarter. The balance there is to try not to reset the pricing and compete hard in such a thin market. For us, it seems an obvious answer.
That's the point I tried to ask Quebecor on the call last week, is, you know, instead of focusing on loading customers and causing backward impact on your own, you know, large pool of subscribers that you have.
I'm not sure they're the first to discount.
No, As a sell side analyst, I always want more information than less information. Is there, maybe a view that instead of always reporting subscriber loading-
Yeah
... moving to account loading, i.e.-
Yeah
... you know, you already do that with, on your cable side. You, you report ARPA instead of ARPU.
Mm-hmm.
As an industry, but, you know, Could the industry be better off if the focus is on top line growth?
Yeah
EBITDA growth rather than pure subscriber loading?
I'm not sure it'll change all of the behavior. It might change some, but there's some challenges with that, too. First off is, you and your peers run forecasting models, and as you run your forecasting models and you ask us for, you know, in the Q&A, for support on where to set those, some of those forecasting models derive off of a P x Q formula. If the information's not there, I'm not sure, you know, that you're going to get the same clarity in running those models. You're still gonna ask the questions. I'm not sure the P x Q on an ARPA is going to change behavior. It's just a different P x Q.
You're sort of blending services across an account, and you're setting an average across those services, but each of us in our companies know the buildup to that average.
Mm-hmm.
I think you're still gonna get some of the same behavior. You've heard me consistently answer in each of the quarters and the annual results when Tony and I present. The first questions that come up are usually around nets or ARPU. My answer on ARPU, whether it's high enough, you know, positive, negative, my first part of my answer is usually if we're on the right side of zero, right now we're not, if we're on the right side of zero on ARPU, for me, that's a full win. I focus on service revenue growth and EBITDA growth and free cash flow growth. That's what's going to grow the value of the enterprise. If you get enough loading of customers, you can offset some dilution of ARPU with the Q part of that, you know, formula.
You start burning down too much of the price-And particularly in a low growth environment, you're going to have trouble ever building that revenue growth and the EBITDA growth, which is why we focus on our premium brand, our postpaid customers, and we try and follow the balance of manage churn, manage the customers we've got, manage the life cycle where we do compete for the prepaid customers, bring them in at that entry level, but try and move them up. Use a tiered handset subsidy model where you're encouraging customers to move up and providing subsidy where there's value and not providing subsidy on the entry-level price plans. I could go on and on, everything we do, the satellite service is included in our higher tier plans.
The intent of all of this is to try and manage that customer life cycle, but really to try and drive that service revenue growth and EBITDA growth. We can make it work by bringing in prepaid customers at an entry-level price, but it can't be all of the customers, and you have to have a path where you can move them up through. I've moved off topic a bit. Getting back to your question, everything I've answered is how we manage our service revenue growth. The premise of what you're saying is you can take the target off of ARPU and change it to a blended ARPA, and you can take the target off of net adds and change it to an aggregation of nets across a number of services or households or accounts.
The buildup for that is still going to come from the companies looking at, well, if we don't have growth in wireline, we need growth in wireless. If we don't have it on consumer space, well, we need to lean in on wholesale. We're still going to do the same things to try and manage the service revenue growth. I think the, you know, the more full answer is you'll change the target, but I'm not sure you'll change all of the behavior. We remain focused on going after premium brand postpaid customers as our first priority, and using our flanker brand and our prepaid brand to try and, you know, try and get some of the new customers coming in that we can continue that life cycle growth. I'll stop there.
You mentioned, satellite, and we saw a lot of announcement yesterday at, Mobile World Congress. Are you starting to see some pull?
Some
... on satellite in Atlantic Canada now that you are offering it, including
Yeah
... all the plans that you have?
There's some. It's... We're still in the very early days of commercialization. When we launched the trial, I think we had something in the range of 1 million text messages on the satellite service over the few months that we ran the trial. For those that don't know, our satellite coverage is with Starlink. We have, we also have deals signed with two others. They're not as far along as Starlink in deploying satellites. We have satellite coverage from coast to coast up to the, I think it's the 58th parallel, which is roughly a third to halfway up Hudson Bay, straight line across the country. That covers virtually every road in Canada other than the ice roads going up far north.
I was talking to somebody last week who was on a snowmobile trip up in extreme northern Quebec and was telling me that he was using the satellite coverage to do WhatsApp calls while he was on his snowmobile run in minus 30-degree temperatures in northern Quebec. It works. The apps work. Texting works. You can use the apps to run maps. More is coming. We'll have voice and full email coming in time. It's working well for providing coverage, key for first responders and what have you. There is some pull. There's some pull in moving customers up to have it included. There's some pull for customers signing up because they have a need for it. It's gonna take time to fully develop.
Okay. I'm sure MLSE is an important topic that will drive your stock's performance.
It's a huge opportunity.
... and value creation that you're working on. Can you remind us what's the latest?
Sure
... vision that you'd like to achieve as an organization, bringing MLSE and the Jays.
Mm-hmm
creating that value that you keep, you know, you talk about? the timeline maybe-
Sure
... and, how you can get there.
Sure. It's a huge opportunity for us, and it's a critical part of our priorities for 2026. Maybe part of it falling into 2027, and I'll come to that. The first step in all of it is buying the 100% interest in MLSE. We have a 25% minority partner through Kilmer, Larry Tanenbaum's holding company. And we have a put call option arrangement that triggers the first week of July.
Mm-hmm
of this year. We hold the put, or the call rather. Larry holds the put. To be clear, we're buying, he's selling. It'll be a race to see which one of us exercises our option first. My guess is it'll be us. I'm not sure we'll wait till the first day before we send our notice of exercising it. If we can negotiate a value and a transaction ahead of that, we will. We're in March. That triggers in July. My guess is, you know, it looks like it's probably going to run to the put-call mechanism in the shareholders' agreement. That lays out a very clear sequencing of events and timeline for setting the valuation on the transaction. Three valuators get appointed. The two closest valuations are used. The one that's furthest out high or low gets thrown out.
The two closest are used to calculate an average. That average is the valuation used for what we pay to buy out the 25% interest we don't own. There's a stipulation in terms of the timeline where all of these sequencing of events has to happen. That takes us roughly into early fall. My expectation is we will have a valuation. I don't expect there to be delays from a regulatory standpoint or a league approval standpoint. We're a known quantity. We already own and control MLSE through our 75% interest. We consolidate it. The regulators aren't going to have a look at any change in control for the assets. My expectation is that'll run fairly smoothly. Sometime in Q4, we will have a valuation. We'll close on the purchase of that stake. We will move quickly to combine Rogers Sports & Media with MLSE.
We will now own within one entity Sportsnet, Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, TFC, Toronto Argonauts, Scotiabank Arena, as well as the minor league facilities and affiliates, as well as the live entertainment concert business that we own a significant interest in. That will all come together within Rogers Sports and Media MLSE. Along with Sportsnet, we will have our other media assets. Once we have that all combined, my guess is, my expectation is that'll happen also in the fourth quarter. We will then look to bring in minority investors, probably institutional investors. There may be some private name investors in there as well, but the value of that entity is, I expect, somewhere in the range of CAD 20 billion-CAD 25 billion that we'll run a transaction at to sell a minority interest in.
At that level, we're looking at probably institutional investors more than private investors. That collection of assets is second to none globally. With a city this size to own and operate all of the major professional sports franchises and their venues, I don't know another parallel like that, certainly not in North America. I'm not aware of one in anywhere else in the world. We've had a lot of interest expressed from others that we've spoken to. First things first, we have to buy the 100% stake and then bring it to market. There's been some question over the last several months on whether or not it's a private transaction or a public transaction. A key part of this is us setting a market determination of value of those assets that we can hold up as being a part of the value of our RCI share price.
Right now, I don't think any of those assets are reflected in the RCI share price. The way to maximize that is probably with a private market transaction with institutional investors to come in and set a valuation for our holdings within. That will also generate capital for RCI to then use to pay down our leverage. We're at 3.9x today on leverage, as reported at the end of the fourth quarter. Through this exercise of acquiring the Kilmer stake and then recapitalizing that combined entity, I expect to lower that leverage. We got down to the 3.5x range just ahead of buying the Bell stake from less than three years from when we acquired Shaw. I expect this transaction to similarly reduce our leverage with the recapitalization. I'll pause there.
If both transactions happen in 2026, where do you expect your leverage to end at year end?
I'll start with, I'm not sure we'll get, and here's where I said it might fall into 2027. I'm not sure we will get the new investors in before we fall into 2027 because those new investors probably do have to be qualified with the leagues, potentially with the regulators, although again, we'll continue to control the asset. I don't expect that to be much involved, the leagues will want to know who's investing. That just takes time. If we can get that in During the fourth quarter, the more is the better. We'll make sure the league stay informed with, you know, all through the steps with what our intentions are, and move as quickly as we can.
If we can get all of that done, my target ultimately is to get us back to where we started when we started Shaw, when we started on MLSE, which is back to roughly the 3.5x range, at least initially. Over time, we'll look to see through organic growth, EBITDA growth, and application of free cash flow, how to bring it down further. Ultimately, I'd like to see us down in the 3.5x range.
Okay. just one question on if you do a private transaction, obviously, it will have a one-time bump into the valuation if you do it at CAD 20.
Mm-hmm
... like you mentioned. How can you keep track of the value creation of the sports franchise, which has been increasing over time...
Sure
... if you don't have a public listing or a public valuation out there?
Good question. There's 2 different ways. The challenge with the public valuation is there are very few of these sports assets that trade on a public market. The 1 that do, and the first example that's used is MSG. The ones that do generally trade at a substantial discount. Atlanta Braves, MSG, each of them take a public market discount. I would tell you, RCI has a public market discount. The private valuation of RCI is far greater than the publicly traded share price. When you're looking at these sports assets, if you don't have a public listing, that doesn't mean they don't trade. If we have institutional investors, a handful of them that buy in, they'll buy in and they'll have different time frames. They'll have different hold targets. They'll have different.
Okay
... different parameters around their investment. They'll potentially trade-
Okay
... amongst themselves or bring others in. There's nothing to say that we couldn't decide two or three years down the road. I'm not, you know, this isn't a plan. Don't hold me to this. There's nothing to say two or three years down the road we couldn't trim an RCI holding and sell down another small stake and use those proceeds potentially to buy back RCI shares or to, you know, to further delever. There can be any number of follow-on transactions that help update the marker. Over and above all of that, one of the largest influencers within the sports and media space is Sportico and Forbes, who every year they come out with a reset on the valuation of sports franchises. That provides an intermediate, you know, valuation.
You can debate its accuracy, but it at least reflects the updating economics in each of the leagues that we participate in. All of those things together, I'm confident will set some level of awareness of what those assets are worth. First and foremost, the market will see that we are not looking to own 100% of it, that we are looking to, you know, own and operate it and control it and use it to help drive our network businesses. That we will have institutional money coming in, investor money coming in that helps to, you know, strengthen our balance sheet.
You have a lot-
Almost there.
you have a lot on your plate.
There are a lot of opportunities.
This-
there.
Thank you, Glenn. I think we're.
Thank you. I think we're out of time.
We're out of time.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you.