Can we hear Doug? Can you hear me, Doug? We cannot hear Doug at this time. Looking into this.
I'll vote now. Does that work?
We can hear you now. Great.
All right.
Good to have you here.
Thank you very much. Thank you for the invite and good morning.
All right. We only have 25 minutes, so we'll get things started right now. Let's start the conversation with the guidance you have provided just recently with your most recent earnings report. You reported for EBITDA growth of between 3% and 5% for your TELUS segment, which encompasses the telecom, ag, and health. That is leading the industry for 2025, at least in terms of expectations. Can you talk maybe a little bit about your confidence in achieving this outlook in light maybe of the recent pricing action and everything that's going on on the macro side? Maybe if you can also touch on the different aspect of where this growth is coming from within your portfolio.
Great. Thank you. Yeah, we're very happy with our execution that we've continued to be able to do over the past few years. We continue to leverage off our networks, our products, and our customer service. I think that is what is the foundation to the guidance in which we set out in February. You'll see it right across the board from revenue generation, including continuing growth on our internet and data services. Obviously, a little bit more challenged on the wireless front, but we'll see continued growth there just at a moderated level. We're still seeing superior growth in both healthcare and tech and recoveries in TELUS Digital and obviously our business areas. In addition to that, leveraging efficiencies and effectiveness.
You are seeing that fiber continues to drive significant cost reductions through a more efficient network, less customer service requirements as the product is more reliable, more bundling within our services on fiber, and then leading to more profitability. When you marry that then with the opportunity to start monetizing real estate and copper, it is a triple win for a better term on revenue, cost, and then incremental monetization. When you bundle that together, that is where our guidance is established on. The foundation of customers first, obviously, continues to be our great focus.
No change in the recent weeks from what you've seen so far in the year, right?
There's going to be more pressure, but we did build in within our range that our ARPU would not improve materially. Right now, I would say no, there's been no changes in the past couple of weeks.
Great. One subject that I think is kind of impossible to avoid here today is potential tariffs that everyone knows about, obviously. If you can maybe talk a little about the exposure that you have to this topic or potential topic, difficult to say at this point, and maybe talk about if you did incorporate the threat for the tariffs in the guidance that you have.
Yeah, we've got a long-standing track record of dealing with exogenous events. We think some of the regulatory events we've had, COVID and other items that our resiliency continues to be first class. What we've got set up right now through my treasurer is a tariff prime within our organization who's looking at all of our, call it vulnerabilities and opportunities, and ensuring that we're well positioned to be ready for either short-term or long-term impacts of the tariffs. For example, we've continued to hedge a lot of our US dollars, so protecting us against volatility in the US dollars. We've been looking at our supply chain to ensure we have diversified supply and so that it will as well bring us or allow us to have an opportunity to not be impacted by the higher cost structure or limited supply in general.
We look at all of our product sets right across the world between all of our businesses to ensure is there anything on that end as well that we should be prepared for on multiple vendor strategies. Obviously, looking at opportunities. Within Canada, ensuring that our businesses and organizations in Canada that are going to need a little bit more efficiency or support from Canadian champions such as ourselves, we're willing to step up and help those businesses and individuals as well. I think the only thing that's a little bit harder to predict would be what is the impact on the economy and will there be a slowdown on the consumer and biz side that would be abnormal. I think so far we're seeing that our services are still obviously in very high demand and we haven't seen the impact early stages to that.
From that perspective, we think we've got a playbook in place. The playbook we report to Darren and I monthly and to our board quarterly. It has a very high profile within our organization so that it gets the priority it needs.
Great. What I understand is that this was somewhat incorporated in the guidance as we were talking about it before. You reported your expectations for the year.
If it wasn't, we are preparing with remediation plans to mitigate any event or most of the impacts of that. There'd be no changes as we speak today.
Yeah, understood. Makes sense. Now let's go into the operations a little bit. Let's talk about wireless first. We're in a competitive landscape. Today is a competitive date. We're looking at pricing this morning. Last week was as well. What should we be expecting in terms of the direction of ARPU this year? Also, we have an immigration team that has been evolving over the last year. If you can talk about the two main drivers of ARPU and loading for the coming year. We're back to we can't hear you.
Sorry, for some reason I keep going on mute automatically.
All right.
Is that okay?
Yes, we can hear you now.
All right. Thank you. From an immigration perspective, yes, we're seeing immigration slow. In Q1, when you think Q1 is the lowest loading quarter of the year, that would put a little bit more pressure on the quarter for net loads. Specifically, when you look at churn rates, there's a lot of loading that needs to happen just to go positive. We have the lowest churn rate in the industry, so it does help us on that end as compared to what our peers would have to load just to get to break even. That being said, we are seeing a little bit more pressure than normal on a Q1 from the perspective of a net loading opportunity. I think we'll expect to still see an opportunity for loading through bundling and through product penetration within homes.
We still have fiber customers that are not using our wireless services or vice versa. We are going to leverage that in our future and our growth strategy as we have been in the past. We will continue to look at homes that are under-penetrated, even if they are new Canadians who started with one device or product, and we will continue to build over that over the tenure that they have had in Canada. We are continuing to look at that end as well for future growth. Leveraging, obviously, IoT and some of the other business products also complement the revenue trajectory. From an ARPU perspective, we are assuming that ARPU is stabilizing and has potential to be slightly improved as the year progresses. I still see it being negative on a year-over-year basis or hopefully closer to break even as the year progresses. The intensity levels are still there.
We continue to focus, obviously, on economics and profitability to ensure that any of the offers that we are matching or not would have a reasonable economic profile. The combination of both handset specials and rate plans do put future pressure on our ARPU. We have seen throughout January and over the Christmas season significant handset specials where those under the accounting rules are amortized into the future over your ARPU. I do think that pressure will continue to come. We have anticipated sort of a flat lining to slight improvements. Q1 with the lower loading and the significant amount of intensity may show not quite as much an improvement as future quarters may, but definitely managing through that through our profitability focus.
Yeah, makes sense. Thanks for this. Let's move to the fixed business. It has performed well in the case of the closing of the Rogers Shaw transaction. You've been able to stand your ground there. Now, people are wondering how sustainable this is or what are the drivers that will keep your fixed business growing over the several next years?
Yeah, I think it's going to continue to be product intensity and product quality. I think we saw our fixed data revenue in Q4 around the 2% and jumped up or around 4%, sorry, a little bit higher. We expected the normal run rate of data to be in the 2% range for 2025 is probably more of a typical run rate. We will see growth in our fiber loading as we continue to finish our build. As much as we've cut back on the capital associated with fiber, we're still completing the build where we see fit and where it's economic to do so.
We are then looking at product intensity, really focused on what's next and how do we ensure our customers get multiple products in their home and that we're relevant to them for their services they need, including some of our new product launches in Home 2.0, which include aging at home, will include power and energy, and other services that will be able to layer it on to your current security or home offerings. We do think that will be very opportunistic for ourselves and for our customers. There are significant benefits coming from both of those, even in cost savings or protection of you and your family. I see that as being how we're going to continue to grow this line. Our business lines continue to grow, especially in the SMB area, and that also contributing to the fixed data.
I would say it all starts off the foundation of our fiber network, then followed by our products and our product superiority, and then leading into the bundling in which we continue to focus on for multiple years now.
Yeah, makes sense. You mentioned a couple of times the bundling and product intensity. One of the major aspects of this going forward is probably going to be the wholesale internet review that is going on right now at the CRTC. One question that I get from time to time is, what happens if the CRTC does not allow you to resell internet wholesale anymore after this review that is coming up? What are some of the options that you have to keep growing that product intensity strategic focus?
Yeah, so one, we could continue to resell cable if fiber is not allowed to be sold. That being said, I think the last validation that fiber should be on a wholesale basis and even the rules that were put out on five years after the build that wholesale is not required gives a provider plenty of time to get market penetration and start to monetize the very valuable yet long-tenured asset. I think as we look forward, I would say we'll continue to bundle our products in the east. We have opportunities for healthcare, Home 2.0, wireless, and all of our other products that's in addition to wholesale on cable if we continue to bundle on that end.
At the end of the day, I think it is fair that access to fiber is good for Canadians as long as the pricing regime aligns to infrastructure-based costing where the organization that built the network should get a profit on that. We fundamentally believe that. We are not asking for a subsidy. We are asking to help on the side of monetize those assets. We believe that retail and wholesale are a good combination to monetize the assets faster.
Allowing you to resell in the east presumably would also mean your own network being open to mandated wholesale in the west. What do you think would be the potential impact and what would be the dynamics that your competitors could be leveraging there?
Yeah, I think as long as you go back to the fundamentals of the costing and ensure that subsidies are not given to wholesale sales. That, again, it's back to that you get a return on your assets. You have to compete. You compete on products. You compete on customer service and all the areas in which are good for the economy and actually good for our customers and Canadians alike. I think that to me would be the point one. When you look at then as well, as much as we try to focus and be perfect on customer service, we're not always. Where the wholesale side also comes in is it will help us monetize our network faster for customers who may not have even gotten. I look at it as we will compete.
As long as there isn't a subsidy or benefit given to many wholesale suppliers or the wholesaler, then I think it can work and it'll work very well across the country to the betterment of both organizations and Canadians alike.
Yeah, it makes sense. The wholesale can be revenue too. Now, I want to touch on the efficiency of the industry. People are wondering what is basically the efficiency generation runway that you have. I think you've been investing a lot in digitization over the last couple of years. We've been seeing restructuring programs. Investors very often want to know how long of a runway there is for those types of measures.
Yeah, agreed. What we've looked at, we've been focusing on digitization for quite a while, as you highlight, right back to prior to COVID, as you would have saw even during COVID, where one of the few that could right out of the gate offer no touch in digital service to our customers significantly faster than any of our peers. There are a few reasons for that. One, our fiber network continues to be further ahead in development than our peers. With fiber, it allows you to have fewer repairs, fewer customer complaints, fewer customer calls. You start driving efficiencies the moment you get customers onto fiber. That would be one of the leading opportunities. Once we've got all of our customers migrated from copper to fiber in a particular area, we can actually shut off the copper network.
Doing that saves another wave of costs, including your MSO and hydro property taxes, etc. We are in the early stages of that. There is still a significant runway to completion of shutting off the copper network as we do more and more migrations to fiber. The gift that keeps on giving on that end is obviously our copper sales and then real estate monetization subsequently. The second arm to this is customers' focus from day one and having TELUS Digital as a significant supplier to us. They've been very strong at bringing down our cost structure, but giving it a culture that also is the same culture as TELUS. Ensuring the customers get first-class customer service.
With the new side of, or not the new, but with their focus on AI and digitization, they've also been the enabler to TELUS digitizing our customer experience and bringing down our cost to serve where appropriate, but a healthy balance between physical and digital as customers need both types of support. Even some of the AI tools that they're developing for us now on propensity to churn and growth opportunities, we've found that are seeing the benefits break down the churn level of basis percentage points producing just based on those new tools and AI tools that they're bringing to our use. I would say it's the combination, again, of superior network and moving a first mover advantage that we've had on bringing our fiber network to fruition.
It's our focus on customer service and ensuring that we are relevant to our customers and meeting their needs, how they want to be served. Having a subsidiary organization such as TELUS Digital, we're able to enable those quicker and at the culture that we want our customers to experience.
Yep, that makes sense. Circling back on this, one of the very important aspects of investing in TELUS, I think, is the future CapEx intensity that you have. We've been using kind of a 10% CapEx intensity in a couple of years, which was guidance that you have provided a couple of quarters ago. Some of the challenge that some investors have with this number, it's not really a challenge because you're world leading in that sense, but we can't see a foreign example of this, of seeing a clear company achieving this, reporting numbers achieving this. What is your degree of confidence? We've been seeing guidance of other fiber players elsewhere talking about the same numbers. I definitely think it makes sense. What are the kind of guideposts that make you think this is achievable in the next couple of years?
Yeah, I think from the perspective of prior to our fiber build, our annual capital spend was in the CAD 1.9 billion-CAD 2.1 billion range. Another CAD 400 million-CAD 500 million lower than it is today. I think when you look, yes, we are a bigger organization than we were then. You can look at the fact that we're spending at some point over CAD 1 billion on fiber annually, and that's declining, obviously, to significantly lower amounts now as we finish the tail, but even lower into the future. It's a 60-year-plus asset. Once you have that initial lift done, it's really maintenance and expansion so that your capital envelope required for that declines significantly. I think when you look at our wireless evolution, you've seen a lot of spectrum auctions that have occurred over the last few years.
Part of our leverage is we had to buy billions and billions of spectrum at very high rates over the past few years and then put that into service. Going from 4G to LTE to 5G, the evolutions on the come, even in wireless, are not at the same intensity level that they were in the previous auctions and wireless rollout or evolution. Our fiber build, we're building small cells concurrently. When millimeter wave does come in the next auction, we expect that auction to be a lot less. Even our rollout of that will be more programmatic on where is the best opportunity for usage of that technology and then leverage the small cell technology that we already have built to also roll out some of that for capacity and coverage where appropriate.
I think when you bring that together, the fact we're going from two networks, copper and fiber, down to one, you'll see an efficiency factor there. Our other businesses from healthcare to tech are really data and applications businesses at the end of the day, which again, will have a very nice capital intensity level that will also complement to the telecom side. I am confident based on the trajectory we're on, we will get into that range. I think the slowdown of revenue a little bit on wireless may be prolonged a little bit, but we're still targeting to get down to those levels that you referred to.
Yep, that level will probably help you deleverage over the next couple of years. One of the most interesting updates that you've provided, I thought, and personally on the last earnings call, was your long-term guidance on leverage. You are now targeting to exit 2027 at a three-turns level, if I'm not mistaken. This is a bit more ambitious than what we had modeled. Maybe if you can elaborate on how you achieved that objective, maybe there's some asset sales that investors don't know as much about that you can discuss.
Yeah, I think it's built on twofold. One, our free cash flow generation from operations. I think as you continue to see our growth trajectory through tech and through healthcare, healthcare is having over 10% on revenue and 20% on EBITDA. Those growth rates are we expect to continue. We think our free cash flow acceleration will come on multiple fold. In addition to just what assumed EBITDA growth, our restructuring dollars are starting to fall. You see it came down a little bit in 2025 and will come back probably down another CAD 100 million or CAD 200 million in 2026. Interest charges with interest rates of cash interest will also start to decline, not only just from rates declining, but also from our deleveraging as we continue to bring down our debt level. To your point, there are some monetization opportunities.
The ones that we continue to talk about are obviously our copper, which we have sites to $1 billion gross and $500,000,000 over the next five to six years. Looking at is there forward contract opportunities or other things we might want to do. There is our real estate portfolio between the assets we own today and are developing at 100% on our own balance sheet to the partnerships that we have on the residential that is looking forward into the REIT strategy. Both of those have monetization opportunities over the next few years, but even our owned assets have a bigger one and quicker one should we want to tap into that. We are also looking at we have a ventures portfolio of over $800 million.
Through the acquisitions we have done over the last little while, there are some non-strategic investments that we have made that are not going to scale, probably are not fitting into our future roadmap anymore. We do see a few hundred million over the next few years per year coming out of the divestitures of those assets. We then look longer term on a partnership within health and tech, agriculture. Our health business growing at the rate it is will have a very significant market cap in the not too distant future. Bringing in a partner at a billion plus is very doable and an opportunity also that is in front of us and it could even exceed that significantly.
There are opportunities for other infrastructure type assets should we want to do that or even hybrid debt should we want to do that that would also complement the leveraging. When you look at the big pool, we've identified as much as CAD 7 billion of opportunities of one-time items for a better term that would help us deliver, but we only need a fraction of that to get down to the 3.0 in the CAD 2 billion-CAD 3 billion at most. We do think we'll be well on our way to executing on that plan in addition to our free cash flow generation, which will get us to our deleveraging in that time frame.
That $7 billion amount, I think it's the first time I hear this number. Some of that would be generating EBITDA, presumably, but maybe wouldn't sell majority partnership in there. Most of it wouldn't be too meaningful for your current EBITDA, right?
That is correct. If you think of some of the bigger chunks of partnership in health, if we were to do an infrastructure deal, even the copper and real estate will not impact EBITDA unless we have an asset gain through the process. Any of the trimming we do on our investments from a ventures perspective for generally minority or very low minority interest, though, again, not impacting EBITDA. The only one that possibly could if we did trimming on non-core assets that carry EBITDA with them, we would be very open to what the short and long-term impacts of that are. I would assume it would not be significant to the exceedance.
Interesting. Last one I have is on capital allocation. Presumably, your evolving balance sheet situation would also come with an evolving capital allocation strategy over the next two to three years. If you can maybe talk about what may change on that front, would a lower leverage maybe down the road allow you to take the TI private maybe? If you can talk about this next.
No problem. Yeah, our strategy and capital allocation right now is delever and strengthen our balance sheet, continue to invest in the business for future growth. Ensure we have the growth rates and the leadership that we're showing today into the future, and then return to our shareholders. That's through the dividend growth or share buybacks or whatever that may look like into the future. By setting the target for 2027, I think it prioritizes our deleveraging, and you'll see that getting down to the 3.0 as we discussed. It prioritizes taking the DDRIP out, again, focusing on shareholder returns and removing or reducing the dilution. Once you get into that time frame of having those few items done, I think your point is what next? Should we monetize more on those items than that bucket that I referred to?
As we get more free cash flow subsequent to those initiatives, we would consider all options on share buybacks or other opportunities into the future. To be determined, I need to execute very strongly for the next two and a bit years on my delivering plan and removing the drip, and then we'll address the next opportunity shortly thereafter.
Yep, makes sense. Cool things I like hearing there. That is all the time we had, Doug. Thank you so much for taking the time with us this morning, which is best for the future. We have GDI presenting next at 10:45. Thanks, Doug.
Thank you. Have a great day.