You're on the hot seat. Great. We have with us, Doug French, CFO. I'm sure you guys know, Doug, CFO of TELUS. Happy, thank you for coming.
No problem. Thank you.
Happy to have you. I have to ask about the CEO transition. I mean, this, we have to get it, yeah, you know, covered for sure. Let's start with that. Can you maybe just give us a recap of what will happen between now and, let's say, when Victor takes over? What are the key objectives as management, running TELUS that you set yourself to do? You know, the transition period, you know, what are you trying to achieve and in that process?
Absolutely. You said you weren't gonna ask that. I'm just kidding. Anyway, well, we obviously had a, the board had a very thorough succession plan process, and obviously wanted a very seasoned leader. Your plan between now and when he takes the reins is all off the fact of he sat on our board for the past three years, he's been part of our strategic planning, he has the same similar culture to TELUS from customer service to internal, looking out for your team members and community. Very aligned to where we're at. The transition down that side is not gonna be starting from scratch.
I think when you look forward to where we are today to when he takes over, he starts in May and then takes the reins in July, I think it is execute on your plan, and if anything, execute on your plan as crisply and as quickly as you normally would. I don't think anything changes, to be honest, between now and the time that he takes over. We are executing operationally, as we always have. We continue to delever ahead of plan, and I know we'll probably talk more about that. We're continuing to look at all of our strategic initiatives.
I would say being he's been on the board, he voted with the board every single time for where we've been on our strategy. It's steady as she goes. Time will tell in the future.
Okay. I promised I won't across because there's a lot of things you can't be in control of as, you know, until we get the broad strokes of the new strategy we have to wait. Okay. You know, in the meantime, when I look at your wireless business, we had Glenn earlier talk about, you know, some improvement at the end of next year that maybe, we've lost a little bit of the momentum going into 2026 in terms of pricing, you know, and the price behavior. You know, we're still seeing subscriber growth in the marketplace and maybe Q1 is gonna be, you know, on the weaker side for the, as usual.
Can you tell us about how Q1 has been for you so far and, you know, what are your expectations for 2026 in terms of subscriber growth and general pricing levels?
Subscriber growth, we did see the slowdown in immigration last year. I would say we would expect something similar this year. Similar growth to last year is what we're projecting. On the ARPU side and competitive side though, like we're not seeing a slowdown in the progression. You would have seen we led network revenue. We led ARPU improvement. We lead in churn reduction. Would you then lead it to leading the network revenue growth, all of that fits to the strategy of focusing on economic loading, focusing on customers that you can include in your home and mobile bundles, and ones that you can continue to bring and margin back to your organization. I see ARPU continuing to increase as or to improve as the year progresses.
Whether it ever gets to break even or positive growth by the end of the year, I would doubt. I think it's just gonna steady as she goes, in the positive direction. In the first quarter, I think it's been more reactionary to what's going on in the market. We found that if one of our competitors lowers and puts on a above-the-line special, and if you remember above-the-line specials include from rate plans to subsidy, to device financing floor, or to customers being given business plans when they're really a consumer walking into the store and it doesn't matter, the zero screening that happens. That is all rerating your base in some capacity. If we match them, the whole industry just gets diluted. We trade off. My churn goes up, their growth goes up.
Their churn goes up, my growth goes up. No one's better off. We took a bit of a strategy to say, all right, if we're gonna play in aggressive markets, we'll go a little bit more aggressive, but we'll go shortly, and we'll just keep doing our own tactics. I think it's gonna be slightly different on how you look at it. When I've got the backdrop of the best ARPU improvement, the best network revenue improvement, and the largest EBITDA improvement, I think I'm putting my money behind my economic outcomes. I'm not seeing a fall off. I'm not expecting ARPU to go negative worse again. I'm expecting a trajectory. I think it's got to be based on value. You have to give your customers value.
You have to give them customer service that they're happy and doing business with you with, and then the products in which make it very relevant for them to stay with you across the board, not just on one product.
Maybe if you bigger picture, in a market the size of the Canadian market having four well-capitalized operator that are competing for subs in a lower growth environment, do you think the market can act rationally on pricing? Or where, you know, it's kind of given that you'll see these spurs of spurts of price, you know, discounting all the time, because the market is small and you have four companies competing in it?
I think if you continuously focus on value creation for your customers and yourselves, the loading number becomes less relevant. you know, you and I have even had this conversation on some of the reporting changes that have happened around the world. If I continue to focus on economics and I have a lower loading quarter, yet my EBITDA is growing at the right pace, I'll walk away from loading. It really comes down to the customer service, it comes down to the bundle, and we can cross-sell into different products and still have a very, very good quarter without playing the call it uneconomic price game. Is it always gonna be competitive? The answer is yes, especially in a market, like Canada with four providers that you suggested.
We'll always be competitive, but you don't have to gravitate to the bottom to be successful, you don't have to be the highest market share to be successful either. You just have to have the best product set and the lowest cost structure. Bringing in, again, how you service your customers between digital first, having your AI customer service and making sure that you meet all their needs and how they wanna be served, when they wanna be served, you can do that at materially lower cost structure. I would say, our focus continues to be that, is focus on the bundle, focus on bringing products of relevance, focus on the margin, and if loading were to be slightly lower in any given quarter, it is because the economics are getting better.
Okay. Is it, do you think it's an external factor that is driving this behavior to load customers, or it's internal compensation at the company level that is encouraging behavior that then, you know, causes these discounts to occur, i.e., you know, are compensations within the organization focused on loading versus revenue generation and EBITDA? Is that something that has to change before we see a general change in the behavior in the industry?
I would say it's lesser on the internal side, at least with our organization. We have way more weighting on Free Cash Flow than we do on loading, as an example. We've removed substantially all of our loading metrics from our scorecard. I would say it's 100% more focused economics and driving value. I think for the longest time though, we were rewarded, our industry was rewarded for loading by the street.
Mm-hmm.
And I would say that has been, I think, a learning curve for the market in general because I think that's changing and changed. When you even look at taking away subscriber loading, we did the first change of moving prepaid and postpaid together because the industry was taking a prepaid customer that was making a CAD 20 margin, moving it to a postpaid customer to make a CAD 15 margin, but calling it a postpaid load, and their share price goes up. They economically are worse off, yet their share price will go up because they had more postpaid loading. I think we've gotten away from that, we've tried to lead with metrics that matter, would be the best way I'd describe it.
Cash flow that matters, you know, subscriber reporting that matters. If we were gonna make changes again this quarter, you would see it continue to be aligned down that path of what matters, what drives value. Shareholders can look at that and say, "Are they doing well or not?" If we're held accountable to that, I'm very, very happy. When you're rewarded for, call it artificial loading, it just doesn't make any sense to me.
Okay. That's great to hear. On, on the fixed side, it's been a notable strength at TELUS to see you guys continuing to take market share or add subscribers. Can you focus a little bit about what you're doing in the east? You know, how much that strategy could add in terms of the pool of customers that we can see over time, grow your internet subscriber base? Is it worth the effort, i.e., is it worth competing in the east when you know that some of your peers in the east will come and knock on your door in the west as a consequence of your action in the east?
Absolutely. Our position has been competition is good and we are open that if the wholesale of our fiber in the west comes to the west in more prominence, 'cause it's already started, so it is underway, then it's a good thing for consumers, and it's actually a good thing for the industry. It makes us be more accountable to customer service, quality of service, and relevancy to our customers. We actually need to bring them a bundle or bring them products that are meaningful to them at a price they can afford. If you can't do that, then that's why you're afraid of competition, is that you're actually not meeting your customers' needs, you can't bring them relevancy, and probably your customer service is not great, so you're afraid of that competition.
As long as you're operating in a mode that says, "We're there and we're going to make money doing it, we are not going to do my previous comment, take loading at losses in the east," and that's not our strategy. Our strategy is similar to the west. It's very much of bring value, bring, own the home, bring multiple products, and bundle wherever you can for long-term relevancy. The growth will come with that as long as you stay steady. We all know wholesale rates are relatively high because the cost of building a network is high.
We have to actually then be relevant to our customers in the bundle, and that's what we'll continue to do in the east and focus where we can make money, where we can add value to our customer base, and where we can generate Free Cash Flow.
Have you been successful so far in terms of... You don't disclose how many subs you've added, but you did mention on calls that you've had some success. How would you qualify that success?
I think it's going to be continued on EBITDA and Free Cash Flow growth. At the end of the day, as we just talked about on loading, I could load 100,000 internet loads, but if I don't make any money on it's irrelevant. I think it's the leaning into our capital allocation, that our capital intensity is the lowest in the industry. We have the most fulsome fiber network of one of the most in the world. We're leveraging those assets to drive product intensity and product relevancy to all of our customers, and we're starting to do that in the East.
There's a lot of the East that needs fiber that hasn't been built, and, you know, back when the naysayers were saying, "Stop building fiber, it's gonna impact your leverage," I think that we have a desirable fiber network now that most are envious of. I would say that is what we're gonna continue to build off of.
You know, that build has added leverage to the balance sheet. You know, conversation I have with investors is that, you know, the last couple of years should have been the fruit of that investment. We should have started seeing that flow through into lower leverage and improving Free Cash Flow. Why do you think that hasn't transferred into Free Cash Flow generation as fast as maybe investors or, you know, historically you guys have hoped to achieve?
I think the fiber network has given us returns that we've expected. Most markets we're in have had penetration rates that are in our business plan. I think when you look at the company as a whole and you say, "Where did the Free Cash Flow and why did we not be able to deleverage a little bit faster?" I would say we've been the most transparent on our deleveraging plan with timelines. We've been the most transparent on how we're going to do it, and we've continued to execute that very consistently along the way. Remember, fiber is a 67-year asset. We started building them about 12 years ago, and the break even on some of these communities are greater than 10 years.
You're not going to get Free Cash Flow positivity on your whole network, in the first five years, in the first six years, especially when you've been building over that timeframe. It is actually meeting all of our expectations. Our churn rate is lower, our revenue is higher, our cost to serve is lower, and our customers are extremely happy, and we can bring in significantly more products that we never could have brought in before. I think when you look at how the industry's changed, and we just talked about wireless and where pricing went over the last two years, I would say that was deeper than expected. I would say there's other couple things, including our fall off of TELUS Digital that would have been a little bit more of an anomaly on that side.
We will have the lowest, or do have the lowest, of the, us, Bell and Rogers anyway, leverage rate in the industry. We're on a path to be 3.0 years before them, and that is just based on our current existing plan. I would say yes, it's taken a little bit longer based on the past, you know, 12 months, 24 months of market pressure, but we are well ahead of our peers and we're well ahead of the current plan that we put out about a year ago. I would say we continue to execute on that, and I think the market's gonna be very happy with where we end up at the end of 2026 and the end of 2027.
Okay. I asked this question earlier to other companies is, you know, as this pure fiber footprint, you know, brand new, and we have seen capital intensity come down pretty quickly at TELUS. What is how much more can it come down so that we can plan, you know, look at the business and say, "Okay, fundamentally this business can run at, let's say, 9%-10% capital intensity ratio with margins of X." You know, can you give us some ballpark figures we can look at or expect to see that you can achieve over time?
Yeah. I think we set the target of 10% or less, which I think would be with revenue slowing obviously puts a little counterbalance to that. We took capital down again for the second year in a row. We underspent capital two years in a row, for probably the first time in a long time. I think we're allocating our capital now to the areas that matter, and the fact that you don't have that fiber build, call it, heavy lift, you get to put it exactly now where the biggest bang for your buck is. We've got majority of it done. We're still finishing in certain regions where, yes, it is economic to do so, but it's a longer tail.
We can invest in significantly more shorter term capital in AI and digitization, which brings our customers even better service and more, more opportunity on product intensity. I would say, keep modeling to the 10% or less, and then we'll break out further as we go forward. I don't see it having to go above that. The last spectrum that we got in the open auction allows us to not have to, you know, densify our network.
Mm-hmm
... for a longer period of time, because we got it in almost every major city that we provide in. Again, it's having assets of consequence, where we have an envious fiber position, we have an envious spectrum position now as we got very reasonably priced spectrum, which helped top up in urban centers. I'm very confident we're gonna hit our 10% level. I'm very confident we're gonna have our de-leveraging strategy. It's now operational execution and continue what we do well.
We're gonna talk about capital allocation for sure, in terms of margins for fiber, for your fiber wireline business, interestingly how AT&T broke out basically the legacy part, the copper part from the fiber op part and has set a date, essentially 2029, where copper is gonna be shut down, and it's given the stock and investors a brand-new view about what a telco could look like when all this legacy cost is taken out. You have talked a lot about how much cost you can take out, but is there a timeline where you think we can look at and say, okay, you know, 2030 something where all this legacy cost is gonna be shut down?
I don't have like 100% on when you would shut down the total copper network. We're down to well below 5% in fiber markets where we have copper customers on it. We do have an accelerated plan that says of the markets in which we have fiber, we will be off and those copper customers will be migrated to fiber by a period of time. We are going through that region by region as we speak, allowing us to monetize the copper, allowing us to monetize real estate. I don't think we've done, you know, as a high disclosure is what you're referring to, but I'll look to do that into the future as we get our plan made.
There is a portion of copper that we probably will never fiberize. We may do wireless instead, but I think that is more where I'd be uncertain of the timeline. I would expect the timeline would be very, very reasonable and I think appreciated by the street and I'll look to put more of a flag in the sand on that.
Looking forward to it. Okay. Capital allocation. I mean, this is a question for sure that comes up a lot in discussions. TELUS Health monetization, do you expect to see transactions or transaction happening on that front sometime between now and before Victor comes in, or it's too early to tell?
We're in a process right now. We've hired our bankers to help us. We are have an inbounds, over 75 very quality opportunities, in looking at the assets that we have. We are looking to definitely have, let's just say a relationship, whether it be a short list, an LOI, a something done, concurrent or before Victor starts, but obviously the process has to play out.
Right.
I think that'll be the goal, though, back to we are trying to execute our plan as we would have with or without Victor being there. I think it just puts more motivation to make sure it's crisp, and we're doing all the right things anyway. That operational execution was going to happen, and we're now well underway. I'm very confident we'll have something in a year. I'm hoping we'll have something before Victor starts, at least in a signed or announceable state. Then we will continue to move on as a year on what's next.
Do you see that investment happening in one of the segments, or it will be, TELUS Health as a whole that somebody will take, you know, some ownership in, or it's gonna be by in some of the segments directly?
Yeah. We're working with our financial advisors now to determine that on what is the best outcome. If the best outcome is one partner, then we would obviously lean that way. If the best outcome is to prune off a division or two first, then bring in a partner, we're looking at that as well. I think we're keeping all our doors open based on the inbound interest and what our financial advisors end up and we end up on the next step. I would expect the pitch books to be out and be ready within the next 30 days.
In terms of TELUS Digital, any plans to do a similar transaction where somebody can come in and take some small private ownership in TELUS Digital, or, it's gonna just be part of the organization going forward, as is?
For now, it's part of the organization. I think we've had enough change and disruption in TELUS Digital. We need to maximize the value again of why we had it in the first place. I think you'll see a segmentation change. The TELUS business that TELUS Digital was doing for us on CX will move back into TELUS. That'll be owned by the business owners, Zainul and Navin, as an example. They will have that part. TELUS Digital will really be focused external. AI digital, and that AI digital for TELUS will still be in TELUS Digital, but it'll be more streamlined to the higher end and call it transactional type business.
we highlighted that we wanna grow our AI business from CAD 800 - CAD 2 billion over the next, you know, few years, and TELUS Digital is very meaningful on that. Between our AI factories to TELUS Digital, we can be the an end-to-end provider of AI solutions, right? From teaching our model to hosting our model in a sovereign Canadian data center. Seeing early traction on that, which we're very happy about. I think if that continues on the path it's on, that portion of the business will be very integrated into TELUS. We see that as being an opportunity where they're gonna help digitize TELUS. We've had a strategic advantage of bringing down our cost structure, having AI agents, by our own subsidiary company for a while.
I think that's why we've led in customer service. That is why our churn rate is the lowest in the industry and been below one on post-paid for over 10 years. We've actually had internal focus, which is how do we do it better and how do you do it cheaper, so that you can actually bring both into fruition with your customers. I would say that most likely would stay for a while as you get more and more AI initiatives, more solutions in which it could be digital first, and start removing the dissatisfier with our customers. They don't wanna be on the phone for two minutes, let alone 10.
If we can have a digital solution that's easy to use for them, and TELUS Digital can enable that for us, that's exceptional. Then second, they can go sell it to their customers. Some of the names you listed or mentioned in the United States are using them for that. I think it's a fantastic cross opportunity on cross sell while we leverage their expertise along the way. For the external CX, to be seen. I think right now it is stabilization, but if there was ever a looking at something else, that might be it, but for today it's just stabilize, execute and drive the cost savings that we promised.
Do you think, you know, if you think about TELUS in a few years from now, will it continue to have ownership in TELUS Health, TELUS Ag, and TELUS Digital? Or are we heading towards an organization that is focused purely on telecom, trying to monetize these assets as best as you can and drive towards a telecom pure play?
I don't know what a telecom pure play is really gonna look like three to five years from now. I think digital and AI will be part of it and have to be part of it. I think when you think of some of the initiatives we have, which are data platform and insights, whether it be healthcare, whether it be, you know, your even your entertainment watching, whether it be, even agriculture for that matter, it's gonna continue to move down platforms, data, and connectivity. I think if you aren't relevant along the way, then it's gonna be a tougher market to slug because you then become the pipe only instead of the pipe plus value add.
We've continued to execute on the pipe plus value add, bringing more products to our customers, bringing products to our customers that our peers haven't done because of their legacy. Even in entertainment as example, being the first streamer of Netflix and Disney and Amazon together as an example. Those kind of solutions, I think you're gonna keep seeing coming from us, as we look to, one, integrate across all of our platforms. We will decide, you know, where that line is and where does that integration stop. I think you want an, you want some kind of, relevancy in the long term, and EAP, employer healthcare as an example. We're selling it to all the business customers in which we're offering telecom to.
If you have another connectivity piece, it allows you to have another bundle, another product, another relationship that's very important to your customer. I can't give you a clean answer. I don't know. I would say yes, we're up to pruning and we are going to prune so we can focus on what matters. I would say we will continue to lean into the digital and AI world, and we'll continue to have relevancy and bundled in incremental products to our customers so that it doesn't just become a price game.
Okay. We're running out of time. I won't ask you a question on the dividend because, you know, this is a bigger question to be asked for the incoming management, you know, CEO and what the plan is for Victor going forward. How do you expect leverage to end in 2026 for TELUS within the current framework that you're running the business?
Yeah. We have well laid out our de-leveraging plan. We have initiatives in up to about the CAD 7 billion mark. We've showed you our tower monetization of what effectiveness that could bring. We're at 3.4 right now. We'll be at 3.3 or lower by the end of this year, and we'll be at 3.0 by 2027 or lower in our opinion, based off the monetization, based on partnerships, and based on operational execution, while bringing down the DDRIP to zero and still being able to afford the dividend. If we continue to execute down that path, that still is the current operating plan. Yes, it is not an easy plan, but it's one that we've executed in the past and we continue to execute on.
I think until we miss any of those milestones along the way, I would say it's premature to have a strategy change.
Okay. Thank you, Doug. Great way to finish. We'll have a small break, and we'll restart with BCE right after.
Great. Thank you.