11th Annual Desjardins Montréal Conference

Mar 17, 2026

All right, we're going to be closing the first day of our 11th Montréal Digital Day conference here. Last but not least, obviously finishing the day with TELUS. Thanks. Doug French, CFO of TELUS, thanks for being here with us today. No problem. Thank you. Great. Let's get into it. Maybe we can start with the CEO transition. Obviously, it could mean potentially some changes in the strategy. Any updated views maybe on the discussions you've been having with Victor, maybe on the capital allocation going forward? What do you expect there? Yeah. I think it's early in the process. Right now we're just continuing to execute to our strategy. We've worked through with the board, with Victor, the path we're on. We have some very exciting things happening over the next 6, 12, and 18 months for our work, right from de-leveraging to the removal of the DRIP, to even our growth and some of the products and services that we're offering. I'd say early stages are execute and continue to execute on all fronts. We'll make more decisions as time goes by. So far it's been a great experience in getting to know him better and him getting to know us better. Yeah. I would say nothing's changed at the moment in our strategy or capital allocation. Any timeline where you would expect maybe some news or updates on when he might have a better idea of what he wants to do? He starts formally on July 1. I think the August release, which would be one month after he starts, would be maybe information flow number one, and then shortly thereafter. He spent the last month getting to know the organization below the top level, for a better term. Right. Getting under the hood and finding out how the organization works and some of the risks and opportunities to continue to operate in the future at the lower level. I would say right now it's absorbing info and then he'll do a proper assessment and we'll have more of those discussions as we move forward. Right now my goal is to execute and de-lever as we've laid out and as we'll talk about more today. Yeah. Of course. Head down and executing on the existing plan is what's happening right now, I think is a good way to summarize it. I want to talk about the outlook for 2026. You've released your guidance with your last quarter reporting. I'm wondering what are the maybe underlying growth assumptions that you have. You communicated an EBITDA growth target of 2%-4%. What are the puts and takes that could bring you to the lower end, higher end? What are you expecting for growth this year? Thank you. Our budget is the high end of our range, and so just executing to our budget puts us in that category or that zone. When you look at our business pillars, our business areas, they are all in slightly different stages, and the risks associated with them are also slightly different. Maybe starting with TELUS Digital, you would have seen they had negative EBITDA in 2025. Mm-hmm. They're continuing to get better every quarter. You would see, I think, a consistent progression for TELUS Digital as we go into 2026. Still could be slightly negative out of the gate, but every quarter is currently getting stronger off the foundation of their AI and digital services. We're getting continued a bigger funnel than ever, execution than ever, leveraging our both sides of the house from TELUS Digital to our AI Factory- Right ... continuing to grow down that path. TELUS Health, we've had a little bit of a slowdown in organic growth as we've been doing in the integration of some of the acquisitions that we've had. Again, I see it as turning the corner between, call it almost flat to slightly positive organic growth to significantly more positive as the year progresses. Mm-hmm. Our addressable market on a lot of our product sets, including EAP, continue to grow as the year, again, progresses. Right. I see that being the next stage. I see risks in our business area vertical was negative growth again, as we had highlighted in a couple of quarters with one or two re-rates in the public sector, and you have to lap those from a fixed- Right Data perspective. We think those are behind us as well. Again, business coming out of a negative quarter or two in 2025, to becoming more positive from Q1 and on. Then maybe on the consumer front, which I know we always get into a little bit. Yes Later on. We've seen great progression on consumer, on the ARPU improvement fixed and wireless data revenue and wireless monthly network revenue continuing to grow, and we expect improvements for that to go. I would say probably the slower out of the gate in Q1 as I start turning the corner on some of these, so Q1 could probably be on the lower end. Yeah ... to the lowest quarter we have of the year. When you think through the opportunities we have on all of those fronts, I'm very excited about the opportunity we have and the growth that we're going to see in 2026. Modeling a bit more of a back-end loaded year in terms of growth probably makes sense. Probably makes sense. Still no changes to guidance. Absolutely correct. Okay, great. Makes sense. You touched on price competition recently in wireless. It pretty much started in February. We were hopeful that after back to school last year, after Black Friday, that we kind of didn't have to look behind on the state of competition there. Back in February and even last weekend, we're seeing quite aggressive price offers in the market. Can you talk a bit about what happened, and how should investors be expecting some improvement going forward? Yeah. Time will tell, but I would expect improvements to continue and improvements to get better as the year goes on. Q1 is the lowest loading quarter of the year. When you think through churn rates and all the promotional activity that happened in Black Friday and Christmas, there's a bit of a slightly elevated churn rate early in the year as well. I think all the providers are more up against, do they have positive or negative loading in Q1? Because it's generally. Mm. the very low loading. Yeah. Depending on your base, depending on your churn rate, that could be in front. I would say some of the intensiveness won't impact the year. The volume is lower in Q1. I would say that any price sensitivity that happened will not slow down the trajectory to improvement. It's only if this continues into later in the year as volumes pick up. I would say, I would think you're going to see different strategies of how to address the market. We all do on a competitive nature. We address the market differently. Our approach has been a little bit more short spurts into the market just to get in, get out, and show a more economic focus for the long haul. Yeah. We'll see how the market reacts to that. We will not match on highly subsidized devices and ones that are uneconomic. That includes three or four different items, right, when you think of pricing, right from MRC to lowering device financing floor that lowers your economics, to call it vertical, where you're giving business rates to consumers. Yeah would be the last one, and then just pure subsidy on how much you're giving away per handset. I guess the silver lining of what's happening right now is that at least it's happening in a very low volume quarter. Q1 is always low volume, but it seems like this year is probably low volume. What is the impact on ARPU growth? When do you expect ARPU growth to turn back to positive? I think we were maybe initially thinking about 2026, maybe the beginning of 2027. Is that still the target? I think I would be optimistic to think it'll be in 2026. I would say the progression every quarter will get better, is what we're currently looking at or seeing. Once you get momentum in your base down or up, if you really have managed your base effectively, you'll see that trajectory. With more than 10 million subs, you can't swing your base overnight. On the way down, it's painful because it's hard to turn. On the way up, as long as you're not re-rating a material part of your base at any point in time, you can still overcome some of that short-term challenges like a Q1. That makes sense. We're expecting 2-7% positive ARPU growth. Frankly, we will all be looking at service revenue, which should matter more and the amount of loading. We're trying to get away from looking at it on a quarterly basis, especially in Q1. Can't believe I'm saying that, but zero should only be an arbitrary number. Hopefully, we'll be looking forward for this. I agree with you 100%. Our decisions are on Free Cash Flow and on network revenue growth. They're not on sub growth on its own. You obviously want sub growth at some point because for our perspective, we're looking to product intensity and what else comes with that, but not at all cost. Right. You're way better off to let those customers that are price hoppers, and there's a lot of them, just take the next lowest price. Yeah. Great. I want to move to the fixed business. You've reported pretty solid net adds over the last couple of quarters there. You don't disclose what is coming from the East versus from the West. Should we be expecting some more strength there going forward? Maybe, what's the mix between the technologies you're using? Yeah. We've seen great penetration on our fiber, and we're continuing to finish our fiber build in the West. We've got some fiber builds in the East as we've highlighted as well, in addition to the TPIA. I would say the growth we're seeing is on a product intensity basis, and you'll see that our churn rates still are relatively low in our fixed base. Mm-hmm. We were the only ones with positive TV loading, the only ones with the lowest home phone losses. When you actually look at RGUs on wireline, I think we were the only ones that were positive as well. It's the combination of the suite. No single product we look at is to be standalone. We look at the bundling. We look at the value to the home, and how can we increase the value to the home. How can we be relevant to our customers beyond just an internet pipe for a better term? Internet's very, very valuable, but when you can actually do home automation or energy management and/or healthcare, in addition to providing internet at reasonable rates that provide security and relevancy to our customer base, that's what we're looking to differentiate. I think that's what you're seeing in our wireline results. Mm-hmm. It's really that combination of all those product sets. In the east, we are seeing loading. I'd say we're still seeing- Okay ...call more than half still coming from the west. More than half of your total loading. More than half of our total internet loading is still coming from the west. Okay. The East is growing, and again, we're only doing the East, leaning on the opportunity to bring in a profitable long-term home or business for that matter. The single product. In competitiveness, if it means I'm not going to make money, is not in our strategy. It really comes down to that bundle, that home, that value prop or business value prop. Okay. I want to discuss more the TPIA approach because you're taking a risk there. Essentially, you're a new player in a new market, we can call it that way. Presumably, the other companies might be thinking about being also a new player in a new market out west. How do you balance the growth and the opportunities this is bringing versus the risk you're taking there? Yeah. I think it all comes down to your confidence in your ability to execute, your confidence in the quality of your networks, your confidence in your product sets and what you bring to the relevancy of your customers, and then the quality of your customer service. You throw that into the bucket and say, "I've got the opportunity to maintain and protect," or not protect even, "maintain and earn the right to take a little bit of risk in the west because I'm offering good service or excellent service on the best networks, with the biggest product set of all my peers." That allows then a lower churn rate, and it doesn't give the customers a reason to leave proactively. We're investing a lot in our customer service and how we can use AI to improve the speed in which we serve them, to improve the quality in which we serve them. We know we're not perfect by any means, but continuing to invest and use TELUS Digital, which is our asset to do that, to say that all streams could be done more effectively, all streams could be done more efficiently, and customers should be able to answer the question online through an agent, an AI agent even, in one minute if that's what they really want to do during Black Friday instead of waiting on the phone for whatever period of time that is. We're trying to build that capability set and lead the market on that. That'll lead you in cost structure, lead you in customer service, and lead you in capabilities. When you do that, again, you're not as afraid of competition because you're actually leading with what's most important to the customer, and that's been our strategy from day one. When you go into the east, I think our brand is quite strong. Mm-hmm. We're also the most giving company in the world, which has been very prominent in the east as well as the west on bringing back to communities where we work. When you've got a strong brand with great service and great networks, you can build off of that. Right. As we're looking at the East and building in certain networks, it's actually a very positive reaction, both from the municipality and the governments there on, "Thank you for bringing technology to our communities." Then, being an Easterner at heart, I have my own opinions of the providers here and how I've been ticked off over the years, and I'm really trying not to do that as we launch. The internal eastern champion. Yeah, exactly. I want to make sure we're not making those same errors. If in the west, they can resell my fiber, and utilize or maximize the value of my fiber, I'm open to that, and we've been very open to that from day one. To the extent that an underutilized asset is unprofitable, a utilized asset, whether it's wholesale or retail, is profitable. Mm-hmm. When you think of fiber being the long-tenured life it is, I would rather have someone using it than not. Again, I'm open to customers that we have not treated as well as we should have in the west that won't come back, and I'm okay with someone else reselling our fiber to those individuals to get them on the better technology. Under their name again. Yeah. Makes sense. Okay. I want to talk about TELUS Health. You announced earlier this year that you've hired bankers to explore alternatives for TELUS Health. If you can discuss what exactly is on the table for TELUS Health, because we see a range of scenarios there, and are you confident that we could get an outcome maybe, I don't know, before the end of this year? Yeah. We're expecting an outcome before the end of the year. We are looking out for obviously the best interest of our organization, our customers, and our team members. As we look at the options, we're looking at what is the best long-term outcome to ensure that service is maintained in an excellent way, that our team members and our customers don't feel anything from a negative perspective, it's all positive. That the partnership gives us what we need from a focus, and that could either be through a streamlined business- Mm-hmm or that could be just from a partner that's willing to grow with us, and gives us a little bit of relief as a byproduct on the balance sheet, by deleveraging. Because any proceeds we get from this would go directly to deleveraging. I'd say right now we're working with the bankers and getting feedback. We had about 75-100 inbound investors saying, "I would like to be part of the process. I want to look at all or part of your health asset." We're going to make sure that our customers are looked after first- Mm-hmm ... find a model and a structure that hits our desired outcome. To the extent we can simplify the business, I think that would be an exceptional outcome as well. Making sure you could execute on as an A+ across the board. Just to clarify on the simplified structure or streamlined business, are you talking about selling some parts of the assets or? Potentially. That would be a potential option. Still working through the bankers to do that. Yeah. I would say yes, that might be an option. Okay, great. I'm sure you saw Bell's announcement yesterday relating to Sovereign AI. This is also an area you're involved in, although with a bit of a different model there. One of the questions we've been getting is that the difference you have in your model versus Bell is that I believe you want to own the chips. That is a bit of a different capital requirement profile than Bell has. If you can discuss this and maybe what would be the requirement, and is this a contribution to growth that is material for the company? Yeah, we highlighted that our AI revenue is going to go from CAD 800 million it is today, which I would say would be substantially through the TELUS Digital WillowTree component to our business, to over CAD 2 billion in the three-year period. That would be built off of growth in our AI services, including our AI Factory, or factories plural. It could include even further expansion as opportunities arise over time. We've built the AI Factory. We were very opportunistic that we still have our data centers, one in Rimouski and one in Kamloops. With that, we have a power source that goes right through the middle of it, with our ability to grow and expand the modules within that to higher levels. Right now, we're really working on our first module in both. We launched the Kamloops one in the fall of last year. Mm-hmm. Rimouski's going live for data compute as we speak, so within the next short period. We do own the chips. The advantage we have at the moment is the buildings are built, the infrastructure is there, the power is there, all we had to do is sign the agreement with the NVIDIA and an equipment supplier, which was HP and- Right ... we're buying it in a modular basis. We're going to build capacity, fill the capacity. We do not expect it to impact our capital intensity. It's part of our envelope. With that, we also then get technology upgrades. Instead of build it and they will come, the chips we purchased like five, six months ago are now being purchased, and they're 20%-30% more efficient. Mm-hmm. Driving efficiency through power is more limited, so if you can get more output from more efficient chips and technology, you don't want to do a big build. You want to do smaller builds more frequently. That's what our structure is. We then are 100% managed by TELUS, so it's completely Canadian sovereign, no partners, no one from any other country involved in our data center. We do have WillowTree, which has operations in Canada and around the world, who can build your model for you, can test and teach your model, and use that and put it into our data center, should we want the end-to-end service. What I do like about it is we have the end-to-end service as required. We have the compute that is now got significant paying customers and a lot of pilots in it still, with a significant amount of funnel that we think will continue to grow to be material in the not-too-distant future. As we get to plateaus of scale, we'll include that in our quarterly reporting. Yeah that you'll see the progression on that. We are absolutely seeing great traction, especially to those who want a Canadian solution in Canada. Are we talking revenue contribution maybe more in 2027 then or? I think you'll see some this year for sure. Okay. I'd say more materially 2027. We'll definitely be double-digit millions in 2026. It's definitely not zero or not in the low-end single digits. It'll be well above that. Yeah. Great. I want to talk about capital allocation a bit there. Obviously, with the change at the CEO level, the plan might change eventually, but you do have a de-leveraging plan. You did some tweaks to your DRIP discounts just recently in the last reporting. What are your expectations on the DRIP? One of the comments we often get is that issuing equity at this price is costly. This is an important consideration for investors. What do you think the plan is, and maybe put that in context of the asset monetization? Absolutely. We have multiple pillars to our asset monetization, right from copper monetization. As we complete our fiber and do our migrations of customers from copper to fiber, we can resell the commodity, which is copper. It can be in the range of CAD 100 million a year. We talked about, and that was at old pricing. Now that pricing continues to accelerate, we're looking at is there any other opportunities to accelerate the decommissioning of that. We have commercial real estate and residential real estate. We're looking at, do we sell some of both now to help monetize faster? We've actually hired, again, a separate banker from the other ones we have to work through the strategy around that and start the process. We have over 8 commercial buildings we could look at, and then 2 or 3 residential buildings that are 100% owned by us, not the partnership model that we've been looking at over the new ones. That is also ones that could be executed within 2026. We're looking at then the partnerships as we had talked about, all of that going to de-leveraging. Should we get and exceed, let's just say our placeholder for, or our target for debt reduction, we could accelerate the DRIP and bring it down. We're still learning what the step-down looks like. We will find out within the next 2 weeks what going from 2%-1.75% means from a participation rate, and then we will adjust accordingly. When we see those 2 data points between monetization opportunity Yeah take-up of the DRIP at a lower rate, then we'll adjust on how quickly can we move to reduce the DRIP, and with the objective that the sooner the better. Yeah, because if I'm looking at our forecast for your leverage profile going forward, you're going to have the lowest leverage among the big three for several years. Some investors have a hard time understanding the urgency. Not that you shouldn't be de-leveraging, but equity issuances are definitely top of mind for investors as being concerned, so- No, absolutely. When you look through, usually your leverage is an indication of what flexibility do you have? As we get into the sweet spot on leverage, I think that is significantly more flexibility to make those other points that you're suggesting. It's the triangle between the three, or three-legged stool, and making sure that we can balance both. I agree with the sentiment of issuing shares and reducing that as fast as possible is our goal. Being able to afford to do that with your current debt levels and Free Cash Flow is the one, two, three of it all. Right. We're doing our best to accelerate that and get into a better spot than we are on the DRIP today. Yep. Looking forward to it. That's all the time we had, Doug. Thanks a lot for your insights. Thank you.