Rogers Communications Inc (RCIAF) May 14, 2026 Conference Transcript

So it's EBITDA, but also booked, but not built.

You have a bit of a first-mover advantage in the access to the power. You already have enterprise relationships. You're Canadian, so for a sovereign business, you can differentiate on that front. When I turn to Ziply, I struggle into where is the competitive advantage. You certainly don't have a scale advantage in fiber over AT&T and Verizon. You don't really have a first-mover advantage other than maybe the Pacific Northwest where Ziply had homes connected already, and being Canadian doesn't matter. And, you know, maybe even in some cases is a negative, depending on the political advantage. Why is Ziply as attractive as a use of capital versus the data centers? With Rogers Communications, I know I'm sure he's familiar with these two gentlemen, but Tony Stafford, the CEO, and Glenn Brandt, CFO. Guys, thanks very much for spending your time with us. Good morning. Thanks for having us.

Good to see you all. Yeah.

So I want to start with things that I think are most topical with investors and what's changed, and for you guys, is CapEx. It's a pretty positive surprise is the way I'd frame it, but certainly a surprise with the magnitude of your guidance change. It's like three weeks ago now when you guys reported. So maybe just tell us why such a big change now versus doing it in January when you gave us the initial guidance.

I'll start. Yeah. Look, we're always relooking at our capital investment in terms of ROIs. And, you know, largely as a result of, I would say, increasing regulatory hurdles that just make the paybacks uneconomical for us. We decided to relook at projects and focus on the ones that have the paybacks, the ones that continue to allow us to have network superiority. To be clear, we think we've reduced it to a level that is sustainable. We still continue to invest in growth, but some of the projects just aren't viable. And so we looked at four things. One is just stopping certain projects. Payback didn't make sense. We're always looking at capital efficiency, working with vendors, working with our internal groups to continue to improve our outputs for what we pay. We consider alternate technologies with the onboarding of satellite and our satellite services. It is a very strong substitute in rural, and so some of the rural builds that we had contemplated seem much less relevant for that. And so, you know, those are some of the areas that we're focused on in that, and we'll continue to reassess. It's worth noting that, you know, following Shaw, we elevated our capital spans to significantly move us in terms of network performance to the best network in both wireline as well as wireless. We continue to be the only national wireless carrier. And as I said, now with satellite, we cover pretty much all of Canada. A lot of that build is sort of coming end of term. And so what we're doing is moving back to levels that we think are appropriate and sustainable. I would say we always had a plan to bring it down. We accelerated it, as I said, largely as a result of some of these regulatory decisions that, you know, continue out in a drip fashion. But cumulatively, they're having an impact on the economics of our investments.

The only thing I would add, and Tony has touched on the effect of the Shaw acquisition and the integration of the systems. If you go back to our level of capital spend in 2021, before we were setting ourselves up with systems investment to be ready for Shaw, our capital spend back then was $2.8 billion. And Vince, you'll recall, the theme then was, when are you going to bring capital intensity down? And so we're running at about the level we were at five years ago, pre-integration with Shaw. That work, as Tony said, is largely done. The other element of this is we've been around for 65 years. We drive about $10 billion of EBITDA. And the capital projects we're working We're building on, you know, all of that engine, all of that momentum. Some of the work here is, in terms of lessening the intensity, is adding a couple quarters to the build schedule. Well, if you're adding six months to the build schedule, that build, we haven't had it for 65 years, and we can wait another six months for it and still execute according to our plan. So the impetus for it, as Tony has said, was some of the regulatory decisions. You see it in the report you wrote this morning. One of the points that you noted on Quebecois' report is their capital spend is $185 million this quarter. That's a quarter, less than a quarter of what we invested in Q1. We can bring ours down and still build for capacity, build to protect from cyber threat, build to keep pace without having to have it all done within the four quarters instead of six quarters. So it's just balancing those priorities and creating, over the course of the next four years, that billion or so reduction in capital spend is a half-turn improvement in our delevering over the course of the next four years. That's the impetus.

Okay. I don't necessarily expect an answer. Is there any specificity on specific projects that could have been delayed or canceled, whether it's you don't need to spend on 4G anymore because all the network traffic is going to 5G, or you don't need to do mid-splits anymore because you've done them all on the cable side, or there was headcount that was capitalized that you could get rid of? Is there anything you're willing to share that's a bit more specific about the $800 million overall reduction?

I'd say there's a balance across some of each of those in terms of head count. As we take longer to execute, some of it is third-party vendor spend, some of it is contractors that we deploy, that if you're taking an extra two quarters to add to the cycle, you don't need as many, you don't need the overtime to complete the projects, and it's not going to affect revenue. Some of it is looking at, as Tony has said, the rural build, whether it's wireless coverage or expansion of wireline footprint, and just sequencing that differently, deferring or removing some of that because satellite will cover it. There's a few different topics in there, Vince. Okay.

And you did just mention that you don't think this impacts revenue. I think you guys have been pretty good at being pretty sanguine about the revenue environment we're in in Canada with competition and population growth. I mean, it's not like you're thinking you're going to have 4% or 5% revenue growth out of your core telecom business. But with where your modest expectations are, is it your view that with this new level of CapEx, there's no negative impact on that, even though you may not be passing quite as many new homes with fiber?

Yeah, we absolutely think we've got the right formula to continue to grow, albeit in a more muted growth trajectory. You know, we still see on the wireless side penetration growth in the 2% to 2.5%, and so that continues on a very steady pace. Population growth is at zero, and within that 2% to 2.5% growth, you know, the real issue for the industry is moving our pool up, And we launched just a few weeks ago our new price card, rate card for Rogers, and we're trying to move away. We continue to move away from pricing as the primary lever to value propositions that more resonate with what consumers want. Value for money is always important, but other things like certain plans will include roaming. Certain plans will include satellite coverage or differentiated levels of video experience, etc. And we like how it's resonating in the marketplace. It's been now a few weeks, and when we look at our trends this quarter, we're seeing good market share gains and good growth of ARPUs. Now, it's going to take a while for that to translate to overall ARPU growth, But the direction is going well. And on the cable side, you know, it's really about, you know, in the first quarter, you would have seen homes pass by, grow by 3%. But as new starts slow and are on hold, you know, the back half of the year will be much slower. And there, it's really about continuing to grow ARPA on a household basis. And, you know, with things we're doing on Internet, performance, and the differentiation there, and the video product as well, the Rogers Xfinity platform, we've got some key ingredients that are resonating in the marketplace and helping with the ARPA growth.

Excellent. We'll come back to wireless and cable in a bit more detail in a second. But just while we're talking about the capex reductions, I want to link it to the regulatory file, and I always ask this question not knowing how much detail you may want to share, but I want to give you a platform in case you want to. I mean, clearly, there seems to be some level of non-satisfaction with the regulatory environment overall. Is there anything more specific you can point to, Tony, of other particular policies, whether it's TPIA, MVNO, or whatever, that may be the ones that you would really like to see change to get you to maybe ramp up investment again?

Sure. You know, there's three main areas that on the regulatory front have evolved to a point where they're disincentivizing investment, but they're also, in the end, working against the affordability platform that the government really wants. And the three issues are mandated access to networks, both wireline and wireless, which is fine, but it's now come to a point where they're at lower than cost rates. You know, for the longest time, we had a TPIA marketplace where we wholesaled the wireline parts of the business. The mandated rates were always based on cost studies. And what we're increasingly seeing are arbitrary decisions on rates in both wireless and the MVNO space, as well as in TPIA that are below cost. And that doesn't last long. We've seen that model play out in other parts of the world, Europe. What ends up happening is we have to cut capital, which is a shame because Canadians ultimately pay for it in terms of network performance. And so directionally, that's the issue on that one. And so that's the first point. The concept in and of itself is just counterintuitive. I always use the example of the grocery business. It's like the government coming in and saying, Mr. Grocer, you have to allow anybody else to resell on your shelves, and we're going to tell you what price. And the price is going to be lower than what it costs you, because we think that is going to lower prices. And by the way, that shelf space has to be as good as what you're otherwise keeping for yourself. And so it's just false economics, and it's not going to last long term. The second is the increasing amount of fees embedded in each of our bills. If you were to look at wireless, I'll use that as an example. Customers pay HST, but we're paying fees within that. Spectrum is a great example. We pay for the Spectrum, but we also pay annual fees on Spectrum. Those are growing at double-digit rates. Nothing is changing. The government is just growing those. And so there's a number of regulatory fees. Each wireless bill has over $4 of hidden fees. So just imagine a customer coming in on a $45 plan, they're almost at 10% of hidden fees within that $45 price point. That's just not sustainable. And it's growing at a rate, as I said, it's double digit. Notwithstanding, the industry continues to lower prices. I'll give you another example, which is programming that we have to carry. Now moving to the cable business. There's lots of content that we have to carry. Canadians aren't watching it, and they don't want to pay for it, and we're mandated to include it. That's costing us hundreds of millions of dollars in programming costs that isn't being utilized by the consumer. And ultimately, the consumer is bearing the cost of that. And so that's moving against the affordability agenda. You know, so that's sort of the second point of it in terms of rising fees and costs. So, now, having said that, you know, I don't want to leave with hopefully complaining is going to lead to something different. We continue to proactively be in dialogue with different parts of the government. And optimistically, the tone is coming from the top that they want to rebuild Canada, they want to invest in enhancing Canada's digital network. And so we hope as part of that that we have more constructive dialogue of what the regulatory regime needs to evolve to in order to allow that type of evolution in networks.

Much more than I expected. Thank you. I'm glad I asked. I will open up to the floor in a little while, but two topics I'm going to hit first before, but get ready if you have any questions. So there was the CapEx reduction, and then there was this, you know, I think glorified newspaper headline of a 50% headcount reduction through a voluntary departure program. Clearly, you're not getting rid of 50% of your employees, but maybe I think there is something going on. Can you give us a little bit of an unpacking plan of what this cost reduction program is actually all about?

It's a small shadow of the headline impression that was left with the media. I'm not going to put definition around it, but I would say that the actual take-up rate on the voluntary departure and retirement program, this is the second or third time through for one of these programs for many of our employees, and so many of them have already seen this opportunity come and go and said, no, we want to stay. And so the actual take-up rate is roughly equivalent to what you would ordinarily see an employee churn within Rogers over the course of a year. And so think of it in that context, Vince. We've gone back to office five days a week for our employees starting back in February. For some of our employees, that just doesn't work. For other employees, every year, it's the same within the bank. Every year, you have more employees that reach retirement age. This was an opportunity for the employees where the back-to-office wasn't working with their family arrangements to put up their hand and say, this gives me some financial flexibility. For us, it allows us to reset our cost structure. We have another integration exercise coming through with MLSC. We still have lots of growth, lots of opportunity within the company, and it simply allowed us to find a path for some of those employees. And the vast majority of us, I'm one of them. I would qualify for retirement age if I wanted to retire. I'm too young for that. And so many of us put up our hands and said, no, we'd like to stay.

We've already lost one CFO in the last week. You're not losing this one.

Stick around for a while. You're not losing this one.

Anything, you mentioned sort of natural attrition. Is there anything with technology and AI that's under the surface there, too, That you're seeing the ability to get by with less headcount, and that's a bit of a part of the exercise, too.

Sure, I'll start. I'd say not really is sort of the short answer, Vince. You know, we're always looking at both in capital as well as operating costs. How do we do things differently, do things better? Always centered around how do we improve the customer experience and how do we take steps out? How do we simplify the value proposition and start with that? And then say, what's the best way to do it? In some cases, many cases, and increasingly, AI can help in product or service delivery. We have some good things happening, AI, in terms of network monitoring, troubleshooting areas in both wireline and wireless where there's an issue. But for the most part, it's centered around AI solutions for our customers, particularly in the enterprise space, is where we see more opportunity. And on that front, we continue to partner with the large global players on that in bringing a solution to customers, and as I said, largely enterprise customers. And so it's all of those things going into the mix to continue to drive efficiency improvements. And AI, well, I think I've covered it in terms of the areas where we see it being useful.

Perfect. So my last topic before I go to the floor here is sports. Obviously, a big foul for you guys. Great segue today with Jay's walk-off Grand Slam last night. I don't know if you noticed, Madsen Square Garden, a new all-time high this morning. So sports is topical.

And then you won a lottery as well, a little draft pick.

It makes the worst performing asset out of all your teams maybe have a little bit of a brighter future. So with that, I'll open it up to you guys. I won't be specific on it. I'll just let you guys talk. Is there anything new to share on the timing of the process and what the latest developments are?

One of you go. Sure. So we continue to engage with our minority partner in MLSE today. Anyway, one or another path will happen. Either we will reach a negotiated valuation between the two of us, or we will reach one through the option process. There's a finite timeline in that that will be resolved over the course of the next several months by early Q4, October timeframe. And so we're very confident we are going to acquire 100% interest in MLSC through the course of that exercise. While we're working through that, we are initiating with investors very informally over the last several months. We've talked about that. But we're also working on pulling together information to go to market more definitively with bringing in prospective investors, qualifying them with the leagues. We have not started that exercise yet. But the intention is to do that in parallel with working through the buyout of the current minority shareholder so that it's a very fast follow, probably in early 2027. Once we complete the acquisition of the Kilmer-Larry Tannenbaum interest later this year, we then have to qualify those investors with the leagues. The valuation will be part of that qualification because that's part of the structuring of the transaction. And so as we work through that, I expect we'll be early 2027 with a fast follow to complete that part of the exercise. That will help us to deliver the balance sheet by – the objective here is to recapitalize the minority position that we're buying out with the Kilmer interest and raise some capital on the value of those assets to deliver a part of the Rogers balance sheet with what we took on to buy out the Bell interest. And then we have a steady-state run rate for that entity to move forward with and integrate it within our operations and within our customer office.

So to be clear, your intention here is to have more money coming in than what goes out, so there will be a deleveraging event over the next 12 to 15 months? Yes, yes.

I just end it by saying, you know, we continue to see it as a strong third pillar of value growth for us. It was wireless, there's cable on this, and it's not just the collection of assets, it's how do we get the synergies across all three. You know, I always quote this, over 80% of Canadians are sports fans or music fans, And so it's really about engaging with those customer relationships to continue to grow and build value for cable and wireless as well, and vice versa. And so it's really a two-pronged approach on sports and entertainment.

I think the other key emphasis for us, Vince, not to overturn this, but this transaction will bring in a third-party affirmation of the value of those assets.

We believe that once we own all of sports

and media, MLSC, RSM combined, that those assets are worth more than $25 billion Canadian. And when we take that to market and get a third-party affirmation of that value, that's not reflected in the RCI share price today. And so a key part of this exercise is to take that $25 billion of asset value and reflect it in the roughly half billion shares outstanding. Well, that's an increment of somewhere between $0 and $50 a share. We're not going to get $50 a share bump on that. But there is a very substantial asset value in our balance sheet in terms of fair value that right now is not reflected in the RCI share price. That, combined with the operational growth path with our sports and media assets, those are two very key elements of the transaction.

I hate to pin you on words, but are you quite deliberate in saying over $25 billion now? Because I think you said $25 billion on the call three weeks ago.

Well, I'll say it this way, Vince. We continue to see transactions that continue to drive the value up, and so it only increases our confidence. And, you know, even the $25 billion number, it's Forbes values, apply a very modest growth rate, given, you know, those are six months ago, and take into account some of our other key businesses, you know, you look at Sportsnet drives hundreds of millions in EBITDA. A lot of that, increasingly, is through sports streaming. Take a conservative valuation on that. We have an entertainment business, a concert business. We have here in Ontario a partnership with Live Nation, and that's working well. And the concert business continues to grow at double digits, and increasingly a very material EBITDA. And again, take that multiple at a conservative rate. And then we have real estate and a few other assets in there as well as it sort of comes together. And so the 25 is, in our minds, a starting point. Yeah.

I think if you factor in, as I said, I expect to execute this in early 27. Well, that's more than a half year away from where we are today. If you look at the Forbes and Sportico valuations on our assets, and you go back to look to see where they had valued the Blue Jays, for example, end of last year. San Diego Padres just traded at U.S. $3.6 billion. Well, that's a substantial uptick from the roughly $2.5 billion U.S. valuation on the Blue Jays less than a half year ago, or about a half year ago. And so there's a substantial uptick. You mentioned MSG. There's a substantial annual growth factor that comes into that as well. And so, yes, I expect it to be a substantial asset valuation when we execute on this.

One little sub-question that I'm going to go to the audience, just if people want to get ready, is the concert side of it and entertainment side of it, I'm a little struggle myself, which I assume means investors maybe aren't fully understanding of this file. Is this something new that's coming on, or has this always been buried in the media segment operations, you know, any revenue or EBITDA that comes from the concert promotions?

We've always been in the concert business. But I say one of the things, and to be transparent, you know, we learned through Taylor Swift, there's a real opportunity to ramp up the volume of concerts. You know, so much so, Live Nation added Roger Stadium up in Downsview, and all the venues continue to be full. You know, there's now Hamilton, and that one as well. And so it's a business that's always been there. But for this city, it's been growing exponentially.

Anybody in the audience have anything? Remember, we'll get you a microphone if you do, just so webcast can hear it. Throw your hand up if you do. And rest assured, I will ask about wireless cable in my next topic so you don't have to lob a softball crank on wireless. Okay, nobody too close to lunch. People are falling asleep, so let me keep going. So wireless, a typical question, Tony, you usually have a good informed answer on is sort of where do we sit in terms of the volume growth in the market today? I see Q1 look like it ended a little stronger than people expected. Everybody's reported now, and we see sub-adge not quite down as much as we thought. Does that mean we've pulled some demand out of the second quarter into the first quarter with all those promotions, and maybe your updated thoughts on full-year volume growth for the industry?

Yeah. Maybe I'll start with the second part of the question, which is, as I mentioned earlier, for the full year, we see the industry continuing to grow at 2% to 2.5%, And I think everyone would agree, it was a very heightened level of volume, largely in the flanker space that drove what is typically a very slow, mild quarter. And we use the term, it was really supply-side driven. It was driven by the commencement of very deep discounts, promotional discounts that some industry players thought was a good idea. And so what we saw is consumers adding second, third, fourth lines at those price points and or switching. And so quite a bit of activity in the switcher market. And you saw that in elevated churn across the industry. What we're seeing as we look to second quarter, we're seeing the market being, I would say, much more measured. We're seeing good growth in gross ads as well as net ads, I would say, on a more stable trajectory than what we saw in Q1. Churn continues to move in the right direction on a year-on-year basis, so we like what we see there. But importantly, the trending on ARPU in is strengthening. You know, we launched the Rogers new value propositions and what's included in those. I mentioned that earlier. And we continue to, you know, I would say in Q1, we had to lean in on some of the value proposition for FIDO. You know, we reluctantly moved it to 5G. And as you referenced, there are some cost savings to that. And that was sort of always the strategy. But as part of our brand consolidation strategy, that was something we didn't really want to do now. And I would say it slowed down our brand consolidation strategy. But that still is the strategy for us that we're kind of resuming on in this second quarter for a number of different reasons that we think make sense. And I'll end with, notwithstanding, you know, some of the noise that you hear in the flanker space, all of our net ads are on the Rogers brand. The Rogers brand continues to be our flagship and leading market share contributor for us. And so those are good things that are happening in our base and our wireless portfolio. And so good indices in the second quarter.

And on the churn, if I can come back to that, I mean, churn wasn't just up in the first quarter, I think it was up by a surprising amount, and Rogers wasn't the only carrier to see that dynamic. You now see that back down on a year-over-year basis in the second quarter, as opposed to just being not up as much as Q1?

Correct. Year-to-date, it's down year-on-year. We've got half the quarter still to go, and we'll continue to look at the dynamics in the industry. But I would say, compared to what we saw in Q1, volume levels and market dynamics seem to be more steady and in line on a year-on-year basis.

Okay. That's great. And you mentioned the brand consolidation. Is there ever a time where the cost-benefit will be there to just get rid of the final brand altogether and only have Rogers and Chowder and really bifurcate the market? Or do you lose too much market share from the two competitors who still have that kind of flanker?

No, we do see a world where, you know, our vision is Roger's everything. You know, we talk about the synergy plays between wireless, cable, and now these other assets. And we just think we get more bang for the buck, more value for money by focusing on one brand. And the work we have been doing has been largely only on the Rogers brand, and that's working well. And so, you know, we had a relatively large FIDO base, and so we wanted to be careful. And our work has really been on migrating those FIDO customers to the Rogers brand and giving those customers, depending on what their ARPU levels are, a landing spot that works for them and then will continue to migrate them up once on the Rogers brand. As I said, that slowed down in the first quarter because of the price points in the flanker space, but we're resuming that. And so the direction of travel is to continue to consolidate brands. You know, if we look to the U.S. as a model, very little on the flanker side, and they continue to focus on their primary brands. And so we have proof points that it works in the marketplace. And, you know, with the right dynamics and how we put together our value constructs, we're very confident having the Rogers brand go up against the competitors' flankers if that's where they choose to stay.

Has there been any reduction in FIDO spend over the last year or two of reduction in the number of stores or a marketing budget that maybe is already starting to show up in your numbers that we don't see?

Significantly, I would say, in both Fido as well as Chatter, and those dollars we put into Rogers, but it's also come down in absolute. You see that in our margins. You know, we're sitting with industry-leading margins of 66%, 65%, 66% consistently, and, you know, those are one of the contributors to that. Great.

Let's spend a minute on cable. I'll sometimes forget you're a cable company. You started as a cable company, or I guess you started as a radio company initially. The big boost was cable. Here we are 30 minutes in having to talk about it. So what's your view of the correct state of the market? It seems like the level of competition ebbs and flows, and right now it's a little more ebb. It seems a little bit more calm between yourselves and the main telcos, but I don't know if there's a lot of competition. There's a difference by region that you want to call out, or maybe I'm wrong in my assertion?

Sure. Late in Q1, much like we did in wireless this quarter, again, we relaunched our value proposition on that. And we continually try to move away from price as the focal point. It's always going to be important, but other things, having best network, most reliable, ubiquitously the fastest speeds. You know, all of our 10.6, 10.7 million homes passed have access to one gig and above in terms of speed. So that's important. And obviously, we're focused on the converge play with wireless as well, just given our national presence there. So we try to focus on, as I said, that value proposition for internet, and then layer on top of that, the Rogers Xfinity video platform that's resonating really well. And so in some cases, as we did that, we were trying to get more for more, you know, a bigger share of the consumer wallet for adding more things in each of the plans. And that's been going well. If I had to differentiate between east and west, I would say we're seeing better results on that strategy in the east. Our primary competitor in the west continues to, you can just look at the website, they continue to be $15 to $20 underpriced and continue to focus on price. But even with that, we get a very good market share performance in the west. We'll see how those dynamics play out, but we have confidence in the value proposition and price points that we have out there and continues to lead to strong financials overall for the cable business, growing at 1% on revenue and EBITDA, and they're two strong margins in the 56% to 59% range, depending on the quarter.

I think those are the key elements that I'd emphasize from a financial standpoint, is we've got the cable operations that are finding some revenue growth and EBITDA growth, and we've lightened up the capital intensity tremendously. So that's a large driver of our free cash flow. That, with the convergence opportunity to help wrap our arms around some of the wireless customers out west, that's really the foundation of the business case for the Roger Shaw transaction. Great.

And within that 1% or so revenue growth in cable, is B2B one of the biggest contributors on a percentage revenue growth basis? And I haven't heard you talk about it for a couple of quarters now. Is there anything new going on in B2B growth?

It continues to have strong growth in both wireless and wireline. On the wireline side, we've been underpenetrated, but now that we have a national footprint on the wireline side, we're at the table more, winning more, largely in the mid to small, but some large ones as well. Satellite has been a big contributor to our outlook for business also from an IoT standpoint. So, you know, with our satellite offering, we can now offer IoT pretty much across everywhere. And if you think about our resource industries, northern parts of Canada, that's always been a big one in terms of a big challenge in terms of getting the coverage. And, you know, our business was a lot of private area networks in working with companies. But now with satellite, we have a solution that's much more cost effective. And so a lot of interest in the marketplace on those solutions that are coming on board. And so all that to say continues to do well across the country. And as you said, it isn't embedded in our cable growth, albeit at a proportionally smaller number than consumer, but rising disproportionately faster.

And when you say satellite, are you starting with the Starlink direct-to-device type of satellite? SpaceX, specifically.

Separate from the satellite video legacy business we have within Wireline, yes.

And if you win customers because of that IoT capability in a mining application or resource application, that's going to be booked in cable? Wouldn't that be booked in wireless revenue?

We included an enterprise. Sorry, enterprise is both wireless and cable. So we split wireless into wireless and cable. So I was talking to both from an enterprise perspective. Gotcha.

Not all of that is a tailwind to the 1% cable segment revenue growth, but it's still goodness for Rodgers overall. Okay. You opened the door to Satellite, so let me ask the question. We seem to hear more and more about it, especially from U.S. investors, that Starlink is making noise, even Amazon Leo is making noise, that they're not just going to stay in the rural areas, that they're going to try to compete for broadband customers in cities. And we see some price plans that even seem to be heading in that direction already in some cities. Is there any update in your view of being concerned about that new technology as a threat to your cable business?

We continue to see it as complementary. You know, satellite does have limitations, both on the wireless as well as when you try to use it for home internet. Line of sight is still a thing. Satellite works best in urban when it is converged with some type of cellular wireless system and service. So we kind of continue to see wireless and satellite working in tandem, and it'll be an evolution of the two. We don't see for a very long time a roadmap where satellite will replace wireless or wire line. It's just the physics don't get there. And so it's really all three of those coming together on a converged basis is a more likely outlook. And we'll continue to partner with the ones that make sense. Today, we don't see very little, if any, in the urban markets. It does continue to be a rural play where there is no other wireline by us or our competitor, or our 5G home internet doesn't have coverage or sufficient coverage. And, you know, consumers have a solution, at least with satellite. So that's where we're seeing it. So it's largely in places where we don't play in.

Okay. The other thing I'd call out on the satellite services that we offer, from coast to coast, we cover Canada from the 48th, or 49th, rather, to the 58th parallel. Virtually every road, you've heard me say this before, Vince, virtually every road in this country is covered if you have a 4G IoT device with that satellite coverage. Nobody else can touch that coverage, no other satellite company. Our peers have announced deals with other satellite companies. They don't have near as many satellites in the air near the capability. And so that gives us an opportunity to sell those services in the enterprise space that adds to the growth opportunities we have within this.

The other two you mentioned, they seem like they're still committed to that other satellite partner, but if they were to change their mind, can you remind us, do you have an exclusive arrangement with SpaceX, or could the others piggyback on that too?

It's not exclusive, to be clear, but the physical limitations would make it difficult for another partner to come on right now. And so SpaceX is really working and focused on working with us as we increase the capabilities of it. And so, you know, there is a possibility at some future date that there's some type of sharing arrangement. But right now, they're working exclusively with us and probably for the next while.

Okay. We only have a couple minutes left. Just give the audience one more opportunity. Anybody out there have anything they want to ask before I move on? Seems like not. Let's move on to a couple of balance sheet capital allocation stuff. So the debt leverage, you're trying to get down. Obviously, free cash flow has now improved with the lower capex. You're going to have money coming in from sports. We start to then think through when do we get to a point where there's excess cash available for returns to shareholders? You haven't raised your dividend for many, many years, or maybe the share buybacks are more important than that. Can you help us understand, Glenn, how you would think about it? Would you think about it just straight as the way you report leverage? If that gets to three times, let's say, that's good enough to start thinking about new allocations of capital, or do you think about it as that extra, almost full turn of leverage from the hybrids and the infrastructure, backhaul infrastructure funding?

So I'll start with, we're nearing the final steps of execution around our delevering plan. And we've been on this path ever since announcing the Shaw transaction. And we had the opportunity to lean in earlier than intended on MLSC. And even with that, we're nearing completion of that exercise. I tell you, we're probably inside a year of execution on all of that. When we get through that, I expect our leverage to be somewhere in the range of three to three and a half times. The initiative around lowering our capital intensity, I told you earlier, over the course of the next four years, that lowers our leverage by about a half a turn. We have an initiative that you've heard me talk about and you've asked about, Vince, over the last couple quarters around securitizing our bank receivables. That I expect to have set up in the next, I'll I'll say a couple months. If not within this quarter, certainly early in the next, we will have a facility set up to self-contain the receivable working capital within the bank. Ultimately, what I would like to move to, and this will take some work with the rating agencies, but it's standard fare to deconsolidate the bank operations from RCI sports and telecom business in terms of the leverage related to the RCI balance sheet, distinct from From the self-contained leverage, ultimately hopefully moving to a deposit-type business, lots of work to do there first, but a self-contained financial enterprise that doesn't affect the RCI capital structure. As we move through all of those steps, there's more than a one-turn improvement in leverage from those three steps combined. Well, we're at 3.8 times now. One turn, I'll be below three times. And that's not projecting out to 2028 or some distant future. That's in the foreseeable near term. As we get to three times, we will start engaging on what our long-term capital structure is. I'd like to see us operate in the two and a half to three times range. At our free cash flow with our dividend payout level, we've got a substantial amount of annual free cash flow that delivers the balance sheet organically. That creates an opportunity to either lift dividends and or put in place a share buyback program annually. We'll get there. We were there years ago in 2010 through 2012 where we were buying back shares to stay at a leverage rate of two times. That was in my history. And so my expectation is in the near to medium term, we will get back to that scenario. I've got some work to do prior to that. But you can see from our dividend payout level and the generation of free cash flow growth that we've got a path that we're executing on, on schedule or ahead of schedule, to get to that point again soon. So the quick answer is yes, we will look at all of those factors. Excellent.

Well, on that note, I'll just say I certainly hope that as you start taking deposits in Rogers Bank that you don't start to view TD as a competitor and you still come back and participate in our conference.

Vince, I am a long-standing personal customer of TD Bank going back to the 70s.

I have a Rogers Bank credit card as well.

Very good.

It's a quid pro quo for you, Glenn. But thanks very much, Tony and Glenn, for your comments and insights. As always, we're going to take a brief break before we go on at 12.15 with Kojiko, grab lunch down the hall, and come back and bring it back to your tables here.

So thanks very much. Great.

Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.

Thank you.