BCE, Inc.

good morning the notable step up in competitive events intensity this year particularly during the back to school period given the new competitive landscape consumer wireless service revenue was up a healthy 4.7 reflecting our focus on high quality premium brand customer loadings and careful management of our pricing plans This is being supported by a growing base of postpaid customers on 5G-capable devices, the vast majority of whom are subscribing to premium unlimited data plans. At the end of Q3, half of all postpaid customers were on 5G-capable devices, which is up from 35% last year. In residential wireline, we continue to win even more broadband customers in fiber areas as we face sustained competitive activity from the cablecos and our DSL copper footprint. We added a quarterly record 104,159 new net fiber to the home customers in Q3. That's up 7.9% over last year. And of these, 71% signed up for gigabit or higher speed tiers, or 22% higher than Q3 2022. Customers are continuing to move to higher internet speed tiers, recognizing the superior performance of Bell's pure fiber network, the compelling value of symmetrical speeds, and the value and reliability of our multiple product offerings as evidenced by the 24% year-over-year increase in new customers who are subscribing to mobility and internet service bundles. Our rapidly growing base of internet customers on gigabit or higher speed tiers, which now represent 52% of Bell's total fiber to the home subscriber base, contributed to strong 6.1% residential internet revenue growth this quarter. And I'd like to point out that Bell continues to deliver world-leading broadband services at declining prices. The latest stat scan data shows that the price of all goods and services in aggregate across the Canadian economy has increased 3.8% over the past year, while the cost of cellular internet access services have declined 7.2% and 7.8% respectively. I'll turn to media now. Digital and direct to consumer continue to grow strongly, helping to offset much of the secular pressures from traditional media platforms. Digital revenues were up 26% over last year and now comprise 39% of media revenues compared to 30% last year. That's an impressive result given the current industry backdrop. Driving this performance was Crave, which grew direct streaming subscribers by 13% over last year on the back of market-leading content. Customer usage of our SAM TV advertising tool also grew, seeing sales revenue increase by nearly 50% this quarter. And with the recent introduction of ad-supported tiers on Crave, as well as the launch of addressable TV and audio advertising, which will enable advertisers to target ads to specific households or devices, Bell Media is well positioned to capture a higher share of industry digital ad market revenue going forward. As we consistently execute on our quarterly business plan objectives, we're continuing in the background to transform Bell from a traditional telco to a tech services and digital media leader within a new environment marked by more competition, macroeconomic challenges, and increased regulatory activity and regulatory uncertainty. Our sharp focus on operational efficiencies and cost optimization is being unlocked by our multi-year fiber journey, increased levels of digitization and automation across the organization, real estate consolidation, copper decommissioning, as well as other initiatives we are undertaking to become more efficient, including, just as an example, moving 5TV to a single platform and reducing the number of billing platforms. The investments that we're making in these cost-efficiency initiatives are allowing us to accelerate our well-progressed plans to digitally revolutionize our business and to significantly cut operating costs. Investments need to be made to drive this agenda, and we'll make them. But importantly, these investments will support a stronger EBITDA growth trajectory in the medium to long term, margin accretion and free cash flow expansion in the years ahead that will help support our dividend growth objectives. I'll turn now to slide five of our presentation. I'm going to review some of the key operating metrics with you for Q3, starting with Bell Wireless. We added 142,886 new net postpaid mobile phone subscribers, bringing total year-to-date net ads to more than 297,000 or 4.3% higher than 2022. It's a strong result. In fact, it's our second highest Q3 result since 2010. And this was a function of an 8% increase in gross activations this quarter, as churn was consistent with pre-pandemic Q3 levels at 1.1%. ARPU remained stable year over year, even as roaming tailwinds moderated significantly due to lapping the post-COVID recovery. And that's a testament to effective customer base management and our focus, again, on premium value subscriber loadings. We also reported mobile connected device net ads of 64,282. That's up 31% over last year. This reflects continued strong momentum for Bell's 5G and IoT B2B solutions, including connected car subscriptions that will be an even bigger driver of revenue growth in the future. Now, turning to the wireline side of our CTS segment. Consumer internet's having a record year. Fiber net ads were up year over year, exceeding 100,000 for the first time ever. And recall that Q3 2022 was a record quarter before that. When including the competitive loss of DSL subscribers in our non-pure fiber footprint, total retail internet net ads were 79,327. That's down 11.5%. But the consolidated result actually reflects a higher number of customer deactivations in our copper service areas. And overall, what it's demonstrating quite clearly is the competitive advantages and importance of fiber. And it was also another solid quarter for Bell IPTV, where gross activations grew 11% year over year, reflecting the pull-through benefit of fiber internet and our TV product leadership. However, due to higher customer deactivations on our five app streaming service, which typically occurs following the expiration of previous year's promotional offers, total net activations were down 2,100 versus last year and are at 36,000. And rounding out our wireline subscriber results, satellite TV net customer losses increased, driven by higher competitor promotional offer intensity, while home phone net losses improved 2.5%. Taken all together, total retail residential net customer ads, including satellite and local phone, increased a very healthy 42,662. This represents our second best ever result after last year's record performance. And again, that's a tribute to the Bell team's focused execution. Moving now to Bell Media. While the advertising market remained challenging, TV sports advertising revenue increased in the quarter, driven by our broadcasts of FIFA Women's World Cup Soccer, F1 Grand Prix Racing, Wimbledon, and NFL and CFL football, underscoring the value of premium content to advertisers. And this helped TSN and RDS assume their ranking as the top English and French language sports channels in Q3. Digital revenues, as I mentioned, continue to accelerate, growing 26% over last year, benefiting from strong Crave and Sports direct-to-consumer streaming growth, as well as Bell Media's programmatic advertising marketplace. And CTV remained Canada's top network in prime time in the summer broadcast season. And for the first time ever, all four CTV branded specialty stations ranked in the top 10, including three of the top five and the number one channel, CTV Comedy. And on the non-sports French language front, Bell Media was ranked number one in full-day viewership in the entertainment and pay specialty market in the key 25 to 54 demographic, while Nouveau maintained stable market share over competitors. In summary, I'm pleased overall with our progress and our momentum in Q3. Subscriber growth was healthy across the board and the generational investments in leading long life infrastructure assets we have made will continue to support meaningful growth going forward and meaningful cost reduction opportunities across the company. With that, and for his first time as CEO, I'm going to turn the call over to Curtis to provide more detail on Q3 financial results.

you mirko and good morning everyone it's a real honor to assume the role of cfo of this iconic company i look forward to living up to the high standards set by my predecessor glenn leblanc and working with all of you in the years ahead okay turning to slide seven our consolidated financial performance for q3 demonstrates the bell team's consistent execution and focus on profitable subscriber growth and cost discipline in the face of ongoing media advertising challenges and increased competitive intensity across all of Bell consumer products. Total service revenue was up a solid 1.7%, while operating costs improved nearly 1%. This collectively delivered 3.1% growth in adjusted EBITDA and a strong 90 basis point increase in margin. Although Mirko already pointed this out, it bears repeating that this result represents our best consolidated EBITDA growth rate in well over a year. Despite higher EBITDA, net earnings in adjusted EPS were down versus last year as anticipated, and profiled in our quarterly budget for 23. This was the result of higher financing costs due to higher rates and more debt outstanding from investments in our growth strategy, higher depreciation and amortization expense from rapid growth in our broadband capital asset base, and higher income taxes as Q3 2022 benefited from an approximate $80 million tax provision reversal related to our acquisition of MTS in 2016. CapEx was down $158 million this quarter as we front-end loaded our spending this year, given favorable construction conditions during the winter and spring seasons, and realized even better fiber and 5G build-out efficiencies than originally expected. The decline in CapEx, together with the flow-through of strong EBITDA growth, drove a 17% increase in free cash flow this quarter. In line with our internal first forecast and consistent with our guidance target for 2023, we project a $900 million or better year over year improvement in Q4 creep free cash flow. This comprised of several things, but including approximate $500 million favorable swing in capex versus last year, lower cash taxes, positive change in working capital, attributable largely to the timing of supplier payments, and a further sequential step up in our EBITDA growth. Moving to slide eight to discuss Bell CTS, service revenue growth improved sequentially this quarter, increasing to 2%. This was supported by a 6.1% increase in residential internet revenue and continued healthy wireless growth, reflecting our focus on premium subs and higher year-over-year roaming revenue. We also benefited from a stronger B2B performance trajectory driven by higher sales of security and cloud focused managed and professional services, which will be key growth drivers for us going forward. And the financial contribution from FXI that we acquired in June. In fact, even when excluding the favorable impact of that acquisition, organic service revenue growth was positive, representing Bell Business Markets best quarterly results in almost 15 years. Product revenue was down due mainly to the timing of wireless-related mobile phone and equipment sales to large enterprise customers, particularly in the government sector, which can be quite likely, and a tough year-over-year comparable as we lap the equipment supply chain recovery that began in Q3 of last year. EBITDA grew 2.4%, which yielded a 45.1% margin, increase of 60 basis points versus last year. This higher margin reflects the strength and quality of our service revenue growth and easing of year-over-year weather-related and inflationary cost pressures, promotional offer discipline, and a continued sharp focus on cost efficiencies. Moving to slide nine to discuss Bell Media. While better than industry peers, our top-line financial performance continues to be impacted by a protracted advertising slowdown attributable to the current economic backdrop and Hollywood strikes, a shift of advertising revenue to foreign digital platforms, and a more challenging regulatory environment that has not yet adapted to the new realities facing media. This collectively drove a 1.3% decline in total media revenue this quarter. a respectable result under the circumstances, which is attributed to our broad mix of assets, premium content, and successful execution of our digital-first media strategy. The year-over-year rate of decline in advertising revenue improved sequentially this quarter to 5.2 compared to 9% in Q2, benefiting from strong digital advertising growth of 34%. This was further moderated by a 2.9% increase in subscriber revenue, driven by continued strong DTC crave and sports streaming growth. In light of this revenue backdrop, we maintained a key eye on cost savings and adjusted our operating cost structure in order to support margins and cash flow generation. This enabled us to deliver EBITDA growth of 11.5% and a strong 3.3 point increase in margin to 28.6%. Turning to the balance sheet on slide 10, We ended Q3 with $4.5 billion of available liquidity, which included the proceeds of $1 billion public debt issuance in August and approximately $3.8 billion in available, excuse me, revolving bank credit and other committed facilities. Given our relatively strong Q3 financial performance, our debt leverage ratio remains stable at 3.5 times adjusted EBITDA. Our weighted average after-tax cost of all borings also remains below prevailing interest rates at around 3%, and our average term to maturity is approximately 12 and a half years. At these levels, together with a manageable debt maturity schedule in 24, no further interest rate hikes expected in the immediate term, a sizable pension solvency surplus, and substantial recurring free cash flow generation, we're in a very good financial position heading into next year. To conclude on slide 11, with the year-to-date consolidated financial results in line with budget and even stronger EBITDA and free cash flow growth trajectories projected for Q4, I'm reconfirming all of our financial guidance targets for full year 2023. I'll now turn the call back over to Thayne and to the operator to begin Q&A.

Great. Thanks, Curtis. So before we start, to keep the call as efficient as possible, please limit yourselves to one question and a brief follow-up so we can get to everybody in the queue. If there's additional time at the end, we'll circle back for more questions. With that, Matthew, we are ready to take our first question.

Thank you, Fain. The first question is from David Varden from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking the questions. Appreciate it. I guess Mirko, I think that this quarter, especially kind of in the prepared remarks and the text, you kept calling out the competitive pressures facing, I think, especially the wireless industry with the ARPU down about 0.2% year-over-year. Obviously, you know, investors have been closely watching the space in the aftermath of the Roger Shaw merger close and Freedom's acquisition by Kebacor. And we're trying to get a level set as to what the competitive intensity of this industry now is and what it might be as we look into 2024. And I was wondering if you could kind of maybe elaborate a little bit on kind of how different you feel the competitive intensity is from say a year ago. And as you budget into 2024, what do you think we should all be expecting will happen? Thanks.

Thank you, David. Look, I know there's been a number of, so there are kind of the macroeconomic environments, something we have to keep an eye on as we head into 2024. The competitive dynamic, of course, we have to be mindful of as well as changes in the regulatory, potential changes in the regulatory environment, right? So those are the three things. at a macro level that we're keeping a close eye on as we get ready for, well into Q4, but as we manage our way through Q4 and look forward to 2024. I would say, David, more specifically to your question and perhaps with a focus on the more near term of Q4 and the back half of Q3, what we're going to do is continue to be disciplined as we have been in this environment. And our focus, and I said it a couple of times in my opening remarks, our focus is going to be on premium, accretive smartphone loadings and multi-product loading. So it's about the fine balance between quantity of loads and the quality of loads. And that's what you're going to continue to see from us. Another thing as an aside is we're going to continue to improve the Virgin brand, Virgin Plus brand and I'm pretty pleased with the trajectory of that brand, especially since we relaunched it in July. And if you think about back to school, things that I've said publicly before, it was competitive. Not unreasonably so. I think you saw less in the form of hardware discounting and more in the form of data buckets, which I think is a good thing. But it was competitive. Discounting was reasonable. And as we came out of back to school, I think that discipline remained, and we expect that to continue throughout Q4 and we're certainly going to continue to behave and operate, not behave, operate in that in that disciplined fashion, balancing the quality of loads and the quantity of loads. And I'll just end by saying I could, you know, saw the government's announcement yesterday. I think there's still going to be healthy immigration in this country and that should be, you know, that should be lifting all boats as we as we look ahead.

Great, thank you. Next question, please. Thank you. The next question is from Drew McReynolds from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning. Just two high levels for me. Berko, back to you. With all the focus on TPIA, wondering if you could provide us with first any update you could have on the timing of that decision and then In terms of implications for BCE, what are you most focused on with this decision and framework and what are some of the ways you can respond to that? And then secondly, just maybe for you, Curtis, welcome aboard and good to see you in the seat. Just wondering what your priorities are as CFO and what you're focused on as you look into 2024. Thank you.

Thanks, Drew. I'll go first. All right. I don't know, I don't really, I don't have much insight into when the TPIA or fiber access wholesale decision is coming out, Drew, but, you know, there's a sense that it's sooner rather than later, but I don't really know what the timing is, but more fundamentally in terms of implications. I've been doing this a long time now and I've always said because I fundamentally believe that three fundamental points are all related. Number one is regulatory uncertainty has impacts on investment. Two, regulatory decisions which create disincentives to investment will obviously lead to a reduction in investment, and conversely, regulatory decisions that promote investment are going to lead to increases in investment. Certainly, that's how we behave, that's how I operate as CEO and how we're going to manage uh this company um you know i i mentioned it right at the top of my opening remarks and we we got a head start in uh the first six months of this year on our fiber build and we're well on track to hitting the targets we had established for ourselves for 2023 and we well knew within Q2 that we would not have a problem hitting our targets. And that's why when Glenn last spoke to this group, he indicated in the face of a number of questions that we were going to hit our free cash flow guidance for the year because we knew that we'd had our head start and we knew what the CapEx profiling was going to be for the back half of the year. In fact, we had some some wiggle room there. Given that we had such a head start, we could have kept going and actually built more than what was in our target plan for 2023, but we decided not to because of the regulatory uncertainty that's out there. So, I mean, if the decision isn't favorable from a fiber perspective or from a wholesale access perspective, you're going to see us slow down the build as early as next year. It's as simple as that. And that would be unfortunate because when we enter a community with fiber, we actually increase competition because we all know that DSL isn't competitive with cable DOCSIS. Conversely, we all know that cable DOCSIS actually isn't competitive with fiber. So where we enter with fiber, we increase competition against the cable company. And then the cable company knows that in time it needs to upgrade its networks, build fiber of its own, which actually further increases competition. And you see the results where we enter, the customer gets better service, better value, lower prices. And that's what's being put at stake here with the conversation that we're generally having. in the regulatory proceedings around TPIA access. Hope that answers the question.

Great. And Drew, thanks for your other question. I'd say my focus is pretty straightforward. It's how do we continue to drive free cash flow so that we can keep growing our dividend and funding our dividend? And then the second focus I'd say is, you know, we're on a path here of digital transformation and evolution, as Marco said, into a tech co. I think that has pretty significant ramifications for our company, our free cash flow potential, as well as our customers and the services that we can provide. So as we get more efficient and flexible, it allows us to meet our customers in a digital world and drive free cash flow growth for our shareholders. So I think if I had to call out two focus areas, it would be those two.

Thank you. Next question, please. Thank you. The next question is from Mayor Yagi from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Great.

Thank you for taking my questions. I want to go back to the wireline side. Mirko, you talked about Fibre to the Home being very competitive against COAX, and we certainly saw the result of Fibre to the Home in your results this morning. very strong loading. Can you discuss a little bit where you're taking share from regionally on a regional basis and the pricing in the marketplace, how competitive it is right now compared to, let's say, a couple of, you know, three, six months ago and your strategy to continue to grab market share? You know, is it price-based competition or uh more uh technology so and and also on wireless i wanted to ask you you discussed your views on on this on on the competitive marketplace i just wanted to ask you in terms of expectations for our pool in q4 where do we stand uh where are the puts and takes uh that will drive our full growth or decline that we should think about uh thank you

In terms of wireline, ultimately on a regional basis, it's really where we have fiber, right? I mean, ultimately fiber is fiber in Quebec and Ontario and at 104,000 loads, it's strong performance, call it everywhere. And ultimately, it's not solely driven by pricing. I mean, our pricing is competitive. It's a competitive market. But ultimately, the network advantage, speed advantage, the up and down speed advantage that we have is what we're leveraging in the market. And then you start to combine that in a more bundled world where we have more fiber footprint, more wireline footprint. We're driving mobility and internet bundled subs as well. So it's a combination of a few of those things.

On wireless, I think our ARPU performance was pretty good in Q3. We kept ARPU stable in... in the environment that we had. And I think the puts and takes are both, you know, service revenues are poo. Roaming growth did slow down. I called that out. It slowed down year over year and sequentially. And data overage continues to decline as customers continue to move to larger unlimited plans. But you know our monthly recurring charges are accounted for 85% of our service revenue growth and also a big driver of our ARPU performance and that's a good thing and it shows the focus that we have on premium loadings on 5G and I think as you look forward to Q4 just I won't repeat what I said in response to David's question, but I would, in terms of our approach, you're going to continue to see us manage that balance between quantity and quality so that we can deliver what you all expect of us, both the strong subscriber performance, but strong financial performance.

Thank you. The next question is from Tim Casey from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Mirko. Given the free cash flow profile you've outlined that you'll meet your targets, but you know, you did recently make an acquisition. You've got a spectrum auction coming up and as you highlighted, you know, there are some economic concerns. How do you put that all together with a shareholder base that continues to expect dividend increases in light of where leverage is? How should we think about that going into next year?

Look, I'd say this. We know what investors seek from us, right? I've said this time and again, it's stability of the dividend first and foremost, and it's free cash flow growth supporting that dividend. We're going to continue to be laser focused on that. We have said for a couple of years now, quite clearly, we telegraphed that we would be operating at an elevated payout ratio so that we could do the things that are strategically important to this company and to shareholders for the medium and long term. And you're seeing us deliver on those promises and that roadmap, and at the same time, we're going to continue to take significant costs out of the business. I've highlighted that in the past. I've reiterated it today. So has Curtis. So again, all these things that we're doing, Tim, they're going to pay off in the medium term. pay dividends, literally, another way to put it. At the same time, when these opportunities come up, like tuck-in acquisitions, you saw the one last week, we're going to take advantage of those because they're strategically important. When you take a step back, our priorities for capital allocation the dividend fiber build spectrum and investments in digital and efficiency enhancing initiatives. That's what we're going to do.

Thank you. The next question is from Batia Levy from UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. A question on media. Can you provide a bit more color on the proposed acquisition of Outfront and how that would change the growth profile of the media unit? And if we should think about any synergies that could come with that. Thank you.

Hi, Batya. Thanks for the question. So Outfront at a home, I mean, we announced last week, obviously, we don't have approvals yet. expect to pick those up in the first half of next year. I would say it's a relatively small tuck-in acquisition, but it is an actual growth area for our media business. Transaction is accretive immediately, but again, quite small. I'd say the assets are complementary to ours. It allows us and our out-of-home footprint to be truly national. We will drive synergies there. There are some cost synergies and also some strategic benefits. But again, in terms of changing the overall trajectory, it's not that big an impact.

Thank you. The next question is from Aravinda Galapathigi from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Marco, I just wanted to go back to the comments you made in your prepared remarks about you know, delivering stronger EBITDA growth, you know, through, you know, cost management and the efficiency initiatives that you've kind of outlined. How should we think of Bell's broader digital transformation initiatives you've talked about? Like, where are you in that sort of you know, which innings are you in, I guess is what I'm asking. Try to get a sense of what we can expect in the future compared to sort of the periodic cost reductions you delivered in the past.

Yeah, so there are periodic cost reductions we've done in the past, including in June of this year, which allow you to change the cost structure. And then there are the types of initiatives that I teed up in my opening remarks, I think you're asking about, which both reduce your costs, but also kind of transform the way we operate. And as Curtis mentioned, actually enhance the customer experience. So I can give you some examples. put a bit more flesh on the bone. So, you know, we did undertake for the past little while on integrating multiple billing systems that we've had in our company down to one. So for example, in the consumer segment, particularly in Ontario and Quebec, we've typically had five legacy billers and we've collapsed those into one biller. And then we're starting to migrate customers from the old system to the new system. system, and that will lead to consumer goodness. That would be just one example. Another example is continuing to evolve our digital platforms and our self-serve apps, which are already rated best in class, and we'll continue to make those even better and more intuitive for our customers. There's real estate optimization, which we've talked about before. We've launched customer self-install, which we've which we've improved uh over time and as more customer locations get actually physically connected to fiber it increases the number of eligible homes to which we can offer self-install of course with the expansion of fiber there's the copper decommissioning journey that we've talked about You know it's it's things like that and then the hard periodic blocking and tackling like streamlining sponsorships, discretionary expense management, vendor consolidation. All of these things are the things we're going to do to ensure that we can continue to deliver longer term margin expansion and of course the whole transition to the cloud. We announced our Google Cloud and AWS deals about two years ago and a significant portion of those deals is moving some of our own workloads to the cloud, which will create some efficiencies for us and some customer service improvements. I mean, I'll stop there. I don't want to give you a full laundry list, but I think those six, seven, eight items give you a sense.

Thank you. Our next question is from Simon Flannery from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Right. Good morning. Thanks for your time. So I wonder if we could come back to the fiber to the home. Obviously some great momentum there. There's been a lot of concern about just increasing costs to build and it'd be great to just get any color on what you're seeing out there in the marketplace and how you're seeing the returns on that investment as well as any benefits on the churn side and on the sort of the lower cost of repair and maintenance going forward. Thanks.

Yeah, hi Simon, thank you for the question. I'd say on the fiber to the home side, we actually have not seen an increasing cost to build. I think ultimately, you know, we're mitigating inflationary risk here with just more efficiency. And frankly, we've been doing this over a decade now, so we just keep getting better and better at building out fiber. So we're not really seeing increase in cost. We're seeing increase in efficiency.

And some of the benchmarks I look at in terms of the metrics, churn does remain quite a bit lower in fiber territory than not. You can actually see it in the numbers, 104,000 fiber net adds, but 79,000 total net adds. The churn is lower by, I've said in the past, 30 to 35 basis points. Lifetime value of a fiber customer is significantly higher in service and support costs. I've said time and again, you can expect it to be about 40% lower on fiber than on copper, and that number remains generally the same.

Thank you. Our next question is from Jérôme Dubray from Desjardins Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So thanks for taking my question. First one I have is on the wireless environment. You know, with the MVNO race decision, we have high, large data buckets. Now we have the Lucky and Virgin brands being sold at bell locations. Do we find ourselves in a market where the wireless service is a bit more commoditized maybe than they used to be? And if so, what would that mean in terms of how you operate the business going forward?

No, I think there's still, first of all, there's a lot of growth potential in the wireless environment. Now let's start there. So population growth, penetration, headroom, the transition to 5G. Again, people who, customers who migrate to 5G spend more and use the service more, consume more data. There's a goodness for, in particular, on our side with the multi-product household, where I've said in the past, we're under-penetrated compared to some of our peers, and we're closing those gaps. And of course, the immigration tailwind. So all of that leads to growth. In terms of the other part of your question, I would say that there's still points of differentiation that we're going to leverage and we're going to use against our competitors. So the fact that we have the best network is a value proposition that customers are well aware of. And even in terms of our Our own brands, like Lucky's not at all the same as Virgin or Bell in terms of the value proposition. And, you know, Bell and Virgin are still separated in terms of value prop. So 5G plus on Bell, no 5G plus on Virgin. Multi-gig on Bell on internet and not so on Virgin. Wi-Fi 6C on Bell, not so on Virgin. and internet and mobility discounts, not so on Virgin. So there's still value differentiation there, and we're managing all three brands quite well.

Thank you. Our next question is from Stephanie Price from CIBC. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I'm hoping you could dig a little bit more into BYOD and lower device financing trend that we're seeing in the markets. Can you talk a little bit about how it's impacting financing and whether you think this device upgrade rate could go even lower in the future? And related question, what you're seeing in terms of the new iPhone launch and any implications there for margins in Q4? Thanks.

I don't have a specific comment on the iPhone launch to share. As far as BYOD, obviously, that's financially accretive. If we ask the customer to pay for the cost of the handset, it's a good thing. And as we improve the network and customer service, we can we can lower the transaction intensity without, certainly lower the level of discounting on handsets while at the same time not increasing the level of transaction intensity. So if you can keep churn low because of the superior product offering we have, while not having to subsidize deeply discounted devices, that's a good thing all around. I think the trend is in the right direction there. and generally positive, but I think there's more we can do to make it even better.

Thank you. There are no further questions registered at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Fotopoulos.

Thanks, Matthew, and thank you again to everybody for attending our call this morning. The IR team, either Richard or myself, will be available throughout the day for clarifications and follow-ups. On that, I wish everybody a great day. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Have a good day.