BCE Inc.

All participants, please stand by. Your conference is ready to begin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the BCE Q3 2021 Results Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Tain Fotopoulos. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Maud, and good morning to everybody. With me here today are Mirko Bibic, BC's President and CEO, and Glenn LeBlanc, our CFO. You can find all of our Q3 disclosure documents on the Investor Relations page of the bce.ca website, which we posted this morning. Before we begin, I'd like to draw your attention to our safe harbor statement, reminding you that today's slide presentation and remarks made by Mirko and Glenn during the call will include forward-looking information and therefore are subject to risks and uncertainties. Results could differ materially. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by law. Please refer to the company's publicly filed documents for more details on assumptions and risks. With that, I'll hand it over to Mirko.

Thank you, Shane, and good morning, everyone. Our Q3 results demonstrate another quarter of consistently strong and disciplined execution across all our operating segments that is firmly rooted in a strategic roadmap that has guided us over the past 18 months. Operationally, our objective was to improve steadily each quarter from the troughs experienced in Q2 of 2020 when COVID began to significantly affect our business. And that's exactly what we've done. Q3 marked a very notable milestone in our recovery as total revenue and adjusted EBITDA are, for all intents and purposes, back to pre-pandemic Q3 2019 levels, with consolidated service revenue up 3.6% and EBITDA 4.2% higher than last year, despite ongoing COVID-related headwinds affecting wireless roaming, business wireline customer spending, and media advertising. Even as we focused on recovering from those impacts, we pushed ahead with our CAPEX acceleration plan, building the best broadband infrastructure and remaining comfortably on track to hit our upsized network expansion targets for 2021. We invested another $1.2 billion in new capital this quarter, 12% higher than last year, on direct fiber and fixed wireless connections, as well as further expanding mobile 5G coverage and deploying 3.5 gigahertz capable radios as we continue to get ready for the launch of true 5G next year. We leveraged our accelerated broadband network plan, retail channel strength, improved direct sales capabilities and multi-brand strategy to deliver 266,919 total mobile phone, mobile connected device, retail internet and IPTV net additions in Q3 an increase of 10% over last year. In wireless, our sharp focus on higher value mobile phone loadings continues to pay off. Based on peers who have already reported Q3 results, we led the Canadian industry once again this quarter in terms of wireless service revenue, ARPU, and EBITDA growth. These metrics really matter in terms of providing an indication of the health of our underlying business, not just today, but also going forward. As our smartphone customer base grows, roaming rebounds, the decline in data overage reaches an equilibrium point, and 5G revenues materialize more meaningfully, these levers should continue to support superior future revenue growth and operating profitability. I would also add that we achieved these results against the backdrop of lower wireless prices as we continue to make more lower priced options available that deliver significant value to consumers and support the government's public policy objectives. According to the most recent StatsCan data, pricing for wireless services has declined 25% since September 2019, at a time when overall inflation has been growing rapidly, while the price Canadians pay for all goods and services combined has actually increased 5%. For Bell Wireline, as our broadband fibre footprint advantage keeps expanding, we see the immediate tangible benefits on residential subscriber growth, market share, and Internet revenue. In fact, this past quarter, we delivered the highest number of Internet net ads in 15 years and strong residential Internet revenue growth of 9%. Clearly, the strategy is working. It's the reason why we're so confident in our accelerated capital investment plan. In Business Wireline, as the team continues to carefully manage near-term COVID financial impacts, which Glenn will detail momentarily, our organization is also focused on putting the building blocks in place to ensure Bell is strategically well-positioned to capture an industry-leading share of the IoT and next-generation solutions revenue enabled by the convergence of 5G and fiber. As you know, I have a lot of optimism for the growth potential in this area. There are going to be thousands of applications, and they'll need access to our advanced broadband networks, edge data centers, and IoT platforms. We are already leading the way in building momentum with innovative new consumer and business applications that leverage the speed and ultra-low latency of Bell's leading 5G network, as certified by PCMag, Ookla, and Global Wireless Solutions in their most recent studies of mobile network performance, and new MEC alliances with AWS and Google Cloud, which we discussed last quarter. Recent 5G consumer initiatives include the launch of TSN 5G View and an augmented reality collaboration with TikTok. On the enterprise side of things, we're working with Canadian AI startup Tiny Mile to provide 5G connectivity for its growing fleet of food delivery robots in downtown Toronto. We also entered into a partnership with VMware to offer their advanced cloud software, which builds on Bell's agreement with AWS to support 5G innovation and accelerate cloud adoption across Canada. Notably, Bell is the first Canadian communications provider to offer AWS-powered 5G multi-access edge computing for business and government customers. Most recently, our business markets unit launched Smart Supply Chain powered by Bell IoT Smart Connect, a software-as-a-service IoT aggregation solution designed for fleet and supply chain operators. And just earlier this week, we announced our newest collaboration with Esri, Canada's leading geographic information systems provider to create smart city IoT solutions for municipal governments across the country. At Bell Media, TV advertising continued to strengthen with audiences that remain industry leading. In fact, TV advertising revenue this quarter was 10% ahead of pre-COVID Q3 2019 levels. That speaks to the breadth and quality of our programming that differentiates us from domestic broadcasters, and foreign content producers alike. Even though the recovery in radio and out of home was suppressed by the pandemic's fourth wave, results are better than last year. Ultimately, advertiser demand will come back once normal activity resumes with a broader reopening. That's the traditional side of our media business. Then, I have tremendous optimism for our digital first strategy. The goal is to grab a bigger share of the digital ad spend in Canada where global internet and social media platforms dominate today. we will grab a bigger share with our asset mix and investments in ad tech and digital content platforms and by leveraging big data insights. The strategy is working. We're seeing continued momentum there. Digital revenues now represents 22% of total Bell Media revenue, up from 9% only four years ago. So a lot of potential in the media business going forward. And we're continuing to make good progress as well on a number of Bell for Better ESG initiatives. we're already taking concrete actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. In support of World Climate Action Day on October 15th, we announced that we have saved 71 kilotons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions since 2008 and purchased more than 175 new electric vehicles that will be put into service by year-end. Bell has also partnered with the Université de Sherbrooke to develop solar technology that will help reduce our reliance on diesel generators to power communications towers used to connect remote communities. Recent field tests of the solar optimization technology have achieved diesel fuel reductions of 75%, significantly exceeding our goal of 40%. I'll now turn to slide 5 for an overview of some key operating metrics for Q3, and I'm going to start with wireless. The back-to-school period this year felt more like 2019, with all retail stores reopened and increased consumer activity. We added 115,000 new net postpaid mobile phone subscribers, up a strong 46% compared to Q3 of last year, and even 22,000 higher than Q3 of 2019. Notably, this result reflects significant year-over-year growth on the Bell brand. So that's very positive. Customers are coming back into stores, so pent-up demand helped drive higher transaction volumes. We're also so much better at direct and digital channel sales than we were a year ago. And post-paid churn of 0.93% was our lowest ever Q3 result and five basis points better than last year, even with the step-up in competitive intensity that's typical and expected during this time of year. That said, we were quite measured and more targeted in our competitive approach during Q3. I've said this before, but our objective is not to lead in gross loading. The goal is to get the right amount of market share and focus on higher value smartphone subscribers to grow service revenue and ARPU. Wireless service revenue in Q3 was up an industry-leading 5%, yielding 2.3% higher ARPU. ABPU growth was more modest at 1.1%, due mainly to a higher mix of bring-your-own-device customers in the subscriber base versus last year, and more post-paid customers on expired equipment installment plans. For mobile connected devices, although we added 71,000 new IoT subscriptions, up 73% over last year, total net add, as you'll see, were only 33,000, as we continue to move away from unprofitable, low ARPU data device transactions. In prepaid, we added 22,000 new customers, which is our best quarterly result in the past year. solid performance that is expected to improve as immigration and international travel resume more fully. Turning to wireline, again really a very strong quarter from an RGU perspective with 34,000 new net retail customer additions more than two and a half times higher than last year. This is only the second quarter in the past five years where we've achieved positive total wireline retail net ads including home phone and satellite TV, which is a testament to the advantages of our accelerated broadband network investments and TV product leadership. At Bell Internet, we delivered 66,000 retail net customer additions. This is 5% higher than last year when we saw exceptionally strong demand because of COVID. And as I said earlier, and it bears repeating, this was our best quarterly result in 15 years. On the TV side of things, Also a great result with our best IPTV net ads since the third quarter of 2019, as we benefited from the return of sports and a more typical student inward session this year. We added 32,000 new subscribers this quarter, up a strong 68% versus 2020. Satellite net customer losses remained more or less stable compared to last year at around 21,000, while home phone losses improved 14% to 43,000. Turning to Bell Media, as I said, TV advertising was strong. We're back to the content funnel and timing of that content being what it used to be, both for live sports and other TV programming. On the heels of our most successful upfront season ever, advertiser demand was robust, translating it to strong bookings that drove a 25% year-over-year increase in TV advertising revenue. This was supported by leading viewership across all Bell Media properties. TSN and RDS were the top-ranked sports TV channels for Q3 and for the 2020-2021 broadcast year, while our English-language entertainment specialty channels achieved record rankings, claiming the top three spots for CTV Comedy, Discovery, and CTV Drama. And Nouveau continued to gain viewership over its French-language competitors with audiences up 18% in the current fall TV seasons. Consistent with our strategic focus to lean in more aggressively on digital, we continue to make good progress in growing our streaming distribution platforms and digital advertising markets in Q3. Total crave subs increased 5% over last year, while customers on direct streaming platforms grew a strong 33%. This, together with our rapidly expanding CTV AVOD product and continued scaling of the SAM TV sales tool, contributed to excellent digital revenue growth of 32% in Q3. So in summary, our strategic investments in advanced networks and industry-leading services significantly improved customer experience and outstanding operational execution by the Bell team delivered very strong year-over-year operating results in Q3. And perhaps more importantly, we brought the business's financial performance back to 2019 levels despite still facing ongoing COVID headwinds. Thank you, and on that, I'll turn the call over to Glenn for a more detailed review of our financial results.