Cogeco Communications Inc.

Good day and welcome to Cogico Inc. and Cogico Communications Inc. 4th Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Patrice Ouimet, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Cogico Inc. and Cogico Communications Inc. Please go ahead, Mr. Ouimet.

So thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter conference call. So as usual, before I begin the call, I'd like to remind listeners that today's discussion will include estimates and forward-looking information. We ask that you review the cautionary language in the press releases issued yesterday and in our annual reports regarding various risks, assumptions, and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ. And with that, I'll pass the line to our CEO, Frédéric Théron, for opening remarks.

Thank you Patrice, good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q4 2024 results. We're pleased to report a solid set of results again this quarter and to have delivered on our guidance for the year, including a particularly strong free cash flow performance. Since my appointment as CEO in March, we've remained focused on five key strategic priorities. US-Canada synergies, digitization, advanced analytics, disciplined network expansion, and wireless. I'm pleased to report that we continue to make significant progress in each of those areas. Regarding synergies, we successfully completed the merger of our US and Canadian teams and as of September 1st, are now operating under a unified operating model. This integration is generating cost savings, which will be strategically reinvested in key growth drivers where we've historically lagged competition, including digital and revenue analytics. Additionally, this new structure enables us to optimize talent deployment across both countries, accelerating our overall performance. Importantly, it also sets the stage for the gradual harmonization of our technology platforms and vendors, an area where significant opportunities for improvement still exist. In terms of digitization, we've successfully deployed our AI-powered customer service chatbot in both the U.S. and Canada using a unified platform and vendor And in September alone, the chatbot managed over 80,000 customer inquiries in Canada and the U.S. combined, demonstrating its capacity to enhance customer experience and streamline service operations. We grew our Oxio digital brand customer base over the past year and remain highly impressed and excited about its future potential. especially as we focus on expanding the brand on our own network with strong margins. Additionally, we're actively integrating Oxio's best practices into our Cogeco and BreezeLine brands, further enhancing operational efficiency and growth across the board. In the area of advanced analytics, we've now established a centralized team of data scientists who will collaborate closely with our sales and marketing teams. In terms of rural network expansion, we've successfully completed our Quebec build with sales penetration results exceeding expectations. Our Ontario initiatives are still in development, and in the U.S., we're reviewing the BEAD subsidized rural network expansion opportunity and remain prudent about this initiative. Lastly, in the wireless space, we were pleased to announce strategic partnerships with both Eastlink and a national network operator during the quarter. With these partnerships in place, we now have all the components to launch wireless services in Canada using a capital light MVNO approach and are currently focused on integrating these elements. While we have not yet set an official launch date it's safe to say that the timeline will be measured in quarters, not years. In the U.S., we're fine-tuning our recently launched wireless operation, and it will take some time before the customer base reaches a significant scale. With that said, let's get right into our Q4 results. Our fourth quarter and full year consolidated results were slightly above the guidance we provided investors this time last year. As we diligently focus on balancing subscriber growth with financial performance, our fiber to the home network expansion programs in Canada and the U.S. added close to 14,000 new homes passed in the quarter and close to 58,000 for the year. This brings the increase in our total number of homes passed since the beginning of fiscal 2022 to 253,000, representing a nearly 9% growth in our network over that period. At Cogeco Connection, we grew our Canadian internet base by nearly 10,000 subscribers this quarter across both our Cogeco and Oxio brands, marking 18 consecutive quarters of subscriber growth in Canada. The growth in our internet subscriber base, higher average revenue per subscriber, and an ever-vigilant focus on controlling costs drove solid year-on-year EBITDA growth of 4% in constant currency. We expanded our network by an additional 8,400 home spas this quarter, increasing the number of Canadian home spas to more than 132,000 since the beginning of fiscal 2022, many of which were done in collaboration with governments. At BreezeLine, we grew EBITDA by 2.4% in constant currency compared to last year, as our ongoing efficiency initiatives and shift towards higher margin products continues to gain traction. BreezeLine customers are taking increasingly fast internet, which is driving a higher lifetime value per subscriber. This, along with a strong focus on cost efficiencies, has resulted in steadily growing adjusted EBITDA margins over the past year. We're already seeing that the digitization of our operations and proactive maintenance are having a positive impact, driving a year-on-year reduction in truck rolls and customer service calls. Our U.S. Fiber Network Expansion Program added 5,400 new homes passed in the quarter, bringing our total to nearly 121,000 homes passed since the beginning of fiscal 2022. As noted last quarter, BreezeVina has considerably less exposure to the U.S. Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, than the industry average, and the discontinuation of that program is not having a material impact on our revenue or EBITDA performance. Overall, BreezeLine had 8,700 internet subscriber losses in the quarter. This number includes 4,500 ACP subscriber losses, and we expect the past quarter to be the last one with material ACP-related customer losses. In Ohio specifically, internet subscriber losses were 2,700 in the quarter, or 2,000 excluding the impact of ACP losses. Improved network performance coupled with upgraded products and enhanced customer service continue to drive rising customer satisfaction levels and are improving subscriber metrics versus last year. Turning to our radio business, competitive dynamics in the radio advertising market during the quarter contributed to lower than anticipated revenue for Cogeco Media. That said, revenue from our digital advertising solutions continue to grow and are providing increasingly meaningful contributions to the business's overall revenue. We're also pleased to report that Cogeco Media's stations remained high in the ratings again this quarter. Now turning over to fiscal 2025. This year marks the beginning of a three-year transformation program that we've now officially launched. As part of this program, we've completed a comprehensive benchmarking exercise, comparing our performance against leading players in both North America and Europe across a range of operational KPIs. These include metrics such as truck rolls, call center volumes, the percentage of sales and service interactions conducted through digital channels, the use of pricing discounts, and many others. And while our operations are strong, the benchmarking exercise revealed that we lagged behind top quarter operators in several areas, indicating significant opportunities for us to further accelerate our performance. Consequently, Fiscal 2025 will be a year of reinvestment as we lay the foundations necessary to reach benchmark performance and drive sustainable EBITDA growth. We anticipate that early indications of this growth may become evident in fiscal 2026, with more substantial progress expected in fiscal 2027. With that, let me turn the call over to Patrice, who will provide more details on our financial performance, for the fourth quarter and our financial guidance for the coming year. That's it, over to you.