Rogers Communications Inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Rogers Communications Inc. third quarter 2022 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. Following the presentation, we'll conduct a question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, You may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paul Carpino, Vice President of Investor Relations with Rogers Communications. Please go ahead, Mr. Carpino.

Thank you, Ariel, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, I'm here with our President and Chief Executive Officer, Tony Staffieri, and our Chief Financial Officer, Glenn Brandt. Today's discussion will include estimates and other forward-looking information from which our actual results could differ. Please review the cautionary language in today's earnings report and in our 2001 annual report regarding the various factors, assumptions, and risks that could cause our actual results to differ. With that, let me turn it over to Tony to begin.

Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report that Roger's Q3 results continue to demonstrate strength and consistency in our wireless business and media results that reflect the unique value and quality of our sports and media assets. Additionally, we invested aggressively in our networks and our customers' experience to ensure we deliver the resilience and services our customers expect. We're making excellent progress on our priority to drive better execution in 2022, and I'm proud of what our teams have delivered to date. Let me provide some highlights on our Q3 results and progress across key priorities before turning it over to Glenn for additional detail on the quarter. Before I start, let me note that given the Shaw Rogers Quebec Gore transaction is now in front of the competition tribunal, we will not be taking any questions on the transaction. We remain confident in our response to the Commissioner and the response of Videotron and Shaw and greatly appreciate the hard work of the Tribunal to bring this to a timely conclusion so that this transformational transaction that will increase competition and choice for consumers can close. When appropriate, we'll provide further updates on the progress. Turning to our Q3 results, in wireless, Rogers continues to be strong. We're delivering on our commitment to drive better execution, and you have been seeing this consistently throughout 2022. By leveraging our extensive distribution network, growth and immigration, and effective base management, Rogers is achieving strong share gains in a growing and competitive Canadian wireless market and continuing to offer consumers choice. We had postpaid phone net subscriber additions of 164,000 in the quarter and total mobile phone net ads of 221,000, up 30,000 from last year. We saw success in all brands across our markets, and impressively, we have delivered total net wireless additions year-to-date of 448,000, up 137% from last year. As we have seen throughout the year, demand for Rogers' infinite unlimited plans has continued to grow, driven by more people returning to the office, strong immigration growth, and more consumers traveling outside of Canada. Since launching unlimited plans in Canada in 2019, Rogers has become the largest provider of unlimited data plans to Canadian customers, with more than 3.2 million customers on these robust, and 5G capable plans. As the need for data continues to grow and new applications are developed, the value of these plans becomes even more important to customers. Through our infinite unlimited plans, consumers are leveraging the extensive data buckets and higher speeds that support video and business applications used in a hybrid work model or while traveling on vacation with friends and family. The appeal of these plans is clearly evident in overall monthly data usage, which continues to grow. On average, our customers are now using 6.6 gigs per subscriber, up 35% compared to the same period last year. On infinite plans, data consumption is even more impressive, with customers using almost 10 gigs per subscriber per month. This is up 17% year over year. and more than triple the usage when unlimited plans were launched back in 2019. The simplicity and value of these plans combined with the record investments being made to support this usage are allowing customers to leverage the full capabilities of their mobile devices. In our media business, we have accelerated our return to profitability driven by our leading portfolio of sports assets. We delivered double digit revenue growth and have seen significant growth in adjusted EBITDA, reflecting the growing value of this franchise. While other non-sports media players in Canada have seen weaker performance in this business, Canadians' appetite for sports programming and attending Blue Jays games in person remained robust and drove excellent financial performance. On the cable front, where we had delivered strong execution in the first half of the year, we did not achieve the subscriber results we expected of ourselves with our performance in Q3. Against the backdrop of very aggressive and opportunistic promotional activities from our national competitor, we were less effective in responding to this dynamic early in the quarter. But we have since focused on tactics that balance subscriber growth and market share with wireline profitability. While very disappointed with the network outage, the impact was isolated. and our teams have worked hard to regain customer trust. Importantly, we have gotten better from what we have learned as we accelerate investments and network resiliency in order to provide always-on connectivity and service to our customers. Overall, I was very pleased with our underlying Q3 financials, which were strong. Excluding the $150 million in credits we provided to our customers in Q3, Total service revenue was up 7% and adjusted EBITDA was up 8%. In wireless, our underlying business reflected strong financials with service revenue up 9%, adjusted EBITDA up 7%, and blended mobile phone ARPU up 3%. And in our cable business, revenue and adjusted EBITDA were both up 2%, and we maintained cable profitability despite the aggressive promotions. Importantly, these credits will not carry into the fourth quarter, and we're encouraged that our better execution plans are working. Additionally, even with the impact of the credits, we are able to maintain our 2022 full-year guidance ranges. In terms of network investment, our capex spending in Q3 was $872 million, up 18% from one year ago. This represents a record quarter for capital investment by Rogers. Importantly, network-specific investment was up 52% compared to a year ago, demonstrating the commitment we are making to improve resiliency and the customer experience. In closing, I'm extremely pleased with the growth and leadership we have seen in our businesses. I want to thank the Rogers team across the country for their hard work and ongoing commitment to improving the customer experience and delivering better execution despite a protracted regulatory process associated with the Shaw Rogers Quebec ordeal. I appreciate our team's passion, and so do our customers. Let me now turn the call over to Glenn, who will provide a few more details on the quarter.