Operator: Our next question comes from Batya Levi of UBS. Please go ahead.
Batya Levi : Great. Thank you. A question on CapEx with this year coming in at a bit at the high end of the guidance range, should we assume that’s pulling forward some of the spending for next year, or can you provide some general color on CapEx trends for next year? Thank you.
Glenn Brandt: Thank you, for the question. I think that’s not pulling anything forward that’s carrying on with a current run rate and closing at the year. I think, I’m very broadly rounding now, but I think we’ve been fairly consistent through the year running at or around a billion dollars a quarter. And so, if we sustain that pace through the fourth quarter, recognizing that there’s a holiday period in there and some of that spend tends to slow as we move into the winter months that pace would take you to the upper end of the guidance range. Going forward in 2024, the combined operations we haven’t guided yet, but we’re not pulling anything forward and we’ll come out with our guidance early in year ‘24.
Operator: Our next question comes from Stephanie Price of CIBC. Please go ahead.
Stephanie Price : Hi, good morning. Two from me. First is, you mentioned strength and bundling in the west. Just hoping you can dig a little bit more into what you’re seeing in terms of bundling the Western customer base and also how we should think about upside from revenue synergies with Shaw. And then secondly, just on the role of wireless handsets in the Rogers strategy, equipment revenue trends seems to be above ahead of peers here. Just wondering the ability to finance handsets for the help of the Rogers bank card might be supporting the trend.
Tony Staffieri: Just let me unpack that. I’ll start with the last part of the question in terms of the longer-term financing under the Rogers credit card, it’s early days. And the customer take up and interest in that has been very strong, not surprising. I mean, the value proposition is to amortize the cost of the phone over double the period when it’s on the card. So, the total quantum of financing doesn’t change. It’s just over a longer period of time. And the construct, while there’s no contract, the construct is such that the value proposition makes it compelling to be and stay at Roger’s customers. And that’s the way we’ve designed that value proposition. And importantly, it dovetails with what we’re seeing as the longer life of the mobile devices, consumers, and businesses continue to hang onto the vice longer.
And we’re seeing that over the last several years as a trend. And so, dovetailing that longer life with a longer amortization period makes a lot of sense. But again, it’s early days and we’re looking forward to how that’s going to play out over the holiday season. In terms of bundling opportunities in the west. Specifically, the coming together with Shaw where you had Shaw customers that were either Shaw Mobile and or Shaw home product customers and Rogers wireless customers. What you we saw is not well, you would expect customers that were already clients of Rogers and Shaw coming together and trying to understand how that coming together into one bill was going to impact them. We got what we expected on that, and that was good. But more importantly, what we’re seeing are customers that had one product set but not the other looking to simplify things and bring together their product suite.
And so, again, it’s at the end of Q3, six months into it, but it was more demand than we expected this early in the process. So, we’re pleased with the market trend and appetite of customers to put together products, between wireless and cable. And then the last piece is revenue synergies and how that’s coming to some extent, the bundling that I just talked about is one aspect of it. And as I said, that’s coming in better than we expected this soon in the process. But the second piece is that we’ve talked about is on the enterprise and in particular the mid to small business. And what we’re seeing there is same thing a very good appetite of business customers to look to alternatives that they previously didn’t have in the West in being able to combine those.
Many of the product sets on the business side, more and more are converged. And so, to the extent that they have one easy experience between their businesses inside as well as when they’re outside of their business that seems to hunt well. And so, as we streamline our product set in that segment of the market, we’re seeing very good traction there. Hope that covers it, Stephanie.
Paul Carpino: Next question, Ariel.
Operator: Our next question comes from Simon Flannery of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Simon Flannery: Great. Thank you, very much. Good morning. I want to talk a little bit about CapEx if I could. I think, one of the opportunities you saw in the West was to extend the network to MDUs that had not been connected. Can you just update us on that and just give us a little bit more sense of the timing, where you are on the DOCSIS 4.0 upgrade? What should we expect in ‘24 and beyond to move that to completion? Thanks.
Glenn Brandt: Thank you, Simon. On the capital spend specific to wiring up MDUs in the West, we are — it is underway. Early days. We are six months in through the third quarter and halfway through the fourth. Those planning schedules are well underway in terms of getting permits and what have you. In some cases, we have started some of that build. In other cases, still to come, but we are about where we would expect to be, and so happy with that.
Tony Staffieri: On the second part of your question, Simon, on the 10G DOCSIS 4.0 roadmap, where we are at on that. We are, as you would expect, fast follow, extremely fast follow relative to where, our U.S. cable peers are. And so, the work with respect to mid and high-split, not to get through technical is well underway. And our expectation is that, the bigger lift on that is in the East. And that work is progressing nicely in terms of it. And so, as we look to the CPE and the chipset availability, we will have that much along the same timelines that you are hearing from, the U.S. cable operators. So, look to the back half of ’24 as the beginning of what you will see in terms of customer experience improvements.
Paul Carpino: Thanks, Simon. Ariel, we have time to put in two more questions, please.
Operator: Certainly. Our next question comes from Jerome Dubreuil of Desjardins. Please go ahead.
Jerome Dubreuil: Good morning. You have been great to provide details on synergies. But it is not been really easy to figure out on top of what exactly we should put the $1 billion. So, I know it is not the kind of questions management teams like. But, given the forecast that we see out there, do you think it’s likely that your Cable margins could be around 60% in 2025?
Glenn Brandt: Thank you for the question, Jerome, and I love your optimism. I am not going to start guiding, ’24, let alone ’25 this morning. Let me answer it this way, we have got, two capital-intensive businesses in Wireless and Cable with strong margins. Wireless right now is 64%, Cable is 53%. And they are both growing or expanding, as you would expect for a business that has a larger scale. We have essentially doubled the size of cable, with the Shaw acquisition, that brings some economies with it. It brings some additional capital spend with it. Wireless’s margins cover, its investment in infrastructure as well as its investment from time-to-time in spectrum. And so very satisfied with the balance across all of that, particularly as a result of having increased the scale substantially for Cable to now roughly match where we are with Wireless in terms of national breadth and size of EBITDA and revenue.
