Rogers Communications Inc. (NYSE:RCI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 4 of 12

I don’t know if you’re looking for a rough rule of thumb, think of it in the range of probably 0.4 to 0.6 times depending upon the year depending upon how much of the year we have left in €˜23 once we close. But if you were to try and model it along those lines, Drew, I think you’d probably be in the ballpark. And then free cash flow in the outer years, maybe not in the first 12 months. But we will have available free cash flow to nominally pay down debt as well. That’s about as fulsome as I want to get right now, but that’ll give you an idea how to model it.

Operator: Our next question comes from Sebastiano Petti of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Sebastiano Petti: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just sticking with the cable network investments and competition themes you did mention in your prepared remarks that the fourth quarter was aggressive and promotional intensity from your national peer. But at the same time, I think Tony, you mentioned that you expect perhaps market share trends to improve in 1Q and 2Q. So in the near term basis, if you can maybe unpack some of the drivers there, you expect within the first and second quarter team to lead to the better subscriber market share. That would be great. And then maybe a longer term question. And in the U.S. you’re seeing your larger peers, charter, Comcast talk about versus 4.0 upgrade path, obviously, you are largely going to follow the Comcast paths.

But they have outlined the goal to get the DOCSIS 4.0 by 2025, pretty much ubiquitously across their footprint. What does that mean for Rogers? While market share trend may improve over the next couple of quarters relative to they are continuing on their fiber path, assuming the transactions with Shaw closes here shortly, obviously tell us pretty formidable in terms of cyber overlap as well. And just maybe give us a view on how Rogers is thinking about the long term HFC DOCSIS 4.0 upgrade paths, and maintaining competitiveness relative to your fiber peers. Thank you.

Tony Staffieri: Thanks for the questions Sebastiano. Two parts to your question. The first is now as we look to €˜23 and I just want to clarify as we talk about market share improvements. I just want to reiterate and level set expectations that it will be a progressive ramp in €˜23 a little bit in the first quarter ramping to the second quarter and then into the back half. And so I just want to just make sure we’re not getting too far ahead of ourselves. In terms of the fundamentals that get us there we’re very focused on the customer experience, and are they getting reliable internet at speeds that they want. We’re less focused on a price battle. What we do know is you can sign on a customer at a very low ARPU. But in the end, if they’re getting experience they’re not happy with, then that is the primary reason for change.

We continually look at the market reasons for customers coming on board, reasons for customers leaving and across the industry and that’s true both Canada and U.S. while price is always important a more important factor is the internet reliability. And that’s because we just even in the consumer space with a lot of work from home, it’s become so critical. And so those fundamentals around customer experience is what we believe will in the long term continue to drive the right gross add in the right churn fundamentals. So that’s point one. Second point relates to DOCSIS 4. Let me be clear, we do not have a competitive disadvantage in our internet business. In fact, we see it as a competitive advantage. In our footprint, we’ve been deploying fiber all the way to the home, all the way to the business premise for over a decade.

Page 4 of 12