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

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Simon Flannery: You’ve talked a little bit about revenue synergies, and one of the things we’re seeing in the U.S. is the rise of the double play, the internet plus wireless bundle, and triple play bundle kind of declining over time. Perhaps you could just give us a little bit of a sense of how you see that in Ontario? What sort of performance you see having being able to offer that combination to your customers? What percentage of your cable base does have your wireless product? And how do you see the opportunity to bring that playbook to Western Canada? Thanks.

Tony Staffieri: Thanks for the question, Simon, I’ll start and Glenn will pick up. At a very macro level. We’ve, we’ve been watching that trend closely in the U.S. In Canada, because we’ve had, I would say more experience at it having been a cable and wireless operator in significant parts of the country for a long period of time. In terms of the bundling, it’s largely been a price dynamic in terms of enticing the customer to it. When you look at the actual by dynamic in many ways, the channel distribution is different in how the customer buys, and a number of other factors in terms of the decision making criteria and how they think about them. And so other than promotional incentives to bundle them, I would say the fundamentals of the business seem to be continue to be somewhat separate.

And so we’ll continue to capitalize on that coming together at the right time. But price alone isn’t the answer long term and it really gets back to the comments I gave earlier with respect to long term cable churn rates. So we continue to watch that trend and certainly it’s an opportunity for us in terms of bundling. We don’t disclose the specifics of, within our footprint, what that looks like in terms of bundled offering for competitive reasons. But I would say it is growing, but perhaps not as much as you might think.

Glenn Brandt: Then maybe the only thing I would add to that Simon is our Ignite offering is particularly attractive as people’s viewing habits turn towards streaming to help still provide a base upon which to sell our video service product. It is a very strong offering that allows people to access streaming as well as the traditional channel lineups very conveniently. So that does help as well.

Simon Flannery: And what’s the call out on the video numbers in the quarter?

Glenn Brandt: I think we’ve touched on what I think the priorities were it was a consistent, it is a very competitive market, it remains competitive going into €˜23. And I don’t think there’s really anything more to call out than that.

Operator: Our next question comes from Stephanie Price of CIBC. Please go ahead.

Stephanie Price: On 5G, can you talk a little bit more about the 5G rollout and the 5G mid band coverage targets you have and what you’ve seen in terms of an uptick in customers moving to higher tier plans once you’ve deployed it? And finally, how you think about network costs if you operate both 4G and 5G networks in the near term?

Tony Staffieri: Thanks for the question, Stephanie. In terms of 5G rollout, as you saw on previous calls, we were very quick out of the gate very early in the year to deploy the mid band spectrums as you referenced very quickly. As of today we’re sitting at approaching 85%. We’re at about 83% today in terms of 5G coverage. And so we continue a very aggressive ramp. And you can expect that as we head towards the end of the year that will approach 90%. So we continue to deploy that spectrum very quickly. And in many markets, you’ll see the banner 5G Plus much like you do in the U.S. and that will continue to be at a very rapid pace as well. So that’s all proceeding well.

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