BCE Inc. (BCE) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

May 5, 2022 8:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

All participants, please standby. Your conference is ready to begin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the BCE Q1 2022 Results Conference Call.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Thane Fotopoulos. Please go ahead, Mr. Fotopoulos.

Thane Fotopoulos

Thank you, Elena and good morning to everybody. It's good to be back with all of you this quarter hosting today's conference call. As usual, here with me today are Mirko Bibic, BCE's President and CEO; and our CFO, Glen LeBlanc. You can find all of the relevant Q1 documents on the Investor Relations page of the bce.ca website which we posted earlier this morning.

However, before we begin, I'd like to draw your attention to our safe harbor statement reminding you that today's slide presentation and remarks made during the call will include forward-looking statements and information and therefore, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Results could differ materially. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Please refer to our publicly filed documents for more details on assumptions and risks.

With that out of the way, I will hand it over to Mirko.

Mirko Bibic

Thank you, Thane and good morning, everyone. We've had a very positive start to the year. Our dedicated Bell team once again delivered strong operational and financial results, driven by consistent and disciplined execution leading broadband networks and services and a focus on service excellence, all underpinned by a set of strategic initiatives that have guided us over the past two years, as you know and that will continue to guide us in 2022 and beyond.

Although Omicron undoubtedly is causing some near-term disruption, notably for Bell Business Markets and media advertising, we achieved robust total revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of 2.5% and 6.4%, respectively, in Q1. This represents the first quarter in which our consolidated financial results surpassed pre-COVID levels. The second year of our historic CapEx acceleration program is in full swing with close to $1 billion in new capital spent in the quarter. We remain on pace to deliver approximately 900,000 new direct fiber connections and further expand our 5G service footprint to more Canadians while also launching a stand-alone 5G core, notably on 3.5 gigahertz spectrum. With our midterm broadband Internet build-out plan, 80% completed and 5G network service available to more than 80% of Canadians by year-end, we expect CapEx to begin decreasing starting in 2023.