TELUS Corporation (TU) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

May 4, 2023 1:30 p.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the TELUS 2023 Q1 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to introduce your speaker, Mr. Robert Mitchell. Please go ahead.

Robert Mitchell

Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Our first quarter 2023 results release, MD&A, financial statements and detailed supplemental investor information were posted to our website earlier this morning at telus.com/investors.

On our call today, we will begin with remarks by Darren, Zainul and Doug. For the Q&A session as we typically do, we will be joined by other senior leaders including Navin, Jim Senko, Tony, Jeff, Sid and John.

Today's remarks and answers to questions contain forward looking statements. Actual results could vary from these statements. The assumptions on which they're based and the material risks that could cause them to differ are outlined in our public filings with the Securities Commission in Canada and the U.S. including our first quarter 2023 and annual 2022 MD&As.

With that, over you, Darren.

Darren Entwistle

Thank you, Rosco, and hello everyone.

In the first quarter, the TELUS team once again demonstrated our hallmark execution excellence characterized by the potent combination of industry leading customer growth and financial results. Our robust performance continues to be underpinned by our globally leading broadband networks and of course our customer centric culture. This enabled our best first quarter on record with total customer net additions of 163,000 up 10% on a year-over-year basis.

Once again this quarter, our team's passion for delivering superior customer experiences contributed to strong client loyalty across all of our key product lines, including blended mobile phone, PureFibre Internet, Optic TV, security and voice churn, all coming in at or below 1% which reflects North American industry leading performance in that regard.

In the first quarter, we delivered leading consolidated revenue and EBITDA growth of 16% and 11% respectively, alongside industry best double digit free cash flow growth of 29%.

Let's turn now to have a look at our mobile operating results. TELUS achieved strong customer growth of 105,000 net additions in the first quarter. This included healthy mobile phone net additions of 47,000 up slightly over last year and our best first quarter result since 2010.

Notably, this strength was driven primarily by loading on our premium brand, reflecting our continued focus on high quality and profitable customer growth. It also included healthy connected device net additions of some 58,000 which were up 26% on a year-over-year basis, indicative of positive momentum with respect to our 5G and IoT B2B solutions.