Rogers Communications Inc. (NYSE:RCI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 9, 2023 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Paul Carpino - Vice President of Investor Relations

Tony Staffieri - President, CEO and Director

Glenn Brandt - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Drew McReynolds - RBC

Sebastiano Petti - JPMorgan

Vince Valentini - TD Securities

David Barden - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Maher Yaghi - Scotiabank

Tim Casey - BMO

Aravinda Galappatthige - Canaccord Annuity

Batya Levi - UBS

Stephanie Price - CIBC

Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley

Jerome Dubreuil - Desjardin

David McFadgen - Cormark Securities

Operator

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Rogers Communications Inc. Third Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. As a remainder, all participants are in a listen-only mode. And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions].

I would now like to turn the conference over to Paul Carpino, Vice President of Investor Relations with Rogers Communications. Please go ahead, Mr. Carpino.

Paul Carpino

Great. Thank you, Ariel, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, I am here with President and Chief Executive Officer, Tony Staffieri; and our Chief Financial Officer, Glenn Brandt.

Today's discussion will include estimates and other forward-looking information from which our actual results could differ. Please review the cautionary language in today's earnings report and in the 2022 annual report regarding the various factors, assumptions and risks that could cause our actual results to differ.

With that, let me turn it over to Tony to begin.

Tony Staffieri

Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to report that we delivered industry-leading results in the third quarter, our seventh consecutive quarter of growth and momentum. We also made substantive progress on integration and we are now tracking six months ahead of our synergy targets and deleveraging plans. Our team is clearly firing on all cylinders, executing with discipline, and delivering on our commitments.

Turning to results, we grew total service revenue by 40% and adjusted EBITDA by 52% in the third quarter. Our consolidated adjusted margin performance of more than 47% is 340 basis points higher than our competitor BCE, and almost a thousand basis points higher than TELUS. We are clearly delivering through a consistent strategy that focuses on the quality of our assets, operational efficiency, and discipline execution.

In wireless, we delivered industry leading financial and operating results. We attracted 261,000 mobile phone net editions of 40,000 from a year ago. This reflects the best combined postpaid and prepaid loading in our company's history. This phone only loading represents 94,000 more than BCE and over a hundred thousand more than TELUS. We did this while growing ARPU. Simply put, we continue to out execute our peers and have done so consistently for the last two years. We also delivered impressive financial results in the quarter. Wireless service revenue was up 15%. Adjusted EBITDA was up 18% and wireless blended ARPU up 4%. It's clear, Canadians are choosing Rogers more than any of our competitors.