BCE Inc. (NYSE:BCE) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 8, 2024 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Thane Fotopoulos - Investor Relations

Mirko Bibic - President and Chief Executive Officer

Curtis Millen - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Maher Yaghi - Scotiabank

David Barden - Bank of America

Stephanie Price - CIBC World Markets

Drew McReynolds - RBC Capital Markets

Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley

Tim Casey - BMO Capital Markets

Jerome Dubreuil - Desjardins Securities

Aravinda Galappatthige - Canaccord Genuity

David McFadgen - Cormark Securities

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the BCE Q4 2023 Results and 2024 Guidance Conference Call.

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

Thane Fotopoulos

Thank you, Matthew, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call.

With me here today are Mirko Bibic, BCE's President and CEO, and our CFO, Curtis Millen.

You can find all of our Q4 disclosure documents including our safe harbor notice concerning forward-looking statements for 2024 on the Investor Relations page of the bce.ca website, which we posted earlier this morning.

We have a lot of material to get through on the call. However, before we begin, I want to draw your attention to our safe harbor statement on Slide 2, reminding you that today's slide presentation and remarks made during the call will include forward-looking 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, Mirko, over to you.

Mirko Bibic

Thank you, Thane, and good morning, everyone.

Our quarterly and full year financial performance demonstrate the stability of our business and our proven ability to execute under any circumstances. The Bell team takes pride in delivering what we promised, taking the necessary near-term actions, including driving costs out of the business and balancing growth with profitability to meet our commitments to our customers and to our investors, while at the same time, putting in place the technology, product, customer service and cultural foundation that we know will drive growth in the medium to long term.

Our results for 2023 validate this fact as we achieved all our financial guidance targets and maintained a stable EBITDA margin even while facing significant media advertising headwinds, unsupportive government and regulatory decisions, and a macroeconomic environment, marked by higher interest rates and sustained inflation.