BCE Inc. (NYSE:BCE) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call November 7, 2024 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Thane Fotopoulos - Investor Relations
Mirko Bibic - President and CEO
Curtis Millen - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Sebastiano Petti - JPMorgan
Vince Valentini - TD Securities
Drew McReynolds - RBC Capital Markets
Maher Yaghi - Scotia Bank
Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley
Aravinda Galappatthige - Canaccord Genuity
Jerome Dubreuil - Desjardins Securities
Batya Levi - UBS
Lauren Bonham - Barclays

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the BCE Q3 2024 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, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. With me here today, as usual, are Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE; and our CFO, Curtis Millen. You can find all of our Q3 disclosure documents on the Investor Relations page of the bce.ca website, which we posted earlier this morning.

Before we begin, I'll draw your attention to the safe harbor on Slide 2, 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 BCE's publicly filed documents for more details on our assumptions and risks.

With that, over to Mirko.

Mirko Bibic

Thank you, Thane, and good morning, everyone.

Our operating results for the third quarter demonstrate that we're pursuing growth in a financially disciplined and responsible manner in what's arguably been the most competitively intense market we've seen.

Against this backdrop, we remain focused on better quality, long-term margin-accretive subscriber acquisition and reducing costs to help offset short-term revenue impacts from sustained competitive pricing pressures, expected revenue losses from the source, which we've discussed in the past, slow economic growth in a media advertising market that's still in transition, pardon me, particularly on the linear side.

This focus on disciplined customer growth and ongoing efforts to drive cost savings across the organization through our advanced broadband networks, expanded digital and AI capabilities as well as other transformation work streams is reflected in our Q3 consolidated EBITDA growth of 2.1% and a 1.7 point margin increase to 45.6%.

Notably, this was our best quarterly margin performance in over 30 years. This contributed to 10.3% higher free cash flow in Q3, which was in line with our plan as profiled in our quarterly budget at the start of the year. So really good execution by the Bell team in a highly competitive marketplace. I'm going to move now to our operating results. Starting first with wireless.