BCE Inc. (BCE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Please welcome Curtis Millen, EVP and CFO. Please welcome Curtis Millen.

So they call war-time promotion. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to BCE's 2025 Investor Day. My name is Krishna Somers, Head of Investor Relations, and it's my pleasure to host you today. To those of you here in Toronto, thank you for joining us in-person. And to those of you joining online, a warm welcome to you as well. Now before we get started, I do wish to acknowledge that we are joining you today from Toronto, the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendatthe Peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this land remains home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. So thank you all for being here. I greatly appreciate your interest in BCE. And we look forward to this opportunity to update you on our business to dive deeper into our long-term strategy and highlight some of the exciting work being done by our team. We do have a full agenda today, starting with CEO, Mirko Bibic, who will set the table and provide an overview of our strategic priorities. You will also hear from a number of our senior leaders. Following the presentations, we are going to have a Q&A session with all of today's presenters. So we do ask that you hold your questions until then. The presentations and Q&A are going to run about 3.5 hours, and this does include a short break midway through. Now I'd like to remind everyone that today's presentations will include forward-looking statements regarding our expectations for future performance, markets and business outlook. These statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. We encourage you to review our most recent filings, which identify important risk factors that could affect our future performance. BCE, nor its affiliates undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. Our Investor Day presentation will be posted to the BCE website at the conclusion of today's event, and that version does contain the endnotes and non-GAAP information referred to on today's slides. And with that out of the way, we are excited to offer you a window into BCE's strategy, innovation and plans for the future. Now to kick things off, let's turn down the lights and set the stage with our opening video. [Presentation]

And with that, I'm delighted to kick things off by introducing our CEO, Mirko Bibic, who will discuss our vision for the future and how we're positioning BCE for long-term success. Thank you again for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the day.

Good morning. Thank you for being here. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to the investors, analysts, journalists, members of the BCE leadership team and members of our Board who are joining us here today. Timing for this meeting could not be better, given the exciting pace and scale of change happening at Bell and at BCE. When I became CEO just over 5 years ago, in January 2020, none of us could have predicted the extent of change that was coming. COVID-19, supply chain constraints, high inflation, rising interest rates, global tariff wars, reductions in immigration and ill-advised regulatory decisions all reshaped our operating environment. On top of that, we saw a massive decline in wireless and Internet prices, even as the prices for almost everything else increased. Throughout this upheaval, we were agile and we were forward-looking. While others retreated, Bell stepped up, and we invested in Canada by expanding our fiber network and building a 5G network with incredible speed. Seeing a surge in demand for network capacity, speed and reliability as Canadians shifted to working and learning from home, we accelerated our capital investment program. And at the same time, Bell maintained our long-standing capital markets approach, which was centered on dividend growth. And looking back, I'm proud of many of the things that Bell's accomplished and [indiscernible] of the company, our network expansion, improvements to customer experience and effective drive for cost efficiencies, market share growth in fiber and our digital media strategy powered by Crave. Other elements were more difficult. Our cost structure while significantly improved, didn't keep pace with declining prices. Customer experience still has room to improve, and the dividend growth model became a strain on our balance sheet. But today, the world looks so very different than it did in 2020. The Canadian economy is changing our industry is changing and technologies advancing at an unprecedented pace. AI, for example, is a generational emerging technology that will redefine how we work, how we live and how we connect And we're in response here at Bell, we've devoted time and effort to reshaping the company, our capital markets approach and our operating strategy. Today, we're a far more focused company positioned for growth in a new competitive and technology landscape. We diversified revenue streams in higher growth and less regulated domains, and we have an energized management team that's ready to execute, execute and execute some more. As we move forward, our execution will be anchored on what we've always done best for 145 years. That's to advance how people connect with each other and the world. Connection is more important today than ever before. Demand for connectivity is rising at an unprecedented pace, and Bell is better positioned than any of our competitors to meet that growing demand. So today, we're going to outline why and why that positions us to grow free cash flow, our unique and differentiated set of assets, our 4 key strategic priorities, our proven track record of driving efficiencies, strengthening the balance sheet and optimizing the cost of capital. Our commitment to you is clear: deliver a total shareholder return with a sustainable dividend. So what makes Bell better than our competitors? We have a unique and differentiated set of assets, and this is important. They are all related to our core business, which is connection. We're an iconic and trusted brand. We have the deepest customer relationships, we have the country's largest fiber network and best 5G+ network, and that's been recognized by Ookla and GWS. We're the trusted leader in enterprise solutions, and we've pivoted to respond to changing customer demand. And Bell Media, Canada's #1 media company, will be a consistent revenue, EBITDA and free cash flow driver. Our four focused strategic priorities are built on these core differentiators, and they provide material execution upside. Put the customer first, deliver the best fiber and wireless networks, lead an enterprise with AI-powered solutions and build a digital and media content powerhouse. And underpinning all of these is our company-wide transformation and continued drive for efficiencies. And as we execute against these priorities, we expect to deliver compound annual revenue growth of 2% to 4% over a 3-year horizon while continuing to manage the significant declines in legacy businesses. We also have a new goal to drive an additional $750 million in savings for a total of $1.5 billion by 2028. We recognize that the lowest-cost providers are best positioned to serve customers in dynamic markets. By increasing revenue growth, driving operating efficiencies, we expect to deliver adjusted EBITDA CAGR of 2% to 3% from 2025 to 2028. And again, we're going to do this while managing continued decline in certain high-margin legacy segments. I'll now provide a bit more detail about what we are doing to deliver on our priorities. So number one, putting customers first. This is an area where we've historically fallen short as an industry and certainly here at Bell. And we started meaningfully tackling that challenge in 2020 because we knew we were nowhere near good enough. And we know that companies that lead in customer experience deliver better financial outcomes. In 2019, we had the highest share of CCTS complaints among the 3 largest national carriers. And today, we have the lowest. So we've made good progress, but we're not there yet. Hadeer will be up shortly. She'll be up this morning, and she'll outline how we are equipping our dedicated team members and our customers with the tools they need for better experiences. Our second priority is to deliver the best fiber and wireless networks. Fiber is the best broadband technology available, bar none, we all know it. Blaik is going to be up right after me, and he's going to show you why. Needless to say, fiber will continue to fuel our growth for years to come. And when we sought out new growth opportunities, we landed on Ziply Fiber, a company whose core business and whose culture aligned with ours. Ziply will be a material growth driver for BCE. With Ziply as part of our portfolio, we can reduce our build costs and increase our fiber penetration across North America. At close, the acquisition increased our fiber footprint significantly, and there is much more on the way. There's also big upside on fiber penetration. 5 years after network deployment, that's after 5 years of tenure, Bell achieves on average here, 46% fiber penetration. That means that 46% of locations passed are our customers. Ziply is an earlier tenure mix, and it currently sits at 28% penetration across its operating footprint. So that means that there's huge potential for subscriber growth within Ziply's existing footprint in addition to the new locations we plan to reach through our network build. Looking ahead, we'll plan to reach up to 8 million locations in the U.S., in part thanks to Network FiberCo, our strategic partnership with PSP Investments. So working together, we'll grow our U.S. footprint at an attractive capital cost and improve our free cash flow profile all at the same time. So this approach shows we'll drive growth in a disciplined manner aligned to our capital market strategy. Harold is here today from Seattle. He's the CEO of Ziply Fiber, and he'll have a lot more to share about our U.S. fiber plan. Let's move now to wireless. In 2020, we didn't have a 5G network at all. And today, our 5G and 5G+ network reaches 89% of Canadians. And we have an important structural spectrum advantage as speeds and capacity demands continue to increase. And importantly, we have the most churn upside in wireless as well. Over the summer, we achieved a major milestone. In collaboration with AST SpaceMobile, we completed Canada's first space-based direct-to-cell 4G voice over LTE call broadband data transmission and video stream. This success lays the groundwork for Bell's planned rollout of space-based direct-to-cell service in 2026, and that's going to extend coverage into Canada's most challenging areas. When commercially available, this technology will enhance public safety, support remote business opportunities and keep Canadians connected wherever they may be. Our third priority, lead in enterprise with AI-powered solutions. You'll hear more on our exciting enterprise strategy from John later. We're already Canada's top enterprise network provider, and our unique offering drives value for enterprise clients well beyond network through our -- through Ateko, excuse me, our integrator of AI automation platforms; through Bell Cyber, our cybersecurity center of excellence; and through Bell AI Fabric. Bell AI Fabric offers full stack AI solutions that allow Canadian companies to develop and control made in Canada sovereign AI systems on a scale not otherwise possible. Bell's AI service offering is multilayered, and it comprises, of course, our leading 5G and fiber networks, hardware infrastructure, including Canada's largest sovereign AI data centers; software and large language models, including through our partnership with leading Canadian AI company, Cohere; and advisory tech and professional services through Ateko. The Cohere partnership is a great example of how Bell AI Fabric is at the center of Canada's tech ecosystem. We were proud to announce our strategic partnership in August when we became Cohere's largest commercial customer, embedding its North Agentic AI platform across Bell and offering its premier LLM to our enterprise customers. Remarkably, 9 short weeks later, we launched our first internal use cases. We're executing at start-up speed, and we're capitalizing on opportunities that are right in front of us. By 2028, our goal is for Ateko, Bell Cyber and Bell AI Fabric to be a $1.5 billion AI-powered solutions business, and we're almost halfway there. Finally, on media, our ambition is to build that digital media and content powerhouse. Bell Media is growing. In 2020, we saw where the industry was going, and we transformed to become a digital media leader. And thanks to that strategic foresight, again, we are Canada's #1 digital media company. We're targeting a 60% digital revenue mix by 2028. Sean is here as well, and he's going to walk you through what's next for Bell Media and how we will continue to deliver Canada's best content on every platform. So earlier, I mentioned that these four strategic priorities was underpinned by our company-wide transformation, which enables us to drive efficiencies while continuing to deliver for customers. So a few examples. Our self-installs driving net savings and helping customers get connected faster. We'll begin to shut down our 3G network in 2027, building on work already underway in the province of Manitoba. As part of the shutdown, we're offering low-cost LTE and 5G-enabled devices to customers to ease the transition like the affordable ahlo phone by Bell. We're phasing out copper in a smart and balanced way, and we'll save costs by upgrading to fiber, reselling salvage copper and making the most of our real estate footprint. Our systems have grown too complex over time as technologies evolved and as we've completed multiple acquisitions. But we've been simplifying to provide a smoother customer journey at lower cost. So think one billing system, one ordering platform and a unified customer profile. And through this process, we will eliminate hundreds of apps that add costs. So now a word on our capital market strategy. Maintain a sustainable dividend policy, continue to delever and optimize the cost of capital, including through strategic partnerships. Between now and 2028, we expect this strategy will drive free cash flow growth after lease payments at a CAGR of approximately 15%. So all of this put together, our four strategic priorities, our company-wide transformation, our significant execution upside and the most talented team in the business will fuel our goal to provide investors with a total shareholder return that balances growth and a sustainable dividend. So in summary, here's our ambition between now and 2028. Compound annual revenue growth of 2% to 4% an additional $750 million for a total of $1.5 billion of cost savings by 2028, compound annual adjusted EBITDA growth of 2% to 3%, 3.5x leverage ratio by 2027, approximately 15% free cash flow growth after lease payments and approximately $5 billion in dividend payments to shareholders through a sustainable and disciplined dividend strategy. We'll do this while managing the structural decline of legacy businesses that remain high margin on a per customer basis but carry significant maintenance and capital costs such as copper voice. The key. So the key is to position Bell for the future by driving net new revenue at lower capital costs. Now one of the best parts of this job is working with the tens of thousands of motivated team members across Bell, including those of my colleagues who you'll meet today. They're here every single day for our customers, every single day. It's truly the best team in the business, all 40,000 of them. So take it from me. Team Bell is ready to seize our material execution upside, and it's rooted in what we've always done best, and that's connecting people to each other, connecting businesses to their customers and connecting all Canadians to the latest technologies. Connection is and has always been, for 145 years, the foundation of this company. And today is the perfect day to introduce our refreshed brand and our new tagline, Connection is everything, and it reflects our corporate strategy. It's relevant, it's approachable, and it is designed to reflect the full breadth of our customer segments. And it's about a promise. It's to create stronger connections every day because connection is at the core of the human experience. And let me show you how it comes to life. [Presentation]

We have a very strong and seasoned leadership team. And today, you'll hear from many of them. Blaik will share more on how we're delivering the best fiber and wireless networks. Hadeer, our Chief Information Officer and first-ever Chief Customer Experience Officer, will walk you through how we're putting customers first. As I mentioned, Harold is here from Seattle, and he'll outline our U.S. growth strategy. John will detail our plan to lead an enterprise with AI-powered solutions. Sean is going to share our ambition to build that digital media and content powerhouse. Curtis, our CFO, and someone you all know well, will provide our financial outlook. And we also have our Chief Technology Officer, Mark McDonald, and he'll join us later on the Q&A panel. I'm confident you'll leave here today with a deeper understanding of Bell's strategic direction and our potential. There's a lot to look forward to today, of course, and well beyond. Thank you for your time this morning.

Please welcome Blaik Kirby, Group President, Consumer and Small Business.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Blaik Kirby, and I'm thrilled to be here to share our vision for Bell's Consumer and Small Business group. I've spent over 35 years in the telecom industry, starting as a technician and working my way through network engineering, marketing, sales and strategy. I've had the privilege of working both wireline and wireless, 20 years in wireline, 15 in wireless and 5 years leading both. I've been hands on through every generation of wireless, 2G to 5G and help lead the transition from copper to fiber. I also spent a decade in strategy consulting in the U.S., which gave me a broad perspective on how to drive transformation and growth. That journey has given me a deep appreciation for the power of networks and the people who build and deliver them. And it's why I'm so excited about where we're headed. Our strategy is anchored in a single powerful ambition to deliver Canada's best fiber and wireless networks creating exceptional value for both our customers and our shareholders. Today, I'll walk you through how we're leveraging this advantage to drive sustainable growth strong financial performance and a step-change in our operational excellence across our Canadian footprint. We have unique advantages, unmatched scale, vertically integrated strength and owner economics. At Bell, we have 3 million fiber internet customers, 10.5 million wireless subscribers and 4 million TV content subscribers, a customer base unparalleled in Canada. We also have the best of the best, best networks, best distribution, best brands and owner economics and content. Bell is one of 3 carriers globally with overlapping fiber, wireless and media assets. This unique combination gives us a powerful competitive edge to drive convergence that others can't easily replicate. Over the next 3 years, our goal is to drive 1% to 2% CAGR in both consumer and small business revenues and adjusted EBITDA, growth that's primarily driven by Internet, wireless and content. We expect our growth revenues will scale from 70% in 2020 to 85% by 2028, putting us on a strong footing for years to come, while we continue to manage the legacy business decline. We're very excited about the years ahead as fiber, 5G and improved execution accelerate our growth. Our ambition for 2028 is clear, and it's built on four key pillars that will guide our execution. First, we will reinforce that fiber and 5G are the absolute heart of our business and our core competitive advantage. Second, I'll demonstrate how our investment in fiber is the engine that drives outperformance across both Internet and wireless. And third, we'll unpack the significant execution upside we have in our operations. And fourth, we'll detail our go-to-market transformation, unlocking further efficiencies and growth. At the core of our investment thesis is that connection is everything, and the fundamental superiority of our fiber and 5G networks will deliver on those needs. This isn't about having the best technology today. It's about owning the essential platform for future innovation growth and the profitability for the foreseeable future. Content demand and [ AI ] growth drive the need for speed and reliability that only fiber and 5G can deliver. We see insatiable appetite for data. Consumers want access to rich content anytime, anywhere on any device. And business adoption of AI will grow, driving an explosion in compute and data needs. This digital era demands fast, reliable, secure, seamless networks. In short, the world is moving to ultra connectivity. Only fiber broadband and 5G wireless can best meet these customer needs. Our strategy is simple: to deliver superior customer benefits with fiber and 5G. Bell's fiber and 5G delivers unmatched performance. Fiber gives customers the best Internet experience at home, and it delivers the fastest 5G mobile experience through our fiber-backed towers. We offer today up to 8 gigabit symmetrical fiber Internet speeds and 5G+ wireless speeds up to 4 gigabits per second. Our new WiFi 7 Hubs support up to 19 gigabits WiFi throughput in-home, truly next-level connectivity. Fiber is much better than cable. When you compare the technologies head-to-head, the advantages of fiber are undeniable. We offer faster speeds, dedicated high bandwidth and symmetrical speeds. From an operational standpoint, our network is more reliable with a lower cost structure. Cable is 7.5x more expensive on energy and requires 1.8x more truck rolls. We are investing in the technology for the next 100 years, while our competitors are burdened with a legacy platform that will require a full costly upgrade to fiber just to catch up. And most importantly, 82% of Canadians recognize fiber as the leading internet technology. On wireless, we have an important structural advantage. As speeds increase 100-fold, our significant spectrum advantage over our largest competitors with 2x more mid-band spectrum will deliver the fastest and most reliable 5G+ network. We're positioned to win in the multi-gig era. Now our second pillar. Fiber drives outperformance for both Internet and wireless. It is the key that unlocks market share gains and higher profitability across both Internet and wireless. I'll now show you the tangible metric-driven results of this strategy and the significant growth potential that remains. Our fiber investment creates a powerful growth flywheel. We have penetration upside as we see penetration more than double from 20% to 46% within 5 years in new footprints, more than 2x what we had with copper-based Internet in the same area. And despite any slowdown in new fiber rollout, a growth lever remains with 3 million newly passed homes in the last 5 years yet to reach 46%. Fiber also yields better economics, with cost-to-connect rates expected to reduce by 23% and cost-to-serve rates expected to reduce by 12% over the next 3 years. And fiber customers are happier. With higher Net Promoter Scores, the non-fiber and dramatically lower churn, around 15% better for fiber versus non-fiber and 25% better for bundled fiber households. When we combine fiber Internet households with wireless and other services, these households have incredibly low churn. This combination of higher penetration, better economics and greater loyalty creates a profitable and sustainable growth engine. It's no surprise, we are winning share where we have fiber. Our fiber footprint leads in the Canadian market with more than 2x locations passed versus our next leading competitor. Over time, expect us to deliver 50%-plus market share in our fiber footprint and obviously, the largest base of fiber Internet households in Canada. Where we have fiber, we have 39% of households with both mobile and Internet compared to 18% in non-fiber footprint. We expect this to grow to 50% over time. Simple math, get 50% market share where we have fiber and penetrate 50% with mobile. We have higher household revenues and household lifetime values where we have fiber. We believe we can drive higher product intensity, and we plan to increase our product intensity in the next 3 years by 25%. We expect this increase in subscription services per household will be driven by mobile and Internet cross-sell and through the expansion of streaming and content sales, directly leveraging our distribution billing and household relationships. Higher subscriptions and lower churn will drive much higher cash lifetime value from an average of 6,000 to over 10,000 for a fully penetrated household. The opportunity ahead is exciting. With a base of 2.2 million customers who only take Internet or mobility from us, it represents a significant low-cost cross-sell opportunity. Fiber has enabled significant growth. As we grew our footprint, our subscriber growth across fiber Internet, wireless TV and content is forecast to grow from 14 million in 2020 to nearly 20 million by 2028. While traditional TV is declining, demand for content continues to grow, and we see significant growth in Bell Media direct-to-consumer content bundles. Households with both Internet and mobile are expected to rise from 1.2 million in 2020 to 2.1 million by 2028. We believe this growth in convergence will be driven by fiber Internet penetration and cross-sell execution. Moving to our third pillar. Beyond our network advantage, we have significant upside potential by delivering better experiences, which Hadeer will discuss, improving our execution and furthering our leadership with new products and services that our customers want. We have made churn reduction, an area of focus, and we have significant churn upside. Our targets are to reduce both postpaid wireless and converged household churn by 30 basis points by 2028. We plan to achieve this through focused initiatives, driving higher product intensity, using AI-driven models to proactively identify at-risk customers, improving upgrade programs in wireless and elevating customer service to boost NPS. You've seen material improvements with more to come. This is an upside that others don't have. Customers want fast and reliable WiFi and WiFi 7 on fiber will be the best WiFi experience they can get. Only fiber will unleash the full potential of WiFi. Our recently launched new Giga Hub 2.0 is a game changer, delivering speeds 10x faster than WiFi 5. And since 85% of smartphone usage happens over WiFi. Mobility customers on Bell Internet will experience the fastest and most reliable Internet speeds. Customers want their Internet always on, like electricity or water. We are redefining reliability with our unbreakable Internet proposition. Unbreakable Internet, launching in spring 2026, combines two key advantages that cable can't replicate. First, our fiber network remains on during power outages, a structural advantage over cable. Second, our Giga Hubs include seamless wireless mobile backup using our 5G network enabled by a customer's Bell Mobility smartphone. The combination of passively powered fiber plus mobile backup makes Bell's Internet ultra resilient. Clients get peace of mind that they are connected when they need it most. We believe Unbreakable Internet will be a compelling service benefit to have your mobility and Internet from Bell. Content consumption continues to grow. Customers want flexibility on where and how they watch TV. Increasingly, Bell TV is watched as an app similar to streaming services. Customers don't want dedicated set-top boxes anymore. We are leading the future of TV by eliminating the set-top box and delivering a full streaming experience on apps, on devices customers already own. This app-based approach is uniquely flexible and customer-focused, meeting customers where they are on Apple TV, Google TV, Samsung, LG and other leading TV brands. From a business perspective, this model is highly scalable, cost-efficient and simplifies the customer experience, giving us another structural advantage over cable's closed set-top box-centric business model. Putting all these things together gives us product intensity upside. We plan to do this by bundling Crave with our TSN and RDS streaming services, and with partners like Disney+ and Netflix. And we will further expand by integrating high-value third-party services for AI, gaming and security. Customers benefit with bundled discounts and the convenience of one bill and can sign up in any channel. We then benefit from additional Crave and TSN penetration and lower overall household churn. Our owner economics, scale and strength enabled through Bell Media provides a platform for growth that no competitor can replicate. Finally, our fourth pillar is the continuing transformation of our go-to-market to become simpler, more agile and more efficient. Canada is a small market with too many brands. We will be streamlining our brand portfolio to be similar to other mature telecom markets, where most operate with one main converged brand. Going forward, Bell will be our only brand for superior mobile and Internet and content bundling and driving product intensity. In January, we will be stopped selling Virgin Internet in Ontario. We anticipate substantial operational savings from realigning our brands, higher product intensity and lower churn. We also see an opportunity by simplifying our offers and connectivity value proposition. We already have unlimited Internet plans and drive a 70%-plus mix on gigabit-plus speeds. For wireless, similar to the U.S., we will differentiate mobility rate plan tiers based on class of service, content and handset financing. Recently, we launched our tiered plan construct, which we believe will be accretive to ARPU. We have the best distribution network in Canada with over 4,200 exclusive and semi-exclusive retail locations, giving us unmatched market reach. With over 3x more exclusive and semi-exclusive locations than our competitors, we have a significant advantage. We also see a major opportunity to improve our cost structure by shifting more transactions to digital channels. Our goal is to more than double our digital mix by 2028, leading to significant cost savings and a better customer experience. The combination of top-tier exclusive distribution and scaled up digital gives us the best of both worlds to drive sales leadership and also delivers an expected $180 million cash savings over 3 years. Regarding the implications of the recent Internet access decision, our approach is twofold. First, protect Bell's retail position in the East, executing on the integrated strategy I described today. Ultimately, we believe fiber resellers will on balance, take more share from cable, driving higher fiber penetration for us in the East as typically seen when this happens. And two, our focus in the West will be to protect our mobility base by offering more services in a disciplined way. We will offer these wireless customers no set-top box 5 TV and/or streaming content bundles to grow wireless sales and lower churn. And where necessary for the highest-value customers, we will resell fiber Internet. Being more competitive in the West will significantly improve customer consideration of Bell, particularly for wireless. We will be launching Fiber Internet in BC and Alberta in November. With a strong focus on cross-sell and mobility and Internet content bundling nationally, we expect this to translate to continued strong retail market share and overall better network penetration in the East and gains in wireless performance in the West. Now to conclude, a word on our financial ambitions. By executing on our four pillars and delivering the best connectivity for consumers with our superior 5G and wireless networks -- sorry, 5G and fiber networks, we expect to deliver steady financial growth and strengthened our market leadership in consumer and SMB. We believe this strategy will drive growth in subscribers revenue and cash flow while enhancing profitability. Our financial ambition is to achieve 1% to 2% CAGR in consumer and small business revenues over the next 3 years driven primarily by 4% to 5% CAGR in our growth services. We also expect 1% to 2% CAGR in adjusted EBITDA over the same period. I'm excited about Bell's leadership on two fronts. First, the combined power of our pure fiber and 5G networks is delivering faster speeds, better reliability and lower latency. Exactly what Canadians need in this era of AI and streaming. And second, as we move beyond traditional TV, we're leveraging our ownership of Crave with partnerships with top platforms to offer flexible, affordable streaming options that deliver the content people want, when and where they want it. Our leadership in these two areas will position Bell to better serve our customers while creating long-term value. Thank you.

Please welcome Hadeer Hassaan, EVP, Chief Information and Customer Experience Officer.

Hi, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today to share with you how we are transforming customer experience, a critical part of our business. I'm the first named Chief Customer Experience Officer in Canadian telecom. I'm also the Chief Information Officer. This dual role is by design. It gives me a unique opportunity to align strategy, execution and outcomes. It's about orchestrating people and technology to create simple, seamless and intuitive customer experiences. Mirko and Blaik spoke about Bell's world-class networks and our differentiated assets. But what's really important is how our customers experience those assets every single day. I want to start by acknowledging that telecommunication companies can do better in customer service, and we are no exception. At Bell, we've prided ourselves on delivering a superior network. But our internal complexity built up over years of legacy systems and multiple acquisitions, has made it harder for customers to do business with us. That is changing. Today, I will share how we are making customer experience a competitive advantage for Bell. I'll start with why customer experience matters. Our ambition to truly redefine customer engagement, the solid foundation we've already built, how we'll deliver on our ambition through people, AI and our technology platforms; and finally, the upside ahead. Delivering the positive customer experience matters, companies that lead in customer experience consistently deliver superior financial outcomes. The difference is striking. A [ Bain ] study shows that over a 10-year period, NPS leaders achieved over 3x higher total shareholder value, nearly double the revenue growth and 5x growth in operating income. Investing in customer experience creates internal engagement, strengthens customer relationships, drives loyalty and repeat business and fuels profitability. It's a core driver of shareholder value. At Bell, we have over 240 million direct interactions every year. That reach gives us something incredibly powerful. We know our customers, and we have a real-time pulse on our business. Each of those moments is a chance to delight our customers, make it easier to do business with us and deliver hyper-personalized experiences, which means services and experiences that truly match our customers' needs, like higher-speed Internet that matches your utilization or an ultra plan for the frequent traveler or the right content bundle. And here's what's equally important. Easy, friction-free experiences also cost less to deliver. Every great interaction doesn't just build loyalty, it drives efficiency. At the heart of our ambition, a customer-first commitment, a set of principles that we apply to every interaction with the objective to make it easier for customers to do business with Bell. It's anchored in four guiding promises. Faster interactions without friction. From sales to appointments, billing or upgrades, we follow through. Every journey from on-boarding to troubleshooting is simple and seamless and customers get a consistent, connected experience online, in-store or over the phone. Our vision for 2028 is ambitious, and it's grounded in people powered by data and disciplined delivery, something we do very well about. We'll design experiences that leverage technology to enable our teams and customers, the outcome is clear, more engaged employees happier customers with a higher lifetime value and lower cost to serve. Customer experience isn't a marketing slogan, we will deliver measurable business outcomes. As Blaik shared, we are focused on higher NPS and lower churn across the base. We are targeting 25% higher product intensity, leading to a higher lifetime value, all while unlocking over $100 million in operational cost efficiencies per year. Accomplishing these targets starts with happy customers. Since 2020, we've made bold moves to fundamentally reshape our organization. Through our laser focus on customer experience, we've delivered measurable meaningful improvements. In 2019, Bell had the highest share of CCTS complaints in the industry. Since then, we've reduced complaints per 10,000 subs by more than half. Today, Bell has the lowest complaint rate among the 3 largest national carriers, through disciplined execution and uneven commitment to put the customers first. In addition, we prioritized delivering the best possible self-serve digital experience for customers. It's easy, fast and convenient. We introduced self-install, a program that lets customers set up their services in less than 15 minutes, no technician required. Customers prefer its convenience and it's generating significant net savings. We designed a self-serve app that our customers love. The MyBell app has received more than 50 industry recognitions since 2022. And we've transformed our billing experience with a personalized interactive e-bill, making it easier for customers to understand their charges at a glance. By beginning our AI journey well ahead of the curve, we've cultivated a powerful dual advantage, a foundation of high-quality structured data and an expert team that thinks AI first, the two core enablers for AI success. Today, AI is changing how we serve customers and improving agent effectiveness already leading to measurable results. Our AI-powered virtual repair, it's a tool developed in-house in 2022. It has already eliminated over 1 million technical support calls. With our virtual assistant, we can better understand customer intent, provide answers quickly, direct them to self-serve or find them the right agent. It's not an out-of-the-box chat bot. Rather, our virtual assistant is at the forefront of global deployment, and it works. AI Ops for network monitoring detects 99% of site incidents in under 15 minutes and speeds root cause analysis by 80%. It leads to fewer outages, faster fixes and happier customers. We've come a long way in self-install, in digital channel share, in call and chat propensity. And we are just getting started. I'm even more excited about what's next. Our foundation is strong. And now we get to accelerate. Let me show you a glimpse of the future and what we have in store for our customers. I would like to introduce you to Isabel. [Presentation]

Our transformation strategy is simple. First, we empower our teams with AI superpowers. This means giving our dedicated people the tools they need to focus on what matters most, delivering an exceptional customer experience. For example, on a customer calls, our agents' screen is instantly populated with real-time insights and AI-driven diagnostics. They can skip the basic questions and get right into providing a solution, turning a long call into quick, effective resolution that adds value to our customers. Second, we personalize the experience, focusing on what matters most to each customer and adds real value. And third, for customers who want immediate answers, we provide a powerful 24/7 self-serve options across any channel, giving them complete control and convenience. To make this vision a reality, we are combining data, AI and the right strategic partnerships with global leaders like Google, ServiceNow, Salesforce and Cohere; allowing us to move faster, innovate smarter and leapfrog traditional approaches. In addition, our approach is different. Many companies, they focus on individual use cases, find one area like chat or a billing use case and make it better with AI. This is a start. But for this to scale, you would need to develop 1 million individual use cases. It's slow and results are limited. We are building technology services as platforms, with embedded AI at the core. Every customer touch point benefits from AI natively, not as a bolt-on. Instead of launching a small project, every time we want to add intelligence, our teams can now configure new capabilities in just a few clicks. AI is part of the fabric of how we operate. The result, immediate scalable impact across millions of interactions, but most importantly, happy customers with seamless experiences. Our mission-focused platforms will make a real difference for our customers and for Bell. Let me give you a few examples. Our Bell Virtual Assistant will allow us to serve customers 24/7 in their language of choice. This is an ongoing lighthouse project with Google with many world first releases. I'll share with you a demo at the end to show some of its potential in action. With agentic AI, customers will be able to manage their services across voice, chat, web and app seamlessly. What's more, the same AI agents will be available to our frontline teams to make their job easier and enable a better, more informed experience to our customers. We build once and deliver value everywhere with minimal incremental cost. We are developing a promise engine with ServiceNow and in partnership with Bell's very own Ateko to help solve complex service scenarios, previously managed across multiple legacy systems. For instance, a technician runs into a safety issue during an installation, like a tree needs to be trimmed before continuing the work. We've historically struggle to keep customers informed of the status. With ServiceNow Promise engine, we identify every commitment need, verify it and critically keep the customer updated throughout until the promise is fulfilled. The result, informed, happy customers. In partnership with Salesforce, our customer journey platform bridges marketing, ordering and service, all linked into a dynamic AI-powered conversation tailored to each customer's needs. The result, added customer value, timely communication throughout the customer journey, happy customers. Our targets are clear: to turn every interaction into measurable positive impact for customers and for Bell, to achieve higher NPS and lower churn, higher product intensity, higher lifetime value over $100 million of operational savings, but most importantly, happy customers that value their bell experience. Thank you for your time today. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity to empower our customers through exceptional experiences. Our telecommunication solutions are more than just services. They enable people to make the connections that matter. I will leave you now with Natalie Cattanach. Natalie is the VP of Strategy and Shared Services. She will give you a closer look at our Bell virtual assistant, next-gen AI technology that enables us to better support customers in their channel of choice. Welcome, Natalie.

Thanks. Our virtual assistant is transforming customer experience by enabling conversational self-serve support 24/7. We've already deployed core VA functionality across our chat ecosystem. And now we're extending this experience to our voice cues. Lucky Mobile rollout is complete. Virgin Plus is underway, and Bell will follow later this month. This AI-powered platform immediately replaces our legacy IVR, but more than that, it serves as the technological foundation for next-gen customer service. From here, we'll continue to innovate, optimizing the experience and scaling new use cases to maximize ongoing business value. Today, I'm excited to showcase our VA experience. The functionalities we'll discuss are either in production or are included in our 2026, 2027 program road map. In our first scenario, RVA leverages generative AI to answer customer inquiries and find a solution that meets their needs. So let's get started.

I'm Bell's virtual assistant. I use artificial intelligence to learn. How can I help you today?

I just received my bill, and it's higher than what I usually pay. Can you please explain why?

I can help you with that. To authenticate, can you please click on the link to log in to MyBell?

Okay. Done.

Thank you. I took a look at your current invoice, and it is $20 higher than last month due to roaming charges you incurred on September 4 to September 8 in Mexico. I hope you had a great time there.

All right. I forgot I used my phone while I was traveling. Yes, Mexico was great.

I'm glad to hear that. Do you travel to Mexico often? You are eligible to upgrade to the Ultra Canada and International plan for $10 more per month, this plan includes unlimited data, calling and texting in Canada and internationally.

That sounds interesting. I'm visiting my family in Mexico next week. Can I upgrade the other line on my account to that offer, too? My husband also travels a lot.

This is a special offer for your line, but let me see what I can do. Do you mind if I put you on a brief hold?

Sure. No problem.

Okay, I have sent the request to my manager. Please wait a moment while I get their response.

In this scenario, the VA consults a human agent for approval to apply the targeted offer on both lines of the account. Let's go behind the scenes to demonstrate what that looks like. First, the VA initiates a chat, outlining the situation and providing rationale to justify its recommendation. The live agent then reviews this information and provides direction. So in this case, the VA highlights the customer's long-standing loyalty and the agent aligned to upgrade both lines of the account to the Ultra Canada International plan.

All right. I spoke to my manager. And given your loyalty, I'm able to upgrade both lines on the account. Would you like to proceed with these changes?

Thanks. I appreciate that. Yes, please add it to my account.

Okay. Great. I've added it to your account. You will receive a confirmation e-mail with all the planned details.

Thanks. That was pretty easy.

That's great to hear. Thanks for choosing Bell, and enjoy your trip to Mexico next week.

So as you can see from the first example, our VA supports customers with inquiries, and we'll even call upon live agents for second-level support. However, it will do much more than that. In our second example, we showcase how the VA leverages existing digital tools, in this case, virtual repair; to troubleshoot technical issues and to get our customers back up and running fast. Let's give it a try. Hi there.

I'm Bell's virtual assistant. I use artificial intelligence to learn what can I help you with today?

My Internet is not working, and I have virtual meetings all day.

I'm sorry to hear that. To access your account, I need to authenticate you. I will be sending a onetime pin to your phone. Please read back the code when you receive it. A onetime pin has been sent to your phone.

It's 350920.

Thank you. I've checked for outages in your area, but there are none. However, there is an active weather alert. Let's initiate our virtual repair process. I am going to run remote diagnostics on your service.

Thank you.

Okay. I can see that the signal is not flowing to your modem. There appears to be an issue with your physical wire, which may be weather related. I will need to deploy a technician. I have someone available at 1 p.m. this afternoon, if that works for you?

I can make that work. I really need service.

Okay. I've scheduled your appointment for 1:00 p.m. this afternoon. You'll see these details in the manager appointment section in MyBell Mobile. In the meantime, you can use wireless Internet backup to stay connected and attend your virtual meetings. I am sending instructions to your phone now.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you for calling, and enjoy the rest of your day.

As you can see, our VA enables us to better support customers in their channel of choice. Both of the scenarios reviewed today will be available to customers in voice and in chat. And this is just the beginning. Through ongoing innovation, we will continue to improve customer experience and make it easy to do business with Bell. Thank you.

Please welcome Harold Zeitz, CEO Ziply Fiber.

Greetings from Seattle. I'm Harold Zeitz, CEO of Ziply Fiber. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss Ziply Fiber and BCE's U.S. strategy for the coming years and how they directly align with Bell's priorities to deliver the best fiber network with a great customer experience. As you know, I co-founded Ziply Fiber and I'm new to the BCE team. I began my career after business school at AT&T, led the fiber and network design teams responsible for converting the Western 13 states to fiber. I spent 10 years after that at McCaw Cellular, which became AT&T Wireless, where I ran markets across the country and then led marketing for the whole company. I spent the next decade leading technology companies delivering high transaction consumer services before I return to telecom for the most recent dozen years. My roots in fiber and telecom are deep. The entire Ziply fiber team is excited to join the BCE family. BCE is enabling Ziply Fiber to accelerate and expand our ambition to bring fiber service and a refreshingly great experience to more people and businesses and at a faster pace than we could on our own. The opportunity in the U.S. is quite significant because nearly half of homes do not yet have fiber. I'll start with a bit of history on how we got here prior to the acquisition by BCE. First, we assembled a team of experienced people, many of whom we knew from prior work. We needed the expertise to turn a struggling telco we purchased into a leading fiber company. We remade the network, nearly tripled fiber locations and radically improved the customer experience. Importantly, we also simplified and modernized our back office and network systems, giving us the ability and platform to scale efficiently. Three strategies drove our progress. And largely the same strategies will drive the delivery of our 2028 ambition now as part of BCE. From the beginning, we architected and plan to operate the best and fastest network. It's the foundation for everything we do. And we designed our commercial-grade purpose-built for IP network to be redundant, scalable, reliable and low cost to operate. We focus everything we do around delivering a refreshingly great customer experience. This is at the core of every decision we make, and the first thing we talk about with our team members every day. We plan to bring fiber to more places, and now we can go further and build faster with BCE and the formation of Network FiberCo, the partnership with PSP Investments. As I mentioned, our first strategy is to operate the best and fastest network in the U.S. A few key things to note that differentiate us from others. We offer speeds of up to 50 gig at every residential location, which is the fastest in America. And we architected the network in such a way to provision in such a way that everyone gets the speed they pay for at all times. We operate the network capacity at over 8x the need based on average peak utilization, so there's never congestion. Physical fiber cuts get rerouted automatically, and the other side of the ring can more than handle the incremental traffic. The network is a 400-gig optical network, which is architected for scalability and expansion. The design also gives us full control over quality of service. We were intentional in the network design to ensure we were providing customers with a refreshingly great experience. Both consumers and businesses continue to increase their demand for bandwidth and no matter how much they need, they just want their data connection to work always. Our second strategy is to deliver a refreshingly great experience in everything we do. Every Improvement we make every system change, every department is driven by this because we believe that nobody really wants to have to contact us. In other words, the best service is no service, which is our way of saying customers should never have a need to contact us. There are three key elements to delivering on this strategy. In a world where customer expectations are driven by immediacy, we're moving towards the ability to install fiber the same day at all locations. Currently, all addresses are eligible for same-day repair and approximately 75% of fiber addresses are eligible for same-day install. We continue to increase that through our build and other methodologies. We continue to make IT enhancements to automate daily capacity adjustments to maximize both service and installation within the same day. And we find ways to modify construction such that even more installs can be done on the same day. We live in a world that expects service today. We aim to deliver just that. We also believe simple wins, and we apply that concept to all of our tools and customer interactions to drive customer satisfaction. When we make it easy for customers and easy for our team to serve customers, everybody wins. We've made it easy to shop and buy, we continue to automate and improve our customer communications across the full Ziply experience, and we've added more self-serve capabilities to our app, all of which drive have driven significant gains in NPS. And we still think there's more term to grow -- more room to grow. The labs principle that helps drive a progressing great experience is a philosophy of where there's a way, there's a better way. For example, we've developed a single platform that can deliver the same capability to customers, care agents, sales reps and field operations, which makes it easier to keep enhancing experiences and faster to roll them out. Fundamentally, we're always trying to get better every day. The result of these efforts is that while customer base continues to grow, our customer contacts are decreasing to some of the lowest in the U.S. market. In the end, we have the belief that the best service is no service. So much as possible, we'd like our customers never to have a need to contact us. Lastly, we plan to accelerate and expand our fiber build to get to about 8 million locations over time. BCE and the PSP partnership have given us a big advantage to be able to expand beyond our original acquired footprint and to begin to build faster. We know PSP well. They were shareholders in Ziply via their private equity team, and we are excited that they continue to be engaged in the Ziply growth story, this time through the infrastructure team. We will now leverage PSP and BCE Capital as well as Bell's existing network, and we can leverage our collective U.S. routes, which extend beyond the current Ziply 4-state footprint, for growth and more efficient build. Network FiberCo will enable us to accelerate our fiber build and expand our geographic reach. We will ramp up construction over time over the next several years and continue ramping beyond 2028. Because the market is dynamic, we've identified more than 2x the locations we intend to build and we plan to build as first fiber. Lastly, we're evaluating what I like to call Launchpad opportunities, which are small fiber ISPs that could accelerate our expansion in a particular region. All new routes will also offer growth opportunities for our commercial business. We have the right strategy, the right team and a generational opportunity to deliver long-term growth. Currently, we have about 1.4 million fiber passings. Our ambition is to more than double our fiber passings to about 3 million by the end of 2028. We continue to see rapid fiber penetration with customer additions as we turn on fiber, with about 25% penetration in just the first year and increasing penetration rates as cohorts mature. We have a number of unique assets that give me confidence in our ability to achieve the U.S. fiber growth plan. It starts with our team. We believe happy employees make happy customers. Our team is motivated and excited by our new accelerated and expanded mission with BCE and the PSP partnership. We have a great network that's proven and has the ability to expand and scale. Once we build it, simply fiber distribution and installation teams have a proven track record of delivering strong penetration. With this team, we will continue to find better ways to simply deliver a refreshing or great experience for customers. By executing on our strategies of best network, refreshingly great experiences and accelerating and expanding the fiber build, we expect to deliver significant revenue and EBITDA growth as part of our 2028 financial ambition. Over the next 3 years, we anticipate Ziply Fibers revenue to grow at a CAGR of 15% to 20% with an EBITDA increasing at a CAGR of 14% to 18%. We are excited about our new mission, to accelerate the fiber build in our four current states and expand the reach across the U.S., delivering the fastest and most reliable network to about 8 million people in businesses, providing a refreshingly great experience to customers. With the combined strength of BCE and the PSP partnership backing us, the Ziply team can now focus even more on executing our plan, supported by a streamlined financial structure and enhanced funding. Thank you.

Okay. Well, at this point, we are going to be taking a 20-minute break. So please take the opportunity to stretch and enjoy some refreshments. We'll see you back in the room and online in 20 minutes for the next segment of our program. Thank you. [Break]

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the break. And for those of you just rejoining online, thank you for being with us. Now let's continue with our program. I am pleased to introduce John Watson, Group President, Bell Business Markets, AI Fabric and Ateko. Welcome, John to the stage.

I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to share Bell's enterprise AI strategy. Over the last 25 years as an executive officer I've experienced a success from leveraging powerful secular growth within our industry. I became the head of Bell Business Markets about 2.5 years ago, and we redefined the business, going back to my start-up routes and creating a dynamic enterprise flywheel of sustainable growth by tapping into strong secular opportunities. This has been a consistent pattern for Bell over the last 145 years. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to share our story with you today how Bell will lead in enterprise AI-powered solutions. We're building on strength, underpinned by the best B2B networks and unrivaled customer trust. We're growing adjacent to our core and high-growth categories that create meaningful and differentiated services that positively impact our customers' businesses. By fully leveraging the power of the best AI capabilities within Bell and for customers is a powerful flywheel of differentiated growth based on technical skills, platform expertise and strategic investments. Our communications business is a large, profitable foundation to build on. We're the market leader across all categories. We're investing in the core services and service delivery, but our primary growth engine is AI-powered solutions, where our ambition is to double revenues by 2028. Bell Cyber, Ateko and AI Fabric, our successful businesses led by innovative founders and entrepreneurs. By focusing on these high-growth areas, we're significantly expanding our market for end-to-end AI solutions, reinforcing and growing customer relationships. Legacy enterprise service offerings have been declining here in Canada and everywhere, as they're phased out and replaced with powerful new technology. New technology substitution when combined with regulatory decisions, have caused low single-digit revenue and margin pressures. But Bell's enterprise strategy for the last 10 years is not our strategy for the future. What sets us apart now is how we're pivoting from these traditional services to our next chapter of growth. We see tremendous opportunity to leverage our leading DBM platform to bring differentiated and integrated solutions to our customers. We're focusing on a small number of high-growth sectors adjacent to our core, specifically in fiber and wireless. As you can see, these growth categories are projected to represent 65% of our revenue by 2028. And we see that number as a floor versus a ceiling as we become the leader in these new areas. Trust. We're the enterprise leader because customers trust Bell to manage their critical infrastructure, manage connectivity, managed security, manage AI platforms, their entire business relies on Bell. We have a bold, differentiated strategy for growth. We've successfully executed three major brand launches in March, May and September, introducing our new AI-powered solutions. Our strategy has four tightly integrated pillars: number one, reinventing our core services and service delivery; number two, becoming the #1 cybersecurity provider in Canada; number three, building Ateko into the leading service integrator of AI automation platforms; and number four, extending Bell AI Fabrics leadership. Our timing is perfect. Sovereign platforms and AI will significantly accelerate our strategy, and there are areas where Bell is a Canadian leader. It's powerful because it leverages our core platform strengths, maximize the potential market for our full stack AI solutions. Canadian built, Canadian run, on the best networks, built for the world, and I love this slide. We've created a powerful and unique group of technology businesses to deliver more for customers. We brought together amazing Canadian tech founders onto our team, all have chosen to stay with us because they believe the time is now to create a Canadian communications and tech services champion. With Bell as a trusted platform, we're also bringing together the best Canadian technology champions Cohere, [ Vector ] and Mila to join forces and build a Canadian leading technology champion ecosystem. This collaboration extends across the entire stack, integrating our superior services from Ateko, AI Fabric and Bell Cyber with other Canadian leaders like Think On, Digital Research Alliance, Sanctury AI and SDK. There's always been a vibrant Canadian landscape of tech founders, but they disappear into the machinery of large international organizations. Bell provides a platform to combine and supercharge what they do with like-minded teams and innovate right here. This is a network of amazing and creative AI tech companies, and we're just getting started. Platform focus and vertical specialization are hallmarks of our strategy. We'll focus on a select number of areas. We'll execute really well. Bell is the largest combined telco and Ateko team to work across platforms and deliver differentiated AI solutions. It's particularly important in complex sectors like financial services, utilities and government, where leading technical capabilities are essential for success. I'm now going to unpack the four pillars of our enterprise AI solutions I shared with you earlier. First pillar, reinventing core services and service delivery. As the leader in enterprise connectivity, we have an excellent opportunity to automate process within Bell and for customers, leveraging best-in-class platforms, AI and Ateko's IP to deliver differentiated secure services with observability. We'll deliver significant quality and efficiency gains as well as time-to-market delivery for new services. Our second area of focus, Bell on-demand network, fundamentally redefines how customers consume connectivity. Customers access network capabilities via a unified and intuitive self-serve digital interface. Third focus area, unified communications. We're the leader and are delivering the complete suite of innovative and powerful offerings, leveraging the best technology partners. The portfolio of solutions enables early AI adoption for a number of customers. Our deep technical bench knowledge is critical, along with the largest technical team to implement and manage the solutions. Fourth area of focus. Contact-center-as-a-Service and contact center AI are two very high-growth areas for Bell as both a strategic operator and for Ateko, which enables these capabilities for customers. Bell has secured some of the largest contracts and is currently deploying these advanced technologies successfully at scale, leveraging the full market suite of platforms. This is really important. Many companies are struggling with the adoption of AI and the delivery of meaningful benefits. For our government and enterprise customers, modern contact center platforms and technology are one of the primary pathways to leverage AI in a meaningful way, more personalized experiences and efficient operations. Over the last 3 years, we've built expertise as the lighthouse customer and are sharing what we've learned to help customers do the same. Fifth area focus, mobility innovations. The essential backbone of the modern enterprise. This is about empowering our customers' most valuable asset, their people. In today's hybrid work environment, providing secure, reliable and seamless connectivity to every employee, no matter where they are is mission-critical. We're the market leader in this space, providing not just Canada's best network, but also the crucial layers of device management, and security that enterprises demand. Our growth is fueled by rapid innovation, and we're excited about private network innovations, advanced 5G capabilities such as 5G slicing. Cybersecurity, the second pillar of our enterprise AI-powered solutions. Our advantage scale and more threat intelligence data to power our advanced AI Cyber Solutions. Cybersecurity is a core focus in key areas of strategic investment. This is a large, fast-growing market, it creates immediate cross-sell and upsell potential across telco, cloud and managed services. Bell Cyber is unifying cybersecurity across the bell ecosystem, delivering a one-stop end-to-end security platform for network, cloud and endpoint. We're building a sovereign Canadian-controlled AI threat intelligence capability, and this is essential for securing our nation's critical infrastructure and helping public and private sectors reduce dependency on foreign [ feeds ] and risks. Now moving on to the third pillar of our enterprise AI-powered solutions. We recently united four of our startups under an exciting new brand called Ateko, founded in March 2025 in Montreal, 145 years after Bell was incorporated in the same great city known for AI innovation. We're creating the leading Canadian service integrator for automation platforms. Ateko is a made-in-Canada success story. Specializing and helping enterprise customers maximize the value they get from 5 global leading AI platforms, leveraging BBM scale and relationships, Ateko builds on our existing master service agreements and service delivery models. Ateko implements solutions in the most attractive, highest-growth software and cloud segments. It's highly accretive to the traditional BBM portfolio and deep into the heart of our customers' operations and workflows. We own the solution end-to-end, deliver unique outcomes powered by AI and accelerate time to value. Our technical expertise in vertical specialization leveraging Bell's platform supports exceptional growth. Focus is the key. We have capabilities across five growth areas: ServiceNow, Salesforce, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. In these specialties, we have the largest Canadian team in areas with more than 1,700 coveted technical certifications. Ateko is uniquely positioned to be the leading service integrator for AI automation platforms with sovereign requirements. The financial sector is a key vertical for Ateko, with major customer project expansion initiatives underway, with several of Canada's leading financial institutions. Ateko had proven their ability to deliver over many years. But now with the backing of Bell, they're able to exponentially increase the scale and scope of services and revenues. For example, in one key engagement, a major institution entrusted us in September to fully outsource their ServiceNow operations. This level of trust is a direct result of the comprehensive proposals, which often go far beyond competitors by integrating unique assets across the bell ecosystem, including Bell Media, to act as a powerful value multiplier. For another financial institution, we modernized the IT operations by leveraging ServiceNow's automation and AI capabilities. This transformation is now extending to retail banking operations, significantly enhancing both productivity and customer experience. I'd like to share with you a great example of why Bell's really well positioned to leverage the two leading enterprise software platforms within focused verticals as the leading service integrator for AI automation platforms. We work with our platform partners, in this case, ServiceNow; to build differentiated solutions. Bell has one of the largest field services teams in North America, and we needed to upgrade our platform to an AI-centric field solution. We secured the support of Bill McDermott, ServiceNow's CEO, to invest in capabilities that will enhance this platform to service the largest and most complex customers. This was done in conjunction with Bell's field team executives, who also help sell this to other large companies. Ateko does the work to implement the platform capabilities within Bell, and they're the first to help customers to do the same. Ateko sells the full stack of AI services to the world. This creates exceptional opportunities due to the leading differentiated solutions that drives incremental internal financial benefits and higher-margin external revenues for Ateko. It's a win, win, win. The fourth pillar of our enterprise AI-powered solutions. Over the last year, our customers in the private and public sectors made one thing clear, they need a Canadian company to build the large-scale AI infrastructure to support their sovereign vision. We listened, and the Bell team has taken the lead to build Bell AI Fabric, Canada's largest sovereign AI compute project. It's an amazing time. Since announcing AI Fabric in May, we've already expanded its scope. The two leading Canadian sovereign AI companies have teamed up to bring a meaningful and differentiated AI platform solution to our customers. Bell's Ateko, Cyber, AI Fabric, running on the best networks are now benefiting from Cohere's leading sovereign AI North model. Bell is Cohere's preferred and strategic partner for both government and enterprise, sovereign AI, go-to-market actions. We are really well positioned. We're also deploying Cohere internally to drive our own business outcomes while leveraging the same experts at Ateko and Bell Cyber. This strategic partnership is a game changer. It solidifies our AI leadership, creates an excellent platform for customers to build upon. Bell AI Fabric is Canada's sovereign digital spine. We're building a coast-to-coast mesh of clean powered capacity, best-in-class connectivity and a curated marketplace that loops value back into Canada. By pairing Bell's enterprise reach, cloud resale, airgap instances, cybersecurity and Ateko expertise, we have the complete and unique full-stack AI offering that is second to none. We're accelerating AI adoption across platforms with a sharp focus on cybersecurity automation, threat intelligence and advanced contact center AI where Bell is the leader. Simply put, Bell gives customers the services they require. Sovereignty. It now impacts every area of our business from network security, cloud and AI. We made strategic announcements in each of these domains, positioning Bell with the right assets at this pivotal moment. Bell is uniquely able to serve high security, top secret airgap environments, a significant opportunity aligns perfectly with our solution strategy. Our goal, we've created three start-ups in less than 2 years, delivering $0.75 billion of revenue. Our target, double it over the next 3 years to $1.5 billion. This growth enhances our customer relationships. It creates differentiated value-accretive opportunities, which leverages our industry-leading enterprise networks, unmatched technical bench across telco and Ateko domains. In the end, our strategy builds on our position as the most trusted partner while helping our customers benefit from leading AI automation solutions. Lastly, double click on the numbers. Overall, enterprise revenue is projected to grow at a positive compound annual rate of 2% to 4%, with EBITDA also targeted to grow at a CAGR of 1% to 3%. This is a materially improved trajectory. And that's not just relative to the last couple of years, but the last couple of decades. It's an excellent time to build a Canadian communications and tech services champion, powered by the best enterprise sovereign AI solutions, fully leveraging AI across Bell and leading an AI-powered solutions, we create a growth platform built on technical expertise, platform trust and leadership. Our ambitions are clear: AI-powered solutions revenue by 2028, enhance our customer relationships and unlock new opportunities back by our industry-leading networks. We look forward to sharing our continued success with you. Thank you very much.

Please welcome Sean Cohan, President, Bell Media.

Good morning. Happy to talk today about Bell Media. It's moved from legacy Canadian broadcaster to digital media and content powerhouse with global impact and how it's well positioned for sustainable, differentiated growth for BCE today and through 2028. But first, a bit about me and what brings me here. I'm an adopted Canadian, a recovering New Yorker, a former investment banker and management consultant who spent nearly 20 years leading at [ AD Networks ] and in Nielsen. So I was drawn to Canada and Bell due to Bell Media's unique portfolio of platinum assets, brands and content. I saw it as something widely misunderstood and underestimated. Now to be fair, thriving in the global media ecosystem today is no easy feat, big media players everywhere are facing challenges and an uneven trajectory. But despite that, nearly 2 years into the journey, we've built solid momentum, and I remain just as excited by Bell Media's growth potential. Before I go on further, let's take a look at some video. [Presentation] Let's dive in. Let me start by skipping to the end of the movie. Success in Bell Media, it will be measured by a handful of straightforward metrics. Delivering single-digit compound annual growth in revenue and EBITDA, continuing to expand digital revenue to 60% of total revenues and growing Crave to 6 million paid subscribers and $1 billion in annual revenue with EBITDA margins of over 25%, all in route to even more robust free cash flow and a bigger business at Bell Media. Now the route to get to those numbers and our 2028 [ POWERHOUSE ] ambition, well, that's about first, growing our content leadership across sports, entertainment and news, and owning the key cultural moments for Canadians across these genres. Now where folks go for that content has shifted dramatically to digital platforms. For us, it's about accelerating digital transformation with that in mind, scaling Crave streaming, driving digital ad revenue and driving synergies to and with BCE, all while yielding free cash flow growth as a low capital intensity cash generator and an important source for BCE. So first, let's start with our content leadership. Bell Media is the largest media and entertainment player and largest content acquirer and maker in Canada by a country mile. And Bell Media captures the largest audiences in Canada to show for it. In fact, Bell reaches 98% of Canadians each month. This audience and frenetic social media activity, well, it's driven by marquee live events, what we call events of consequence or simply cultural moments. Bell Media owns almost every important event and moment in Canada from the Super Bowl to the Oscars to the national election, from the Emmy's to F1 to Grey Cup, to the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup here in Canada. If people are talking about it, it's likely on one of our platforms. Our iconic sports, entertainment and news brands and content, they drive more than 800 million hours of consumption by Canadians each month on screens big and small. We have the #1 Canadian broadcaster, the #1 out-of-home player in the market, the #1 news service, the #1 sports services and the #1 domestic video streamer. So let's talk about that streamer, Crave. A fully bilingual video service, Crave is the #1 Canadian owned streamer and has grown explosively over the last 1.5 years. And it stands apart in the market due to its beloved series and movies, the content Canada craves one might say. And it starts with HBO. Our long-term agreement with Warner Bros Discovery makes Crave the exclusive home of HBO programming for their foreseeable future, with new seasons of hits like The White Lotus, The Last Of Us, two new Game of Throne spin-offs and great library shows like Succession and Sex and the City, HBO content captures Canadian viewers' attention. The Crave service also includes content from strategic long-term agreements with Starz, with Disney, with Sony, with NBCUniversal and more. Now alongside this great acquired fair, Bell Media creates award-winning original content as well. Today, we partner with some of the world's best creative collaborators like Fox and Lionsgate, Freemantle, [ Canal+ ], Seth Rogen, [ Will Arnett ] to produce shows like Late Bloomer, Empathy, Sullivan's Crossing and Shoresy. This content helps build the Crave brand, drive fandom and grow subscribers. Couple this with a huge library of enduring classics like Friends and The Office and [ soapy ] competition reality shows like Love Island, and there's truly something for every Canadian. Today, Crave boasts 30,000 hours of content for consumers, and by year-end, it will exceed 40,000 hours. Moving over to sports now. Our leading sports services, TSN and RDS, have literally the deepest, broadest lineup of sports rights and talent in the world. We have long-term rights to virtually every sport in event. This includes the NFL and Super Bowl, the Men's World Cup, F1, The Masters, PGA, CFL and Grey Cup, the tennis Grand Slams, basketball, regional hockey, iconic teams like the Leafs and Habs, which we just renewed, plus the biggest portfolio of women's sports in the market. Consequently, we've had the largest reach of any sports service in Canada, 17 million Canadians monthly. It's an amazing schedule, whichever season you look at. The Raptors, the Bills, the Habs, the Grey Cup, PWHL, Super Bowl and so on, all peaking with FIFA Men's World Cup in Canada next year -- next summer. Live sports is without a doubt, the last bastion of appointment viewing left in entertainment. A great example of this is the Super Bowl, where 17 million viewers tuned in last February, not to be confused with TSN and RDS' 17 million monthly viewers, which I just mentioned. This is 17 million in 1 night across TSN, CTV and RDS. Let's take a minute to take a look at Bell Media Sports. [Presentation]

Next up, CTV. CTV Bell broadcast network is a broad reach vehicle, which has been the most watched broadcast service in Canada for a remarkable 24 consecutive years. It's truly a megaphone for driving Crave, sports and lots more. Now CTV content delivers mass reach, where the sports contests alongside TSN, entertainment shows like Etalk or big award shows like the Oscars. The Oscars, for example, well, it brought 8 million Canadians to CTV, making it the #1 entertainment broadcast of this past year. Alongside entertainment and sports, news is another important part of Bell's differentiation. CTV News is the undisputed news leader across linear and digital, national and local markets here in Canada. Let me say that again, the undisputed news leader across virtually all measures. Now shifting how we deliver news, that is publishing as stories break rather than holding for nightly newscasts. Well, that's helped catapult us to #1 in digital news in 2025, and it has made us the leader for 17 of the last 18 months. Finally, Bell's content leadership isn't only limited to video platforms. Whether in audio with iHeart or out of home with Astral, Bell Media leads the market. In out of home, think billboard, street furniture and the like. Bell Media's Astral is the #1 player. Market coverage has grown from 20 to 50 markets, and we've expanded our digital screen and street furniture portfolio significantly. So content leadership that is delivering consumers the compelling content they want across sports, entertainment and news, it's a big part of what differentiates us and positions us to deliver on that powerhouse ambition. But there's a lot more. The momentum we have today, it's built on our transformation journey. As Mirko noted earlier, Bell Media recognized as early as 2020 that content consumption, technology and business models are changing dramatically, that we had to start to change our thinking and approach. Bell Media has since undertaken a series of moves on its portfolio, its content, its tech stack and its 1data. These moves, well, they've set us on a journey, which has shown encouraging progress, and the path has since come into even greater focus. This transformation path is going from linear to digital, from closed system to content everywhere consumers look to listen and watch, from broadcaster to streamer, distributor and producer, and from selling broadcast ad spots to cross-platform sought-after audiences linked to outcomes like dealer visits or sales. Look, some of this is simplistically like fishing. You got to fish where the fish are. Viewers, subscribers and advertisers, they've all been migrating to a streaming digital and on-demand world. So we've been making that same transition in content delivery, marketing and ad selling. Our progress can be seen in a dramatic shift in the revenue mix towards digital. Already close to half our revenue is from digital with a path to over 2/3 over the next 5 years. In line with that mix shift, after uneven results in media for a handful of years, we've unlocked financial growth in 2024 and 2025 thus far. We grew EBITDA by high single digits in 2024 and are on track to continue to grow by single digits in '25 and expect this to continue through 2028. Supporting this is 5 consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue and EBITDA growth. Now they won't all be growth quarters to be sure. That's the nature of the beast. But Bell Media's aim is to grow annual revenue and annual EBITDA by sustainable single digits through 2028. In contrast to others in the space, we can say we are growing beyond compelling content and sound transformation thinking. What's behind that growth? In a word, Crave. Crave is and will continue to be a big driver. Across Bell, we're leaning into streaming and direct to consumer, and that focus has driven a historic 1.2 million new subscribers since the start of 2024, a whopping 40% increase, which brings us today to 4.3 million subscribers. By the end of 2028, we expect that number will be 6 million subscribers and will allow us to achieve our ambition of making Crave a $1 billion annual revenue business with EBITDA margins of over 25%. And this translates to a target of double-digit CAGRs on subscribers, revenue and other metrics between now and then. And we're doing this by growing distribution of Crave. We started with the launch of Crave on Amazon Prime Video and as Blaik described, with more collaborations with Bell's mobility and Internet offerings. We're doing this by offering subscribers flexibility and expanded choice with an ad-supported tier. We're doing this by make Quebec, a priority and ramping up supply of French language original content. We're doing this by investing in meaningful global and profitable content that differentiates Crave from others. And we're also doing this through high-value streaming bundles to consumers with our Disney+, Crave and TSN bundle. As an aside, there will be more like this to come, offering subscribers value and choice. And we're making dramatic improvements to Crave's user experience, leveraging AI to drive personalization, content discovery and even more engagement this year. All the while, we're expanding Crave to include direct access to CTV and Noovo content to an expanded kids portfolio to news and select sports. So Crave is a big part of our growth story, as is ads. That is capitalizing on digital advertising and data revenue opportunities in the market. The growth of the digital ad market in Canada has been truly extraordinary. In the past 5 years, digital ad spend in Canada has gone from $7 billion to $13 billion, and we expect that to outpace $16 billion by 2028. Bell Media has targeted driving its ad revenue by then -- by driving growth in digital to more than offset declining legacy sources. And we're doing that through big changes in our go to market by making Bell easier to buy and by dramatically expanding our digital ad inventory, growing impressions with Crave with Ads, which is sold out today growing as fast as the platform; addressable TV; FAST and AVOD offerings; and other platforms, including YouTube and TikTok. Not to mention our digital out-of-home inventory. Over the past year, Astral has increased digital faces by more than 200% with plans to expand more. So the last element of our 2028 powerhouse ambition is synergies for BCE and continuing to generate low capital intensity cash. As mentioned, Bell Media has historically averaged low capital intensity. Think 4% to 5%. And as you heard from Blaik and John earlier, we'll take full advantage of our synergies, those in consumer bundling, in marketing, in data and in tech with the rest of BCE. So from bundling Crave with consumer offerings, think mobility, Internet and content, to leaning into privacy safe data and insights from across BCE's consumer touch points. From -- then go from marketing, consumer and BBM services across Bell Media's various platforms to sharing a tech stack and people on consumer and B2B apps. There are a range of cross-business unit advantages, which we are capitalizing on. In closing, content leadership, transformation, Crave, digital ads, synergies and cash generation, they all play important roles in our 2028 powerhouse ambition. Our recipe is designed to allow growth businesses to offset legacy declines and allow us to achieve single-digit compound annual growth in revenue and EBITDA with highly efficient capital deployment. The headline Bell Media story over the last few years and the next 3 is the largest Canadian media player leaning into digital while optimizing legacy, driving growth and driving more cash flow. I'm excited about continuing to drive growth in Crave, sports and our digital portfolio and excited to capitalize on how often our global competitors underestimate us. And while there's still work to be done, with some downtown Toronto style potholes along the way, Bell Media is differentiated and winning. It has the globally unique portfolio of assets, the content and the brands, the path, the plan and the momentum to be that powerhouse. Thanks very much for your time and interest.

Please welcome Curtis Millen, EVP and CFO, BCE and Bell Canada.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Our operating environment has shifted dramatically over the last 5 years. And as you've heard from my colleagues today, we've made foundational investments to position the company for the future and the opportunities we have unlocked are very attractive. We've built out 3 million fiber locations in Canada over the last 5 years to reach 8 million fiber locations. We've expanded our fiber expertise into the fast-growing U.S. market, diversifying our revenue base, solidifying our position as the third largest fiber broadband provider in North America. We've built out a world-class 5G, 5G+ wireless network. We've doubled down on customer experience. This is driving strong results in the market. We've leveraged technology to drive cost efficiencies. We have developed full stack sovereign AI infrastructure and solutions, and we've transformed Bell Media into a digital-first business, all of which, combined, increase the durability of our financial profile. We've made significant progress, but there remains many more opportunities going forward. When we combine our unique and differentiated assets, our focused strategy and our disciplined approach to capital allocation, we have a clear path to strong free cash flow growth, sustainable dividends and driving total return for shareholders. With that in mind, I plan to cover 3 topics with you today: first, our disciplined approach to capital allocation designed for the new environment that we operate in; second, how the foundational investments we've made in our businesses are future proofing our financial profile; third, the financial results that we expect to generate by executing on our forward-looking strategic plan. Okay. Let's double click on capital allocation. We have a disciplined approach to capital deployment. It's designed for our new operating environment and built along the following framework: strengthen the balance sheet, fund our focused strategic priorities and importantly, return capital to shareholders. In terms of balance sheet deleveraging, we're targeting a 3.5x net debt leverage ratio by 2027 and have a clear path toward 3.0 by 2030. We've optimized the cost of capital for our U.S. fiber expansion by leveraging a third-party capital partnership. This reduces our funding requirements and reduce the risk for our shareholders. We'll consider funding partnerships in other areas going forward if they accelerate growth and strengthen our financial profile. While deleveraging, we'll also continue to fund the key strategic priorities my colleagues have shared with you today that will drive both growth and efficiency. Our current dividend is meaningful and sustainable. The 40% to 55% free cash flow payout ratio represents a balanced policy that enables us to achieve capital market goals and the attractive dividend yield helps drive total shareholder return. The free cash flow we generate combined with our disciplined approach to capital allocation is expected to drive long-term value for shareholders. Okay. Let's have a look at how the foundational investments we've made in our businesses are future proofing our operations and financial profile. We're a very different company than we were 5 years ago, and our transformation will continue over the next 3 years and beyond. As a result of foundational investments in our IT systems and processes, fiber and 5G networks, AI products and services, digital media platforms, we've become far more resilient and future focused across all business lines. On the consumer side, fiber subs now represent 73% of our Internet subscriber base. That's expected to grow to over 80% by 2028. We've also created a new growth vector in the U.S. with the acquisition of Ziply Fiber. We currently have 1.4 million fiber homes in the U.S. We expect to exit 2028 with approximately 3 million locations. By 2028, Internet, wireless and content is expected to drive 85% of consumer and small biz revenue. On the enterprise side, the solutions we provide are increasingly powered by next-gen products and services, fiber, wireless, AI-powered solutions. By 2028, around 65% of enterprise revenue is expected to be driven by these next-gen services. Through strategic investment and focus, we've transformed our media business into a largely digital media platform. Media has transformed from just 16% digital-based revenue to now being on a path to reach approximately 60% digital by 2028. Put simply, the investments we have made are supporting an increasingly growth-focused operating mix. As a result, our financial profile is increasingly future proof and positioned for long-term growth. We expect that by 2028, approximately 80% of our revenue, 73% of our EBITDA will be generated by growth services. This represents a dramatic shift in our operating and financial profiles, highlights how the investments we have made positions us well for the future. Over the last 5 years, we've also made foundational investments and are leveraging AI capabilities to simplify our operating structure and deliver significantly improved customer experiences. As Hadeer and Blaik discussed earlier, our customers have noticed. Customer complaints have decreased. Churn is on track for even further improvement. Our strong track record to date gives us comfort to increase our cost savings target from $1 billion to $1.5 billion by 2028. This target includes the efficiencies mentioned by Hadeer and Blaik earlier as well as other savings driven by leveraging technology solutions internally, simplifying operations and the overall benefits of executing against our 4 strategic priorities. $1.5 billion is our 2028 target. There will be incremental cost efficiencies in 2029 and beyond as we continue to streamline our operations and exit legacy services. For example, copper decom related real estate and rationalization, those are benefits not included in the target $1.5 billion. That represents an incremental opportunity. To date, we've monetized $100 million from this program, but it's still in the early stages. Enormous value in monetizing our copper, but it's going to take some time to fully harvest. Put simply, our foundational investments in customer experience and operational simplicity will continue to improve customer retention and generate cost savings. We've also made foundational investments in our fiber network and have solidified our position as the third largest fiber broadband provider across North America. We're well positioned for growth as fiber is the clear winner in the broadband landscape. Growth will be driven by capturing the significant ramp-up of subscribers and new fiber footprint as well as by reaching run rate levels of penetration on fiber that we've already built. In terms of new fiber footprint, our acquisition of Ziply Fiber and our Network FiberCo partnership enable a straightforward path to double our current Canadian fiber footprint. By the end of '28, we plan to double our U.S. footprint to approximately 3 million fiber locations. Over time, we plan to leverage the Network FiberCo partnership to expand our fiber footprint in the U.S. to 8 million locations, bringing our total fiber reach to over 16 million locations. By leveraging our partnership with PSP, we'll accelerate and expand our ability to monetize the U.S. fiber opportunity. For every $1 invested by Network FiberCo, BCE will only invest $0.20 to $0.25. Funding is proportionate to our 49% equity stake and, the partnership will utilize nonrecourse leverage to reduce the overall risk of the investment. Our CapEx requirements in the U.S. will drop dramatically, and will largely become success-based spend. And we still expect to deliver 20-plus percent returns. We know fiber is the clear winner in the broadband market. Where we have fiber, we've been capturing the majority of net adds and growing our market share. As Blaik mentioned earlier, we reached 46% penetration within 5 years in our new footprints in Canada. Ziply Fiber has also been able to drive consistent and dramatic penetration ramp-up across new fiber build cohorts. So there's significant opportunity in both Canada and the U.S. to drive penetration in markets where we've already deployed capital. 25% of our fiber footprint in Canada has been built within the last 3.5 years. 40% of Ziply's fiber footprint has been built within the last 4 years. So a continued ramp-up in penetration is expected across these markets. I would also note that 46% is the market share we capture in Canada within the first 5 years. It does not reflect run rate share. In some of our more tenured fiber markets, penetration is over 50%. So there's much more opportunity to increase our share of overall broadband subs. This increasingly future-focused operating profile translates into improving financials across every operating line. Over the next 3 years, we expect to deliver a consolidated revenue CAGR of 2% to 4% while continuing to transform both our operating mix and financial profile. We expect to generate over $3 billion of new growth revenue over this period. That more than offsets the decline in legacy products and services. Over the same period, we expect to deliver a consolidated adjusted EBITDA CAGR of 2% to 3%, again, with net growth across all businesses. This growth rate reflects significant contribution from fiber, wireless, AI-powered enterprise and digital media. It also reflects the impact of legacy headwinds, which will represent a much lower share of our financial profile by the time we get to 2028. Excluding the headwinds, our expected adjusted EBITDA CAGR would be north of 6%. I also think it's important to point out that these growth metrics only include a portion of Bell AI Fabric's significant growth opportunity. There's also value upside not reflected in these financials as the investment value being created by our 49% stake in the U.S. fiber partnership with PSP is not consolidated. We expect to generate significant free cash growth over the next few years. As discussed, our investments across our strategic priorities will drive EBITDA growth. We'll see benefits from the normalization of working capital, lower severance costs and lower lease payments, which will offset interest and cash tax pressures. CapEx spending is expected to remain relatively flat in 2028 versus 2025 but resulting in a lower capital intensity ratio. Over the next 3 years, we expect to grow free cash flow after lease payments at a CAGR of approximately 15%. By 2028, we'll be a company that delivers sustainable growth across all business units, generates significant discretionary free cash flow, benefits from lower capital intensity, operates with renewed financial flexibility, is powered by next-gen services, anchored by our unmatched brand and enduring customer relationships. Our free cash flow generation underpins a resilient investment-grade credit profile and supports meaningful deleveraging over time. We expect to reach our target 3.5x net debt leverage ratio by 2027 with a clear path towards 3.0 by 2030. These targets reflect our sharpened focus on balance sheet strength and financial flexibility. We expect to reach these milestones through a combination of organic EBITDA growth, free cash flow generation and near-term monetization of non-core assets. As you've heard from my colleagues today, we have a clear and actionable path to delivering strong financial results. The integrated strength of our unique and differentiated assets is the foundation of our confidence in the 2028 outlook we've presented today. So between now and 2028, net leverage is expected to decrease to 3.5x by '27, below 3.5x by '28. We expect revenue to increase at a CAGR of 2% to 4%, adjusted EBITDA increasing at a 2% to 3% CAGR. Capital spending will remain relatively flat on an absolute dollar basis, will decrease as a percentage of revenue to approximately 14%. Free cash flow is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 7%. Free cash flow after lease payments is forecast to grow at an impressive 15% CAGR. Between now and the end of '28, we expect to generate $22 billion of cumulative free cash flow before CapEx and lease payments. We also anticipate returning approximately $5 billion to shareholders through a sustainable and disciplined dividend strategy. In summary, we're driving a step function increase in free cash flow. Our technology investments are delivering measurable improvements in customer experience and operational efficiency. Growth funding remains disciplined, generating attractive returns across our core businesses and more than offset declines in legacy services. Capital intensity has been reduced and spending is increasingly demand-driven. We're actively deleveraging and enhancing financial flexibility. Our dividend approach remains prudent and sustainable, reinforcing our commitment to long-term value creation. Simply put, we have reshaped our financial foundation, positioning BCE to deliver accelerated free cash flow growth, a stronger and more resilient balance sheet, a sustainable dividend and meaningful long-term value to shareholders. Thank you.

Thank you, Curtis. Now throughout the day, you heard from many members of BCE's strong and seasoned leadership team. Mirko provided an overview of BCE's strategic priorities. Blake detailed how we're delivering the best fiber and wireless networks. Hadeer walked us through how we're putting customers first. Harold outlined our U.S. fiber strategy, and John detailed our plan to lead in enterprise with AI-powered solutions. Sean shared our ambition to build a digital media and content powerhouse, and Curtis just outlined BCE's financial strategy and outlook. We hope you found today's presentations valuable and can better appreciate how our assets are both unique and highly differentiated and tightly aligned with our core business in a way that sets us apart. We are now ready to begin our Q&A session. So I would like to invite all of today's presenters up on stage, and I'd like to do this along with Mark McDonald, who is our Chief Technology Officer, driving the network and the connections through everything. As they settle into their seats, I'd like to quickly note how we'll run this session. Around the room, we have several Bell brand ambassadors with microphones. If you do have a question, please raise your hand, and we will bring a microphone over to you. We ask that you introduce yourself by name and the organization that you're with before asking your question. And with that, I'd like to open it up to our first question. So please do put your hands up if you have one.

Vince Valentini with TD Cowen. Great day guys. I'm a little confused by one of the targets is that in almost every segment, the revenue growth is targeted to grow faster than the EBITDA growth, which is not what we're used to with BCE. You've been so focused on cost cutting that we usually see EBITDA a little bit ahead. At the same time, you seem to be targeting that your leases are going to go from $1.1 billion down to $800 million. Is there simply some accounting change there, Curtis, of some leases turning into OpEx? Or is there some mix change within the revenue? If you can try to unpack that for us, it would be helpful.

Okay. I'll take the second piece first, Vince. So there's no accounting change. It's literally just we are focused on free cash flow. So we look at managing CapEx and capital leases together. Ultimately, the new additions in '24, '25, '26 are going to be lower than they were in '22, '23. So we have line of sight to lease cash repayments coming down over time. So ultimately, it's just free cash flow management for us. It's managing our spend.

Are there any specific buckets of the leases? Because it's a pretty big number like that you could [indiscernible].

It's a bit of everything. I'd say all the investments that we've been making in IT processes and just simplification that are run the business CapEx, if I'm thinking about CapEx and leases in a similar bucket, our cost to run the business is just coming down. We're more efficient. No set-top box means you don't have capitalized set-top boxes, right? Less equipment -- network equipment rolling out, more of it's being put through CapEx than leases. So no accounting, just free cash flow management. What was the first part again?

2% to 4% versus 2% to 3%.

Why is revenue growth [indiscernible].

Yes, ultimately, we're clearly still focused on efficiency and cost savings. That's why we bumped up our $1 billion target to $1.5 billion. Ultimately, we're driving 15% free cash flow growth, and we didn't need to model an EBITDA margin expansion. So higher EBITDA dollars, flat EBITDA percent margin.

There's nothing in the mix of the revenue, like some of the new DC stuff or maybe some of the TPIA stuff out in Alberta and BC. Is there anything big in terms of mix that we should think about? Or maybe your answer is telling me maybe the EBITDA is a bit conservative relative to the revenue. You don't want to overshoot at this point in time?

Well, we're certainly going to deliver on what we're promising. And so we'd all like to be here in 3 years and say we overdelivered. But ultimately, look, there's product mix change year after year after year. There are some products that are legacy. We still need to manage the cost to deliver that, the cost to maintain. And yes, we have products that are ramping up, and we're kind of driving increased margin over time in those products. So portfolio basis, ultimately, by 2028, driving free cash flow, EBITDA dollars have increased, EBITDA margin flat. And look, this team is going to be laser-focused on driving out cost efficiencies.

Drew McReynolds from RBC. So I would just echo Vince's comments, great presentation, and thanks for all the forward guidance here. I'll limit -- lots of questions, but I'll limit it to just a couple of topics. I think first, on the regulatory environment, Mirko, you've been pretty clear on your position in Canada. What are some of your working assumptions that underpin this 2025, 2028 outlook with respect to regulation in Canada? And then maybe a question for John within sovereign and AI. I don't think this liberal minority government and [Karni] are done with announcements and initiatives. Just what are your expectations kind of looking forward with respect to just some of the government business that could potentially transition within the envelope of what you're trying to do?

Thank you, Drew. I'll take the first part, John, you can take the second part. So on the -- we've considered a range of outcomes, Drew, on -- particularly on the TPIA or the fiber resale wholesale rates. Look, our position on the policy was quite clear and remains quite clear, but the decision has been made. So the job of this team here is to execute against that background against the context that the surrounding circumstances. So on that front, we are going to execute given the environment as we always do. And we're going to do it well, and we're going to deliver the plan that we've outlined. In terms of now the key thing is the rates that the CRTC will establish the final rates. We continue to urge the commission to make sure that those who build networks in Canada are fully and appropriately compensated for the full cost of building those networks and maintaining them. And on that front, specifically to your question, the ranges that we've provided you consider a range of outcomes. But again, fundamentally comes down to execution, the road map that Blake laid out in detail during his presentation. And on AI and sovereign, over to you, John.

Great. Thanks, Drew. The way I'd like to explain it, we've created something that's one of one, which really resonates at this time. And I'll unpack the layers of it. The first one is anyone looking for a sovereign high-density compute, they need an incredible amount of fiber, best, fastest and most reliable. That's what I've got Mark here for, and he's building that well. So anyone building needs to have that, and it underpins every single facility that we're creating. Second on deck, really, really important. You have to have energy. We have 500 megawatts right now. We don't have to wait 7, 12 years to build some very expensive facilities. So that really matters. And we've got great partnership with the folks who have that energy. The next on deck, think about the building and the land. We're being very thoughtful and a point that I hadn't mentioned earlier, we're not just building without demand. We're securing the anchor tenant. We're securing a long-term deal in terms of utilizing that facility, then we're retrofitting or building anew, and we've retrofitted one and we're building another one that will come on stream at the end of this year. The next you need is a sovereign compute facility. And right now, we've got GPUs from NVIDIA with a partner, and we've got inference chips or TSPs with Grok. So the beauty there is that we can grow faster with partners. We get a share of that on go-to-market as we sell, but they become anchor tenants. And I think there will be additional relationships that we'll bring to bear on that Accord. Next OnDeck, which really resonates well on the sovereign front, we're enabling many small Canadian companies to come on deck with us and to be part of that fabric stack. That is a high priority for our federal government, and we're partnering with them, bringing them on deck and helping them succeed in this environment. Adjacent to that is the Cohere relationship. It is very important to support the only LLM, an excellent company. There's only 4 or 5 countries in the world that have one to help them succeed, and then we can take that to market with the expertise we built. Another important part of that fabric stack is SaaS. And the line, I think you've heard the Prime Minister or Minister Solomon is sovereignty without Solitude. So it's very important in building a Canadian sovereign stack that we still get the best of what the world can offer at this point. And you can't replicate some of those capabilities. Then you've got to bring it to life. So one of the challenges with AI is that enterprise AI is hard. Enterprise AI is not like in your pocket doing ChatGPT or Perplexity. We've invested significantly in a number of companies to on-ramp AI into the federal government into large enterprise accounts as part of that. If you then roll through and think about what we've built and what we're going to build, and I know folks like the financial numbers, and they weren't in the presentation. The first 5 facilities that will go live, they all have IRRs north of 20%. And One is built, occupied. The other one is sold being built. We will build the other ones upon securing the lead tenant and agreement for that. And the funnel is terrific. The one thing there's not right now is power for the AI agenda. I think just one company, OpenAI, this last 2 weeks has asked for 27 gigs of power. And a gigawatt of power is an enormous amount of power. So we don't have concerns about the funnel of the pipeline. What we're doing is investing linking back to your question that we're going to build something amazing for Canada with all the layers of that stack, all the sovereign capabilities and the go-to-market partnering with the best tech companies in Canada and delivering that at a moment in time where it is perfectly, perfectly placed vis-a-vis the federal government or provincial governments and what they really care about.

To remind people do put up your hand if you have a question. We've got a number of mics so we can get a bit of a queue kind of started here.

Jerome Dubreuil from Desjardins. My 2 are on the Ziply opportunity. Maybe the first one for Harold will be, we often hear about some of the investors are concerned that you're going at it against some very big guys in the U.S. and the AT&Ts and guys like that. So what gives you the right to win maybe in terms of building capabilities? Why can't the bigger guys all do it at the same time, especially outside of your ILEC territory. So that would be the first one. And the second one is on the returns, maybe more for Curtis. The PSP partnership, these kind of partners have different risk reward profile they're looking for. So I'm wondering how the return profile changed after you enabled the PSP partnership.

I'll take the first one, Curtis. Thank you for the question. It is an interesting one. I think that we have been building fiber for the last 5 years in the 4 Northwest states. We built -- the first plan was to build on our ILEC footprint. The second, we identified adjacent markets where we had network running through and we thought, gee, there's a town in between our towns, we should build there as well. We have fiber that goes beyond those 4 states that are along routes that we have selected and identified locations that are not likely to be built by others in the time frame that we're talking about. We've designed across a set of criteria, including return criteria and proximity to network that we already have. So we do believe that the plan to get to 3 million in 3 years and the plan to get to 8 million is something that is appropriate for us, and we think we can deliver on that.

There are a lot of homes in the U.S. to fiber up fundamentally.

Yes. Then in terms of returns, look, PSP and our partnership with them increases our returns. And as Harold said, it accelerates our ability to build fiber, sell fiber. We know fiber wins in market. And again, we're not competing with Verizon and AT&T. We're competing with cablecos in region. So we are first fiber where there's already fiber, we're not building there. So we are bringing fiber to market. We're bringing the superior product to market and driving penetration from there. The partnership with PSP allows us to do more of that and to do it faster. So it drives returns. And then kind of the double win here is we're a strategic provider. So we have strategic returns, and we now get to benefit from levered returns because it's nonrecourse debt at the partnership level.

Maher Yaghi from Scotiabank. I wanted to maybe just step back and look at your guidance for '25, '28. It seems when I look at '24, '25, your consumer SMB and enterprise was declining by 0.5% and now you're expecting it to grow by 2%. So maybe if you can unpack the consumer part because you're assuming improved pricing probably in that guidance. And what gives you the conviction that we will see improved pricing in Canada after the declines that we have seen? And the second question on the enterprise side, is it fair to say that the revenue that is coming in, the growth revenue is less margins than what you're losing. That's why we're seeing the revenue growth for the next 3 years higher than the EBITDA growth in the consolidated assumptions?

So Maher, on the second part, there is some of what you indicated, but the important thing to highlight is on -- particularly on the enterprise side, whether or not it's cyber, Bell Cyber, Ateko or Bell AI Fabric may not be the margins that you customarily associate with, let's say, fiber and voice, but it's all net new revenue, net new growth, all fundamentally connected to our core business, and it's real. Each one of them is delivering revenue now and delivering the growth rates even organically that John highlighted. So that's on the second question. On the first with respect to the conviction around consumer and small business. Maybe, Blake, you start, and I might build on it.

I mean we're very confident the wireless business is starting to come back. And I know all of you follow pricing very closely, but the transactional rates have improved significantly in the last few quarters. And what brought wireless down will also bring wireless back up, and we're starting to see that pricing discipline that the Canadian wireless has historically seen. So I think it's wireless coming back. And then some of our legacy businesses become less relevant over time as the mix shifts more to Internet content and wireless.

So in wireless, just to build on Blake, we've seen starting in the back half of the second quarter, the last bit of the second quarter, we started to see price stabilization, and it's continued to improve. And as Blake mentioned, the transaction rates are a bit better now than they have been over the past little while. And then there's been a nice mix shift as well to the premium brands away from the flanker brands, which has provided a lift there, too.

Got a question at the back here.

It's Brian Pilsner from Foyston. Curtis, just a quick question. The -- you put that note the $5 billion return to -- in the form of dividends. I just wanted to understand, does that infer some growth on a per share basis?

No, that's -- literally, if you take the number of shares times the current dividend and you roll it out 3 years, you get to about $5 billion.

Okay. So then the excess free cash is going back to the delevering mostly then?

And to fund our growth.

The second thing is just on the flat CapEx. [indiscernible] has been coming down as the fiber build has been coming down. What's been offsetting it to keep it flat during that time period?

I'd say it's funding of the growth initiatives. So we are building fiber still, and we just closed Ziply. So over the next 3 years, we're still building fiber in the U.S., which is new spend.

And that's up for the $3 million pre the PSP network build?

Correct. Some of the build is still within Ziply Fiber's traditional copper footprint. That's on our account. Everything else is through the partnership. So through 2028, we still have, I would say, more CapEx to build out fiber footprint in the U.S. Post 2028, that will tail off dramatically as the partnership takes basically all of the future build. And then I'd just add, in a perfect world, we're spending a lot of demand CapEx in the U.S., right, to send modems to the new customers that we're signing up.

Sebastiano Petti from JPMorgan. Just quickly, Curtis, to that last point. As you think about Harold, I forgot how you described it, but I guess, growth opportunities or maybe some smaller assets that may come to market. How would you look at that from a maybe on balance sheet versus partnership? How would you maybe compare or think about some of that? And then as you're -- I guess, Harold, thinking about the PSP network investment, I think it's $5 million longer term. Can you give us maybe some interim goalposts as we should be thinking about that build engine ramping up over the next several years? $3 million at typically right, by 2028, I get that. But the remainder, how we should be thinking about the, I guess, build engine and the glide path?

Do you want to take the first part?

Yes, I might go first. So the PSP partnership is set up to fund new build, to fund any tuck-in acquisitions that, again, if we look at a tuck-in acquisition and it accelerates our ability to drive free cash flow, shareholder value, then we'll consider it. But the partnership is the partnership for new builds and tuck-ins.

Yes. In terms of the overall build, which was your question, we have -- I don't think we're giving guidance past 2028. But in the first 3 years, we're going to continue to ramp. Post 2028, we will continue to ramp and then be relatively flat as we continue to build at a much higher pace to complete to the -- about 8 million.

So the 2028 exit rate, we should anticipate an acceleration as we think about '29 and beyond.

It will still be an increase beyond '28 and then not much of an increase sort of staying at that much higher pace to get to about $8 million.

And I guess maybe a quick follow-up on the U.S. business. As you're thinking about increasingly convergence in the U.S. as a theme, and obviously, Jerome touched on it as well, but even the cable operators as well trying to defend their broadband base. So I guess 2-part question. One, have you seen a change in the competitive environment from the cable operators? Comcast is a big competitor of yours in the Northwest. And maybe what does that mean from a churn perspective within the Ziply business? And then secondarily, convergence I think, Mirko, I've asked you this a million times. But as you think about just the need for wireless over time, I mean, where is that, I guess, on the longer-term or medium-term kind of road map?

Yes. So first, to answer about competition and then about convergence or wireless as a bundle. So we've done this for the last 5 years. I've been an investor and other companies have been doing this for quite a bit longer, so I have a good visibility to what cable companies have done over time. And certainly, they've gotten more aggressive over time. We haven't seen anything in the last couple of years that has changed. Initially, they got very aggressive. We compete with -- largely with Comcast and Charter, so the 2 largest. And what we found is we're getting to the penetration curve in our model actually faster than we had expected. So it's actually slightly accelerated from what we had expected. And we continue to eke out a little bit better over time. So we're actually getting better penetration than we expected as we're getting towards that half market share roughly. And so we have not seen anything in terms of increased churn or inability to get to the penetration numbers. On your second question about -- and by the way, I think a thing to think about is as these cable companies have really large bases and they do actions on pricing, it's generally to the next customer. They still have yet to sort of have this whole back business reprice that they may need to go through, which will be a massive thing for them. So on the second question about wireless and convergence, so you know that I have a wireless background, and we have folks up here who know wireless quite well. Our belief is that we're really good at being super focused. And when we identify that our penetration curves change, then that's going to be the moment when we would do something like an MVNO. We're prepared to do that. We think we can execute it relatively quickly. And with the relationships and experience that we have with this team here, we think we're in good shape. We don't think we should do that ahead of when we need to, and we think we have enough visibility to be able to pick that time.

Stephanie Price with CIBC. Just curious, Blaik had mentioned launching a fiber offering in BC and Alberta. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about, is that going to be directly only to your mobile customers? Is that going to be offered more broadly?

Go ahead, Blaik.

Sure. It's initially going to be offered focused on our mobility base with preferred pricing when you bundle and then there'll be different pricing when you're not bundling content. So -- and I think what's different about us is that we're very focused also on bundling content. So what you'll see from us launching this week is you'll see content bundles also in Western Canada, where if you're a mobility customer, we'll want to bundle content also with your mobility service. And we think we can break the content Internet bundle that is in that market. So our strategy is twofold. It's really using our owner economics on content, bundling it with mobility base in a disciplined way. And if required, we will resell fiber Internet to drive that bundle.

So we're going to be playing to our strengths, Stephanie, out West as we do in the East. So our strong distribution, we have strong distribution out West, the Bell brand, which is the most trusted brand and is going to be bigger, even larger brand consideration now that we are able to resell Internet, owner economics on content and content is becoming, as Blaik pointed out, an even bigger component of the customer value proposition, of course, our best network in wireless. So that's -- we'll be playing to our strengths in the way that Blaik described out West.

And then just a follow-up on AI fabric. Just curious how you think about revenue growth and the CapEx requirements from that. And I think Curtis mentioned that as an area of upside to your official targets for 2028.

Stephanie, thank you for the question. So I'll go one level deeper in terms of the 5 sites we're looking to build. So from '26 to '28, those 5 sites will cost us $300 million, and they will have revenues of $100 million to $150 million a year. What's beautiful about what we're building is we'll partner with those who have, be it skills or resources to augment that, specifically in the GPU or TSP layer. So it's a beautiful linkage. And if you think of capital heavy, that's not capital heavy relative to the revenue that will accrue from that. So it's a really good business case that's capital light. And of course, our TechCo and Bell Cyber are very capital light in terms of the growth there. And the organic growth within those businesses is really, really good that pushes us north of 40%.

I think maybe one thing I can add as well is because of the nature of our existing fiber network, our national fiber backbone and our metro aggregation network, we have a lot of fiber in the ground that we're able to leverage as the AI fabric data centers are built at a very efficient rate.

It's Matt Griffiths from Bank of America. Maybe just, John, another question for you. Just to the extent that you can, can you lay out maybe where the growth is coming from? It sounds like you just gave some guidance on the Bell AI fabric, how much revenue you're assuming is coming from there. Can you link that to maybe how many megawatts you're building? And then are you -- what kind of assumptions for Ateko are you making for kind of enterprise adoption, which would require maybe the integration work? And what needs to come first for these type of growth numbers that you were giving to come to fruition?

Thank you. So the first question, the 5 initial sites have a little bit less than 73 megawatts of power. And all of those have a very attractive IRR north of 20%. We have a terrific pipeline of customers. The scarcity now, as I mentioned earlier, there is no power available to the marketplace. And then we have a much larger site that will come after that time period as we build out that one. That has 300 megawatts of power there. So there's a really good pipeline. I think what we're also finding is there's this beautiful flywheel. As folks who have power see the success in what we're building, they want to be part of it. We've got a really good relationship with a software company, Canadian-based that wants to be part of it now. That will change the scale and scope. On a provincial level, there's tremendous interest in what we're doing. So I think the flywheel of opportunity is very significant there. And the way we're going about it really purposely in terms of respecting the capital, investing in building the facilities, the air cooled, the water-cooled backdoor air chillers the landscape of those, we're being really smart about the capital and aligning that well to the revenues that would accrue from that. So that would be on the fabric side. In terms of a Techco and cyber, one of the points I like is this Rule of 40 that many in the room might be familiar with. You add up revenue growth and you add up margin. And it was a bit like Maher's question earlier, we are really turning the dial on that revenue growth CAGR. We're punching well above 40%. And for anyone who's come from a software business, software services business, when you really punch that growth curve, the margins aren't as high as it would be otherwise because you're scaling literally hundreds and hundreds of people and then building that operating acumen around it. So we see a really nice lift off as you roll forward. But in the near term, it's all about revenue growth. It's all about the business. Our hypothesis in moving into this space was we think with Bell Business Markets, we have a platform of the most attractive customer base. And in bringing these businesses into the fold, it's made us more relevant. It's got us deeper in the stack. We're more strategic. We're spending more time with the business strategy side of it than the procurement side. And it's always nice to be on the business strategy side when you're selling something versus the procurement. So all of that is coming true. And we can open doors for them that they could never open. You can have this most amazing architect in Kitchener, Ontario, one of the top 30 in the world. But for them to be the front going into a large FI on Bay Street, that's almost impossible. But the credibility of marrying up this world-class architect in a very key domain, wrapping that around Bell and then going to see FIs on Bay Street, all of a sudden, you have the credibility and you've got the technical acumen, and it's a perfect marriage of the two. So we're seeing that come to life. We see incredible potential on a go forward and blending those 2. And it's capital light. It's really accretive to our core business and makes us more relevant.

And Matt, I want to underline one thing. So there's tremendous growth potential there at Ateko for all the reasons that John has outlined, but Ateko is delivering now and is growing now. And just -- so there's lots of runway ahead because of the AI adoption and the need for AI automation integration. But if you look -- and John in his presentation talked about a major FI having outsourced to Ateko their entire ServiceNow platform now. It speaks to the power of marrying the expertise that the founders of Ateko have with a deep customer enterprise relation -- the deep customer relationships that Bell has and the network gravitas that we have, you put those together, gave that customer confidence to say, take our ServiceNow architecture and needs and please do it for us.

Tim Casey from BMO. Mirko, in the presentation, you talked a lot about, I guess, a road map to decommission copper, but you didn't give any dates and there wasn't a lot of transparency on the potential for harvesting copper and real estate. Maybe if you could just explore those themes, I guess, in the context that some of your peers have given more dates and transparency there.

Yes. Thank you, Tim. So as I mentioned in my opening presentation, I think we want to do this in a smart and balanced way, and we've been going at it. Where we have fiber, we've been migrating residential customers from copper to fiber, and we've been decommissioning the residential component of the services in areas where we have fiber. And it just -- I mean, it creates a flywheel of customer experience goodness, which you might want to touch on, Hadeer. So as we continue to do that, and we've got -- Mark, maybe you can highlight the trial on the CIMCO where we're fully decommissioning a central office where we want to be very precise in how we manage the transition of business customers over from legacy services to new services. And as we do that, it's going to create a flywheel of goodness, both in terms of cost savings and the ability to decommission legacy services and then, of course, monetize real estate footprint. And that will be -- the savings that come from that will be over and above the targets we've given today. So maybe on customer experience and then on CIMCO.

We continue to focus on customer experience. We focus on that through copper, but of course, the fiber customer experiences unbelievable. You get the unbreakable Internet. You get all the self-serve tools and troubleshooting and all the things that we do for our customers. And we are delivering on customer experience in 3 different ways. We are really focused on our customers and giving them the AI-powered tools to self-serve and to personalize their experience. We are also delivering on that for our frontline employees and agents. We're giving them superpowers. So it is -- it becomes less about [swivelled] sharing and like focusing on legacy systems and really more about delivering that fantastic customer experience. And we can talk about customer experience, and I know it sounds nice, but customer experience without a vision and a plan on how we are going to execute on that is like just nice stuff to talk about. We have the vision and the plan to transform our legacy systems to actually deliver on that customer experience, to enable that different customer experience through platforms that are AI-powered that benefit from a redesign in every single interaction. And of course, the fiber experience is unparalleled. We know our customers prefer it, and we prefer our customers to be on fiber as well. So...

Maybe a couple of questions. What we're actually doing practically right now is decommissioning a central office in Eastern Toronto, the Simpson central office. And as Mirko said, that gives us very rich learnings on what does it take to migrate the customer services, both consumer and enterprise and actually shutting down that central office. But we're going beyond that. So across our entire base of central offices and services, we're doing a big data engineering exercise using AI to gather all of the cost data, all of the revenue data per service per customer grouping. So we have a very good representation of the opportunity at quite a granular level. So then as we start to ramp this up a little bit more, we can do that in a very financially responsible way.

David McFadgen from Cormark Securities. A question on AST, your plans with AST. So when do you expect to launch service with AST? And do you expect to have voice, text and data right away? And how big could this market be? I'm sure you've run some numbers.

Yes. So I can talk a little bit about our build plans. So we've completed our initial testing, and we're now starting to build the gateways in the ground. That's going to happen later this year and into next year. So what we're going to do, our intention is to have the full suite of services. So voice, data, video, messaging, 911 over voice. And as the AST constellation gets built out over the course of next year as well, we will then determine what's the right exact moment to do a mass launch. I think we'll do some customer trials next year for sure. And if everything works out well, quickly into a launch as well. So that's the build plan. And maybe Blaik can talk a little bit about the business volume.

Yes. I think we all know Canada is a big country, but this is profound in terms of -- there's about 1% of the population that does not have access to cellular networks. And there's about 10% of the population that regularly goes off the grid. So I think for us, for AST, it allows us to go after that 1%. And you can do the math on 1% of 40 million, which will drive incremental net adds. But more importantly, it's using your device and being able to drive more usage and really enable different experiences. So from a consumer perspective, it's quite strong. And from an enterprise perspective, it's quite profound in terms of what enterprise customers will be able to do. And we will be charging -- trying to monetize the incremental capability as we deploy the technology.

Just one other thing as well as the sovereign aspect, I think, is a very important element. So we are -- Bell are building and operating the ground infrastructure here right in Canada. So we'll be able to control the full flow of data within the borders of Canada, which is a unique differentiator for this solution.

So if we were going to run numbers, should we assume that initially the market, say, 1% times $10 to $15 a month and then maybe you could scale it up to 10%, like something like that?

I think you should think incremental penetration, 1%. We're not going to get all of it. It's going to be shared -- and then I think I would think of it around roughly $10 to $15 incremental ARPU and penetration of that over time. Not everyone is going to value it, but there's going to be a big portion of the population that's going to see value in it.

And maybe if I could ask a question on Ziply. What is the competition with fixed wireless in your footprint? And what do you expect in the future from fixed wireless?

Yes. It's interesting on -- the question was about fixed wireless, and we do get asked about this a bit. We have definitely seen fixed wireless come into our footprint, and it's been where our copper network has not yet had fiber build, and we have seen fewer new customers through that, not much increased churn. But what we have noticed specifically, we measure this very carefully is where we then build fiber, the penetration curve looks the same as where we built fiber where we haven't seen any fixed wireless come in. And that reinforces the hypothesis that we've had. And as we go out and study this, if you have fixed wireless, cable, copper, fiber and satellite available at your home, you're going to pick fiber. And that's what we've seen come through. We've not seen any evidence that there's any reduction in our penetration curves or anything related to churn where fixed wireless where we have fiber.

Okay. And then just lastly, when do you expect Ziply to be free cash flow positive?

Yes. I'd say, call it, second half of 2028, right? I mean, again, I'd caveat this by saying if we can spend more COA and spend more demand CapEx, it's a good news story. But it's basically pretty close to being breakeven free cash flow second half of '27, breakeven in '28. And then again, as we continue to scale growth and reduce CapEx on build, '29 is all free cash flow positive.

So it should stay free cash flow positive and build free cash flow positive? Because you're going to use the JV with PSP to fund infrastructure growth and it will hit your financials.

Yes. If we weren't building new fiber locations, it's free cash flow positive.

I think we got time for a couple more questions here. Bentley?

Bentley Cross with AMCO. Curtis, within your presentation, you highlighted, I think, $3 billion towards debt paydown and/or strategic initiatives or strategic priorities, however it was framed. How should we think about that mix between 2026 and 2028? And an extension of that question, do any of the growth targets mentioned today include any M&A?

So I think if I can jump in first. Ultimately, it's a balanced allocation. So we have a couple of capital markets goalposts that we're shooting for. So there is the 15% free cash flow growth. We have our revenue and EBITDA targets. We're also looking to manage our balance sheet at the same time. So we think that we're going to be able to drive enough free cash flow to pay a sustainable dividend, delever our balance sheet and fund growth. Now is there a little gray area between paying down debt and funding growth? Yes. But ultimately, the good news is we have more opportunities than we can actually chase down if you're thinking about digitization of media, if you're thinking about Bell AI fabric and AI solutions. So it's really managing overall balance sheet and growth and funding growth is not just CapEx, it's OpEx also to the earlier question. So it's really -- we're just going to manage that opportunity be opportunity and year-over-year.

And on the second, I mean, we've provided a capital markets road map as early as February of this year, and we've got a balance sheet framework for you. And any M&A we're going to do will be within that framework. So the first screen is you're going to hit 3.5x leverage by 2027, and we won't do anything that brings us beyond that.

Okay. Well, with that, thank you all for your thoughtful questions and to our leadership team for their insights. To bring the program back to a close, I'll turn it back to Mirko.

So thank you, everyone, for your attention throughout the morning. I hope you've seen kind of an energized company, a fundamentally different company. We have a redefined capital markets approach that we were very proud to share with you today. We've got 4 tightly integrated strategic priorities that we are going to fund that are going to drive growth across each line of business that we have, which is super encouraging. We have a technology transformation, both internally to make us better to deliver better experiences for customers and also that technology transformation provides tremendous go-to-market revenue potential. And perhaps the most important thing, there is a cultural transformation that's taken place where you have, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, 40,000 people that are completely aligned behind the 4 core priorities and are eager to deliver better outcomes for our customers because that's what comes first. If we deliver better outcomes for our customers, we're going to deliver better outcomes for you, and that's the plan. And we've got the targets and the ambition, and now we're going to execute, execute and execute some more for you. So again, thank you for everybody in the room for your attention. And everyone online, thank you as well. Talk to you soon.

Thank you, Mirko, for your closing remarks.