Quebecor Inc. ($QBRA)

Good day, everyone, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Quebecor Inc.'s Financial Results for the First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. I would like to introduce Hugues Simard, Chief Financial Officer of Quebecor Inc. Please go ahead.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Quebecor conference call. My name is Hugues Simard, I'm the CFO. And joining me to discuss our financial and operating results for the first quarter of 2026 is Pierre Karl Peladeau, our President and CEO. Anyone unable to attend the conference call will be able to access the recorded version by logging on to the webcast available on Quebecor's website until July 13 of this year. As usual, I also want to inform you that certain statements made on the call today may be considered forward-looking, and we would refer you to the risk factors outlined in today's press release and reports filed by the corporation with regulatory authorities. I will now turn the floor to Pierre Karl.

Yes, Hugues, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm happy to report once again solid operational and financial results for Quebecor in the first quarter of 2026. We're continuing to deliver on our plan quarter after quarter, profitably growing our wireless market share across Canada, generating superior cash flows and reducing our leverage to maintain the best balance sheet of the industry. On a consolidated basis in the first quarter of 2026, Quebecor increased its adjusted cash flow from operations by $40 million or 10% to $444 million. Its EBITDA, excluding stock-based compensation by $74 million or 13% to $577 million and its adjusted net income by $34 million or 19% to $220 million. We reduced our debt by more than $120 million in the quarter after buying back more than $85 million of our stock and thus improved our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio from 3.26x in the same quarter last year to 2.86x, still the lowest leverage of the Canadian industry while investing $133 million in capital expenditures to continue to improve our networks, our system and our client experience to fuel our resilient and profitable growth. I will now review our operational results, starting with our Telecom segment. I'm very pleased to report what I believe is one of, if it's not the strongest first quarter in our company's history. Our Telecom segment delivered adjusted EBITDA of $620 million, up 6.6% year-over-year with a margin of 50.9%, up 80 basis points. Adjusted cash flows from operations reached $489 million, up 11%. Total revenues came in at $1.2 billion, up 5%, with service revenues of $1 billion, growing 4% year-over-year. These are record results for our first quarter and a pretty good start for the year. Impressive performance was once again fueled by our wireless operations, where service revenues were up 8.8% year-over-year at $466 million, with consolidated mobile ARPU growing for a second consecutive quarter and reaching $35.89, up 1.4%, up, not down like all our competitors. In a market where the dominant narrative had been price compression and ARPU erosion for some time, our ARPU is actually growing and growing not because we're attracting or retaining customers with short-term unsustainable and ill-advised promotional offerings, growing because our customers are increasingly happy with our reliability, performance, service and prices and are thus choosing to stay and upgrade. This is the difference between a customer base earned with value and one rented through discounts. In terms of subscriber growth, we added 28,800 net mobile lines in Q1 2026. While this is much lower than the 52,900 net additions we reported in the first quarter last year, it is a result of our continuing disciplined focus on profitable growth as opposed to buying short-term loading. As you know, this quarter unfolded as one of the most aggressively promotional wireless environments in recent memory, with the incumbents maintaining deep discounting campaigns in all channels well into April, which made little sense, to be honest, unless their compensation is tied to unit growth, which is not how we operate at Quebecor. Basically, a slow organic growth quarter where the big 3 stole customers from one another at ridiculous prices. This is simply unsustainable. The math doesn't work. We much prefer our math, which led us to 37% of the total market loading in the quarter at prices that are improving our ARPU and service revenues. With the lowest cost structure on the market, the lowest ARPU to the fan, we have significant pricing flexibility to compete aggressively while maintaining compelling unit economics. This structural advantage, which we have built over many years is durable and will continue in our favor for quite some time as our competitors struggle with expensive cash flow draining heavy restructurings and workforce reduction. As we marked 3 years since the Freedom Mobile acquisition, the evidence is clear. Canadian families are paying less for wireless. We have accelerated our infrastructure investment and expanded our network footprint. These are not projections. These are measurable outcomes of a decision that reshape the competitive dynamic of Canadian telecommunications. And we are not done. Actually, we are just getting started. On February 24, we launched our Total Freedom plans, offering seamless connectivity across Canada and 120 international destinations powered by our 5G plus network with a price freeze commitment in a market where consumers have been conditioned to expect annual price increases. This is a genuine differentiator. On the B2B front, Videotron [Foreign language] has been a trusted technology partner for Quebec businesses for over 20 years. We are now expanding that expertise nationally, bringing our business services to Ontario and Western Canada, leveraging Freedom Mobile expanding national network. We're still in the early innings, of course, but this is a vast and largely untapped opportunity for us. Turning to wireline, still our largest cash flow generator. We delivered service revenues of $565 million in the first quarter, up 24% year-over-year and the first increase since Q3 2023. This inflection reflects the cumulative effect of wireless network investment and a broadband strategy that is beginning to deliver measurable revenue improvements. On April 10, we launched Internet 2 GIGA, delivered download speed of up to 2,000 megabytes per second and upload speeds of up to 200 megabytes per second in the Greater Montreal area, Laval and Quebec City. This is not a feature enhancement for a niche audience. It is a significant step forward in residential broadband based on our existing infrastructure deployed efficiently and designed to serve the rapidly expanding bandwidth needs of household and business in our core markets. In TV distribution, we're able contrary to the industry to maintain our revenues and margins, thanks to the strength of our Helix platform and our illico+ revenue growth. With the recent publication of Leger 2026 reputation survey, Videotron was recognized as the most respected telecom provider in Quebec for the 20th time since 2006, 2 decades of top recognition, not by an industry panel, but by the Quebec population, rendering its verdict independent year after year on how this company treats the people who choose to do business with it. The customer trust and appreciation that underlie this recognition is the same strong foundation that produce our industry low churn, our growing ARPU and ultimately, the superior financial results we're reporting today. It is a hugely valuable asset that does not appear in our balance sheet, but one in which we have been wisely investing for many years and now among the most durable competitive advantages we possess. As I look ahead to the remainder of 2026, I am confident in our trajectory. Our wireless platform with our 3 complementary brands, Videotron, Freedom Mobile and Fizz is generating both volume and ARPU growth, keeping our churn rate among the lowest and most resilient and accelerating our service revenue momentum. Our wireline business has returned to revenue growth with our recent network innovation positioning us for continued broadband leadership. Our cost structure remains the most competitive in the Canadian telecom sector, and our increasing cash flows give us the financial flexibility to invest wisely to fuel our continued growth and create long-term value for our shareholders. Turning now to the Media segment. Group TVA is beginning to see the concrete results of the sustained efforts deployed over the past several years to simplify our structures and streamline our operations in order to better face the ongoing crisis affecting the entire media industry. In the first quarter of 2026, Group TVA reported negative adjusted EBITDA of $1 million, an improvement of $20 million compared to the same quarter 2025, mostly driven by the benefits of these initiatives. While we welcome these results, we remain extremely cautious in the context of deep structural crisis that continue to shake -- sorry, to shape and to shape the industry. The [indiscernible] hold of the Gapan and the advertising market, the erosion of television subscriptions, a significant reduction in support from the Canadian media fund, the unfair competition from the CBC/Radio-Canada and the heavy regulatory burden imposed by the CRTC continue to undermine private broadcasters faced with these persistent challenges. Mobilization of all stakeholders, including the governments, CRTC and industry association and unions is needed to rebuild a viable model adapted to market realities in order to preserve our collective ability to produce and deliver local news, entertainment and sports content and to support the entire ecosystem that depends on it. I will now let Hugues review our detailed financial results.

[Foreign Language] On a consolidated basis in the first quarter of this year, Quebecor recorded revenues of $1.4 billion, up $52 million or 4% from last year. EBITDA reached $577 million, an increase of $27 million or 5% or $74 million or 13% increase when excluding the unfavorable impact of a $47 million rise in share-based compensation expense across all of the corporation segments. Cash flows from operating activities reached $420 million, stable year-over-year as the EBITDA improvement was partially offset by high current income taxes. In our Telecom segment, total revenues increased 5% or $57 million, with growth from both wireless, where revenues were up 9.5% to $608 million and wireline with revenues up 0.4% to $565 million marking the first positive wireline revenue quarter in nearly 3 years. Total service revenues, the primary indicator of our recurring revenue base, reached $1 billion, up 4% from $992 million a year ago. This acceleration reflects the structural improvement in wireless ARPU combined with the wireline revenue inflection, a second competitive quarter of year-over-year service revenue growth. With rigorous cost management, adjusted EBITDA reached $620 million, up $38 million or 6.6%, our best performance ever in the first quarter with adjusted EBITDA margin reaching 50.9%, an 80 basis point improvement year-over-year. Telecom CapEx spending, excluding spectrum licenses, was down by $12 million or 8% in the quarter, essentially due to a timing of a number of investment projects underway this year. Our 5G --5G+ rollout remains on track and the recent commercial launch of Internet 2 GIGA, as Pierre Karl mentioned, is a clear example of the high-impact investments we continue to make. As a result, quarterly adjusted cash flows from operations increased $50 million or 11% to reach $489 million. Our Media segment revenues came in at $157 million, down 5% or $8 million year-over-year, while EBITDA improved by $16 million to a $2 million loss, reflecting the benefits of the cost reduction initiatives and a favorable impact from the federal government's cancellation of the digital services tax. Our Sports and Entertainment segment revenues decreased by 1% to $49 million, and EBITDA was down $2 million for the quarter. It was down $2 million for the quarter. Quebecor reported a net income attributable to shareholders of $225 million in the quarter or $1 per share compared to a net income of $191 million or $0.82 per share reported in the same quarter last year. Adjusted net income, excluding unusual items, came in at $220 million or $0.97 per share compared to an adjusted net income of $185 million or $0.80 per share in the same quarter last year. As of the end of the quarter, Quebecor's net debt-to-EBITDA ratio decreased to 2.86x, still the lowest among telecom operators by quite some margin. As we continue to proactively optimize our capital structure, we launched in April -- on April 1 of this year, a USD 1 billion commercial paper program in the United States, further diversifying our funding sources and providing additional flexibility at attractive short-term rates. The very next day, we used available liquidity to repay the $500 million balance on the second tranche of our term credit facility. All in all, we continue to preserve the best-in-class balance sheet with available liquidity of over $1.7 billion at the end of the quarter. In the quarter, we purchased and canceled 1.5 million Class B shares for a total investment of $85 million. And we are pleased to announce that on May 13, we received approval from the TSC to increase the maximum number of Class B shares that may be repurchased under this year's program, which ends on August 15 to 7 million shares. We thank you for your attention, and we'll now open the lines for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

Just real quick on mobile phone ARPU up for the second consecutive quarter. Pierre Karl, you talked about focusing on profitable loadings. Should we anticipate -- or despite the competitive environment, do you think the ARPU trajectory or the growth profile can kind of continue through the balance of the year? And then, Hugues, on the CapEx expectations, a little bit lighter for the year -- for the first quarter rather, but I think you said that was partially due to timing. I think you provided some context on how to think about capital spend for the balance of the year on the 4Q call. Remind us, is that still the right level as you're kind of thinking about the 2026 spend? I think there's a year-on-year increase target or figure you kind of cited last quarter.

I guess what I would say is that we stated, of course, I mean, we don't know what the market will be tomorrow. We -- in fact, we expect the worst to be ready for the best. So we have been focusing on our cost base. This is something of importance. And we believe that our cost base will continue to go lower. And therefore, if the market was to go more aggressive or as aggressive as it was before, we think that we're going to be able to keep the track where we've been going, which is growing with profitable direction. And again, well, you guys have been looking at the market, we follow you, obviously, as you can imagine. And it looks like you're watching the market every day, probably in different areas in Canada. So you're well aware of the situation. We are never going in this sometime crazy discount direction. What we do is we try to innovate. And in fact, this is what we did by proposing new formulas, new packages, new things that will make the market more interesting and more vibrant. And I guess that at the end of the day, we should say that our result is not too bad. And this is why our ARPU grew instead of going in the other direction like we've been seeing with our competitors. We have room to grow. This is very interesting. And therefore, the routes and the base are solid, and we look forward to continue in the same direction.

On CapEx, Sebastiano, yes, a little light in the quarter, $12 million or $13 million light, as you saw, a bit of timing, as I said in my remarks. And also, to be honest, some prudence as the quarter was going in our view, crazily, a little bit crazily and unnecessarily competitive, and we just wanted to keep some powder and we're very disciplined on some of the projects that were less revenue related or growth related. But as said, depending on what's going to happen in the market going forward, we should be -- there's no change at this point in our mind in terms of our CapEx guidance. But it's always good to be a little prudent at the beginning of the year so that you can adjust if things get out of control.

Your next question comes from Drew McReynolds with RBC.

Obviously, a great result. A couple for me. Maybe, Hugues, just unpacking wireless ARPU, clearly returned to growth, which looks sustainable. Can you comment on just mix versus price and what kind of dynamics you're seeing on that front across the various brands versus kind of core price increases on average within each brand? And obviously, there's a little bit of an ARPU restatement. I'm just assuming that's a base adjustment of some sort, but maybe you could clarify that. And then I just have one more afterwards.

Before Hugues answer the question, I think that -- and you mentioned it, one of the great advantage we have other than the one that we've been mentioning also is our brands. So we have many brands and all brands are looking for a certain segment. And we certainly not cover all the segments, but we cover most of them. And with Fizz, our digital brand on top of being a low-cost operator, it also brings to the capacity to move forward in this segment of, let's call it, techy, more techy people than usual normal population. And as you know, it's been very successful in Quebec since its launch. And we expect the same success with the other markets that we're servicing in Canada. Hugues, would you...

Yes, on your wireless ARPU question, Drew, I think you're asking about the various brands, right, if I understood your question correctly. So yes, growth on our main 2 brands. Fizz is -- Fizz grew particularly strongly in the quarter. And Fizz is the brand, you will remember me saying this before, where we have a bit more of that flexibility that Pierre Karl talked about a little bit before due to the -- our low-cost structure. Our low-cost structure, it's a true statement across the company, but I'm sure you will remember that it's particularly true in the case of Fizz that has a very -- it's a lower-priced brand, but a lower cost structure as well, which allows us more flexibility to be more aggressive when we need to be. So generally -- I mean, directionally, ARPU improving in our 2 main brands, both in Quebec and in Ontario and the West with Fizz taking advantage of the competitive situation that was out there. And in terms of profitability, which ultimately is what we look at, turned out to be positive as you can -- as you're continuing to see in the numbers.

And I would add to that, Drew, that it's -- obviously, it's easy to understand, but every investment or additional capital expenditures that we're doing in our network, building our network, extending our network brings to the other side of the equation, a reduction or even units, reducing our roaming cost, which is obviously down the road, quite interesting profitable business perspective.

Drew, I just want to come back to your comment about restatement because we don't -- we have made no restatement that we know of. So perhaps you can tell us what you're seeing. We're actually -- sorry?

Yes, go ahead Hugues, sorry.

No, I was going to say that we're actually -- if anything, we're quite proud of the fact that contrary to all of our competitors, I believe, this quarter and a number of quarters before, I can assure you that there was no restatement, no change of calculation in any of the KPIs we put out. We didn't deduct anything or added anything in any of these measures, and we're quite proud of that. So if you saw a restatement, please tell me where it was because I'm sitting beside the CFO of Videotron, who assures me there was no restatement. So...

Well, I'll chalk that up to our mistake because I was surprised this morning when I saw something. But no, that's good to hear. One last one, Hugues, on my end. So interesting to see the sequential improvement in TV revenue, which I think has been many, many, many quarters since we've seen that. Can you just kind of talk to that kind of success? It seems like maybe a little bit more than just kind of a price increase flowing through. And then that's it for me.

On -- are you referring to TV distribution? You're referring to cable?

That's right.

Yes. The revenue increase in cable, it was rather flat, right, if I look at the numbers, which in and of itself is a good performance in this environment. Cable has been more resilient over the past few quarters. Our performance has been better. It's -- there are a number of seasonal issues. Hockey has been very popular. As you know, does it help us reduce the churn rate on cable, perhaps a little bit. There are probably some seasonal -- some other seasonal reasons for that. But we -- it's definitely a trend that we've been seeing. And if you look at our results our performance rather over the last few quarters, you will see that we have been rather outperforming other cable cos in terms of our cable performance, negative growth performance, if I can refer to that.

Your next question comes from Matthew Griffiths with Bank of America.

I guess first, I was hoping you could share sort of what you saw in churn -- wireless churn this quarter. I mean everyone else on a blended basis seem to be somewhere in the close to 20 bps range increase. And it'd be interesting to hear what you saw. And obviously, how that relates to the net add performance. So was the -- was churn up, but -- which drove lower net adds? Or were gross adds down and churn stable? Like that dynamic would just be interesting to hear how the competition amongst the larger 3 kind of ended up impacting you guys? And then one question on satellite. It's sort of topical to have -- to see announcements coming from wireless providers about partnerships or joint ventures that they're entering into to kind of service that was relatively small part of the market, but it's perhaps additive overall. Do you feel as though you're at a disadvantage without any type of offering? Or what do you think about how urgent it is to sign a deal perhaps to add that to the overall offering that you guys have? I'd just be interested to hear your thoughts.

Do you want to start with the...

Well, certainly, obviously, this is an important and an interesting matter. Obviously, as you can imagine, we're considering it. We're looking at it. We analyze it. We're looking what's happening in the marketplace. But I guess that you answered a little bit of the question when you mentioned, is it urgent? We're not considering it in urgent. And this is true that it's a small market. But that doesn't mean that we should not look at it. In fact, we're considering this is complementary or down the road, probably also of importance. So this is why we are reviewing a few avenues. But I would say that it reminds me a little bit when 5G came in, say 5G was -- will change the face of the world. I remember a CEO that was betting on this will change the landscape. And many people were considering it. I guess at the end of the day, we were all distinct or having a different perspective than the one at the beginning we have. In our side, we didn't change our mind. We said that 5G, obviously, is a technology. It will take place like 5G replace 4G, LTE, 4G replace 3G. It's a continuum, I would say. And from where the technology appears, we picked the bus and we came and followed. We all knew that some people were considering that this will be monetized. We all know that it would not monetize. Competition is competition. Pricing is pricing. And the market is not changing in the New York minute. So we've been investing steadily without being rush. And we kept our market share and with Freedom Mobile, we continue in the same direction. So we think a little bit of the same in terms of satellite, and we will continue to look at it surely, smoothly without any rush, but certainly without any doubts.

On -- Matt, on churn, just a couple of comments. We're globally quite pleased with the evolution of our churn rate during the quarter, especially when we look at how we compare with our competitors. We've been more resilient in our -- quite -- it's quite obvious that we were more resilient. And I think you can see it partly, as you know, higher churn leads to lower ARPU as people churn out to lower ARPU than they came in with. And I think our trajectory on this is continuing to be very good. So I think the signs are continuing to be positive on churn. I will just point out to maybe some -- we had some concerns on Fizz again during the quarter, and we found out, I'll be honest with you, we found out a bit of an odd situation where we had more than a few customers who came to Fizz for -- and I'm literally talking about a few hours to be able, you know what, to get out and benefit from the new customer-only promotions that were out there by our competitors. So that's how crazy it was, to be honest. So a bit of an odd situation, odd issue on that front. But other than that, we believe that our fundamental -- our base business continues with industry low churn, and we're quite happy because we think, as I just said, that it bodes very well for our -- the continuing ARPU trajectory.

Okay. And just so that I understand, it sounds like the competitive element in the market was more about the big 3 pulling people from one another, and it doesn't sound like you were experiencing any of their promotions pulling any subscribers to you. But were you noticing on the gross add side that, that was -- so if churn was stable, then while there was a lot of switching activity, like gross adds were lower? And that's what resulted in the year-over-year decline in net?

Well, yes, we said it. I think Pierre Karl said it in his prepared remarks, this was a little bit of an unusual quarter, and we thought unnecessarily crazy, probably sparked by the fact that, as we said, immigration being significantly lower and organic growth being lower. It seemed to have prompted our competitors to launch into things that we just weren't willing to follow on because they just didn't make -- as we said, the math didn't work for us. So -- but anyway, let's see how the rest of the year goes. It seems to have calmed down for the moment, but who knows. So let's keep...

Stay the course.

Yes. We're certainly going to stay the course for sure, as Pierre Karl just said.

Your next question comes from David McFadgen with ATB Cormark.

So a couple of questions. So just based on your comments earlier in the call, does that mean that maybe Fizz was the biggest contributor of net adds on the wireless side?

Not necessarily the biggest contributor. I mean Fizz, as you know, is on a different I wouldn't say trajectory, but it's on a different market or pieces of the market. So not necessarily the highest, but it just -- it was more prone to -- it was more -- it was facing steeper both ARPU situation and churn for some reason. But not -- I think all of our brands, especially picking up on -- in the case of Fizz, don't forget that it's starting to pick up very interesting volumes outside of Quebec, whereas in Quebec, it keeps its really very interesting growth trajectory, which we had -- I think I said that last time, and I'll repeat it, which is proving that our model was done right. That's the very reason why we launched Fizz was to appeal to what we believed was going to be the next generation and the new way of how people wanted to get wireless and to manage their own accounts on wireless. And I think Fizz is responding to these needs and to these wants of the market. And that's why it's continuing to develop very strongly, both in Quebec and outside of Quebec.

Okay. Because I thought, let's say, Ontario, the focus was more on Freedom. Isn't that still the case? And that's the primary brand that you're trying to grow in Ontario?

Yes. Well, it's both. Yes, yes. What we've talked about, David, is that, of course, we have to be more careful in Ontario with Fizz as the overlap and the potential cannibalization appeared more -- a little bit more acute for us at the beginning. So we just thought we needed to be a bit more careful. But I think what we are actually seeing as we're developing Fizz, and it's now in more -- it's in the second, if not third year right now, that we're actually seeing surprisingly low cannibalization between Freedom and Fizz, which is very good news for us.

Okay. And then can you comment on just the overall market activity so far in Q2? Just kind of wondering where net adds are going to show up this quarter, say, versus the year -- the prior year quarter.

[indiscernible] So there's the half of the quarter coming in.

Yes. Who knows, David. I mean right now, it is, as I said a bit earlier, it seems to be quite -- well, in terms of promotional activity, I mean, our intensity seems to be quieting down. To be honest, on the other side of the equation, are we really seeing increased market growth? Not really. And there are still pockets of crazy offers in the market. So you know what, who knows? I think it's a bit early to call the quarter at this point.

Okay. And then lastly, just on the stock buyback. So you're obviously active in the quarter, and you've increased your NCIB up to 7 million shares. Are there any sort of parameters where you'd be more active or less active in the market?

Well, we're kind of staying the course on that one as well, David, to be honest. We believe that it makes sense for us to continue at a reasonable level, at a balanced disciplined level. I mean it's not as if we're buying crazy amounts of shares, as you see. We believe we're at the right level and certainly intend to continue at this point. As we've said in the past, it's something we can flex quite easily. But at this point, it makes sense for us to continue on that path.

Your next question comes from Maher Yaghi with Scotiabank.

[Foreign Language] I wanted to ask you -- so, you mentioned that the lower loading in the quarter was mostly due to gross loading being down year-on-year, not really a churn issue that your peers have had problems with. Now if I look at your top line, obviously, you're growing very fast, helped by a lot of loading that you did over the last 2 years. As we look forward, how should we think about your wireless revenue growth rate in a time when subscriber loading, which you've been relying on to grow is slowing down. Do you think that we need to start to see ARPU actually improve from here to offset that lower growth in subscribers or that is hard to expect in the current environment that we're in, in Canada right now?

That's a tough one to call, Maher. But before I get there, just to your first point, I just want to make sure I don't forget to address your first point. I mean we didn't necessarily say -- I mean, we went through the same -- we live the same quarter as our competitors. We're not saying it was all about gross loading coming down. I mean, churn was up. And so I'm not -- just to make clear, I mean, it was part of both for sure, in terms of loading and churn. But back to your question, it is something that ARPU keeps increasing. I mean, we are definitely -- I agree with your statement that we are living through right now the higher -- the benefits in terms of our view of the higher loading at the right prices that we saw in the past few quarters. But I think you will agree that we haven't changed our strategy, and we're continuing to grow at different volumes, maybe lower net adds. And maybe net adds continue to slope down a little bit. But if you're doing it at the right price, then nothing prevents ARPU. On the contrary, ARPU should continue to improve positively.

Maybe let me ask it another way. You've been relying on a very fast revenue growth in mobile, right, in this quarter, you reported 9% revenue growth in mobility, which is really phenomenal. 8% or 7.5% of that is on subscriber growth. Are you -- as a company, do you see yourself accepting that this growth might come down into the 4%, 5% range because the overall subscriber growth in Canada is slowing down, and it's hard to extract yourself from that environment. As a company, are you -- do you accept that you can live with a 4% to 5% mobile telephony revenue growth or you need to continue to post those kind of growth rates to offset the pressure that you're seeing on the cable side? That's really the question I'm trying to figure out.

Pierre Karl said it well, I think, in his remarks. We're about the bottom line and the cash flow at the end of the day. And that's why we said in Q1, is it a problem for us to have gone from $52.9 to $28.8? No, to be honest, we think we made the right call because the $28.8 is at the right price, which still allows us to continue to improve ARPU and cash flow as we continue to lower our cost base and increase our cash flow generation. So I don't think we're managing -- I think maybe the disconnect between what you're saying is we're not managing the company according to what you're saying. I mean we're not looking for a percentage growth to make up or to counter or to help the fact that on a lower number we may be expecting on the wireline side. That's not how we -- on both -- we look at each business separately to maximize profitability and ultimately cash flow on both sides and work on the cost structure on both sides independently and have our pricing strategies on both sides independently to maximize. We're adjusting all the time these strategies and these packages. As Pierre Karl said, we keep innovating. We keep coming up with things that people are looking for or will be willing to pay for. So it's not -- I mean we're not at all, to be honest, looking at it in terms of percentage to make up for potentially lower growth on the other side of the business. It really -- we're really driving and being very, very granular in our pricing strategies, whether it's wireless and within wireless, depending on the brand and also in wireline. Just that -- I don't know if I'm making very clear.

That's very clear. And maybe just a question on wholesale tariffs. Since we discussed on an open call last time, we were still waiting for the final tariffs to come out on wholesale -- Internet wholesale. We have now the final tariffs. Can you update us on your strategy to bundle Internet with wireless outside of Quebec under the current tariffs that now we know what they will be going forward.

I would say well, the first thing is that we're also looking for the other coax pricing.

That's exactly right.

And obviously, we can say that we were not where we were looking to be. Does that mean that we are confined, I would say, to not being able to bundle -- the answer would be no. We're going to look at it. We will continue to do it. We will finance, I would say, our proposal. It's something that is not completely crazy. Is it completely interesting? Not much. So it's balanced with the coax and something that we find pretty strange is that there are different places depending on the region where you operate. So you're in the Western side, cost of using other people's network is more expensive than in the east side. So it just makes Westerners in Canada not being able to enjoy the most competitive environment. And this was not really explained by the CRTC, and we're still asking ourselves why.

So as we stand right now, should we expect to see you be more active selling bundled services outside of, let's say, Ontario, Quebec and the West? Or do you have the agreements in place to be competitive selling a bundled product outside Quebec right now?

Where you're going, Maher, it's a little bit too much. I think you will understand that we're not going to publicly announce or present our commercial strategy. I guess you'll see in the next quarters.

Your next question comes from Stephanie Price with CIBC.

Internet service revenue growth of 3% was strong in the quarter. It looks like it was primarily driven by pricing. Probably you can talk a little bit about the competitive Internet environment in Quebec and maybe touch on bundling, your thoughts of rest of Canada Internet expansion as well.

Yes. Internet -- Internet revenue growth was in good part driven by price increases. We've discussed that and we certainly own up to that. But the general competitive situation in Quebec in broadband has improved and is a lot more rational, I would say, than what we've known over the past years. And I think it's clearly showing in our numbers that we -- there, again, we're not looking for crazy growth. We're looking for profitable growth. Our strategies are pretty simple. We tend to use the same ones. And in the past, when Bell was crazy pricing broadband in Quebec, you will remember that we did not follow for the most part. Did we pay a bit of a market share price? And probably we did, and actually, we did. But our -- but we have reestablished the situation and our revenue situation is way better. And as I said, partially helped for sure by price increases. But we're actually quite bullish on this. We believe that the state of the market right now is good. And our Internet service revenue performance and even stability in terms of loading. It was positive for us this quarter. And we -- well, it all depends, of course, how the situation evolves -- the competitive situation evolves. But right now, it's looking pretty positive and pretty encouraging.

As you know, Stephanie, Bell was the -- our competitor there, the last telco operator to invest in fiber. They did it. They invested significantly, hundreds of million dollars. So they were looking for results. If not, their strategy would be completely -- a complete failure. So they went and they're aggressively proposing pricing and splash over the place, it's supposed to be better technology, but they forgot a significant thing, which is the customer service. We've been there. We delivered, and this is tough to beat. But now I guess that after all the noise they made, and we should say also our own improvement in terms of network. Were we behind? Maybe we were in certain areas, but we are just compensating now with additional investment and making sure that we'll be able to match any source of technology that our competitor is deploying. So this is also a matter of looking forward more favorably for the future because they know that if they were to come and getting crazier on their pricing, they will not achieve anything. In fact, they will probably achieve a repricing feature like the one they faced with their wireless business.

Maybe I'll just ask one more follow-up. Just on the call, you mentioned the move into B2B technology services in English Canada. Just curious how you think about the pace of that rollout and if you've got the talent and the infrastructure, et cetera, in place at this point?

Well, Stephanie, we're not the kind of organization to which is the flavor of the month. We've been looking at our competitors, we're very strong on this. So it's -- I would say in Italian [Foreign Language]. So it means that going slowly, but surely and surely very long. But we're starting there. As you know [indiscernible] started 20 years ago. And we're right now, it is a very strong competitor to other businesses servicing operators like Bell, but Bell is not the only one. We have Rogers and we have TELUS in certain areas. We follow the course there also, we stay the course, and we've been doing well. We also have the IoT segment, which is of great interest also. Obviously, the pricing is completely different, as you know. But it's certainly a business of the future where we acquired expertise in terms of technology, in terms of sales, craftsmanship. And so we will continue slowly in this direction and move forward with a reasonable growth.

Your next question comes from Jerome Dubreuil with Desjardins.

First one is on strategy. I mean, we do see a very long runway of growth there. But I'm wondering if you think that Quebecor is set strategically for a long time or if you think they're kind of missing blocks or you're happy just to be -- not just, but to be taking more market share and pricing going forward?

I guess -- I feel that I repeat myself. I guess my line today is stay the course, which doesn't seem to be a bad strategy if it don't fix it. And we look forward to continue what we've been able to achieve. We'll see what the future is all about in terms of other opportunities. But if we were to stay on our regular course, we would continue doing what we've been doing in the past. So I don't know. I'm not going to announce that we're investing billions of dollars in AI, data center. We think that our business is open for growth. So this is certainly what we think we should do, and we're trying to do it as best as possible.

Yes. No, that works. Telco investors like predictability for sure. Second one, you're generating quite a bit of cash. EBITDA is growing, your leverage is below target. If I'm taking the 2 million additional shares that you're looking to buy back in the next 3 months before the program expires. At current share price, I get an annualized spending of about $480 million of buybacks annually. Is this a level we should be expecting for the next year or so if we're strategically set and we're happy with the leverage right now or maybe even more than $500 million buybacks?

But we're working for the shareholders. And we believe that the best way shareholders could be served is by balancing the usage of the free cash flow that we're generating. And it's easy to understand reduce debt, buy back shares and pay dividend. There's a decent or reasonable balance between those 3 items. Maybe the next question, you'll tell me is what are you going to do when you're not going to have debt anymore? -- still to go there. Not there yet.

Unfortunately, not.

So this is why I guess that the balance between the 3 components are still the course that we will follow.

And maybe a last one for Hugues. You said earlier on the call, I think I understood you said that Fizz is taking advantage of high competition. I'm wondering what that means exactly. Is it that people see good pricing out there, they start shopping around and ultimately choose Fizz? Or is that what you meant?

Well, what I meant is what we've said before, Jerome, is to optimize the positioning of our brands and to position as best we can as we've done in Quebec between Videotron and Fizz. The difference in Ontario and the West is that it's -- we're starting from a blank page for Fizz. So that's a huge opportunity for us and allows us to be maybe, as I said, a bit more aggressive in certain cases to make sure that we position it versus Freedom as optimally as possible. That's basically what I meant.

Your next question comes from Vince Valentini with TD Cowen.

The CapEx on building out new wireless territories such as Manitoba, where I think you've already started, so that you can wean off of the MVNO regime. Can you update us on that at all as to how much you've spent already? And what are you still planning to accelerate that investment over the next several quarters? And if there's any update on how long to finish off Manitoba, that would be great.

Vince, in Manitoba, it's to be -- it's not going to be a huge program, to be honest. And we are at the early stages. So yes, there's been some CapEx in Manitoba, but it's -- to be honest, it hasn't been huge yet. And we definitely intend to continue, and it's continuing as we speak just for the very reason that you mentioned, to wean off the MVNO as quickly as possible. And it's a market, as I just said, where we believe we can do it fairly quickly by putting on a limited number of sites and being able to then be on our own. So it's progressing. It will ramp up in the next few quarters, but still early stages.

So moving the traffic to your own network from the MVNO partner is not something that's going to happen this calendar year?

Yes, absolutely. It's going to be gradual and towards the end of the year probably.

Okay. And also wholesale -- yes, go ahead.

No, and then going on over the next year or so.

Okay. Also on wholesale, just to clarify, you resell Internet across the country now, and you've obviously been marketing Freedom Internet service outside of Quebec. Is that not almost entirely on cable networks and taking advantage of the cable TPIA rates as opposed to the more recent fiber TPIA rates?

Yes, absolutely.

As we do bids also in Quebec territory on Quebec footprint where we do not operate as an incumbent, you can think of Cogeco and Cogeco also use our -- the MVNO program to use our -- eventually our mobile network. So it's true on every piece of the footprint in the Canadian landscape.

Okay. And just one comment. I mean the obvious reason is because rates on coax are lower, as I believe Pierre Karl mentioned earlier still with this -- at this stage this stage and we don't...

Final price is not there yet.

And the price -- yes, we haven't had a price -- yes, but in our view, it does not make sense that coax should be lower. So let's wait and see what -- where prices end up being. But certainly, and we've said this publicly many times, in our view, it should be the same price no matter what technology or platform or whatever you call it, whether it's cable or FTTH. But let's see where that comes out before being able to see if it's an opportunity or a threat or both.

And last sub-question on that, then. Do you guys have any visibility as to when the CRTC may set some new cable TPIA rates?

That's the billion-dollar question.

Nothing coming imminently as far as you're aware, -- is that fair?

We can't answer because we don't know. We do not have any signals. It comes when it comes or it stays when it stays. And we're still waiting, I guess, for decisions that we've been asking 2 years ago. So we'll continue with that kind of regime. So to all of you, we'd like to thank you attending this conference call, and we'll be there next quarter. Thank you very much, and have a good afternoon.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Quebecor Inc. financial results for the First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. Thank you for your participation, and have a nice day.