Rogers Communications Inc. (RCIB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

The gentlemen here beside me, hopefully, need no introduction if you follow the Canadian telecom sector, but we're thrilled to have Rogers Communications here to be our next presenter. Edward Rogers was sort of a last minute addition. We're thrilled to have the Chair join us to answer mine and your questions. Tony Staffieri, CEO; and Glenn Brandt, CFO. So gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for coming.

Thank you for having -- thank you.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks with earnings season and a bit of pressure in certain entities of the industry and certainly not showing up in some of the share prices. Maybe I'll start off with your sort of general views, Edward, for you. It's been 1 year post Shaw, what are your thoughts on where the company stands strategically? And what do you think about your management team? We'll ask them to cover their ears while you answer the question.

Better if we hear it.

Vince, thank you for having us here. It feels like school with no one want to sit at the front here, but thank you all for coming. It's hard to believe that a year has passed since we finally got our approval for Shaw. But with the delay, I think it gave the team extra time to be ready, and they came in running. And we're able to start the integration at a pace that eclipsed our plans to realize the synergy to become more competitive. We're more competitive in our cable results in the west. The wireless results have been very strong in the last 2 years in the quarter, including in the Western Canada, which is great to see. Rogers has continued to be the top choice for Canadians and new Canadians for wireless. We passed about 60% of homes today with the combined cable company, and I think we have a wonderful opportunity with fixed wireless with certain aspects of TPIA, with using and deploying fiber for fifth generation and using that fiber across the country that we can expand into parts that last 40% over time and have a national -- more national reach that really no other competitor can do in Canada. The team is a fabulous, Vince. It's -- I'm so proud of what they're doing. They were able to get Shaw approved and improved our performance, moved us from third to first. We track 13 core metrics every quarter, and I think we're running about on 10 of them first. We're not going to be always top of the heap on everything, but I'm confident with this team that Rogers will continue to show leadership. And lastly, it's just the innovation that Tony has continued to roll out, what you saw with SpaceX, with Lynk's mobile, with finally getting the TTC done and Glenn's favorite deal, the Taylor Swift deal.

Taylor Swift gets counted as innovation these days. That's good. I appreciate the somewhat positive overview, Edward. I think there has been a bit of criticism on the cable business recently. So Tony, maybe if I can start there to let you try to unpack that a bit more. What is it -- you guys seem confident that the minus 3% revenue growth trajectory we've seen for the past 3 quarters in a row can turn around not only to a smaller negative but actually to positive by late this year. Can you give us a bit more detail on how that's actually possible and what your plans are to achieve it?

A few things there. As we've come together with Shaw, our focus over the last year in the early days was really about the integration of the cable business. I mean, this was, first and foremost, a cable acquisition. And so that's been the focus. And what we said was we need to turn around market share performance, not only in the West but in the East as well, and that's what we've been doing. So if you look at the most recent results, you see a good steady increase in market share on the Internet side. And so we are quite bullish on the market share gains we have made, and we'll continue to make. And there's a few areas that we are focused on in driving that cable growth. And so as Edward said, we cover 60% of homes passed now. And so the bundling opportunity, which was not an opportunity in the past before we closed on Shaw, has been big. Alberta and B.C. continue to be our fastest-growing markets, and we're pleased with that. And so it really starts with customer penetration there. We have been focused on making our value proposition in terms of Internet and the whole home products. Competitive, they were not competitive previously and, you saw in Shaw results, losing market share there. And that's what we've been focused on turning around and has turned around. And it continues to grow in penetration. So that's the first part. The second is in the East. We had a bigger issue there, isn't so much sales as it is churn, and that really related to customer service issues that we were just not good enough. And so we've turned that around, more work to do, but we're seeing good improvements in churn in the East while, at the same time, continuing to improve Internet ARPUs. And so we like what we see there. So that's first and foremost in terms of fundamentals. We then have our enterprise business, which is growing double digit. We've been underpenetrated in enterprise, particularly in small to mid, and so that's been a focus for us. And we like the growth opportunities we see there, both on a bundled basis, but also on just pure wireline services within the business. And as I said, that's growing double digits for us, and we expect it to continue to do so. And then the last piece is 40% of the homes we don't pass. And we launched a couple of things over the last little while. One is fixed wireless access, which has -- which is internet in the home or in the business on our 5G wireless network. And that has been a really good product offering in the marketplace, good acceptance. It's early days. But it allows us to address the market we previously did not, in parts of Southwest Ontario and in Quebec, so good market reception on that, but also allows us to bundle with our wireless and leverage our distribution channels throughout the country, frankly, but particularly in those markets. And then in some parts, we've launched wholesaler, TPIA Internet, and we'll continue to expand those services. It's early days. Last fall, we purchased Comwave as a platform to expand, and we will change the branding of that to Rogers very quickly. And so we will now cover 100% of homes in Canada, as well as businesses, through those type of arrangements. So those are sort of the core pieces. And we continue to have confidence that by the fourth quarter, we will return to positive cable growth. But in addition to the top line, we'll continue to expand margins. We have leading industry margins today as we realize synergies and continue to look for efficiency. And combined with what we think is a very healthy CapEx plan, as we proceed on the DOCSIS roadmap, it's a well-balanced plan to get to cash flow growth as well.

Don't mind. I know it's the perfect commitment but then [indiscernible] because I know you're respectful in trying to look at me while you're answering, and I think that's taking your mouth away from the microphone. So hopefully, that's a little bit better. The -- to follow up on that a little bit. Is this plan sort of just a hope and pray that subs improve and ARPU improves and B2B improves all the things you mentioned? Or is there some sort of hard-line to visibility that you have within your business? Because you seem pretty specific about fourth quarter versus just sort of saying at some point. I mean, is that just a normal optimistic strategy that the CEO has to try to make sure the troops are engaged? Or do you actually have some hard visibility internally?

Hopefully, you've seen and recognize it in our results over the last 9 quarters. This team is focused on execution to a very specific plan. And as we look to not only this quarter or next quarter, but we plan, at a minimum, 4 quarters out in terms of what we need to do and what we're trying to get to. And so as we look to -- so when we make the statement, fourth quarter, we return cable revenue to growth, it's based on specific plans that we track every day, every week. And we're tracking to those metrics. And so I've outlined the specifics of -- or the areas. But you should know that underneath that are specific plans that track by city, by neighborhood and what we expect to do in each of those. And so it's backed up by very specific plans that management is executing to.

Fair enough. So one subset of cable, being the new Shaw territory, isn't [ numbered ] in B.C. We obviously recognize what you've mentioned, that Shaw had been losing pretty significant share for many years. Still seems like TELUS is adding slightly more Internet subscribers than Rogers. They added 30,000 in the first quarter. You added 26,000, and your 26,000 must include some portion of Ontario and Atlantic Canada. So is that a fair characterization that you're maybe improving the subscriber trends, but you're still nowhere near 50-50?

We see that as a good opportunity for us. We're not 50% share. We were probably just slightly above 40% share in the West and has been increasing. When you look at our Internet net adds, it's about double what it was last year. Whereas you look at the competition out there, they're actually declining. So while the absolute number is slightly higher, what we see is the right trend in terms of direction. And so as we, I would say, relaunch in the West with a more -- with Rogers Ignite in terms of the product set, being the Comcast Xfinity platform, we relaunched in terms of the Internet speeds, we focused on our competitive advantage being a 1 gig, 1.5 gig. Shaw had done quite a bit of work on mid-split and high split, not to get too technical. But it allowed the network to have the capacity, both download and upload, that made it very compelling. And so we relaunched the value proposition, and now with the bundle, we like what we see in terms of share performance there. So we continue to -- as I talked about, fourth quarter growth on the top line, Alberta and B.C. are a big part of that.

I'm just going to throw one out as an opportunity, if you want to respond to it. But there have been a bit of pushback from TELUS that you're using price too aggressively in Alberta and B.C., and they don't like it, obviously. Do you think you're getting a proper revenue growth and revenue per home as that subscriber turns around and doing it properly with bundling and marketing quality as opposed to just price levers?

We bring to the market value proposition that we want to resonate with consumers and businesses, and we do it to make money as well. And so if you were to look at our financials, challenging our economics while we have growing in industry-leading margins, I'm not sure I understand the point. But we bring competition to the West that our competitor there hasn't seen for a long while, and so I'm actually encouraged by the reaction.

Fair enough. Glenn, let's turn to you on -- sticking with cable. There's also been a bit of investor concern, I think, since your results on the synergies/margins and how those 2 coexist with each other. So 2-part question, I guess. You're claiming you're already at the full run rate of $1 billion in synergies. But are you really done? Is there not more integration benefit to come? It's just a question of whether it gets counted as synergy or not, but the real benefit is still there. And the second part is you sort of talked about another 100 to 200 basis points as some sort of hard cap. Is that more just a short term-ism? Or is that in the fullness of time?

Yes. I think it's a good question. I think just to clarify, that's a short term. I don't guide beyond 2024 for this year, and so I'm not going to start predicting where our margins are going to go when '25 or '26. There is still plenty of opportunity and room for driving additional cost synergies around. We have only just started on the media content file, and so there's more to come there. Viewership is shifting to streaming away from traditional broadcast. That will get factored in as we figure out how to provide programming to customers' homes and the underlying media content costs that we really haven't started yet with the margins that we're reporting today. So that's future. We've still got some vendor negotiations that were not yet at end of contract for one or the other of the legacy Shaw-Rogers contracts, and so that's underway. Some of them we've been able to open early. Some of them weren't as much of a priority or we haven't got into yet. We will, I promise you, Tony, make sure we hit all of our priorities. And so we'll continue to drive the synergy file. I think it was more, though, a reflection of fact that we got to end of job. I was very happy. We filled that within the first year of identifying the $1 billion of cost to pull out of the business. The most significant part of that was we focused on the people costs earlier and more fully within that first year, and so the people side of it is now complete. And we've settled the employee base down. We don't have people wondering what are my responsibilities, who do I report to, what do I do. That got settled, frankly, within the first 6 months. That, on the cost side, is tremendous benefit; on the integration side, a much greater benefit because you now settle the employee base, and we are now all driven to those results that you see and will continue to develop. So no, that's not the limit of the upside, but I'm trying to focus on our execution within this year.

Fair enough. Edward, let's come back to you. And Tony talked a little bit about innovation and new products. You are the Chair of CableLabs, developing some exceptional new products, and Rogers is going to be able to partake in those. How do you think about that in terms of your role within CableLabs and how it pertains to Rogers and what kind of exciting new developments are coming?

Thanks, Vince. CableLabs started several decades ago to mirror kind of what Bell Labs was doing and create some sort of synergy and standards and a lower cost structure for the industry. Started out as American. It was my father and JR, who kind of bullied themselves to join and became more North American and today is more global. And I think it delivers exactly what it says, which is to be able -- the cable industry to move faster and with synergy and with the cost structure. It's great to sit with other leaders and learn what they're doing and where they're going. And as we deploy capital, it's kind of bit almost what your strategy is. But it's about 50% of the cable operators that are on cable ops today are wireless operators as well. So while still called CableLabs, wireless is a much larger component of it. And I think it's about creating -- focusing on network connectivity and creating networks that allow customers to do a lot more, a lot faster and simultaneously on a lot more devices and look at our cost structure and take components out of the network. So we're more efficient, and the network is more stable for customers, less outages, less down, downtime. And I think it continues to be great for the industry. Rogers has partnered with Comcast, another 10 years for the Xfinity suite of products, which we're thrilled about. Comcast is not just a vendor, but they're -- they use it themselves. And so what I've always loved about it is we're deploying the exact same product stack that they are and user experience that they're getting, and we work extremely well with them. And I think it's the best product set that's on the market, and what's going to be rolled out in the next months and year to come is going to make it even that much better. And lastly, just, Vince, on capital for our company. I think the team is very sure on making sure we make the right investments, but not shy to make investments and not thinking that our industry is somehow not great opportunities for investment. And we're going to continue to make the investments to realize the opportunity of the merger with Shaw and to realize some of the growth opportunities that Tony has talked about.

Excellent. Tony, I come back to you on that briefly if -- some of the new services on the Comcast platform. Are there opportunities in the cable segment to drive some incremental revenue growth through not in traditional means of you don't actually need a new Internet subscriber or a price increase in Internet, but selling them stuff they never had before that the new Comcast platform provides, things like home automation and energy management? Is that part of the pipeline that we're talking about?

Yes. As we look to the full suite, the core is going to continue to be Internet and making sure we have the best Internet, the most reliable, and the DOCSIS platform puts us well on the path as part of the 10G roadmap. So we'll continue to have a ubiquitous industry-leading product at a very low cost per home passed. And so that will continue to be, in our view, the biggest driver. As we look to the entertainment platform and the new OS, we'll -- over the last little while, we've seen what I would call cord cutting on the video side. You see it in our results. But more and more, we do see long-term a world where as we bring entertainment and make it available, less of it'll be linear and more of it is already in terms of the streaming platforms. And we'll make margin, but it'll be a lower margin. And so we'll then augment that with other services. And so one of the ones we're launching is Storm-Ready, and you saw that. And that's a product that will automatically have home Internet move over to 5G wireless Internet in the event that there's a power outage or one of the cables is cut through a storm or through construction. And so those additional services will be there. We do have the home monitoring app as well that we've launched, and there's a second phase of that that's launching. And that'll continue to augment the revenues as well. But those pieces will continue to be secondary to Internet as the primary growth engine.

Excellent. Let's -- I will go to the audience in a little while. If anybody wants to come back to cable, feel free, but let's switch gears to wireless for a second. Clearly, a lot of investors ask questions about what's going on in pricing and competition. It seems to be pretty intense, especially in the month of March. Looked like there was a lot of promotional battles amongst really all 4 carriers, I would characterize it. What are your thoughts, first of all, Tony, sort of where we've been at in terms of the competitive environment? And maybe if you have any update on -- have we seen any green shoots recently of things perhaps stabilizing in April or May?

As you look at the competitive intensity, it goes through cycles. So March is always a busy time frame. I think it's important to always keep in mind, it's against the backdrop of a growing market. Last year, the industry in Canada grew 5.3% in terms of subscribers. Half of it is penetration, half of it is the new-to-Canada category. If you were to look at the first quarter, now that everyone's reported it, good growth at 5%. The government curbed some of the foreign student segment. But in the overall scheme of growth, it continues to be healthy. This quarter, we're seeing growth still in the 4.5%, 4.6% growth. So it's against the backdrop of a growing market that we're competing. And so probably, Vince, you're referring to some of the, what I would call, value propositions and pricing led by a few of our competitors in what we call the flanker brand, $34 to $39 price points. And we've competed, will compete, continue to compete with our Fido brand in that. But I think a lot of the attention is disproportionately placed on that segment. We compete there, as I said, but we very much compete and focus on the Rogers premium brand. The vast, vast majority of our subscriber additions are on the Rogers brand, and you see that come through in our ARPU performance, which is and we expect to continue to be on the growth side in terms of ARPU. And so I think it's important that you look at that competitive intensity across all value segments. And some of the offers, as I said, that you see there, post March, there have been some changes in the value proposition in the market. We continue to follow a different strategy than our competitors. We focus our 5G and 5G+ on the premium brand. Some of our competitors offer 5G in the flanker space, and they sort of moved away from that. Our strategy continues to work for us. You just look at market share performance in total mobile. We led the industry, again, in first quarter. But particularly on postpaid, we landed the quarter -- our estimate is just under 40% market share. And so -- and as I said, with positive ARPU growth. And so we'll continue to focus on our strategy. Competition is healthy, and we do well in a competitive environment.

Fair enough. You mentioned the strong market growth, 5% in the first quarter, and you've talked about close to 4.5% for full year 2024 is your expectation. Will we have a sense -- is that fully reflecting what the government has already done on foreign student applications and acceptances? Or was that maybe a lag effect that's coming later? And do you see some risk that if the government goes even further on holding in immigration or foreign workers that we could be looking at 3% market growth in a year or 2 as opposed to 4.5%? Or is that too extreme?

If I go back to -- penetration gains continue to be at about 2.5%, and that trend is continuing. And as we look to -- we've always lagged the U.S. market, and so that's always been sort of a good lead indicator for us. And so we continue to see that 2.5% being fairly robust. And so the government curbing of the new-to-Canada category would have to be pretty significant to bring it from what was almost 3% to 0.5% to get 3%. So we see that as extremely unlikely to go down to that level. So we continue to see in our, what we would call, bare case growth rate of 4% vis-à-vis the 4.5% that we are seeing now. To answer your question specifically, is there a bit of a lag effect? You picked it up in January because -- just the way the school seasons work, you sort of have the full effect that happened in the first quarter. And then you'll see the exits in Q2 and then you'll see a pickup again in Q3. So we think we've seen the impact of it. We see it in the numbers. So we continue to -- again, in terms of growth rates. And as we look to and talk to the government in terms of what their plans are, we're fairly confident with that growth rate of 4.5%.

That is very comforting to hear. Glenn, I then turn to you and drill down a bit more on the ARPU 20 -- talked about the focus on the Rogers plan not necessarily chasing flanker and not putting 5G on your flanker brand like some others have done. But even with that, it still amazes a lot of the investors that I talked to that your ARPU growth, even when you strip away all that subscriber adjustments and Shaw Mobile adjustments, I mean, still the underlying growth is still positive. Everybody else has turned negative. We clearly can see Fido advertising $39, sometimes $34. But even with that, you're able to keep your ARPU growing. Can you unpack that for us at all? Like what are the different components of ARPU that some moving up, some moving down, I assume, but the net is positive?

Yes. I think there's a few there. The most critical one is, and Tony had it in his answer, it's focusing our 5G network on the premium brand. If you want 5G service, you sign up for our premium brand. And a significant part of our loading -- a substantial part of our loading is on our premium brand. That's, first and foremost the -- I think the most effective driver. Add to that the fact that in any given year, data loading goes up by about 30%. And so there's a natural progression of customers, when they come in on the flanker brand, need larger and larger plans. Family plans will grow, and they move up. And so as you move up from a Fido brand, for those that come in on that entry level, as they transition up to get the expanded services, that provides an avenue for growth. And so I see a continued runway for us. It doesn't come easy. It doesn't come from just default. I said it in my comments after we released our first quarter results. These results don't happen by accident. It's attention to detail. And so we don't water down our 5G services and bring them in on Fido. We don't heavily discount just to get loading. We compete. We'll match. We will make sure if there's an offer out there from one of our competitors on the flanker brand, that we don't vacate the space. But our emphasis is on premium service, premium brand and a value pricing reflecting that premium service, and it's worked well for us for several quarters now. And then when I look at where our ARPU is, it's positive. It's not overwhelmingly positive. We have, as reported, it's -- we've reported as 1% ARPU growth. It's about -- it's almost 1.5%, 1.4% ARPU growth as reported. When I strip out the impact of the Shaw Mobile customers in that Q1, that turns to about 2.5%, an extra 1% of growth there that was dampened by the lower-priced Shaw Mobile customers, roughly equivalent to the base adjustment that we also had reported in the quarter. And so our real growth is somewhere in the range of 1% ARPU. I can take the 1% ARPU, combine it with our net adds loading, and we wind up with -- now we had 9% revenue growth in the first quarter. We've now lapped all of the quarters where we did not have any Shaw Mobile business in the prior period. You'll see that year-over-year growth now temper from the 9% level to somewhere in the range of 5% or 6%. That's strong growth built on the back of we're still getting loading, we're getting industry-leading net adds, particularly in the premium brand, a little bit of positive ARPU growth, strong service revenue growth, and that is still driving very, very strong EBITDA growth. And so those are the fundamental building blocks for us to continue to delever and grow earnings. It's on the back of attention to detail and not watering down the premium services.

I fully agree and good answer. I do hear some people say that some of that ARPU, revenue, EBITDA growth is padded by overly aggressive handset subsidies or handset financing. Can you address that? Because it doesn't seem to show up in your cash flow statement. We see your contract asset EIP number basically flat year-over-year in the first quarter. So you would just -- say that's not the case. You don't think you're subsidizing.

Well, in fact, if you look at our fourth quarter result, we made margin on our handsets, so not a lot, but it's pretty hard to subsidize and still make margin. Look, I think there's -- we have some subsidy in the plans, but the Canadian market really has moved away almost entirely from a subsidy model and moved to an equipment installment plan model. The subsidy we have, more often than not, is a pass-through of handset manufacturer promotions and programs that we can pass along to customers. And so our emphasis really has been on the most expensive part of the handset is paying for the handset. We can't afford to take that in our economics and subsidize the handset cost. Handsets now are approaching $2,000 for a high-end handset in Canada. And so instead, we've moved years ago to the equipment installment plan program. Now the regulatory restrictions capped at 2 years in terms of matching to a service contract. We got -- we've dealt with that by -- through our Rogers Bank Mastercard, allowing customers to have 4 years to pay for their handset interest-free, but allowing them just more time. You can do this with other credit card programs as well. But we can match points and rewards to Rogers services to entice customers to finance the handset on the Rogers Bank Mastercard. From our standpoint, it grows our MasterCard business. That works for us, lightens the hold on customer's wallet for paying for the handset that we don't make money on. We make money on the services, not on selling the handsets, and it's reduced the need to subsidize the handset and make those monthly invoices affordable. And so we've come at it that we don't need to subsidize in order to lighten that, use our credit card business, grow the portfolio that way, give customers an out. And you've -- we've now taken a cost that might've been $50 or $60 a month, cut it in half, and now there's more room for paying for premium services on that monthly bill. We're not doing it through offering greater subsidies. We don't follow that model at all.

Appreciate that extra color. [indiscernible] is anybody -- before I move on to my Taylor Swift questions, anybody in the audience have anything they want to ask on cable, wireless or anything else? Again, still a sleepy bunch. No problem. I'm -- let's do one for Edward. Sports assets, get a lot of discussion these days. They seem to be going for huge amounts of money whenever there's private transactions. You guys are sitting on some pretty interesting sports teams, I would say, in that Jays and MLSE. Any thoughts there about whether that is the thing that could be a source of funds for the company at some point in the future? Or do you like how it's housed underneath the corporate entity?

I think, Vince, it's generally a good problem to have in the sense as you identified. They do continue to appreciate in value. It's been great to see some of the Canadian teams in the playoffs for this run. Disappointed that Toronto didn't get through the first. But I'd say we're committed to our sports assets and our sports and media assets. But we recognize that we won't -- we're not getting, let's say, the full value the way that it's held today, and it's something that Tony and the team are looking at for the future. But right now, focused on Shaw, getting Shaw integrated and making sure we're competitive across-the-board, making sure we're trying to achieve the things that Tony has talked about. So nothing new to report, except for -- to tell you that we do recognize the -- that our shareholders aren't maximizing probably the recognition of the valuation of those assets. It's something we'll continue to look at.

Does that imply, Edward, that if Tony and the team can come up with a proposal that would show if it's better value, that you think yourself and the family would likely be supportive?

Yes. I think it's -- I think we want to make sure it's a right endpoint, not anything done in haste, Vince. It's something we've looked at for a long time. And definitely, if it's a good plan, then the Board and I will be supportive.

Excellent. You mentioned media. Tony, just -- we don't usually talk about it too much. But there was an interesting deal with Amazon Prime taking some of the NHL games next year, which I assume those are rights you had, that they're now being resold to them. Can you talk about -- if there's any specifics on that you want to share, that'd be great. But more maybe the big picture of, do you see more of these rights leaving your cost structure and going to some of the streamers over time to share the load a bit more?

Yes. The -- if you didn't see it, we announced last week or the week before, Monday night NHL Games are exclusively on Amazon. And that was something that worked for us not just economically, but it's part of our strategy, particularly as we launch the next version of Comcast Xfinity OS later this year, which is making content available more easily. No one's going to debate the reach of Amazon as we look to continue to grow viewership. The NHL deal, we're in year 10 of a 12-year deal. It's worked extremely well for us, and so we continue to innovate and come up with ways to expand viewership. You would've seen our relationship with Amazon has a history to it. You would've seen last fall, Sportsnet+ being available on Amazon. And so what we do see is some of the streaming apps being a very good way to expand the reach. And as sports owners, increased engagement, increased viewership can only be good for the asset. And so it works well in terms of the whole ecosystem for us and ties in well with, as I said, the new platform and the way audiences are viewing it. Amazon is one that is, largely as a member of Amazon Prime, is free. And so unlike some of the other ones, the value proposition is extremely compelling, and we expect it to continue to draw strong audiences on that Monday night. And so it is part of a continuation of embracing streaming as part of our entertainment offering, which, again, comes back to the whole value proposition centered around Internet.

Excellent. I'll let you take a breath and I go back to Glenn on what he knows is one of my favorite topics of noncore asset sales and the $1 billion target that's been set, which I think you'd admit that Cogeco was not supposed to be part of that original plan. So you haven't eschew about any of the original $1 billion. Any update on what's going on there timing-wise? Or are you having to pivot what you're looking to sell?

Not having to pivot. It's taken longer than we anticipated, and I'll come to that. So about a year ago, we announced that we had targeted $1 billion of proceeds from sale of noncore assets. We had announced, at the time, predominantly real estate. We mentioned that there were -- there was a noncore business line in there as well that we had been careful not to identify because of the disruption it can have on operations while you're going through the exercise. I think most in the room have probably seen the media leak that happened a month or 1.5 months ago now, identifying that as our data center business. To be clear, it's our third-party data center business, not the data center services that we use internally that we're looking to sell. And so we -- that exercise remains ongoing and underway. And in fact, the media link -- the media leak helped to get a bit of a shot in the arm with some others coming in, some that had looked at earlier, that -- we launched this back -- taking a step back, we launched that exercise in the fall, just after coming off of Labor Day. We went out to a targeted number of industry participants. Right around the same time, the sentiment was settling in that rates were going to stay at these levels for longer, and that had a dampening effect on activity in the data center space. There have been some transactions earlier in the year and in prior year. But really, the intention had, I'll say, entered a lull. That, combined with presumed expected value on our part, I think, dampened some of the response we got. The media leak has given that a resurgence, and we have several quite interested parties looking at it again. I anticipate that we will come to completion on that in the next, I'll say, few months. But that's -- that one is ongoing. I'm very optimistic around that one. On the real estate side, a bit of a mix there. We've got our property on Dixie Road that houses our technology group, to a large extent, but they don't fill the space, nowhere close. And it's a somewhat sprawling campus, more footprint, more land area than we need for those operations. Near the airport -- you don't necessarily need technology operations to be located near the airport, but it's an excellent candidate for logistics or industrial use. And so that's exactly where we focused, and we have found a potential buyer. And right now, that exercise is in the diligence phase, agreed to terms but nonbinding as they move through diligence. And so I expect we'll have something to provide there in the coming couple of months. Other real estate holdings we have are more of a redevelopment in residential or mixed-use redevelopment candidate. That space -- again, because of the backdrop of interest rates,at these levels for longer, that sector really has dried up in terms of interest. And so we could do something, we could do something quickly. Particularly, we have a vacant building at 350 Bloor Street (sic) [ 333 Bloor Street ]. My office used to be located in 350 Bloor (sic) [ 333 Bloor ] prior to COVID. Since COVID, that building is now vacant. I could sell it. I could probably get an offer for it very, very quickly, but it would be a discounted offer. And so we're weighing our options there in terms of giving it more time. I do expect interest rates will start coming down as we move through the second half of the year. I'm a little bit more conservative, and I think it's going to come later in the year rather than midyear and continue through 2025. Those 350 Bloor (sic) [ 333 Bloor ] and other properties that we have then on that list, they will sell. We're weighing our options whether to sell those quickly or wait for a little bit more value to materialize. So a year ago, we were more optimistic that we would get to end of task within the year, and that's certainly what we announced. As we moved through into December last year, it became apparent, it was going to take a little bit longer. And so we pivoted on the order of progression. I intended to complete the asset sales and then move to the Cogeco holdings. We had an opportunity in December where, in a particular week, we had a -- saw a little bit of a pop in the Cogeco share price. I've known those assets to be very liquid if we made the decision to sell forever. And so we pivoted and said, "Okay, let's just reverse order." We made a commitment to delever. I was going to delever by more than $1 billion of asset sales, but let's just reverse. We'll pivot to Cogeco, get that done and fill in the asset sales as we can over the course of the second half of the year target. I can tell you, there is still ample pressure on me to get to end of job on the $1 billion of asset sales, but the exercise is underway. We will complete it. I'm not going to give timing as to whether or not we're going to complete it within the next 1 quarter, 3 quarters. We will complete it and with some urgency to it. In the meantime, we focused on our earnings growth, our cost synergies, our execution within the business to make sure that this delay has not interrupted our pace with delevering, and that will continue to be the focus.

Very comprehensive answer, Glenn. Thank you. That unfortunately has used up all the rest of our time. I know there's a lot of things that we could still talk about, given how dynamic and big your company is. But we'll cut it off there. Gentlemen, so Edward, Tony, Glenn, thanks very much for your comments today.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.