NYSE:TU TELUS Q2 2025 Earnings Report $15.78 +0.04 (+0.22%) Closing price 08/5/2025 03:59 PM EasternExtended Trading$15.78 -0.01 (-0.06%) As of 08/5/2025 05:05 PM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast TELUS EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.16Consensus EPS $0.17Beat/MissMissed by -$0.01One Year Ago EPS$0.25TELUS Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$3.74 billionExpected Revenue$3.63 billionBeat/MissBeat by +$113.60 millionYoY Revenue Growth+2.20%TELUS Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2025Date8/1/2025TimeBefore Market OpensConference Call DateFriday, August 1, 2025Conference Call Time12:30PM ETConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress ReleaseEarnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by TELUS Q2 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 1, 2025 ShareLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways Positive Sentiment: TELUS delivered 198,000 net customer additions in Q2 2025, driven by 167,000 mobile and 31,000 fixed-line gains, while maintaining postpaid mobile churn at 0.9%. Positive Sentiment: TELUS Health saw operating revenue and adjusted EBITDA grow by 16% and 29% respectively, with global lives covered nearing 160 million and $400 million in annualized synergies realized since the LifeWorks acquisition. Positive Sentiment: The company agreed to sell a 49.9% stake in its new towerco Terion to Akeis, monetizing tower assets to boost financial flexibility and accelerate deleveraging toward a 3× net debt/EBITDA target. Positive Sentiment: TELUS committed CA$2 billion to expand broadband services in Ontario and Quebec, leveraging its PureFibre and mobile networks to enhance competition, innovation and affordability. Negative Sentiment: TELUS Digital recorded a non-cash goodwill impairment due to updated WACC and growth assumptions, which largely offset net income and resulted in basic EPS of CAD 0.00 (adjusted EPS CAD 0.22). AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallTELUS Q2 202500:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xTranscript SectionsPresentationParticipantsPresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Good day, everyone. Welcome to the TELUS twenty twenty five Q2 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to introduce your speaker, Mr. Robert Mitchell. Please go ahead. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:00:09Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our second quarter twenty twenty five results news release, MD and A, financial statements and detailed supplemental investor information were posted to our website earlier this morning. On our call today, we will begin with remarks by Darren and Doug. For the Q and A portion, we will be joined by Zainul, Naveen and Tobias. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:00:27Briefly, prepared remarks, slides and answers to questions contain forward looking statements. Actual results could vary from these statements. The assumptions on which they are based and the material risks that could cause them to differ are outlined in our public filings with securities commissions in Canada and The U. S, including our second quarter twenty twenty five and our annual 2024 MD and A. And with that, over to you, Darren. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:00:48Thanks, Mitchie, and hello, everyone. In the second quarter, our team's commitment to operational excellence empowered TELUS to deliver another quarter of industry leading customer growth and strong financial performance. These results demonstrate the strength of our leading portfolio of bundled offerings across mobile and home and the strategic expansion of TELUS Pure Vibra connectivity to homes and businesses inclusive of Ontario and Quebec. We're delivering much more than just affordable Internet, we're providing Canadians with differentiated and unique competitive services, including AI fueled smart home energy management, next generation healthcare, affordable innovative security and exciting entertainment solutions. Our investment in Canada will be augmented by our recently announced $2,000,000,000 investment to expand broadband services in Ontario and Quebec. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:01:44This will allow TELUS to prudently progress national scale through smart broadband network builds and drive product innovation, competition, investment and affordability in Canada. The CRTC's wholesale fiber decision mirrors the access granted to Eastern based companies in the West and as well the wholesale access that TELUS is providing to cable companies on our broadband wireless network in Ontario and Quebec. Relative to our peers, TELUS stands out as the company committing to bold future focused investments, reflecting our confidence in the Canadian market over the longer term and our strategy of bundling wireless and wireline broadband services. Importantly, our track record aligns with the federal government's goals of unlocking private investment, building one Canadian economy by removing interprovincial barriers, addressing cost of living challenges for families, diversifying Canada's economy through driving innovation of Canadian IP and ensuring Canada is on the leading edge of AI, digital innovation and smart sustainability. Turning back to our strong second quarter performance, we achieved total mobile and fixed customer growth of 198,000 in the quarter. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:03:05This was driven by mobile phone and connected device additions of 167,000 alongside fixed customer additions of 31,000. The dedication of our team in delivering customer service excellence contributed to continued strong loyalty results once again this quarter. Notably, postpaid mobile phone churn was 0.9%, consistent with Q2 of last year as we realized our twelfth consecutive year below the 1% level. Looking at our financial results, we achieved solid and resilient TTEC EBITDA growth, including TELUS Health, up 4%, which is consistent with our Q1 results. In mobile, we drove phone net additions of 55,000 and connected device net additions of 112,000. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:03:58These results were supported by our ongoing focus on economic margin accretive customer growth. This is evidenced by our consistent industry leading lifetime revenue underpinned by our industry best churn results, which of course is the hallmark of our organization. Let's turn now and take a look at our wireline business. TELUS delivered another quarter of industry leading total fixed customer additions. Indeed, we were the only company within the industry to deliver positive net additions within the wireline sector. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:04:39This included 27,000 Internet net additions alongside industry best fixed data services revenue growth of some 3%. This is underpinned by our leading PureFibre offering and our consistent strategy of leveraging our superior portfolio of bundled products and services on a national basis that differentiate us meaningfully from the competition in a way that matters to customers. Furthermore, TELUS Health continues to demonstrate strong operating momentum globally, achieving operating revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of 1629% respectively. And Doug will comment shortly on what the EBITDA growth looks like on a normalized basis and how consistent that growth has been historically. Moreover, the team drove a very strong year over year increase in global lives covered to almost 160,000,000 inclusive of workplace options alongside continued organic growth expansion. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:05:49These results were fueled by product enhancements, expanding sales channels, including cross selling and effective cost management through technology and synergy optimization. Our team's deeply rooted dedication to putting customers first serves as the foundation for this success, and we're building on it. Since acquiring LifeWorks, we've realized $400,000,000 in combined annualized synergies. You may recollect that our original target in this regard was 150,000,000 to $200,000,000 This $400,000,000 includes $322,000,000 from cost efficiencies and $78,000,000 from successful cross selling strategies that are continuing to grow markedly. We remain on track to meet our goal of $427,000,000 by the 2025 and we will augment this materially with workplace options global synergies that are on the come. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:06:53We are excited to accelerate TELUS Health's growth momentum through 2025 and well beyond, on the path to very interesting and productive monetization strategies. The consistency of our results reflects our team's passion for delivering superior customer experiences over our world leading wireless and pure fiber networks. Our significant broadband network investments drive extensive socioeconomic benefits for Canadians in communities from coast to coast. Same time, they are enabling continued advancement in our operational, financial and customer experience performance. Looking ahead, our financial position and our operational outlook remains strong, supported by continued EBITDA growth and stable capital expenditures, resulting in a meaningful free cash flow expansion on a chronic basis prospectively. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:07:56This will be enhanced by significant value creation in our growth businesses and a multiplicity of asset monetization opportunities. In this regard, today we announced the definitive agreement with Akeis, who will acquire 49.9% interest in our newly formed Canadian wireless tower infrastructure operator, Terion. This initiative will monetize our world class tower infrastructure portfolio, creating long term value and strengthening TELUS' financial flexibility. Indeed, this allows us to accelerate balance sheet deleveraging and progress towards achieving our target ratio of three times net debt to EBITDA by 2027, whilst turning off our discounted dividend reinvestment program on a progressive basis over the same time period. Strategically, Terion will focus on building new towers for TELUS, who will be its largest customer from the start, while also developing partnerships to expand tower access across the industry and further monetize this valuable asset. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:09:16We are working with a Canadian partner in Lequess to support broad national wireless access for the benefit of consumers and small businesses across the country. This move also aligns with TELUS' commitment to infrastructure sharing, leveraging smart partnerships to extend the reach of our technology, while continuing to lead in network quality and services. Just as we are providing mandated wholesale access through the regulatory MVNO framework on our broadband wireless network across both our traditional operating territory and our expansion territories, and also enabling competitors to access our fiber infrastructure under the CRTC's pro competition wholesale framework, we are now extending that to our wireless infrastructure across Canada. This will enable broader use of our wireless tower real estate to maximize its utility for Canadians. Indeed, having a single company focused on tower expansion will positively impact all wireless providers' ability to deploy acquired spectrum to enhance coverage, capacity and service improvements for their customers. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:10:45Again, it's good for competition, it's good for investment, and competition and investment are synergistic. Importantly, our new tower initiative mirrors our position on Internet wholesale, Specifically, that fair access to infrastructure can foster meaningful competition, affordability and consumer choice, while incentivizing private investment along the way. I would like to thank Eros Woody Spadato, my longtime colleague, and TELUS, former Executive Vice President of Technology Strategy, for assuming the CEO role of Terring. I expect that he is going to deliver an excellent performance in this assignment. My sincere thanks as well to the TELUS and the KES team for working diligently and innovatively to bring this important initiative to fruition. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:11:48Finally, reflecting our TELUS team's long standing commitment to putting our customers and our communities first, In June, the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation held its second annual gala. Notably, the foundation raised more than $2,600,000 in sponsorships, cash donations, and in kind contributions to support the foundation's TELUS Student Bursary Fund. This was also complemented over and above the $2,600,000 with our partnership with CIBC in this regard to expand the Student Bursary Fund still further. Since its launch in 2023, the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation has provided over $4,000,000 in TELUS student bursaries, helping more than 1,000 students from underserved communities reach their dream of postsecondary education, whilst also affecting meaningful change within their communities through volunteerism. In closing, I'd like to express my gratitude to our team at TELUS for their efforts, their resiliency and their grit in executing on our consistent winning strategy to meet or exceed the commitments that we have to all of our stakeholders. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:13:06And on that note, let me turn the call over to Uncle Doug. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:13:10Thank you, Darren, and hi, everyone. TELUS had another very strong quarter of operating execution, financial performance and delevering activities. Mobile network revenue was down slightly as mobile phone and connected device subscriber additions as well as higher IoT revenue of 9% were offset by lower mobile phone ARPU. While the 3.3% decline in ARPU is reflective of the ongoing competitive pressures observed during the prior periods, as well as lower overage on roaming revenues, we are seeing an improved operating environment as market conditions stabilize. We saw ARPU trend improvements quarter over quarter across new activations, rate plan changes and customer renewals, reflecting our ongoing efforts to mitigate network revenue pressures. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:14:05Fixed data services grew 3% year over year, our eighteenth quarter of positive growth, driven by subscriber ARPU growth in Internet as well as security and automation. Additionally, fixed revenue was supported by higher managed services in the business area. GTEC adjusted EBITDA increased 3% alongside margin expansion of 100 basis points to 41.7%. These results were driven by our consistent emphasis on profitable customer growth and ongoing focus on cost efficiency and effectiveness and asset monetization progress. Health revenues and adjusted EBITDA grew 1629% respectively and adjusted margin expanded 180 basis points to 17.5. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:15:00This growth was driven by organic growth in Employer Solutions as well as business acquisitions, including workplace options. TELUS Health EBITDA excluding workplace options was over 20%, that is eight quarters in a row now of over 20% EBITDA growth in TELUS Health. Growth was also supported by various other services, including our PayVider vertical. In Digital, operating revenues and adjusted EBITDA were in line with expectations. Please refer to TELUS Digital's earnings release and analyst call commentary earlier today. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:15:40At the end of Q2, informed by TELUS Digital's most recent financial model refresh, we recorded a non cash impairment adjustment to goodwill. The key assumptions that were updated during the latest model included higher weighted average cost of capital, lower perpetual growth rate and lower cash flow forecast from pricing and margin pressures. You can find all the details of the impairment and assumptions underlying it in the notes to the financial statements of both TELUS and TELUS Digital. With this impairment, net income for TELUS was largely offset by the impairment after deducting non controlling interest share and basic EPS was zero. On an adjusted basis, net income was CAD $342,000,000 and EPS was CAD 0.22. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:16:29Capital expenditures excluding real estate declined by CAD 11,000,000 or 2%, primarily driven by the completion of certain projects in wireless and fibre network builds and the planned transition to fibre builds in partner build model for brownfield and new market areas. Overall capital intensity was 13% and unchanged over the period. Free cash flow of CAD535 million increased by 11% compared to the same period a year ago, driven by higher EBITDA as well as lower capital expenditures and interest paid. Looking ahead, we remain focused on driving towards achieving our 2025 targets, which we reiterated today. This includes TTEC, including Health operating revenues and adjusted EBITDA growth of 2% to 43% to 5% respectively. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:17:22Consolidated capital expenditures excluding real estate of CAD100 million are targeted to remain stable at CAD2.5 billion. Lastly, consolidated free cash flow for 2025 of CAD2.15 billion is also confirmed. As it relates to our balance sheet, the average term to maturity of our long term debt stands at thirteen years with a weighted average cost of CAD4.71. Additionally, our financial position remains robust and our leverage ratio declining to 3.7 times, down 20 basis points sequentially since the first quarter. As we progress through 2025, we expect continued improvements to our leverage ratio, including a net debt to EBITDA ratio by three times by 2027, alongside removing the discount associated with our dividend reinvestment program. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:18:14In June, we successfully raised CAD2.85 billion in hybrid securities across multiple offerings in Canada and The United States, building upon the CAD1.6 billion raised in April. These financings support deleveraging with 50% of the proceeds receiving equity treatment by the credit rating agencies. Subsequent to June 30, we completed our debt tender to retire CAD1.8 billion of securities in Canada and The United States for the repurchase in the amount of just under CAD1.6 billion, recapturing approximately or circa million of reduced future cash flow debt obligations. Our continued organic operational growth, including EBITDA expansion, declining capital intensity and free cash flow combined with the ongoing asset monetization initiatives will further strengthen our balance sheet. Notably, we monetized our wireless powers that were announced this morning will reduce our leverage by approximately 0.17 times on a pro form a basis. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:19:20Including this transaction, we expect to achieve leverage ratio of 3.55 times exiting 2025 as we progress towards our 2027 target of three times. The accounting for a Tappas Tower transaction was an equity transaction. There will be no debt on our balance sheet, we will be consolidating the entity of Terion. In addition, there'll be no impact to EBITDA. Free cash flow in our planning period will be positive from this transaction between interest reductions and the leasing opportunities as highlighted by Darren. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:20:00All the rent paid to Terren is at fair market value lease rates that you would see in the market. Looking ahead through 2025 and beyond, we are well positioned to drive sustainable performance as we maintain our focus on profitable growth. Our strategic initiatives in customer expansion, product innovation and service enhancement will further strengthen our market position and drive long term value creation. With that, Robert, back to you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:20:27Thanks, Doug. Karl, we're ready for questions, please. Operator00:20:31Certainly. The first question is from Jerome Dibre from Desjardins. Please go ahead, Jerome. Jérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins Group00:20:46Hey, thanks for taking my questions. First, I have I'd like to start on whether we should read anything in terms of strategic shift from your proposed privatization of TIAXT. I mean, does it mean there's a change in terms of the monetization path for other tech ventures that are adjacent to Telkom? Or the move is based on maybe more idiosyncratic items at Teladigital? Thanks. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:21:12Move is related to support the deleveraging goals of the organization. And I don't think you should read anything into that on adjacency basis to the other monetization strategies that we have with our emerging growth businesses. Jérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins Group00:21:32Okay. Thank you. And if you can maybe provide the financial details on the towers, maybe numbers about EBITDA of the entity? I recognize it's consolidated, but that would still be helpful. Thanks. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:21:45Yeah, we haven't disclosed the EBITDA, but you will see that all the towers are at fair market value rent. So I think it'd be fairly transparent on the number of towers we have. As mentioned, we will be consolidating, so there will be no impact on debt, no impact on EBITDA, and we will be free cash flow positive in all of our future modeling on an annual basis to TELUS when you bring in the business model that we have put forward and have agreed upon with our partner. Jérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins Group00:22:20Thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:22:22Thanks, Jerome. Next question please, Karl. Operator00:22:25The next question is from Mayor Yaghi from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:22:31Great. Thank you for taking my question. Doug, thanks for the additional disclosure this morning on the deal. You indicated that in the short term to I guess, the medium term, your free cash flow should be having a positive impact from the transaction. How should we think about the long term impact of this deal as you deploy more towers? Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:22:57I think there's in the deal, you know, a plan to deploy more towers. And what happens if we see more colocations on these towers if other of your peers begin to put their antennas on them. So that's my first question. Just a question on wireless. Darren, you indicated in your prepared remarks that you feel that the market is getting better in terms of its direction on price. Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:23:33What gives you, I guess, what gives you the view that this could be sustained? I think this is an important question that a lot of investors are trying to get an answer to that. The recent improvement in prices have the potential to be sustained over the medium term. Thank you. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:23:56On the first one, as you're well aware, the demand for data continues to increase. So within our model and our partnership with Terion, they're going to continue to build towers for capacity and densification for TELUS. In addition, they will continue to lease with other colos as you highlighted. The business model we have in front of us is that not only will we breakeven or be very positive or positive cash flow into the future, The co locate based on our current plan, which is very reasonable, will also keep us cash flow positive for the term of the agreement. And when you think of some of that challenging margins that the industry has, as Darren highlighted, this is a great opportunity for us to utilize assets across the whole industry better and more effectively to increase the profitability and return on these assets by all providers. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:25:02Maury, I don't have a crystal ball and it's probably not appropriate that I wax lyrical on pricing. So I'll just put those out as two caveats. In terms of what gives me hope, I don't think certainty is on the table is probably a few things. Number one, I think the current trend is encouraging. So it's not just AI that does inference from trends on data. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:25:36So I think that is an encouraging component. Secondly, the market has previously been irrational. So when prices create NPV negative outcomes, I don't believe that that's sustainable. So at some point the market has to shift from irrational to rational. I don't think that's a particularly astute observation, but I think that transition has to take place because it's just not sustainable to have that level of irrationality leading to negative NPV outcomes. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:26:12Eventually, given the amount of capital that we deploy within our industry, I think economics have to drive our pricing decisions. And I'm hoping, maybe not in any given day or any point in time, but over the medium to longer term, that's the axiom that's reflected in our go to market decision making. The other thing that I think is interesting to draw inference from in terms of observable comps is that looking across other jurisdictions globally, you see more sanguine behavior. So if it seems to work there, it might work here. Again, given the commonality of the economics overall for our industry, particularly how much we have to invest. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:27:04Let's make sure that we get a proper ROI on that investment. Having said that, I think what you want out of an investment in TELUS is to hope for the best, but plan for the worst, which is why we're fanatical on the ANPU front, which is why you've seen a 10% unit cost to serve improvement. Next, I think there's not many organizations that you're going to find anywhere in the world on telecom that's getting backstopped the way we are with TELUS Digital. And so that drives everything from hygiene cost efficiencies from labor arbitrage to the AI enablement of our business, which provides huge productivity benefits that manifest themselves in better ABPU results even in a pressurized ARPU environment. And that is a distinguished or differentiating capability of our organization. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:28:10Next, what else differentiates TELUS? We're not a one trick pony on wireless. If you look at our wireline business, we're the only one that's growing there as it relates to net adds. We've had a tremendous amount of consistency in terms of data revenue growth and I would expect that to expand prospectively because we have a lot of product differentiation within this area. You see the moves that we're making on home energy, you see the success that we've had within our security business, you see what we're striving to do on home health. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:28:54Effectively what we're doing is to say, okay, we spent all that money on broadband infrastructure, wireless and fiber, let's get economies of scope out of that fixed cost infrastructure by delivering new services over existing facilities. And the beauty of that is those new services aren't getting commoditized. So if there is aggressive pricing activity taking place on one product, well, we've got six other products where that's not occurring. And that's true for TELUS, but it's not true for our competition. And I think that's a massively distinguishing factor for our organization. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:29:35And then lastly, we have our emerging businesses. And you heard Doug's comments as it relates to the economics on health and my comments in terms of what the future looks like, but it's not just the growth attributes of those business that are differentiated from telecom pressures, but aligned with telecom in terms of the data analytic thesis along the way, but it gives us the topology of international exposure. If things are under duress in the Canadian market, we can enjoy an exposure in other geographic markets that are doing well. And I guess really what I'm saying is we've got a lot of elegant diversification within our portfolio that makes us very resilient. Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:30:23Great, thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:30:25Thanks, Mayor. Next question please, Carol. Operator00:30:28The next question is from Stephanie Price from CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead. Stephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World Markets00:30:33Thank you for taking the question. I just wanted to circle back on the towers for a minute. And I was hoping that you can unpack the interest savings versus the rent payments when you kind of talk about getting the net cash flow positive impact. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:30:48The combination of the interest savings plus the co low revenue are what would be the offset of the lease payments and our share of those because we are still owning 51% of that. That is the math in itself. And so I'll just leave it at that and we've built in and we've agreed to the model with our partner on those fronts and we're planning to execute to that level. Stephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World Markets00:31:21Sounds good. And then just on Qudo, Qudo reintroduced five gs plans at the flanker level. Obviously, we saw the similar thing to back to school last year. Just curious if you could talk a little bit about that strategy and positioning the flanker versus the flagship offerings as we head into back to school. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:31:39Dana, do you want to take that one? Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:31:42Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Stephanie. So I think what we've done across our offers is really look at three pillars related to customer economic value from a data size, roaming and speed tier perspective, device subsidy, and then the financing floor. And we've really done a lot of research on what we think customers are going gravitate towards and the features and functions that are aligned with our Ampu objectives. Reintroducing 5D back into Kudo made sense from that perspective because there were other value drivers that we are monetizing out of the flanker strategy. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:32:25So we're really trying to keep it commensurate with what customers are willing to pay for, what attracts them to the brand, what service level and device type that they're going to gravitate towards, and how that aligns with the overall economic value of the offer. So that's how we move towards that decision and it it, you know, I think I think we're pleased with some of the traction on the premium versus flanker differentiation, but there's more to go in that regard. Stephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World Markets00:33:00Thank you. Operator00:33:04You. Next question is from Vince Valentini from TD Securities. Please go ahead. Vince ValentiniManaging Director at TD Cowen00:33:12Hey, thanks very much. Things. One, Doug, can you just clarify the working capital of $223,000,000 outflow? Obviously, that's the part that does not include the contract assets. Any easy installment plans? Vince ValentiniManaging Director at TD Cowen00:33:27Is that something one off lumpy and will it recur in the second half? Second one, bigger picture, we're back to wireless, but let me try to take the crystal ball out of it, not predict the future, but just if the recent trend of slight improvement in pricing discipline were to be sustained, how long will it take for your wireless service revenue to get back to positive, versus the minus 1% clip you've been at? Is this something that's still going to take four or five quarters for all of the past pricing behavior to flow through, or are we much closer to an inflection point, again, the current price discipline holds? Maybe another way of asking that is, is there any way to quantify what percentage of your customer base is already repriced with very little risk of any further movement down? Thanks. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:34:21So on working capital, Vince, we expect working capital to be somewhat net neutral on free cash flow or on cash flow for the year. So it is the lumpiness of timing between just payables and receivables and the seasonality that our industry sees. So there is no expectation that will be a drain on cash for the full year. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:34:46Thanks for the disguised question on quarterly ARPU forecasting, Vince. I appreciate that. Of course, for me to give you a precise answer, I would have to know the trajectory of the recovery for the industry on a macro basis. I'll try to answer your question with two components. One is the majority of our base has been repriced. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:35:13I won't be precise as to the exact percentage in that regard, but it is the majority. And if there is a continuity of the performance, would hope within the next three to four quarters, we would achieve the inflection point that you're alluding to in that regard. Vince ValentiniManaging Director at TD Cowen00:35:44That helps. Thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:35:47Thanks, Vince. Next question, please. Operator00:35:50The next question is from Tim Casey from BMO. Please go ahead, Tim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital Markets00:35:54Yes, thanks. Two for me. Doug, you mentioned there was a variety of drivers on the fixed data line, which was up 3%. I'm just wondering if we should think of that as a sustainable number into the back half of the year and into 2026, given what you've seen in terms of competitive activity and your continued efforts in out of footprint? And secondly, just maybe if you could an update on some of the other deleverage drivers, I guess particularly real estate. Tim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital Markets00:36:30How are you thinking about what paths you might choose there? And what are the interim monetization patterns you're going to see as you sell some stuff? Thank you. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:36:43Daniel, you want to take the fixed component first? I think you've got a pretty robust response to that, to say the least. And then Doug, why don't you do real estate? Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:36:58Sure. Thanks very much for the question, Tim. So on fixed data growth, I think we've definitely shown a lot of consistency as Darren highlighted in his remarks. I think the other element underpinning that is the diversity of the contribution. So when you look at the diversity of that contribution, you can see that there's strong growth across a bundle and portfolio of services from Internet to other contributing elements, including our security portfolio, but also with respect to the business growth that helps support that fixed revenue profile. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:37:38Naveen may want to top up on that, but I think that diversification certainly helps with the continuity. Maybe the last comment I'll make is that you can see, I believe, that while we're growing sustainably and consistently, we are also growing profitably. So whether that's in footprint or out of footprint, we're really looking at ensuring that our value propositions, our pricing, and our customer acquisition are commensurate with driving profitable consumer growth, and ensuring that we leverage our existing customer base to grow into from a household standpoint, so that we're able to achieve that at a lower cost of acquisition. So I believe that there's good sustainability in that growth profile and we're being very disciplined in terms of how we're seeking that growth and we're continuing to build our diversification accordingly. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:38:37Just before Doug goes, given the strength of the story here is not relegated exclusively to consumer. Naveen, you like to top up on a B2B basis and the opportunity that you see there on the performance on the TBS front across SMB and mid market, both today's performance, but also potential? Navin AroraEVP and President - TELUS Business Solutions, TELUS Health, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods & TELUS Partner Solutions at TELUS00:39:04Yeah, thanks, Darren. I'd be happy to. I think the first thing I would say is that, you know, we've continued to outrun competitive and pricing challenges with volume, And we're doing that both on the fixed and the wireless side where we're seeing strong loading both in our incumbent areas as well as nationally. So, we continue to see opportunities to grow market share across the country. And what I think is really nice to see is that our ability to drive product intensity is continuing to accelerate and improve. Navin AroraEVP and President - TELUS Business Solutions, TELUS Health, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods & TELUS Partner Solutions at TELUS00:40:00And that's really on the back of strong customer experience capabilities from the TELUS business team and customers seeing that as a key differentiator and making decisions to make product decisions that are beyond just one product. So I think that's been really great. Our IoT business continues to grow well. We're monetizing five gs, both on connectivity as well as associated industry solutions and data capabilities, private wireless network doing really well as an example in that regard. And just lastly, we continue to focus strongly on our margin profile. And as Darren mentioned, with the strong assets we have in TELUS Digital, continue to drive AI and other automation and digital capabilities in the business and improving both our customer experience and cost profile concurrently. So I'll leave it at that, Terren. Back to you. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:41:14Thank you, Navin. Doug? Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:41:15Yes, so on real estate and other delivering opportunities, we have three or four other buckets. So real estate itself, as you may recall, we had approximately 200 properties that we're looking at and that would equate to a 2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 portfolio that we could roll into a REIT when the scale was appropriate to do so. That would include over 5,000 rental units depending on the full rollout. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:41:47We're still a couple probably a couple of years away from getting that scale and the build program. We do have three buildings coming live early twenty twenty six. But in the meantime, we are still rationalizing real estate. You would have even seen in this quarter, there was in the other line a real estate transaction, which generated more cash for our organization and we'll continue to do that where we can rationalize real estate and not under the development side, but we're building an asset of consequence, pruning where necessary and continuing to drive long term value of from that asset. We still have we've only completed three of 31 central offices on the copper decommissioning side. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:42:31So we still have a significant amount of room to go as well on our copper monetization. We've recycled over five tons so far and generating double that almost 10,000 tons of greenhouse gas reductions from the recycling of that copper. And so again, that $1,000,000,000 opportunity we have is probably only in its less significantly less than 10% from an execution perspective, but we actually have sight to getting to those remaining 31. And then we have our call it our pruning opportunities where we do have ventures in certain business opportunities that are not necessarily in our strategic long term footprint and you've seen a couple of those monetizations as well. And you'll continue to see those in the tens of millions over the next few quarters. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:43:29And then probably mid term, we still have the partner opportunity. I think Darren referred this to this as well on both health and TAC, but as we build these assets a consequence and you've seen the especially the accelerated growth in TELUS Health that there is definitely a lot of interest in bringing in partner relationships as well as partner interest on inbounds to us of can they how can they help us grow that business. Tim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital Markets00:44:00Thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:44:02Thanks, Tim. Next question please, Karl. Operator00:44:05The next question is from Drew McReynolds from RBC. Please go ahead. Drew McReynoldsMD - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital Markets00:44:10Yes, thanks very much. My question just I think bigger picture and probably to start off for you, Darren, on, I guess, Canada's sovereign AI push here with respect to the ecosystem and infrastructure, and it all seems very fresh. And of course, I think Canadian telecom investors are just wondering kind of what the role of traditional telcos like yourself will be in this broader ecosystem. We've seen some news announcements from many operators here. Just love to get your sense of where you think the biggest incremental revenue growth opportunities are potentially within this ecosystem. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:44:58I'm going to be tight, not expansive on this, because I'm very frustrated with thought leadership and intellectual property leakage here in terms of the strategy that we have been pursuing. So three areas for me that I think are interesting. One is there's a huge opportunity on the sovereign AI factory upfront that we are ideally positioned to leverage on an optimized basis, particularly given our relationship with NVIDIA and where we can take that on a progressive basis in terms of compute power and how that can be leveraged on both an inference and on a training basis and that duality is important as well as our sustainability thesis, getting into the realm of liquid cooling and the like. And I think we have an opportunity there to play a pivotal role in that regard. You have to be mindful that telcos are originators, carriers, deliverers, stores of data. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:46:27So our position here including within the broadband infrastructure and security front is exceedingly strong. So that would be component number one. Component number two is the ingestion of AI within our business. And the upside opportunity there, I don't think has any limits in terms of what it can do for us at a productivity level on go to market operations from sales to service to care to assure to billing and collection in that regard as well as the cost efficiency attributes. And then thirdly is the external go to market opportunity within TELUS Digital Solutions led by Tobias and his team. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:47:25And we are unique with this asset on the TELUS Digital Solutions front, which is both a fantastic enabler for TELUS Corporation proper, but is also a terrific vehicle to take our AI solution set out into the external market on a global basis. And in some cases, but not limited to recycling the product factory that TELUS is on the AI upfront in terms of our ecosystem developing trial testing, using and scaling these services and proving it out. And of course, then taking that particular show on the road with Telesdigital Solutions. Tobias, maybe I'll ask you just on the latter point that has less competitive sensitivity to it, just to talk about our attributes on this front and why we like our competitive positioning in this regard. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:48:32Yes, thank you, Darren for the question. I would say that and I mentioned this on the TELUS Digital call earlier that this second half of the year we're seeing a real transition in the marketplace from proofs of concept to actual production level deployment of AI. And one of the most exciting things for us at TELUS Digital is to work with TELUS as customer zero to really prove these concepts out at scale, and that gives us a big differentiator versus most of our competitors, who don't have a built in customer zero. I can give you two quick examples. TELUS Expert Messenger, has been launched. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:49:17It's our asynchronous messaging customer support platform. And because it's async, it's ideally suited for AI in its current state. I think we've all experienced AI can at times be slow, at times you have to ask it, you have to really coax the answer out. So something asynchronous perfectly positioned for AI. We launched it this year. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:49:42We've been able to improve first contact resolution by nine percentage points, a 25 reduction in agent attrition, which goes to speak how much if you deploy AI properly, how much it improves, team member experience. And when we included AI in platform, we got a 13% improvement in average handle time. Another example is our agent trainer, which we've launched with TELUS with other clients as well. And I think that the example of how powerful an AI based agent trainer is is we looked at, the bottom quartile, putting them into an AI agent trainer within thirty days. 80% of the bottom quartile were top quartile performers, and also concurrently driving a customer satisfaction score uplift of 16% within that cohort. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:50:46So, those are illustrative examples of taking proofs of concept and taking them to a full production, and I think, really allowing us to be leaders, especially in contact centers for global deployment. Drew McReynoldsMD - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital Markets00:51:07Thank you. You, both. That's really helpful. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:51:11Thanks, Drew. Next question, please, Carl. Operator00:51:13The next question is from Benjamin Swinburne from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Benjamin. Benjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan Stanley00:51:19Great. Thank you. Two questions. I wanted to ask about the Internet business and then maybe come back to AI and data centers. So on Internet, some comment in your prepared or in your earnings docs about churn being up year on year and sort of competitive intensity. Benjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan Stanley00:51:36I guess when I think about your brand and your fiber network, I think it's really well positioned to win in the market. So just wondering if you guys had any more color on sort of what's happening churn and competition and whether you have any expectation for those trends to improve over the next couple of quarters. And then just back to this sort of tying AI and the data center businesses together, is there an appetite or plan to deploy capital at TELUS towards new data center construction? I'm sure you're well aware Bell's been making a lot of news on that front. I'm just curious if you think that's an interesting opportunity or maybe not the best use of capital from a TELUS perspective. Thanks so much. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:52:20Dave, you want to take the first part on that, if you don't mind, and maybe talk about what we've done on pricing related to wireline economics, but also where we're going in terms of our churn improvement measures. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:52:37Absolutely, Ben. Thank you for the question. So as we stated, we have seen some upticks in churn not to our liking. We've been a very strong proponent and delivered on significant customer loyalty quarter after quarter. So even when we see some small changes we take that very, very seriously. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:53:00We have seen affordability constraints across the consumer environment and aligning with customers on what their price preferences are and ensuring that we right size bundles towards their preferences. But I think that the key element here is that we're really leaning in and working with Tobias to leverage AI on churn propensity, on churn early identification, on aligning pricing models, and we're seeing goodness with respect to making sure customers are seeing more consistency in their pricing and more opportunities to drive value into their households through other streaming or other bundles that we offer. So I think overall, we're not happy with the trajectory that we've had in the past. We're taking very significant measures to ensure that we improve that trajectory, and we're continuing to leverage the assets that we're known for with respect to the AI capabilities, the loyalty and customer service experience improvements, and the bundling capacity of ensuring that customers see more than just one product value in terms of our holistic bundle and our product roadmap will continue to improve in that regard. Benjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan Stanley00:54:20That's helpful. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:54:21And in terms of the next question, I guess the response could be best characterized as being fortuitous for us because TELUS had previously invested significant capital in the development of world class, world leading data centers in both Remuski and in Kamloops. And when I say world class, we put a lot of effort and capital into the construction of those facilities to ensure that we optimized for power. We chose locations that had minimal seismic susceptibility and had sustainability and security attributes and broadband connectivity that was truly second to none. So we are recycling these facilities into our sovereign AI factory. So we're completely bootstrapped if you will on that front, which means the capital required to undertake this activity in partnership with NVIDIA, it's not nothing, but it's effectively de minimis because we're leveraging an existing asset. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:55:44And not only does that help us on the affordability or the capital efficiency upfront, it helps us on the speed upfront, as well as the longevity in terms of how we can evolve the compute power and sustainability characteristics going forward. And that's quite a potent and highly differentiated story. The only other thing I would say on this front is, as these opportunities continue to evolve, it's not unforeseeable that we could also look at partnership opportunities there to bring in capital to support undertakings of this nature given our advantaged position, not unlike what we've just done with the case on tower monetization. So lots of latitude and optionality here and there's nothing like sweating an existing capital asset to get a second life, if you will, on a return basis and that's what we're doing. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:56:56Thanks, Darren. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:56:58Thank you. Carl, we have time for two more questions, please. Operator00:57:02Very well. The next question is from Matthew Griffiths from Bank of America. Please go ahead, Matthew. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch00:57:08Hi. Thanks for taking the question. So on the towers, you mentioned, that the plan or part of the strategy is to have the have Terion build new towers and expand the business. So obviously, the monetization has benefits on deleveraging. This sounds like it has the potential to allow you to expand that business without necessarily having capital on the balance sheet. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch00:57:35So I was just wondering if you could maybe talk about that and if the, any bills would be kind of debt financed by Terion, maybe that would be separate than what would I you're consolidating it, so maybe it it ends up on your balance sheet anyway, but just how that idea of, deploying capital may have factored in. And on the same idea of capital, I thought I heard Doug I thought I heard you say that you were exploring or doing some partner build activity, and I was wondering if that related to fiber. I just wasn't sure if I heard that right, but, obviously across the industry we see a lot of this type of model where people partner up and there's a third party capital comes to contribute to fiber builds. So just curious if I might be a short question, maybe I heard that wrong, but if you could expand on that, if there's anything there would be helpful. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:58:32Yes, so Terion will build the future towers for TELUS and it will be funded by both us and our partners. So there is an opportunity there for cash flow opportunity, but because we do consolidate it, it will show up in TELUS' books with the offset to our partner funding. So it will still be a net cash differential, but that's all built into the model when I talked about our model going forward. And yes, on the partner planning, we're already using third party partners in the West and building fiber. We are looking and started the same in the East. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:59:19And so it would right now be focused on fiber, but it's not limited to as Darren just highlighted on data centers and other initiatives. So I would say, yes, that was the reference in mind was to Fiverr, but it is a great relationship going forward and other measures. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch00:59:38And can I follow-up on that just the next thing that comes to mind is how much you mentioned, I think, earlier the 2,000,000,000, being devoted to build in the East? Is that a combined number? And is that a fifty fifty number with a partner? And lastly sort of anything you can say about the number of passings that this might be able to generate in the East? Thanks. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:00:09That is a number related to the activity. How many balance sheets support that number remains to be determined. And as it relates to homes passed, think let's leave that within the competitively sensitive category And we will show our actuals against the investment prospectively in terms of that program. I think the important thing to highlight is a comment that Zainul made. We will be smart and strategic as it relates to this deployment. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:00:50We're not coming in just to offer the same old, same old in terms of Internet, but at yet another hollow discount, we're looking to bring value and affordability to customers, but we want to ensure that customers get to enjoy the full portfolio of teleservices ranging from health and security to smart energy and other ones that we have on the boil. And finally, have an Acxiom in terms of the economics of our expansion, which is that it is value accretive for the organization. And when we highlight that, I think we've got the track record and the empirical evidence to back it up, because if you look at our fiber deployment in the West, it is truly world leading. There's not another organization that can match the success that we have realized on that front related to economics, product intensity, where we're 3.4 products on a per household basis, what we've been out to achieve on average revenue per home, the lowering of churn, the lowering of cost to serve through truck rolls along the way, it's just tremendous. The penetration rates that we've secured within the communities overall would be a world best result. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:02:20So we're bringing that intellectual property to bear and we're going to live up to the axiom of building value, not just RGUs. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch01:02:31All right, great. Thank you so much. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS01:02:33All right, we'll take our last question please. Operator01:02:36The final question is from Karin Venkat from Barclays. Please go ahead. Kannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at Barclays01:02:41Thank you. Karin, maybe a long term question on the pricing structure within the market itself. When you think about the new to Canada market, looks like structurally that's going to be smaller. And then convergence, I mean, just given your own fiber plans and what's going on in the rest of the industry, it feels like you know, everybody's just going to converge with respect to bundles. So when you think about the flanker strategy or tiering the market across prepaid, flanker, and then of course the premium brands, does that tiering feel like it's too much for a market business? Kannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at Barclays01:03:18And is there an opportunity here to maybe by actually tiering the market less? And, you know, so any thoughts on that longer term in terms of? And then secondly, on the balance sheet side, just given what's going on in the industry right now, and even if we do have a recovery in the next three or four quarters, it feels like the revenue growth rate we are heading towards is going to be slower than maybe what we saw, say, five years ago. Is three times leverage still the right number, or as industry growth settles at a slightly lower level, should the leverage level drift closer to maybe some of your global peers? Thanks. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:04:02Hey, Zano, do you want to take the first part of that question from premium to flanker on that front, and then Doug and I will cover the balance sheet piece later. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS01:04:16That sounds good. Thanks for the question. I think the answer is that it has to be dynamic. And it's not just an ARPU level of sort of delineation across these brands and offers. It's an AMPU level. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS01:04:32And I think what we've seen is you know as Darren highlighted irrational behavior over the last little while in the market relative to the cost of acquisition, the three parameters I've talked about in terms of the promotional subsidy element, the device financing floor, rate plans commensurate with sort of the value in those plans. So I think we have to take a dynamic approach consistently and continue to evolve our strategy on an AMPU basis. I also think that when it comes to bundles, it's not just about wireless and wireline as we've discussed. It's about having other capabilities in the bundle that are delineated to that market demographic. You're certainly correct in saying that as we've seen along with the rational behavior, the sort of immigration trends, again that might not be forever. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS01:05:29So I think that we're going to consistently be dynamic. We're going to consistently evaluate the market based on what we think are the right winning strategies to attract the demographic at the right ARPU and AMPU level. And I would say that given that we are seeing some rational return to rational behavior, there is opportunity to continue rightsizing what the winning strategies are with what the right service investment and the right promotional investments are for those different segments. If we see that change, we will adapt to that change accordingly. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:06:09In terms of growth, I think we're missing out on a lot of elements. We're taking a singular focus related to wireless and we're propagating it into the future with some negative assumptions associated with it. So building upon the comments Zano just made, would expect longer term progression here in a greater level of economic rationality along the way. But I think that alone discounts or does not fully value the benefits that we're going to get out of AI and the meaningful impact that that's going to have on our business from a sales service and efficiency point of view and I think that's worth reflecting on further. The other thing is, it leads out the wireline side of the business and we have a growing and profitable wireline side of our business that is a unique characteristic to TELUS and again aided and abetted or underpinned by the TELUS Digital organization. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:07:31We have an opportunity for national expansion. It's an attractive market for us to pursue in Ontario and Quebec. I guess it's our version of Zipline if you will, along that particular path. And our track record on fiber deployment is literally world best. So I think that's a nice growth opportunity. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:07:55We're loaded for bear on product differentiation. And I've highlighted this repetitiously on the call, but I think it's our job to squeeze economies of scope out of our fixed broadband infrastructure, but I think these services are attractive to both consumers and small businesses. I think we're continuing to exclusively focus on consumers And TELUS has as much combined upside on SMB and mid market as we do on the consumer front and I see that as being underestimated. And then lastly, we've got some pretty attractive emerging businesses on the health, agriculture and consumer goods side. And as it relates to three times net debt to EBITDA, I guess we could say we'll cross that bridge when we get to it in the fullness of time, but just so that you know, we're super scientific in the way that we model it. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:08:58So it's not just a finger in the air or we look at comps on an international basis. We actually do the science on the Pareto combination of cost of equity and cost of tax affected debt and we are a tax paying organization to determine how we can best minimize our weighted average cost of capital. And so three point zero is not a notional target. Three point zero actually equates to the minimization of our weighted average cost of capital through the Pareto combination of cost of equity and cost of tax affected debt. So that's a science number, not a thin air or comp number and we do that on the science front because we are material capital deployers. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:09:55And you don't have to look further than impairment test to know how much a 100 bit shift on the WACC means when you're deployers of capital. So we want to get the minimization of the WACC right, and right now it's three times net debt to EBITDA and we'll assess that on an annual basis going forward. Kannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at Barclays01:10:16Thank Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS01:10:17Thank you everyone for joining us today. Please feel free to reach out to the IR team with any follow ups. And for those of you in Canada, we wish you a nice long weekend. Operator01:10:29This concludes the TELUS twenty twenty five Q2 earnings conference Thank you for your participation, and have a nice day.Read moreParticipantsExecutivesRobert MitchellHead, IRDarren EntwistlePresident and CEODoug FrenchExecutive VP & CFOZainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer SolutionsNavin AroraEVP and President - TELUS Business Solutions, TELUS Health, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods & TELUS Partner SolutionsTobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTreeAnalystsJérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins GroupMaher YaghiManaging Director at ScotiabankStephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World MarketsVince ValentiniManaging Director at TD CowenTim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital MarketsDrew McReynoldsMD - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital MarketsBenjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan StanleyMatt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill LynchKannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at BarclaysPowered by Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release TELUS Earnings HeadlinesTELUS Corp (TU) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Highlights: Strong Customer Growth and Strategic InvestmentsAugust 4 at 3:13 PM | finance.yahoo.comTELUS Corporation (TU) Q2 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 1, 2025 | seekingalpha.comGENIUS Act: Cancel Your Money?A new law called the GENIUS Act could quietly trigger the most radical shift in American finance in decades. Backed by the government but powered by private corporations, this initiative paves the way for digital dollars—programmable, trackable, and outside your control. Once embedded into apps, banks, and retail systems, opting out may no longer be possible. But there’s still time to protect your financial freedom—if you act before the system goes fully live. | Priority Gold (Ad)TELUS Digital reports second quarter 2025 results, with incremental improvement in revenue growthAugust 1, 2025 | financialpost.comFTELUS Corporation - NOTICE OF CASH DIVIDENDAugust 1, 2025 | prnewswire.comTELUS reports operational and financial results for second quarter 2025August 1, 2025 | prnewswire.comSee More TELUS Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like TELUS? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on TELUS and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About TELUSTELUS (NYSE:TU), together with its subsidiaries, provides a range of telecommunications and information technology products and services in Canada. It operates through Technology Solutions and Digitally-Led Customer Experiences segments. The Technology Solutions segment offers a range of telecommunications products and services; network services; healthcare services; mobile technologies equipment; data services, such as internet protocol; television; hosting, managed information technology, and cloud-based services; software, data management, and data analytics-driven smart food-chain and consumer goods technologies; home and business security; healthcare software and technology solutions; and voice and other telecommunications services, as well as mobile and fixed voice and data telecommunications services and products. The Digitally-Led Customer Experiences segment provides digital customer experience and digital-enablement transformation solutions, including artificial intelligence and content management solutions. The company was formerly known as TELUS Communications Inc. and changed its name to TELUS Corporation in February 2005. TELUS Corporation was incorporated in 1998 and is based in Vancouver, Canada.View TELUS ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Earnings By Country U.S. Earnings Reports Canadian Earnings Reports U.K. Earnings Reports Latest Articles Palantir Stock Soars After Blowout Earnings ReportVertical Aerospace's New Deal and Earnings De-Risk ProductionAmazon's Earnings: What Comes Next and How to Play ItApple Stock: Big Earnings, Small Move—Time to Buy?Why Robinhood Just Added Upside Potential After a Q2 Earnings DipMicrosoft Blasts Past Earnings—What’s Next for MSFT?Visa Beats Q3 Earnings Expectations, So Why Did the Market Panic? 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PresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Good day, everyone. Welcome to the TELUS twenty twenty five Q2 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to introduce your speaker, Mr. Robert Mitchell. Please go ahead. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:00:09Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our second quarter twenty twenty five results news release, MD and A, financial statements and detailed supplemental investor information were posted to our website earlier this morning. On our call today, we will begin with remarks by Darren and Doug. For the Q and A portion, we will be joined by Zainul, Naveen and Tobias. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:00:27Briefly, prepared remarks, slides and answers to questions contain forward looking statements. Actual results could vary from these statements. The assumptions on which they are based and the material risks that could cause them to differ are outlined in our public filings with securities commissions in Canada and The U. S, including our second quarter twenty twenty five and our annual 2024 MD and A. And with that, over to you, Darren. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:00:48Thanks, Mitchie, and hello, everyone. In the second quarter, our team's commitment to operational excellence empowered TELUS to deliver another quarter of industry leading customer growth and strong financial performance. These results demonstrate the strength of our leading portfolio of bundled offerings across mobile and home and the strategic expansion of TELUS Pure Vibra connectivity to homes and businesses inclusive of Ontario and Quebec. We're delivering much more than just affordable Internet, we're providing Canadians with differentiated and unique competitive services, including AI fueled smart home energy management, next generation healthcare, affordable innovative security and exciting entertainment solutions. Our investment in Canada will be augmented by our recently announced $2,000,000,000 investment to expand broadband services in Ontario and Quebec. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:01:44This will allow TELUS to prudently progress national scale through smart broadband network builds and drive product innovation, competition, investment and affordability in Canada. The CRTC's wholesale fiber decision mirrors the access granted to Eastern based companies in the West and as well the wholesale access that TELUS is providing to cable companies on our broadband wireless network in Ontario and Quebec. Relative to our peers, TELUS stands out as the company committing to bold future focused investments, reflecting our confidence in the Canadian market over the longer term and our strategy of bundling wireless and wireline broadband services. Importantly, our track record aligns with the federal government's goals of unlocking private investment, building one Canadian economy by removing interprovincial barriers, addressing cost of living challenges for families, diversifying Canada's economy through driving innovation of Canadian IP and ensuring Canada is on the leading edge of AI, digital innovation and smart sustainability. Turning back to our strong second quarter performance, we achieved total mobile and fixed customer growth of 198,000 in the quarter. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:03:05This was driven by mobile phone and connected device additions of 167,000 alongside fixed customer additions of 31,000. The dedication of our team in delivering customer service excellence contributed to continued strong loyalty results once again this quarter. Notably, postpaid mobile phone churn was 0.9%, consistent with Q2 of last year as we realized our twelfth consecutive year below the 1% level. Looking at our financial results, we achieved solid and resilient TTEC EBITDA growth, including TELUS Health, up 4%, which is consistent with our Q1 results. In mobile, we drove phone net additions of 55,000 and connected device net additions of 112,000. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:03:58These results were supported by our ongoing focus on economic margin accretive customer growth. This is evidenced by our consistent industry leading lifetime revenue underpinned by our industry best churn results, which of course is the hallmark of our organization. Let's turn now and take a look at our wireline business. TELUS delivered another quarter of industry leading total fixed customer additions. Indeed, we were the only company within the industry to deliver positive net additions within the wireline sector. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:04:39This included 27,000 Internet net additions alongside industry best fixed data services revenue growth of some 3%. This is underpinned by our leading PureFibre offering and our consistent strategy of leveraging our superior portfolio of bundled products and services on a national basis that differentiate us meaningfully from the competition in a way that matters to customers. Furthermore, TELUS Health continues to demonstrate strong operating momentum globally, achieving operating revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of 1629% respectively. And Doug will comment shortly on what the EBITDA growth looks like on a normalized basis and how consistent that growth has been historically. Moreover, the team drove a very strong year over year increase in global lives covered to almost 160,000,000 inclusive of workplace options alongside continued organic growth expansion. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:05:49These results were fueled by product enhancements, expanding sales channels, including cross selling and effective cost management through technology and synergy optimization. Our team's deeply rooted dedication to putting customers first serves as the foundation for this success, and we're building on it. Since acquiring LifeWorks, we've realized $400,000,000 in combined annualized synergies. You may recollect that our original target in this regard was 150,000,000 to $200,000,000 This $400,000,000 includes $322,000,000 from cost efficiencies and $78,000,000 from successful cross selling strategies that are continuing to grow markedly. We remain on track to meet our goal of $427,000,000 by the 2025 and we will augment this materially with workplace options global synergies that are on the come. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:06:53We are excited to accelerate TELUS Health's growth momentum through 2025 and well beyond, on the path to very interesting and productive monetization strategies. The consistency of our results reflects our team's passion for delivering superior customer experiences over our world leading wireless and pure fiber networks. Our significant broadband network investments drive extensive socioeconomic benefits for Canadians in communities from coast to coast. Same time, they are enabling continued advancement in our operational, financial and customer experience performance. Looking ahead, our financial position and our operational outlook remains strong, supported by continued EBITDA growth and stable capital expenditures, resulting in a meaningful free cash flow expansion on a chronic basis prospectively. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:07:56This will be enhanced by significant value creation in our growth businesses and a multiplicity of asset monetization opportunities. In this regard, today we announced the definitive agreement with Akeis, who will acquire 49.9% interest in our newly formed Canadian wireless tower infrastructure operator, Terion. This initiative will monetize our world class tower infrastructure portfolio, creating long term value and strengthening TELUS' financial flexibility. Indeed, this allows us to accelerate balance sheet deleveraging and progress towards achieving our target ratio of three times net debt to EBITDA by 2027, whilst turning off our discounted dividend reinvestment program on a progressive basis over the same time period. Strategically, Terion will focus on building new towers for TELUS, who will be its largest customer from the start, while also developing partnerships to expand tower access across the industry and further monetize this valuable asset. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:09:16We are working with a Canadian partner in Lequess to support broad national wireless access for the benefit of consumers and small businesses across the country. This move also aligns with TELUS' commitment to infrastructure sharing, leveraging smart partnerships to extend the reach of our technology, while continuing to lead in network quality and services. Just as we are providing mandated wholesale access through the regulatory MVNO framework on our broadband wireless network across both our traditional operating territory and our expansion territories, and also enabling competitors to access our fiber infrastructure under the CRTC's pro competition wholesale framework, we are now extending that to our wireless infrastructure across Canada. This will enable broader use of our wireless tower real estate to maximize its utility for Canadians. Indeed, having a single company focused on tower expansion will positively impact all wireless providers' ability to deploy acquired spectrum to enhance coverage, capacity and service improvements for their customers. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:10:45Again, it's good for competition, it's good for investment, and competition and investment are synergistic. Importantly, our new tower initiative mirrors our position on Internet wholesale, Specifically, that fair access to infrastructure can foster meaningful competition, affordability and consumer choice, while incentivizing private investment along the way. I would like to thank Eros Woody Spadato, my longtime colleague, and TELUS, former Executive Vice President of Technology Strategy, for assuming the CEO role of Terring. I expect that he is going to deliver an excellent performance in this assignment. My sincere thanks as well to the TELUS and the KES team for working diligently and innovatively to bring this important initiative to fruition. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:11:48Finally, reflecting our TELUS team's long standing commitment to putting our customers and our communities first, In June, the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation held its second annual gala. Notably, the foundation raised more than $2,600,000 in sponsorships, cash donations, and in kind contributions to support the foundation's TELUS Student Bursary Fund. This was also complemented over and above the $2,600,000 with our partnership with CIBC in this regard to expand the Student Bursary Fund still further. Since its launch in 2023, the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation has provided over $4,000,000 in TELUS student bursaries, helping more than 1,000 students from underserved communities reach their dream of postsecondary education, whilst also affecting meaningful change within their communities through volunteerism. In closing, I'd like to express my gratitude to our team at TELUS for their efforts, their resiliency and their grit in executing on our consistent winning strategy to meet or exceed the commitments that we have to all of our stakeholders. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:13:06And on that note, let me turn the call over to Uncle Doug. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:13:10Thank you, Darren, and hi, everyone. TELUS had another very strong quarter of operating execution, financial performance and delevering activities. Mobile network revenue was down slightly as mobile phone and connected device subscriber additions as well as higher IoT revenue of 9% were offset by lower mobile phone ARPU. While the 3.3% decline in ARPU is reflective of the ongoing competitive pressures observed during the prior periods, as well as lower overage on roaming revenues, we are seeing an improved operating environment as market conditions stabilize. We saw ARPU trend improvements quarter over quarter across new activations, rate plan changes and customer renewals, reflecting our ongoing efforts to mitigate network revenue pressures. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:14:05Fixed data services grew 3% year over year, our eighteenth quarter of positive growth, driven by subscriber ARPU growth in Internet as well as security and automation. Additionally, fixed revenue was supported by higher managed services in the business area. GTEC adjusted EBITDA increased 3% alongside margin expansion of 100 basis points to 41.7%. These results were driven by our consistent emphasis on profitable customer growth and ongoing focus on cost efficiency and effectiveness and asset monetization progress. Health revenues and adjusted EBITDA grew 1629% respectively and adjusted margin expanded 180 basis points to 17.5. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:15:00This growth was driven by organic growth in Employer Solutions as well as business acquisitions, including workplace options. TELUS Health EBITDA excluding workplace options was over 20%, that is eight quarters in a row now of over 20% EBITDA growth in TELUS Health. Growth was also supported by various other services, including our PayVider vertical. In Digital, operating revenues and adjusted EBITDA were in line with expectations. Please refer to TELUS Digital's earnings release and analyst call commentary earlier today. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:15:40At the end of Q2, informed by TELUS Digital's most recent financial model refresh, we recorded a non cash impairment adjustment to goodwill. The key assumptions that were updated during the latest model included higher weighted average cost of capital, lower perpetual growth rate and lower cash flow forecast from pricing and margin pressures. You can find all the details of the impairment and assumptions underlying it in the notes to the financial statements of both TELUS and TELUS Digital. With this impairment, net income for TELUS was largely offset by the impairment after deducting non controlling interest share and basic EPS was zero. On an adjusted basis, net income was CAD $342,000,000 and EPS was CAD 0.22. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:16:29Capital expenditures excluding real estate declined by CAD 11,000,000 or 2%, primarily driven by the completion of certain projects in wireless and fibre network builds and the planned transition to fibre builds in partner build model for brownfield and new market areas. Overall capital intensity was 13% and unchanged over the period. Free cash flow of CAD535 million increased by 11% compared to the same period a year ago, driven by higher EBITDA as well as lower capital expenditures and interest paid. Looking ahead, we remain focused on driving towards achieving our 2025 targets, which we reiterated today. This includes TTEC, including Health operating revenues and adjusted EBITDA growth of 2% to 43% to 5% respectively. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:17:22Consolidated capital expenditures excluding real estate of CAD100 million are targeted to remain stable at CAD2.5 billion. Lastly, consolidated free cash flow for 2025 of CAD2.15 billion is also confirmed. As it relates to our balance sheet, the average term to maturity of our long term debt stands at thirteen years with a weighted average cost of CAD4.71. Additionally, our financial position remains robust and our leverage ratio declining to 3.7 times, down 20 basis points sequentially since the first quarter. As we progress through 2025, we expect continued improvements to our leverage ratio, including a net debt to EBITDA ratio by three times by 2027, alongside removing the discount associated with our dividend reinvestment program. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:18:14In June, we successfully raised CAD2.85 billion in hybrid securities across multiple offerings in Canada and The United States, building upon the CAD1.6 billion raised in April. These financings support deleveraging with 50% of the proceeds receiving equity treatment by the credit rating agencies. Subsequent to June 30, we completed our debt tender to retire CAD1.8 billion of securities in Canada and The United States for the repurchase in the amount of just under CAD1.6 billion, recapturing approximately or circa million of reduced future cash flow debt obligations. Our continued organic operational growth, including EBITDA expansion, declining capital intensity and free cash flow combined with the ongoing asset monetization initiatives will further strengthen our balance sheet. Notably, we monetized our wireless powers that were announced this morning will reduce our leverage by approximately 0.17 times on a pro form a basis. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:19:20Including this transaction, we expect to achieve leverage ratio of 3.55 times exiting 2025 as we progress towards our 2027 target of three times. The accounting for a Tappas Tower transaction was an equity transaction. There will be no debt on our balance sheet, we will be consolidating the entity of Terion. In addition, there'll be no impact to EBITDA. Free cash flow in our planning period will be positive from this transaction between interest reductions and the leasing opportunities as highlighted by Darren. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:20:00All the rent paid to Terren is at fair market value lease rates that you would see in the market. Looking ahead through 2025 and beyond, we are well positioned to drive sustainable performance as we maintain our focus on profitable growth. Our strategic initiatives in customer expansion, product innovation and service enhancement will further strengthen our market position and drive long term value creation. With that, Robert, back to you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:20:27Thanks, Doug. Karl, we're ready for questions, please. Operator00:20:31Certainly. The first question is from Jerome Dibre from Desjardins. Please go ahead, Jerome. Jérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins Group00:20:46Hey, thanks for taking my questions. First, I have I'd like to start on whether we should read anything in terms of strategic shift from your proposed privatization of TIAXT. I mean, does it mean there's a change in terms of the monetization path for other tech ventures that are adjacent to Telkom? Or the move is based on maybe more idiosyncratic items at Teladigital? Thanks. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:21:12Move is related to support the deleveraging goals of the organization. And I don't think you should read anything into that on adjacency basis to the other monetization strategies that we have with our emerging growth businesses. Jérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins Group00:21:32Okay. Thank you. And if you can maybe provide the financial details on the towers, maybe numbers about EBITDA of the entity? I recognize it's consolidated, but that would still be helpful. Thanks. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:21:45Yeah, we haven't disclosed the EBITDA, but you will see that all the towers are at fair market value rent. So I think it'd be fairly transparent on the number of towers we have. As mentioned, we will be consolidating, so there will be no impact on debt, no impact on EBITDA, and we will be free cash flow positive in all of our future modeling on an annual basis to TELUS when you bring in the business model that we have put forward and have agreed upon with our partner. Jérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins Group00:22:20Thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:22:22Thanks, Jerome. Next question please, Karl. Operator00:22:25The next question is from Mayor Yaghi from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:22:31Great. Thank you for taking my question. Doug, thanks for the additional disclosure this morning on the deal. You indicated that in the short term to I guess, the medium term, your free cash flow should be having a positive impact from the transaction. How should we think about the long term impact of this deal as you deploy more towers? Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:22:57I think there's in the deal, you know, a plan to deploy more towers. And what happens if we see more colocations on these towers if other of your peers begin to put their antennas on them. So that's my first question. Just a question on wireless. Darren, you indicated in your prepared remarks that you feel that the market is getting better in terms of its direction on price. Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:23:33What gives you, I guess, what gives you the view that this could be sustained? I think this is an important question that a lot of investors are trying to get an answer to that. The recent improvement in prices have the potential to be sustained over the medium term. Thank you. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:23:56On the first one, as you're well aware, the demand for data continues to increase. So within our model and our partnership with Terion, they're going to continue to build towers for capacity and densification for TELUS. In addition, they will continue to lease with other colos as you highlighted. The business model we have in front of us is that not only will we breakeven or be very positive or positive cash flow into the future, The co locate based on our current plan, which is very reasonable, will also keep us cash flow positive for the term of the agreement. And when you think of some of that challenging margins that the industry has, as Darren highlighted, this is a great opportunity for us to utilize assets across the whole industry better and more effectively to increase the profitability and return on these assets by all providers. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:25:02Maury, I don't have a crystal ball and it's probably not appropriate that I wax lyrical on pricing. So I'll just put those out as two caveats. In terms of what gives me hope, I don't think certainty is on the table is probably a few things. Number one, I think the current trend is encouraging. So it's not just AI that does inference from trends on data. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:25:36So I think that is an encouraging component. Secondly, the market has previously been irrational. So when prices create NPV negative outcomes, I don't believe that that's sustainable. So at some point the market has to shift from irrational to rational. I don't think that's a particularly astute observation, but I think that transition has to take place because it's just not sustainable to have that level of irrationality leading to negative NPV outcomes. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:26:12Eventually, given the amount of capital that we deploy within our industry, I think economics have to drive our pricing decisions. And I'm hoping, maybe not in any given day or any point in time, but over the medium to longer term, that's the axiom that's reflected in our go to market decision making. The other thing that I think is interesting to draw inference from in terms of observable comps is that looking across other jurisdictions globally, you see more sanguine behavior. So if it seems to work there, it might work here. Again, given the commonality of the economics overall for our industry, particularly how much we have to invest. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:27:04Let's make sure that we get a proper ROI on that investment. Having said that, I think what you want out of an investment in TELUS is to hope for the best, but plan for the worst, which is why we're fanatical on the ANPU front, which is why you've seen a 10% unit cost to serve improvement. Next, I think there's not many organizations that you're going to find anywhere in the world on telecom that's getting backstopped the way we are with TELUS Digital. And so that drives everything from hygiene cost efficiencies from labor arbitrage to the AI enablement of our business, which provides huge productivity benefits that manifest themselves in better ABPU results even in a pressurized ARPU environment. And that is a distinguished or differentiating capability of our organization. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:28:10Next, what else differentiates TELUS? We're not a one trick pony on wireless. If you look at our wireline business, we're the only one that's growing there as it relates to net adds. We've had a tremendous amount of consistency in terms of data revenue growth and I would expect that to expand prospectively because we have a lot of product differentiation within this area. You see the moves that we're making on home energy, you see the success that we've had within our security business, you see what we're striving to do on home health. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:28:54Effectively what we're doing is to say, okay, we spent all that money on broadband infrastructure, wireless and fiber, let's get economies of scope out of that fixed cost infrastructure by delivering new services over existing facilities. And the beauty of that is those new services aren't getting commoditized. So if there is aggressive pricing activity taking place on one product, well, we've got six other products where that's not occurring. And that's true for TELUS, but it's not true for our competition. And I think that's a massively distinguishing factor for our organization. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:29:35And then lastly, we have our emerging businesses. And you heard Doug's comments as it relates to the economics on health and my comments in terms of what the future looks like, but it's not just the growth attributes of those business that are differentiated from telecom pressures, but aligned with telecom in terms of the data analytic thesis along the way, but it gives us the topology of international exposure. If things are under duress in the Canadian market, we can enjoy an exposure in other geographic markets that are doing well. And I guess really what I'm saying is we've got a lot of elegant diversification within our portfolio that makes us very resilient. Maher YaghiManaging Director at Scotiabank00:30:23Great, thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:30:25Thanks, Mayor. Next question please, Carol. Operator00:30:28The next question is from Stephanie Price from CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead. Stephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World Markets00:30:33Thank you for taking the question. I just wanted to circle back on the towers for a minute. And I was hoping that you can unpack the interest savings versus the rent payments when you kind of talk about getting the net cash flow positive impact. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:30:48The combination of the interest savings plus the co low revenue are what would be the offset of the lease payments and our share of those because we are still owning 51% of that. That is the math in itself. And so I'll just leave it at that and we've built in and we've agreed to the model with our partner on those fronts and we're planning to execute to that level. Stephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World Markets00:31:21Sounds good. And then just on Qudo, Qudo reintroduced five gs plans at the flanker level. Obviously, we saw the similar thing to back to school last year. Just curious if you could talk a little bit about that strategy and positioning the flanker versus the flagship offerings as we head into back to school. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:31:39Dana, do you want to take that one? Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:31:42Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Stephanie. So I think what we've done across our offers is really look at three pillars related to customer economic value from a data size, roaming and speed tier perspective, device subsidy, and then the financing floor. And we've really done a lot of research on what we think customers are going gravitate towards and the features and functions that are aligned with our Ampu objectives. Reintroducing 5D back into Kudo made sense from that perspective because there were other value drivers that we are monetizing out of the flanker strategy. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:32:25So we're really trying to keep it commensurate with what customers are willing to pay for, what attracts them to the brand, what service level and device type that they're going to gravitate towards, and how that aligns with the overall economic value of the offer. So that's how we move towards that decision and it it, you know, I think I think we're pleased with some of the traction on the premium versus flanker differentiation, but there's more to go in that regard. Stephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World Markets00:33:00Thank you. Operator00:33:04You. Next question is from Vince Valentini from TD Securities. Please go ahead. Vince ValentiniManaging Director at TD Cowen00:33:12Hey, thanks very much. Things. One, Doug, can you just clarify the working capital of $223,000,000 outflow? Obviously, that's the part that does not include the contract assets. Any easy installment plans? Vince ValentiniManaging Director at TD Cowen00:33:27Is that something one off lumpy and will it recur in the second half? Second one, bigger picture, we're back to wireless, but let me try to take the crystal ball out of it, not predict the future, but just if the recent trend of slight improvement in pricing discipline were to be sustained, how long will it take for your wireless service revenue to get back to positive, versus the minus 1% clip you've been at? Is this something that's still going to take four or five quarters for all of the past pricing behavior to flow through, or are we much closer to an inflection point, again, the current price discipline holds? Maybe another way of asking that is, is there any way to quantify what percentage of your customer base is already repriced with very little risk of any further movement down? Thanks. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:34:21So on working capital, Vince, we expect working capital to be somewhat net neutral on free cash flow or on cash flow for the year. So it is the lumpiness of timing between just payables and receivables and the seasonality that our industry sees. So there is no expectation that will be a drain on cash for the full year. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:34:46Thanks for the disguised question on quarterly ARPU forecasting, Vince. I appreciate that. Of course, for me to give you a precise answer, I would have to know the trajectory of the recovery for the industry on a macro basis. I'll try to answer your question with two components. One is the majority of our base has been repriced. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:35:13I won't be precise as to the exact percentage in that regard, but it is the majority. And if there is a continuity of the performance, would hope within the next three to four quarters, we would achieve the inflection point that you're alluding to in that regard. Vince ValentiniManaging Director at TD Cowen00:35:44That helps. Thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:35:47Thanks, Vince. Next question, please. Operator00:35:50The next question is from Tim Casey from BMO. Please go ahead, Tim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital Markets00:35:54Yes, thanks. Two for me. Doug, you mentioned there was a variety of drivers on the fixed data line, which was up 3%. I'm just wondering if we should think of that as a sustainable number into the back half of the year and into 2026, given what you've seen in terms of competitive activity and your continued efforts in out of footprint? And secondly, just maybe if you could an update on some of the other deleverage drivers, I guess particularly real estate. Tim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital Markets00:36:30How are you thinking about what paths you might choose there? And what are the interim monetization patterns you're going to see as you sell some stuff? Thank you. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:36:43Daniel, you want to take the fixed component first? I think you've got a pretty robust response to that, to say the least. And then Doug, why don't you do real estate? Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:36:58Sure. Thanks very much for the question, Tim. So on fixed data growth, I think we've definitely shown a lot of consistency as Darren highlighted in his remarks. I think the other element underpinning that is the diversity of the contribution. So when you look at the diversity of that contribution, you can see that there's strong growth across a bundle and portfolio of services from Internet to other contributing elements, including our security portfolio, but also with respect to the business growth that helps support that fixed revenue profile. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:37:38Naveen may want to top up on that, but I think that diversification certainly helps with the continuity. Maybe the last comment I'll make is that you can see, I believe, that while we're growing sustainably and consistently, we are also growing profitably. So whether that's in footprint or out of footprint, we're really looking at ensuring that our value propositions, our pricing, and our customer acquisition are commensurate with driving profitable consumer growth, and ensuring that we leverage our existing customer base to grow into from a household standpoint, so that we're able to achieve that at a lower cost of acquisition. So I believe that there's good sustainability in that growth profile and we're being very disciplined in terms of how we're seeking that growth and we're continuing to build our diversification accordingly. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:38:37Just before Doug goes, given the strength of the story here is not relegated exclusively to consumer. Naveen, you like to top up on a B2B basis and the opportunity that you see there on the performance on the TBS front across SMB and mid market, both today's performance, but also potential? Navin AroraEVP and President - TELUS Business Solutions, TELUS Health, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods & TELUS Partner Solutions at TELUS00:39:04Yeah, thanks, Darren. I'd be happy to. I think the first thing I would say is that, you know, we've continued to outrun competitive and pricing challenges with volume, And we're doing that both on the fixed and the wireless side where we're seeing strong loading both in our incumbent areas as well as nationally. So, we continue to see opportunities to grow market share across the country. And what I think is really nice to see is that our ability to drive product intensity is continuing to accelerate and improve. Navin AroraEVP and President - TELUS Business Solutions, TELUS Health, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods & TELUS Partner Solutions at TELUS00:40:00And that's really on the back of strong customer experience capabilities from the TELUS business team and customers seeing that as a key differentiator and making decisions to make product decisions that are beyond just one product. So I think that's been really great. Our IoT business continues to grow well. We're monetizing five gs, both on connectivity as well as associated industry solutions and data capabilities, private wireless network doing really well as an example in that regard. And just lastly, we continue to focus strongly on our margin profile. And as Darren mentioned, with the strong assets we have in TELUS Digital, continue to drive AI and other automation and digital capabilities in the business and improving both our customer experience and cost profile concurrently. So I'll leave it at that, Terren. Back to you. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:41:14Thank you, Navin. Doug? Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:41:15Yes, so on real estate and other delivering opportunities, we have three or four other buckets. So real estate itself, as you may recall, we had approximately 200 properties that we're looking at and that would equate to a 2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 portfolio that we could roll into a REIT when the scale was appropriate to do so. That would include over 5,000 rental units depending on the full rollout. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:41:47We're still a couple probably a couple of years away from getting that scale and the build program. We do have three buildings coming live early twenty twenty six. But in the meantime, we are still rationalizing real estate. You would have even seen in this quarter, there was in the other line a real estate transaction, which generated more cash for our organization and we'll continue to do that where we can rationalize real estate and not under the development side, but we're building an asset of consequence, pruning where necessary and continuing to drive long term value of from that asset. We still have we've only completed three of 31 central offices on the copper decommissioning side. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:42:31So we still have a significant amount of room to go as well on our copper monetization. We've recycled over five tons so far and generating double that almost 10,000 tons of greenhouse gas reductions from the recycling of that copper. And so again, that $1,000,000,000 opportunity we have is probably only in its less significantly less than 10% from an execution perspective, but we actually have sight to getting to those remaining 31. And then we have our call it our pruning opportunities where we do have ventures in certain business opportunities that are not necessarily in our strategic long term footprint and you've seen a couple of those monetizations as well. And you'll continue to see those in the tens of millions over the next few quarters. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:43:29And then probably mid term, we still have the partner opportunity. I think Darren referred this to this as well on both health and TAC, but as we build these assets a consequence and you've seen the especially the accelerated growth in TELUS Health that there is definitely a lot of interest in bringing in partner relationships as well as partner interest on inbounds to us of can they how can they help us grow that business. Tim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital Markets00:44:00Thank you. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:44:02Thanks, Tim. Next question please, Karl. Operator00:44:05The next question is from Drew McReynolds from RBC. Please go ahead. Drew McReynoldsMD - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital Markets00:44:10Yes, thanks very much. My question just I think bigger picture and probably to start off for you, Darren, on, I guess, Canada's sovereign AI push here with respect to the ecosystem and infrastructure, and it all seems very fresh. And of course, I think Canadian telecom investors are just wondering kind of what the role of traditional telcos like yourself will be in this broader ecosystem. We've seen some news announcements from many operators here. Just love to get your sense of where you think the biggest incremental revenue growth opportunities are potentially within this ecosystem. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:44:58I'm going to be tight, not expansive on this, because I'm very frustrated with thought leadership and intellectual property leakage here in terms of the strategy that we have been pursuing. So three areas for me that I think are interesting. One is there's a huge opportunity on the sovereign AI factory upfront that we are ideally positioned to leverage on an optimized basis, particularly given our relationship with NVIDIA and where we can take that on a progressive basis in terms of compute power and how that can be leveraged on both an inference and on a training basis and that duality is important as well as our sustainability thesis, getting into the realm of liquid cooling and the like. And I think we have an opportunity there to play a pivotal role in that regard. You have to be mindful that telcos are originators, carriers, deliverers, stores of data. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:46:27So our position here including within the broadband infrastructure and security front is exceedingly strong. So that would be component number one. Component number two is the ingestion of AI within our business. And the upside opportunity there, I don't think has any limits in terms of what it can do for us at a productivity level on go to market operations from sales to service to care to assure to billing and collection in that regard as well as the cost efficiency attributes. And then thirdly is the external go to market opportunity within TELUS Digital Solutions led by Tobias and his team. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:47:25And we are unique with this asset on the TELUS Digital Solutions front, which is both a fantastic enabler for TELUS Corporation proper, but is also a terrific vehicle to take our AI solution set out into the external market on a global basis. And in some cases, but not limited to recycling the product factory that TELUS is on the AI upfront in terms of our ecosystem developing trial testing, using and scaling these services and proving it out. And of course, then taking that particular show on the road with Telesdigital Solutions. Tobias, maybe I'll ask you just on the latter point that has less competitive sensitivity to it, just to talk about our attributes on this front and why we like our competitive positioning in this regard. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:48:32Yes, thank you, Darren for the question. I would say that and I mentioned this on the TELUS Digital call earlier that this second half of the year we're seeing a real transition in the marketplace from proofs of concept to actual production level deployment of AI. And one of the most exciting things for us at TELUS Digital is to work with TELUS as customer zero to really prove these concepts out at scale, and that gives us a big differentiator versus most of our competitors, who don't have a built in customer zero. I can give you two quick examples. TELUS Expert Messenger, has been launched. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:49:17It's our asynchronous messaging customer support platform. And because it's async, it's ideally suited for AI in its current state. I think we've all experienced AI can at times be slow, at times you have to ask it, you have to really coax the answer out. So something asynchronous perfectly positioned for AI. We launched it this year. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:49:42We've been able to improve first contact resolution by nine percentage points, a 25 reduction in agent attrition, which goes to speak how much if you deploy AI properly, how much it improves, team member experience. And when we included AI in platform, we got a 13% improvement in average handle time. Another example is our agent trainer, which we've launched with TELUS with other clients as well. And I think that the example of how powerful an AI based agent trainer is is we looked at, the bottom quartile, putting them into an AI agent trainer within thirty days. 80% of the bottom quartile were top quartile performers, and also concurrently driving a customer satisfaction score uplift of 16% within that cohort. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:50:46So, those are illustrative examples of taking proofs of concept and taking them to a full production, and I think, really allowing us to be leaders, especially in contact centers for global deployment. Drew McReynoldsMD - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital Markets00:51:07Thank you. You, both. That's really helpful. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:51:11Thanks, Drew. Next question, please, Carl. Operator00:51:13The next question is from Benjamin Swinburne from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Benjamin. Benjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan Stanley00:51:19Great. Thank you. Two questions. I wanted to ask about the Internet business and then maybe come back to AI and data centers. So on Internet, some comment in your prepared or in your earnings docs about churn being up year on year and sort of competitive intensity. Benjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan Stanley00:51:36I guess when I think about your brand and your fiber network, I think it's really well positioned to win in the market. So just wondering if you guys had any more color on sort of what's happening churn and competition and whether you have any expectation for those trends to improve over the next couple of quarters. And then just back to this sort of tying AI and the data center businesses together, is there an appetite or plan to deploy capital at TELUS towards new data center construction? I'm sure you're well aware Bell's been making a lot of news on that front. I'm just curious if you think that's an interesting opportunity or maybe not the best use of capital from a TELUS perspective. Thanks so much. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:52:20Dave, you want to take the first part on that, if you don't mind, and maybe talk about what we've done on pricing related to wireline economics, but also where we're going in terms of our churn improvement measures. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:52:37Absolutely, Ben. Thank you for the question. So as we stated, we have seen some upticks in churn not to our liking. We've been a very strong proponent and delivered on significant customer loyalty quarter after quarter. So even when we see some small changes we take that very, very seriously. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS00:53:00We have seen affordability constraints across the consumer environment and aligning with customers on what their price preferences are and ensuring that we right size bundles towards their preferences. But I think that the key element here is that we're really leaning in and working with Tobias to leverage AI on churn propensity, on churn early identification, on aligning pricing models, and we're seeing goodness with respect to making sure customers are seeing more consistency in their pricing and more opportunities to drive value into their households through other streaming or other bundles that we offer. So I think overall, we're not happy with the trajectory that we've had in the past. We're taking very significant measures to ensure that we improve that trajectory, and we're continuing to leverage the assets that we're known for with respect to the AI capabilities, the loyalty and customer service experience improvements, and the bundling capacity of ensuring that customers see more than just one product value in terms of our holistic bundle and our product roadmap will continue to improve in that regard. Benjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan Stanley00:54:20That's helpful. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:54:21And in terms of the next question, I guess the response could be best characterized as being fortuitous for us because TELUS had previously invested significant capital in the development of world class, world leading data centers in both Remuski and in Kamloops. And when I say world class, we put a lot of effort and capital into the construction of those facilities to ensure that we optimized for power. We chose locations that had minimal seismic susceptibility and had sustainability and security attributes and broadband connectivity that was truly second to none. So we are recycling these facilities into our sovereign AI factory. So we're completely bootstrapped if you will on that front, which means the capital required to undertake this activity in partnership with NVIDIA, it's not nothing, but it's effectively de minimis because we're leveraging an existing asset. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS00:55:44And not only does that help us on the affordability or the capital efficiency upfront, it helps us on the speed upfront, as well as the longevity in terms of how we can evolve the compute power and sustainability characteristics going forward. And that's quite a potent and highly differentiated story. The only other thing I would say on this front is, as these opportunities continue to evolve, it's not unforeseeable that we could also look at partnership opportunities there to bring in capital to support undertakings of this nature given our advantaged position, not unlike what we've just done with the case on tower monetization. So lots of latitude and optionality here and there's nothing like sweating an existing capital asset to get a second life, if you will, on a return basis and that's what we're doing. Tobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTree at TELUS Digital00:56:56Thanks, Darren. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS00:56:58Thank you. Carl, we have time for two more questions, please. Operator00:57:02Very well. The next question is from Matthew Griffiths from Bank of America. Please go ahead, Matthew. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch00:57:08Hi. Thanks for taking the question. So on the towers, you mentioned, that the plan or part of the strategy is to have the have Terion build new towers and expand the business. So obviously, the monetization has benefits on deleveraging. This sounds like it has the potential to allow you to expand that business without necessarily having capital on the balance sheet. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch00:57:35So I was just wondering if you could maybe talk about that and if the, any bills would be kind of debt financed by Terion, maybe that would be separate than what would I you're consolidating it, so maybe it it ends up on your balance sheet anyway, but just how that idea of, deploying capital may have factored in. And on the same idea of capital, I thought I heard Doug I thought I heard you say that you were exploring or doing some partner build activity, and I was wondering if that related to fiber. I just wasn't sure if I heard that right, but, obviously across the industry we see a lot of this type of model where people partner up and there's a third party capital comes to contribute to fiber builds. So just curious if I might be a short question, maybe I heard that wrong, but if you could expand on that, if there's anything there would be helpful. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:58:32Yes, so Terion will build the future towers for TELUS and it will be funded by both us and our partners. So there is an opportunity there for cash flow opportunity, but because we do consolidate it, it will show up in TELUS' books with the offset to our partner funding. So it will still be a net cash differential, but that's all built into the model when I talked about our model going forward. And yes, on the partner planning, we're already using third party partners in the West and building fiber. We are looking and started the same in the East. Doug FrenchExecutive VP & CFO at TELUS00:59:19And so it would right now be focused on fiber, but it's not limited to as Darren just highlighted on data centers and other initiatives. So I would say, yes, that was the reference in mind was to Fiverr, but it is a great relationship going forward and other measures. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch00:59:38And can I follow-up on that just the next thing that comes to mind is how much you mentioned, I think, earlier the 2,000,000,000, being devoted to build in the East? Is that a combined number? And is that a fifty fifty number with a partner? And lastly sort of anything you can say about the number of passings that this might be able to generate in the East? Thanks. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:00:09That is a number related to the activity. How many balance sheets support that number remains to be determined. And as it relates to homes passed, think let's leave that within the competitively sensitive category And we will show our actuals against the investment prospectively in terms of that program. I think the important thing to highlight is a comment that Zainul made. We will be smart and strategic as it relates to this deployment. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:00:50We're not coming in just to offer the same old, same old in terms of Internet, but at yet another hollow discount, we're looking to bring value and affordability to customers, but we want to ensure that customers get to enjoy the full portfolio of teleservices ranging from health and security to smart energy and other ones that we have on the boil. And finally, have an Acxiom in terms of the economics of our expansion, which is that it is value accretive for the organization. And when we highlight that, I think we've got the track record and the empirical evidence to back it up, because if you look at our fiber deployment in the West, it is truly world leading. There's not another organization that can match the success that we have realized on that front related to economics, product intensity, where we're 3.4 products on a per household basis, what we've been out to achieve on average revenue per home, the lowering of churn, the lowering of cost to serve through truck rolls along the way, it's just tremendous. The penetration rates that we've secured within the communities overall would be a world best result. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:02:20So we're bringing that intellectual property to bear and we're going to live up to the axiom of building value, not just RGUs. Matt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch01:02:31All right, great. Thank you so much. Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS01:02:33All right, we'll take our last question please. Operator01:02:36The final question is from Karin Venkat from Barclays. Please go ahead. Kannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at Barclays01:02:41Thank you. Karin, maybe a long term question on the pricing structure within the market itself. When you think about the new to Canada market, looks like structurally that's going to be smaller. And then convergence, I mean, just given your own fiber plans and what's going on in the rest of the industry, it feels like you know, everybody's just going to converge with respect to bundles. So when you think about the flanker strategy or tiering the market across prepaid, flanker, and then of course the premium brands, does that tiering feel like it's too much for a market business? Kannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at Barclays01:03:18And is there an opportunity here to maybe by actually tiering the market less? And, you know, so any thoughts on that longer term in terms of? And then secondly, on the balance sheet side, just given what's going on in the industry right now, and even if we do have a recovery in the next three or four quarters, it feels like the revenue growth rate we are heading towards is going to be slower than maybe what we saw, say, five years ago. Is three times leverage still the right number, or as industry growth settles at a slightly lower level, should the leverage level drift closer to maybe some of your global peers? Thanks. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:04:02Hey, Zano, do you want to take the first part of that question from premium to flanker on that front, and then Doug and I will cover the balance sheet piece later. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS01:04:16That sounds good. Thanks for the question. I think the answer is that it has to be dynamic. And it's not just an ARPU level of sort of delineation across these brands and offers. It's an AMPU level. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS01:04:32And I think what we've seen is you know as Darren highlighted irrational behavior over the last little while in the market relative to the cost of acquisition, the three parameters I've talked about in terms of the promotional subsidy element, the device financing floor, rate plans commensurate with sort of the value in those plans. So I think we have to take a dynamic approach consistently and continue to evolve our strategy on an AMPU basis. I also think that when it comes to bundles, it's not just about wireless and wireline as we've discussed. It's about having other capabilities in the bundle that are delineated to that market demographic. You're certainly correct in saying that as we've seen along with the rational behavior, the sort of immigration trends, again that might not be forever. Zainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer Solutions at TELUS01:05:29So I think that we're going to consistently be dynamic. We're going to consistently evaluate the market based on what we think are the right winning strategies to attract the demographic at the right ARPU and AMPU level. And I would say that given that we are seeing some rational return to rational behavior, there is opportunity to continue rightsizing what the winning strategies are with what the right service investment and the right promotional investments are for those different segments. If we see that change, we will adapt to that change accordingly. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:06:09In terms of growth, I think we're missing out on a lot of elements. We're taking a singular focus related to wireless and we're propagating it into the future with some negative assumptions associated with it. So building upon the comments Zano just made, would expect longer term progression here in a greater level of economic rationality along the way. But I think that alone discounts or does not fully value the benefits that we're going to get out of AI and the meaningful impact that that's going to have on our business from a sales service and efficiency point of view and I think that's worth reflecting on further. The other thing is, it leads out the wireline side of the business and we have a growing and profitable wireline side of our business that is a unique characteristic to TELUS and again aided and abetted or underpinned by the TELUS Digital organization. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:07:31We have an opportunity for national expansion. It's an attractive market for us to pursue in Ontario and Quebec. I guess it's our version of Zipline if you will, along that particular path. And our track record on fiber deployment is literally world best. So I think that's a nice growth opportunity. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:07:55We're loaded for bear on product differentiation. And I've highlighted this repetitiously on the call, but I think it's our job to squeeze economies of scope out of our fixed broadband infrastructure, but I think these services are attractive to both consumers and small businesses. I think we're continuing to exclusively focus on consumers And TELUS has as much combined upside on SMB and mid market as we do on the consumer front and I see that as being underestimated. And then lastly, we've got some pretty attractive emerging businesses on the health, agriculture and consumer goods side. And as it relates to three times net debt to EBITDA, I guess we could say we'll cross that bridge when we get to it in the fullness of time, but just so that you know, we're super scientific in the way that we model it. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:08:58So it's not just a finger in the air or we look at comps on an international basis. We actually do the science on the Pareto combination of cost of equity and cost of tax affected debt and we are a tax paying organization to determine how we can best minimize our weighted average cost of capital. And so three point zero is not a notional target. Three point zero actually equates to the minimization of our weighted average cost of capital through the Pareto combination of cost of equity and cost of tax affected debt. So that's a science number, not a thin air or comp number and we do that on the science front because we are material capital deployers. Darren EntwistlePresident and CEO at TELUS01:09:55And you don't have to look further than impairment test to know how much a 100 bit shift on the WACC means when you're deployers of capital. So we want to get the minimization of the WACC right, and right now it's three times net debt to EBITDA and we'll assess that on an annual basis going forward. Kannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at Barclays01:10:16Thank Robert MitchellHead, IR at TELUS01:10:17Thank you everyone for joining us today. Please feel free to reach out to the IR team with any follow ups. And for those of you in Canada, we wish you a nice long weekend. Operator01:10:29This concludes the TELUS twenty twenty five Q2 earnings conference Thank you for your participation, and have a nice day.Read moreParticipantsExecutivesRobert MitchellHead, IRDarren EntwistlePresident and CEODoug FrenchExecutive VP & CFOZainul MawjiEVP & President of TELUS Consumer SolutionsNavin AroraEVP and President - TELUS Business Solutions, TELUS Health, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods & TELUS Partner SolutionsTobias DengelPresident - TELUS Digital Solutions & WillowTreeAnalystsJérome DubreuilVP & Research Analyst - Telecom, Media & Technology at Desjardins GroupMaher YaghiManaging Director at ScotiabankStephanie PriceEquity Research Analyst - Software and Services at CIBC World MarketsVince ValentiniManaging Director at TD CowenTim CaseyEquity Research - Telecom, Cable & Media Sectors at BMO Capital MarketsDrew McReynoldsMD - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital MarketsBenjamin SwinburneHead of U.S Media Research at Morgan StanleyMatt GriffithsResearch Analyst at Bank of America Merrill LynchKannan VenkateshwarManaging Director at BarclaysPowered by