Rogers Communications, Inc. CIBC Eastern Institutional Investor Conference

Welcome, Glenn. Thank you, Stephanie.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us.

Sure. There's a few themes in there. We came out with our back-to-school promotions. We launched them in July, a little bit earlier than usual. We wanted to set our own tone, and we've emphasized premium service rather than price. We've continued our feature-rich approach to our plans but launched them at price points that were familiar to the market. We've been disciplined with that. I'm pleased to have seen more discipline in the sector in the second and through the third quarter, through back to school, with not leaning in nearly as much on discounting as what happened in the first quarter. I think the first quarter was another reminder to our entire sector that all the discounting does is encourage churn.

At the end of it, even the one of us who had started the discounting, and it wasn't us, the one of us who had started the discounting, by the end of the quarter, all three of us had just had heightened levels of churn, increased pressure on pricing, and nobody was the winner through that. Nobody picked up share. I think we got a reminder of that lesson.

Through the second and the third quarter, the discounting has-- It's still very competitive, but we're not emphasizing discounting nearly as much. We have stayed away from it. The back-to-school numbers are not like what we have seen in prior years. The volumes have been down throughout this year. International student population is down, and in that environment, there's no sense chasing volume. There's no sense trying to energize a market that just doesn't have a substantial number of new customers coming in. We're focused on base management. Our churn levels are similar to prior year, up a very minor amount because we had a price action that we also brought in in quarter. Again, looking to try and help support ARPU and revenue growth longer term.

Even with that and our emphasis on base management has resulted in churn, roughly flat, as I say, up a minor amount year over year for the quarter. The volumes through this back-to-school season, I think sector-wide, certainly for us, the volumes are much more muted than we've seen in prior back-to-school seasons. That's okay. Our emphasis on base management allows us to look for growth through penetration gains, through reasonable price actions. The sector itself, through this quarter, is dealing with the regulatory action on our subscriber setup fees.

Yeah. We're, as a sector, looking to try and figure out how to offset the cost recovery from that through other means, whether it's delivery costs and what have you.

There are underlying costs to setting up a customer phone at a store counter and what have you, that we're still looking at trying to offset.

The impact of that regulatory action is going to roll through ARPU for the sector this quarter. The cost recovery efforts offset some of that. I think you are going to see some of that pressure this quarter and likely into the fourth quarter for the sector. Even with all of that, we are seeing with the reduced emphasis on discounting and with our price action, I think there is some stability coming into the market.

Okay That is a little bit more optimistic looking than where we have been in prior quarters.