Morning, everybody, and welcome to CIBC's Eastern Investor Conference. Thank you for joining us this morning. First up, we've got BCE, and we're very pleased to have Curtis Millen, CFO of BCE, here to provide us with an update and kick off the conference. Welcome, Curtis. That's hilarious. I know I'm CFO because I actually just had to tell my CEO I can't take it. Maybe we'll start off here, and let's make it as interactive as possible. If somebody has a question, please feel free to raise your hand and ask. Let's start off with the acquisition of Ziply. BCE has pivoted to the faster-growing U.S. fiber market. How do you think about the key building blocks for a successful U.S. fiber rollout here? Yeah, it's a good question, and frankly, we're happy that we've closed it. We closed it a little ahead of kind of the normal timeline, so we are up and running. Importantly, I think the first building block is the team. We acquired the assets, and we know fiber beats cable and fiber wins, but the team is very important. Like the Canadian team, the Montreal, like I'm in Montreal. I don't know anything about the Idaho market or Montana market. The good news is the team that's actually driven growth at Ziply is the same team that's going to drive Ziply under our ownership. I think that's the most important building block. The asset, of course, is very important. It's important to remember, kind of like here, fiber doesn't compete with other fiber. We are first fiber in market, and the opportunity for us is the U.S. market is just underpenetrated with fiber for 10 different reasons. The telcos over the last 10 years just haven't built out as much fiber as we have up here. Excuse me, where we're 75% odd penetrated with fiber, there's still about 50% in the U.S. There is quite a ramp-up of potential markets, but same team, fiber wins. It wins in Canada, wins in the U.S., kind of wins everywhere. That's important. The opportunity to keep building because they have so much core connectivity, core network. Their ability to build out efficiently beyond their existing ILEC footprint is pretty impressive. I think you put that together. We've got quite a nice ramp. The other thing, and we noticed it in diligence, we've seen it with others, their ability to drive penetration and just ramp up is pretty straightforward. I mean, I would have thought it was a bit more of a scatter plot, but you know they track week of May 13th, week of May 20th, week of May 27th from a couple of years ago, and you just kind of see the penetration ramp up over time. It's fairly consistent, which I like in my role because I can actually see and basically touch the revenue and EBITDA growth as you deploy fiber. I think ultimately, same old, same old, keep deploying fiber and driving subs. Let's talk about that fiber deployment. How do you think about that pace of the US fiber rollout and the evolving competitive dynamics in the US market? Yeah, and I mean, we do get that question a lot. It's a straightforward question. We're looking at double the footprint over the next three years in the U.S., right? Get to approximately 3 million by 2028. That's a doubling of the U.S. Over time, as we leverage our partnership with PSP Investments, just double our Canadian footprint in the U.S., i.e., you get from we're 8 in Canada, you get to 16 overall. I keep saying doubling because it is important to remember we are doubling our fiber footprint, but in the U.S., we only need 5 million locations outside of the Pacific Northwest. It's not a kind of lion's share of the U.S. market, but it's kind of one of those happy circumstances where a Canadian company actually brings scale to the U.S. fiber build. The U.S. fiber build, as it happens, will still double our Canadian footprint without getting in the way of any of the big folks, frankly. I mean, we're not interested in overbuilding AT&T or Verizon. It wasn't a good idea in cable markets 20 years ago. It's not our strategy. It's not what we're going to do. You build fiber, you take share from cable, and you get to your equilibrium. Frankly, as what we've seen with fiber players, it's just been smaller fiber players, right? The U.S. market is full of smaller folks, 50, 100, 150,000 locations. They move in, they represent kind of the first competition to cable, and they ramp up share, and they ramp up share, and we'll be no different. Let's talk about buy versus build in the US. How should we think about the guideposts BCE is using to assess maybe some of these bolt-on acquisitions in the markets versus building? Yeah, it's a good question. There's no predetermined way to do this. Ultimately, it's how do we drive free cash flow and drive return for shareholders? Every decision kind of goes through that lens. If there's an ability, like I said, there are many, many kind of mom-and-pop type shops that have already built fiber and are taking share from cable. If an acquisition like that unlocks the ability to build more, build faster, generate better returns, then we'll certainly consider it. Sounds good. I'm going to move on from Ziply unless anybody has a Ziply question in the audience. Nope. All right. Within Canada, let's talk about the pricing environment. Everybody's happy about that. You know it seems to be stabilizing here, and flanker and pricing was actually up double digits versus last year. How does BCE think about the Canadian wireless environment at this point and kind of heading into that emotional Black Friday period? Yeah, I'm always of two minds. I always think the prices could be a little higher, but certainly relative to a recent past, it is much more stable. I think in a world of positive immigration, positive net new to category, but just not what we've seen. I think you've seen carriers kind of slowly adjust to that environment, and frankly, chasing net adds is a bit of a fool's errand. Net adds are great, but free cash flow is better. Which is the most important metric? In my view, anyway, in my role, net adds at this point in time is not the right metric. Free cash flow, service revenue, free cash flow, anything that actually drives free cash flow and returns is what I'm much more focused on. Speaking of free cash flow, churn has been a bright spot last quarter. Maybe you could talk a little bit about churn reduction and some of the work that BCE is doing there. Yeah, last few quarters, right? 12 basis points. I think you'll continue to see that improve over time. The good news, bad news is other churn is lower than ours. There's no reason we can't get there, but it means that on a relative basis, we have more to improve. As you've seen in terms of our kind of customer experience improvements and more hardware upgrades, a little bit more keep the customer base you have as opposed to selling in the market. We still have better retail distribution on the gross ad side of the world, but far improved overall customer experience, whether that's self-serve, digital capabilities, more hugs, hardware upgrades. It's 20 different things that are all, frankly, somewhat lagging indicators, but we are seeing traction in the market now and expect that to continue. Maybe switching over to wireline, post the federal government's decision not to intervene in the CRTC TPA decision. How do you kind of think about the Canadian wireline environment? Yeah, look, I think from a policy perspective, I'll always disagree with it. I don't think it incents investments. I fundamentally will always disagree with their decision. They made that decision two years ago, and we've adjusted accordingly, right, in terms of our CapEx spend, our overall capital allocation. None of it is coincidental. Fundamentally, it still leaves us in Canada with 8 million fiber homes. Fiber is still going to beat cable over the long run in the market. I know I drink the blue Kool-Aid, but fundamentally, the market is telling us, right, subscribers prefer fiber over cable. We have 3 million locations that we've already built that don't have customers, whether that's hot homes or homes that we haven't penetrated yet. I think in a world of slowing growth in footprint, it's time to manage penetration. Again, a bit of a broken record, drive free cash flow, right? We're much closer to, I don't like saying equilibrium, but as we near 50-odd%, I think it's north of 50% where we're even longer tenured. As our penetration gets to a more normal level in markets, the incremental 1% of penetration is not the lever that's going to drive the most free cash flow for us. I do think focus on profitability and enjoy the overall cost efficiencies of a more fiberized network. With that answer, we're here in Quebec. That was a lot of answers. With that answer, we're here in Quebec. Maybe you could talk a little bit about BCE's strategy in Quebec. Sure. It's fairly straightforward. I think the rational business decision is dependent on kind of age and stage, right? We were south of 30% penetration here. Our cable competitor enjoyed lion's share of the market. As we built out fiber, I find it's difficult for a cable operator to protect that type of market share when equilibrium is nowhere near that level. As we've gone from kind of sub 30% to mid 40%, is it more important to continue on that steep rise of market share or react to market dynamics? Maybe one last question on wireline. Just in terms of the TPA decision, could BCE ever think about using TELUS's network in areas you're not in? Yeah, it's an opportunity for sure. We've had plenty of time to think about this. I think a few things. One, owner economics are always better, right? The fact that we have three quarters of Canada and we've built out fiber in a bundled world where fiber, I think, is becoming a more important buying decision than wireless or TV, right? Certainly home phone. Given that we have the owner economics there, we do have much more flexibility. I think the other thing that's interesting as we think about it west is we do own Bell Media. We have direct-to-consumer content. Our ability to bundle is not just mobility and internet, which is kind of how we've all thought about this, but it's really mobility, internet, and content. I mean, we have a pretty compelling kind of direct-to-consumer package that we can offer. Owner economics are just much better. The idea of entering a market with somebody else's fiber and being price aggressive against them doesn't make that much sense, again, if you're just trying to drive free cash flow. Makes sense. BCE has talked about a focus on non-regulated businesses, and I think we might see some of that in your Investor Day in a few weeks. Could you talk a little bit more about this and how do you think about your Canadian capital intensity trending over time as you focus more on these non-regulated businesses? Yeah, it's a good question. Again, it's not coincidental. I think a couple of things. One, we accelerated our fiber build in Canada. Our biggest CapEx spend in Canada is fiber build at the start of COVID. I mean, it sounds like a weird milestone, but ultimately, we accelerated our fiber build. We spent, call it, $3 to $3.5 billion more in CapEx over a three- to four-year period. It was the right thing to do for the community. It's the right business decision. Also, like fiber beats cable. The more fiber you have, the more you beat cable. The faster you have fiber, the faster you beat cable. Pretty straightforward logic. It did make sense. It also meant that, you know, coming out of 2025, we knew that the build in Canada was going to slow down. You start getting into less economic builds, footprint expansion. Obviously, the government decisions don't help to make those future builds more attractive from an economic return point of view. I don't think they're helping bridge the digital divide. We're always slowing down in Canada. Ultimately, the opportunity to do what we do best, which is build out fiber and drive penetration, it presented itself in the U.S. When we would have built out, you know, started accelerating in 2020, I would have assumed the opportunity in the U.S. would have kind of come and gone because telcos would have built it out, but they just hadn't. The opportunity is still there. Now we're in market and we're building out. Okay, I would say the bar has been raised on just about every CapEx request, right? The fact that we can build out fiber in the U.S., the fact that we can leverage our PSP Investments partnership so that we're only funding $0.20 to $0.25 on every dollar of fiber put in the ground raises the bar for every other capital initiative, not just fiber build, but everything else. I mean, the return hurdles just got higher. Good news story for me, a little bit tougher discussions for all the operators because the kind of CapEx Olympics just got tougher. We hosted a telecom tour in Montreal yesterday, and BCE was part of it. We talked to John Watson, who's your Head of Bell Business Markets. Obviously, this is a strategic focus for BCE. Maybe you can talk a bit about the positioning there and how you think about BCE's opportunity to capitalize on AI and business transformation here. Yeah, it's really interesting. I do think we're positioned, we're right at the confluence of it. If I take a step back, ultimately, for the last 145 years, what we've done is provide solutions to enterprise customers and governments. It's still what we're doing. I know AI is a great buzzword, but fundamentally, it's the same thing. We're providing end-to-end solutions for our clients. Some of that solution we own and we do it ourselves. Some of that solution we don't do. We should be outsourcing and partnering, right? It's no different in an AI world. Instead of HP and IBM 30 years ago, now we're partnering with Cohere and hyperscalers. We are not going to replicate a large language model. We are not going to step into the shoes of a hyperscaler. It's not the best use of our capital. Frankly, it's not a path we're heading down. The good news for us is we have the core connectivity. We have cybersecurity experts. We have the ability to actually help companies integrate and maximize value through a techco. We can build out the data centers and install the compute and the cooling. We have the relationships because of who we are and kind of long-standing relationships with hyperscalers and with the Cohere's of the world. We can provide an end-to-end solution at scale and now, like it's already in the ground, we're generating revenue and kind of true to who we are. We're not promoting, you know, existing data centers that are repurposed. We waited until we actually had contracts with generating revenue before we announced Bell AI Fabric. Obviously, since we've made that announcement, discussions kind of accelerate from there, but we wanted to make sure that it was actually a real business and we had understood our role in the ecosystem and started the ecosystem running as opposed to kind of AI washing. Oh yeah, absolutely. Of course. I find it interesting you say AI is a buzzword. Do you have any, I mean, you're CFO, Curtis, are you not yet seeing tangible margin opportunity? We're capturing. That's what I'm saying. We're a little conservative in how we want to talk about it. We could have been out there talking about our role in AI a year and a half ago, right? We waited until we had contracts signed and were generating revenue because we didn't want to just talk about AI without actually being able to explain the story and explain our role and what the opportunity is. I think a lot of companies are talking about it. I actually hope more companies do something about it because I do think it's going to be a real driver of the Canadian economy and Canadian enterprise. Adoption of technology is, I always think I'm taking a left turn here, I appreciate it, but adoption of technology for an economy like ours is going to be very important. We hope to be the backbone of that. I think we're well positioned, but I do think the adoption of use cases has to continue to happen. Genesis is not coming to the apps. I'm sorry? Genesis is not coming to the apps. I will see everyone there. I will see everyone there. Look, it's a real opportunity. It's a real opportunity. I think, you know, you don't have to squint too far into the future. I'm sure at all of your organizations, at ours too, it's not just, you know, the pure early adopters who are talking about AI. It's the finance team. It's the HR team. It's across our company where kind of obvious use cases, and every time you stare at something, there's another obvious use case, another obvious use case. I do think automation at scale continues to accelerate. Obviously, the government's going to have to play a role here, but the bigger enterprises, I think we're all going to be in the same spot of leaning in and leveraging technology to drive efficiencies. Let's drill down on that opportunity for Bell AI Fabric a little bit more. There was a big AI conference here yesterday. You know, the government's talking about a $2 billion AI spending target. How do you think about that Bell AI Fabric opportunity at this point? Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I do think I'm glad the government is leaning in. I do think they have a role to play. I think we have a role to play too. I mean, as we're kind of the backbone of broadband, I think we're in the right spot to be the backbone of AI capabilities. This isn't we'll invent every AI use case and widget. This is data centers, connectivity, cybersecurity, a techco's managed and professional services, but leverage our partnerships with hyperscalers and large language models and deliver end-to-end solutions so that, you know, it's a little closer to out of the box so that technology adoption accelerates. Sounds good. I'm going to switch to cost unless anybody has any more AI questions. How long before your excess megawatt to price and capacity impact on the model? I should have said this earlier. All the capabilities I laid out and what we're going to be able to provide, the most interesting thing is access to power and time to power. We've locked up over 500 megawatts of power. It's hydroelectric, it's clean energy, it's renewable, and it's now. Ultimately, it's build pacing. We already have sites up and running. We have contracts generating revenue. This is leverage when you see contracts and you can see revenue, build the site, off you go. This is very different than the old kind of colo, sell one rack, sell two racks. Where was a kind of SMB enterprise sales effort? This is an access to power, build data center, and then build the solution. We have the ecosystem, we have access to power. Now it's just pacing so that we're not ahead of ourselves. We're not behind and we're not ahead of ourselves opportunity-wise, if that makes sense. It's a bit more timing of CapEx now that we have the building blocks in place. Hi. No, that's fine. That's why I'm here. Because you're not just providing a box, but any infrastructure, you're providing the power. Yep. Is this like a very specialized? I am hesitating on the answer because I'm not an expert in REITs. Yes, it is building blocks of many different businesses that come together. I think of it as there's space and power, right? I mean, data centers, again, for one client, not multiple, you know, 50 different customers. That, it's connectivity, which is pretty straightforward. That's our fiber, connectivity, cybersecurity wrapped up. That gets sold with the connectivity, managed services, professional services. That's our bench of experts. We are all Canadian economy-wise going to be spending real money with the Salesforces, the Microsoft, the ServiceNows of the world. None of us are going to get discounts from them. It is going to be up to our enterprises and economy to generate the actual value out of that spend. We can help with that. You get to the other piece, which is kind of the compute, which we haven't actually invested in today, but we have that option given where we are. You have the large language models and the software where that's not us. We're going to partner with it. Of the value chain, we're here a little bit here, and we're just providing solutions on the rest. I do think we're kind of at the heart of the ecosystem, but it's not just going to be us. So. What's the return on the CapEx? Like a 10, 12% returns you guys are solving for to follow up on this question? What's the return on this CapEx? No, we're looking north of that. I mean, it's north of 12%. I mean, it's in the, yeah. The question for those on the phones was, what was the return on capital? Yeah. Okay. Any more? All right, let's move on to cost. We've got five minutes left, and I want to squeeze it in. You know, your cost per party has been upsized to $1.5 billion. How do you think about BCE's ability to take costs out of the business, and what are the near-term opportunities here? Yeah, I think it's a good news, bad news story, right? You get under the hood, and the original thought was, okay, let's automate. It's a little bit analogous to leveraging kind of the AI technology. There's just, you know, kind of the ServiceNows and the Salesforce and workflow automation. The thought was, you know, how do we digitize as much of the process as possible? You start looking at it and go, I don't want to digitize and automate 10 steps. I want to get rid of seven steps and automate the other three. It gives us comfort to go from $1 billion to $1.5 billion. Again, the $1.5 billion is by 2028. It's not like, oh, kind of job done. We all pat ourselves on the back at the end of 2028. I think for better or for worse, as a legacy telco, there are many more opportunities to simplify, simplify our internal kind of IT posture, simplify importantly our interaction with customers, which is part of the churn reduction and overall kind of NTS scores, like overall customer satisfaction. I think there are many more opportunities to digitize that experience and to streamline our processes. You don't have to squint too far to realize we're a 145-year-old company that's kind of been put together through M&A. It takes a little while to remove extraneous systems to actually simplify. We've done that. I quite like those investments because I can track the improvements both on a customer experience level, but also on a cost efficiency level. Plenty more to do. We have a real line of sight, but even after that, there's more to do. Marco mentioned on the last call, just stopping on divestitures here for a minute, that BCE views its infrastructure as a potentially valuable source of capital. Can you maybe walk through your thoughts on some of the infrastructure sales we've seen recently in the industry and how BCE could look to monetize its infrastructure here? Yeah, I mean, obviously, I don't disagree. I think our infrastructure is wildly valuable. I think we own much more infrastructure than competitors, especially outside of Canada. We've built out fiber to 8 million homes. 94% of our macro sites have fiber to them, right? That's kind of in the U.S., towers and fiber, kind of metro fiber, fiber to towers have seen huge value runs over the last 10, 15 years. I mean, we still own that. Do I think our infrastructure is valuable? Absolutely. Are there six different structures perhaps to monetize some value there? Absolutely. I saw what TELUS did in terms of towers, and they keep control. Of interest, I think we'll look at that. We're not, there's still a strategic value in infrastructure. I marry the kind of short-term gain and the value arbitrage with any strategic give you might have to sell off at the same time and trade that off. Frankly, if I'm going to sell off any quantifiable or qualitative strategic value, you need to make sure that you're getting paid for it up front. We'll look at it. We'll consider it. Fundamentally, there's a ton of value in our infrastructure assets. More broadly, just on divestitures, how do you think about divestitures at this point post-MLSC? I think of it similar to CapEx, right? Our use of capital now, the bar has been raised. Not only, it was happening anyway in terms of when interest rates backed up a little bit, you have to take a harder look. It's not only OpEx, CapEx, but it's also assets you own, right? Are you the best owner of this asset? Or frankly, would you rather own more of a different asset class? I look at it as pure capital allocation in a world where we have so much opportunity in other assets to invest. If it's an adjacent business or adjacent to adjacent, I think I'd rather own more fiber in the US, or we frankly would rather take that money, pay down debt, or reinvest in digital transformation. I think the scrutiny on assets we already own has increased because the other opportunities are just so attractive, right? If you can sell off an asset and invest in pure equity returns, it's pretty straightforward for us. We'll continue to do that. Perfect. I think we're at time, so thank you so much, Curtis. Great. Thank you. Appreciate your questions.