BCE Inc. (BCE) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-05-08 11:16:20 ET

BCE Inc. (BCE)

Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call

May 08, 2025, 08:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Richard Bengian - IR

Mirko Bibic - President and CEO

Curtis Millen - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Maher Yaghi - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets

Drew McReynolds - RBC Capital Markets

Vince Valentini - TD Cowen

Matthew Griffiths - BofA Securities

Sebastiano Petti - JPMorgan Chase & Co

Jerome Dubreuil - Desjardins Securities Inc

Patrick Ho - Morgan Stanley

Aravinda Galappatthige - Canaccord Genuity Corp

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the BCE Q1 2025 Results Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Richard Bengian. Please go ahead Mr. Bengian.

Richard Bengian

Thank you. Matthew. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining our call. With me here today are Mirko Bibic, BCE's President and CEO, and our CFO, Curtis Millen. You can find all our Q1 disclosure documents on the Investor Relations page of the bce.ca website, which we posted earlier this morning.

We have a lot of material to get through on this call. However, before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to our safe harbor statement on Slide 2, reminding you that today's slide presentation and remarks made during the call will include forward-looking information and therefore are subject to risks and uncertainties. Results could differ materially.

We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by law. Please refer to our publicly filed documents for more details on assumptions and risks.

With that out of the way, I'll turn the call over to Mirko.

Mirko Bibic

Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. I shared in February our strategic and operational roadmap that will guide our actions for 2025 and beyond, focusing on our customers and on creating value for shareholders. We have a clear strategy for growth and that's anchored in four key priority areas.

Putting the customers first, providing the best internet and wireless networks and services, unlocking potential for businesses with technology solutions and building a digital and media content powerhouse. Moreover, we will continue to modernize and simplify how we do business and how we operate.

And before providing an update on our progress against each of these, I want to call out two key and very material developments. This morning, we announced a major partnership with PSP Investments, one of Canada's largest pension investment managers. With approximately $265 billion in net assets.

PSP is an extremely experienced telecom investor. It will be helping us fund the expansion of our U.S. business, which could see a commitment in excess of $1.5 billion. This will significantly de risk our future funding requirements and bring support for our U.S. Fiber growth strategy while still allowing us to proceed with our deleveraging plans.

I'll describe our partnership in more detail in just a few minutes. Secondly, given the significant changes in our economic and operating environments that have occurred since the fall of 2024, our board has established the annualized dividend per BCE common share at $1.75 per share from $3.99 per share. This change will be effective with the July dividend payment....

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