Yahoo Finance TELUS Corporation (NYSE:TU) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
TELUS Corporation (NYSE:TU) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 9, 2024
TELUS Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day, and welcome to the TELUS 2024 Q1 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to introduce your speaker, Robert Mitchell. Please go ahead.
Robert Mitchell: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our first quarter 2024 news release, MD&A, financial statements and detailed supplemental investor information were posted on our website earlier this morning. On our call today, we'll begin with remarks by Darren and Doug. For the Q&A portion, we will be joined by other members of our executive leadership team. Briefly, prepared remarks, slides and answers to questions contain forward-looking statements. Actual results could vary materially 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 in our first quarter 2024 annual 2023 MD&A. With that, over to you, Darren.
Darren Entwistle: Thanks, Rick. Hello, everyone. In the first quarter, our team once again delivered against our differentiated growth strategy, leveraging our superior asset portfolio, consistent execution track record, and proactive cost efficiency initiatives to deliver industry leading customer additions and solid financial results. This was achieved against the backdrop of a pretty dynamic operating environment you all well know. Our robust performance is underpinned by our strategic focus on margin accretive customer growth, our customer centric culture and our globally leading broadband networks. This enabled our strongest first quarter on record with industry leading total customer net additions of 209,000 up 28% on a year-over-year basis.
TELUS' industry best growth reflects the consistent potency of our operational execution and our unmatched bundled portfolio offerings across mobile and home. Our team's passion for delivering customer service excellence contributed to continued leading loyalty across our key product lines. In the first quarter, TELUS achieved resilient EBITDA growth of 4.3% and margin expansion of 170 basis points. These results reflect the progression of our ongoing transformational efficiency programs that are clearly bearing fruit. Looking at our TTech mobile results, TELUS realized robot's first quarter customer growth of 146,000 net additions, our strongest first quarter on record. This included healthy mobile phone net additions to 45,000 relative to be stable as compared to this time last year.
Disposition result was driven alongside our continued focus on profitable margin accretive customer growth and of course that's a hallmark of our organization. Indeed, we are continuing and now doubling down on this consistent and disciplined approach as we progress through 2024 and beyond. Our efforts in this regard will ensure our mobile customer growth drives EBITDA and cash flow accretion. That is the formula for this organization. Mobile subscriber growth also included record first quarter connected device net additions of 101,000 which represents a 74% increase over the prior year. This reflects continued strong momentum with respect to our 5G and IoT B2B solutions. Importantly, our team delivered another quarter of leading loyalty results, which continues to be the hallmark of the TELUS team.
Blended mobile phone churn of 1.13% was up against the backdrop of elevated competitive activity relative to seasonal trends and not clearly at a level where this organization is content. However, this represented an industry best result by a substantial margin of up to 46 basis points versus our peers. Notably postpaid mobile phone churn was 0.91% as we now have entered the 11th consecutive year below the 1% level. This is an outstanding result and it's an outstanding result on a global basis, reflective of the industry based customer experience that we deliver that's best-in-class and it's done time and again by our TELUS team delivering over our world leading broadband networks. And that for us is the blend, network excellence combined with the excellence of our people and our digital technology at work.
To close on mobile, first quarter ARPU of $59.31 was down year-over-year. This was a result of intense promotional market activity and heightened competition and in particular across device financing subsidies. Our flanker brands offer strong customer value in certain segments with lower associated ARPU, however notably attractive AMPU attributes. Through digital transformation, we are lowering our cost to serve across the board. Inclusive of supporting a compelling AMPU for BYOD and flanker activity. Furthermore, with respect to our premium brand, we are doubling down to reinforce our longstanding and distinctive focus on AMPU accretive loading. Notably last week, we implemented changes to evolve our go-to-market offerings across our brands and particularly in order to enrich our premium TELUS offering and afford customers enhanced and differentiated value.
These efforts will continue to be supported by our team's passion for winning and retaining profitable customers, whilst remaining highly disciplined in respect of device subsidies. Furthermore, we continue to expect connected devices and IoT to increasingly contribute to network revenue, ARPU and AMPU growth as we move forward regardless of the external environment within which we find ourselves. First quarter ARPU alongside leading customer loyalty continued to drive our industry best mobile phone lifetime revenue, which consistently exceeds our national peers by a considerable margin, a considerable margin of up to 44% again in Q1. Now let's take a look at our TTech fixed operating results, where TELUS delivered another quarter of industry best total wireline customer growth.
Indeed, our team achieved robust first quarter Internet net additions of 30,000. We also continue to drive healthy growth in our TV product line with industry leading net additions of 19,000 more than double the prior year. Modest residential voice losses of some 8,000 were flat over last year and again represented an industry best result. Strong and leading security net additions of 22,000 were also similar to last year and continue to reflect our successful multi-product penetration strategy and also reflect a distinctive performance premium on loading versus our peers and of course that's reflected as well within the way we bundle security within the FFH portfolio at TELUS. Overall, our industry leading external fixed net additions of 63,000 notably again a Q1 record demonstrate the strength of our unique and highly attractive bundled offers across our unmatched portfolio of products and services.
These will be further enhanced by continued and significant innovation on our home automation roadmap and the products that are resident within that particular ecosystem that really does create a level of excitement in terms of new revenue sources to come in the quarters ahead. Our superior bundled offerings are buttressed by our leading customer experience over our ever expanding world leading pure fiber and wireless broadband networks. These results are also bolstered by our strong and highly differentiated social capitalism attributes that truly underpin the strength of the TELUS brand. Let's turn now and look at TELUS Business Solutions or TBS, which delivered another strong quarter and again differentiates us from telco B2B performance on a global basis.
In the first quarter, TBS achieved robust EBITDA and cash flow contribution growth of 4% and 9% on a respective basis. Building on our track record of continued profitable growth, TBS experienced strong demand and product growth across all areas of our business. These efforts are progressing our goal of leading the market across both core telecom capabilities as well as our 5G powered Software as a Service and Data Insights Industry Solutions. TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods on the back of record sales performances over the past two quarters, we accelerated our momentum in the first quarter. Indeed, we achieved a 36% year-over-year increase in bookings in Consumer Goods and Agribusiness. Furthermore, we delivered 8% revenue growth in animal agriculture.
We remain confident in the strong growth potential in this business and anticipate positive mid to high single-digit revenue growth in the second half of the year. Let's turn now and take a look at our TELUS Health business. We achieved first quarter revenues of $420 million alongside 28% EBITDA contribution growth. On the back of on target sales and bookings in Q1, we expect steady improvement in health services revenue growth in the quarters ahead. Strong first quarter EBITDA growth was supported by the achievement of $251 million in combined annualized LifeWorks integration and other cost synergies to date leveraging TELUS International along the way. We continue to work towards our overall TELUS Health synergy objective of $427 million to be realized by the end of 2025 as we've committed to the street in that regard.
Furthermore, we drove a 7% year-over-year increase in our globalized coverage that is now reaching nearly 72 million people. Moreover, we supported health outcomes on close to 160 million digital health transactions in the quarter, up 7% on a year-over-year basis. In addition, we increased our virtual care membership to nearly 6 million people up 13.5% on a year-over-year basis again. As we continue to make strong progress scaling TELUS Health and TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods, we remain intensely focused on accelerating the significant growth profile of these highly differentiated global businesses that are thirsty for digital disruption to deliver better client outcomes. Importantly, we are leveraging the expertise, experience and high performance culture and talent of our entire team, inclusive of leveraging significant cross selling synergies across all lines of our business.
This is buttressed by the blue-chip customer relationships, leading digital customer experience and AI cost transformation capabilities of TELUS International. On that note, earlier today, TI also reported its first quarter results. Jeff and the team announced robust cash flow generation amidst what remains a challenging global macroeconomic operating environment and a difficult prior year comparable. Despite the near-term top line challenges, our TI team has executed against significant cost efficiency programs over the past 10 months. These efforts are positioning the business to deliver a strong 2024 in totality. TI's capacity to generate strong cash flows remains highly visible in its quarterly results. Committed to delivering profitable growth, TI's ability to surface further efficiency gains will also help fuel its investment in sales and marketing along with ongoing technology innovation.
TELUS remains highly confident in TI's strategy and investment thesis. This is amplified by meaningful opportunities in respect of digital transformation and particularly with TI's capabilities in AI solutions, including generative AI and this technology's proliferation on a worldwide basis. The continuing critical importance of differentiated digital customer experience solutions in the market, including a welcome and needed disruption from Gen AI is enabling us to serve customers better and win incremental business along the way. This is creating a vibrant tailwind for both TI and TELUS that will bear fruit over the medium and longer term in terms of growth and profitability. Doug's going to have an opportunity in a minute to provide further commentary on both TTech and TELUS International's results.
In closing, the record customer growth we continue to report is underpinned by our dedicated team, who are passionate about delivering superior service offerings and digital capabilities over our world leading wireless and PureFibre broadband networks. The significant broadband network investments we've made are driving extensive socioeconomic benefits for Canadians and communities across the country and will continue to do so for decades to come. These investments also enable the continued advancement of our financial and operational performance at TELUS and the long-term sustainability of our industry leading dividend growth program. Today, we announced a 7% dividend increase, reflecting our unwavering commitment to delivering superior value to our shareholders.
This builds on our extraordinarily consistent track record of delivering on our multiyear dividend growth program first established in 2011 and most recently extended through 2025 targeting annual growth in the range of 7% to 10%. Today's increase represents our 26th over the past 14 years. It also reflects our unwavering confidence in delivering leading operational and financial results on a chronic basis prospectively. Importantly, our strong outlook includes anticipated and continued free cash flow expansion in the years ahead, driven by ongoing strong EBITDA growth and moderating CapEx intensity. This will further support the long-term sustainability and the quality and growth of our dividend expansion program. Finally, reflecting our team's longstanding belief in the synergistic relationship between doing well in business and doing good in our communities, main marks the official kickoff of our 19th annual TELUS Days of Giving.
And we're glad that we've created emulators in this regard, given the societal benefit for all. This year with the support of our extended TELUS family, I have every confidence that we will exceed our goal of inspiring 80,000 volunteers supporting positive outcomes in communities across the 32 countries in which we now operate as an organization. Indeed, this is thanks to the unparalleled level of caring and commitment that our team members and retirees globally have contributed 2.2 million days of giving since 2000 and this is more than any other company on the planet. And the cultural connection that we have to giving back and what it does for engagement at TELUS is the same recipe that underpins the customer service excellence at this organization and the very low churn rate that we consistently deliver against, such as the Alchemy in that regard.
Myself, our leadership team and our Board of Directors remain consistently and exceedingly grateful for our team's passionate efforts to support our global communities as we strive to deliver outstanding results for all of the stakeholders that we serve. And on that note, I'll turn the call over to Doug.
Doug French : Thank you, Darren, and hello, everyone. In the first quarter, our team navigated a highly competitive environment and challenging global macroeconomic climate to achieve strong operational and financial results. Despite the exogenous headwinds, our results are supported by our longstanding commitment to drive profitable customer growth, product intensity, execution excellence and our ongoing focus for efficiency and effectiveness. In mobility, continued mobile phone and connected device subscriber additions drove higher network revenue by 2.9%, partially offset by the high impact of competitive intensity. As we progress through the remainder of 2024, we expect the highly competitive environment could continue to pressurize ARPU in the near-term, along with the lapping of some roaming recovery experience in the first half of 2023.
Importantly, we continue to focus on AMPU to drive the right economic outcomes. This is supported by driving lower cost to serve and leveraging our significant digital and self-serve capabilities along with critical support from TI. Our significant and ongoing focus on cost efficiency will help offset top line pressures across the business, driving sustainable EBITDA and margin accretion. Fixed data service revenue grew 2.7% year-over-year, driven by strong customer growth across Internet, Security and TV along with increased B2B revenue contribution. This solid growth reinforces our superior product diversity within the home and business enabled by our world leading PureFibre network. At the segment level, TTech operating revenues were up slightly by 0.4%, while TTech adjusted EBITDA increased by 4.1%.
Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 160 basis points to over 39%, reflecting a 4% decline in employee benefits expense from our efficiency programs. Turning to DLCX. For more additional and comprehensive details, please listen to the TELUS International webcast that occurred earlier today. DLCX had continued impact from the challenging macroeconomic environment that resulted in operating revenues declining by 4.6% year-over-year. The decline was primarily driven by lower revenue from a leading social media client and a reduction in revenue in other industry verticals, notably e-commerce, Fintech and Travel and Hospitality. This was partially offset by growth in services provided by existing customers including TELUS and Google as well as other new clients added over the past 12 months.
DLCX adjusted EBITDA was up 11%, including earn out adjustment with respect to WillowTree. In addition, the efficiency and effectiveness programs executed on to decline to address operating expenses included decrease of over 3% in employee benefits. Looking forward, new opportunities with new and existing clients supported by building on our momentum within AI Data Solutions, revenue will continue to improve as the year progresses. While TI's ongoing focus on efficiency also puts them in a strong position to manage through some of the macroeconomic pressures as we progress throughout 2024. Overall, TELUS consolidated operating revenues decreased by 1.2% year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA grew by 4.3%. Consolidated net income was down 38% year-over-year, while basic EPS was lower by 40%, in part driven by adjusted EBITDA growth being offset by higher restructuring, depreciation, amortization and financing costs.
On an adjusted basis, net income and EPS were essentially unchanged year-over-year. Free cash flow of $396 million was lower by $139 million primarily driven by higher cash restructuring disbursements, totaling $225 million in the quarter, of which $185 million was related to the 2023 restructuring that we had discussed and disclosed in February. We remain focused on driving towards achieving our financial targets for 2024, which we reiterated today. This includes targeting TTech operating growth of 2% to 4% and TTech adjusted EBITDA growth of 5.5% to 7.5%. Consolidated capital expenditures, excluding circa $100 million that is earmarked for real estate development are still targeted to remain approximately $2.6 billion. Lastly, consolidated free cash flow for 2024 is forecasted to be approximately $2.3 billion driven by higher EBITDA and stable CapEx. While top line growth was pressured at the beginning of the year in part to the aggressive pricing environment, we remain laser focused on profitable customer growth as evidenced by our recent and differentiated multi-brand pricing suite and continue to drive demand in our superior bundled offerings over our leading broadband networks.
Furthermore, we anticipate improvement from TELUS International, particularly in the second half of the year as well as TELUS Health and TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods. Overall, we remain positive on our ability to continue to generate strong free cash flow for years to come, benefiting from our industry leading growth profile that consistently showcases our superior asset mix and operational execution. The strong position further supports our industry leading dividend growth program in place for 2025. Our commitment to deliver on this program is underpinned by our confidence in executing our growth strategy and generating meaningful free cash flow on a sustained basis. This is balanced with maintaining a strong balance sheet and providing us ample flexibility to support our future growth ambitions, leverage reductions and capital returns to shareholders.
With that, I'll turn it back to Robert.
Robert Mitchell: Thanks, Doug. Mihai, we're ready to proceed with questions please.
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