By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau said on a fourth-quarter conference call Friday that the company’s subsidiaries have been able to navigate around playing the aggressive price game in the fourth quarter while maintaining a favourable price position vis-à-vis its competitors.
Peladeau said promotional door-to-door offers of “unreasonable” 60 per cent discounts on wireless by its competitors have “stupidly” pushed down all the telecoms’ revenues. Quebecor executives have previous called moves by Bell on the wireline front, such as $45 offers for 500 Mbps download speeds, to be “blatantly stupid for everyone [industry].”
Despite these comments, Peladeau said Quebecor – which holds the lowest average revenue per user (ARPU) among the four national players at $34.36 in the fourth quarter, down nearly $2 year-over-year – has been able to maintain its composure and not bite on the race to the bottom by committing to a strategy of reducing operating expenses through digital technology and making more efficient its technical and customer service operations.
The company also “lowered our equipment subsidies with our [bring your own device, BYOD] activation, strategically adjusted the wireline pricing towards the end of the year and optimized the positioning of our lineup of brands to mitigate the pressure on price,” Peladeau said.
“While we are proud of our continuous improvement of our network, the reality is that we need to maintain price differentiation,” Peladeau added.
The telecom’s executives have said in previous quarters that it’s not ashamed about its much lower ARPU figures compared to its major competitors because it’s part of the customer-acquisition strategy. The hope, Peladeau conveyed, is that its subsidiaries can fire on all cylinders when it comes to executing on the triple-play bundle – internet, television and mobile wireless – to retain customers.
Earlier this month, for example, its low-cost flanker Fizz launched its all-digital television service in Quebec, which is available to Fizz home internet customers on promotional discount. Last spring, its Freedom subsidiary launched internet and television services in Ontario.
Quebecor executives also bragged on Friday’s call about its wireless churn – the rate of customer defection – being the lowest of the four major players, though that cannot be verified because the company doesn’t disclose those numbers. Chief Financial Officer Hugues Simard said Friday that Freedom, Fizz and Videotron have all seen lower churn numbers.
Quebecor reported 87,500 new mobile subscribers in the quarter, up 2.2 per cent compared to the 66,100 it gained in the same period in 2023. It saw a loss of 1,700 internet subscribers in the quarter compared to an increase of 6,300 over the same period. On television, it saw a 17,500-subscriber decline compared to a decrease of 6,900 over the same period. And it saw a 18,600 subscriber decrease in the quarter on landlines compared to a decrease of 17,200 over the same period.
Total mobile wireless lines by quarter-end was 4.14 million – up from the 3.76 million at the end of the comparable quarter in 2023; total internet subscribers was 1.73 million – up slightly from 1.727; total television subscribers was roughly 1.3 million, down from the 1.35 it had by the end of the fourth quarter the year prior; and landline connections was 608,000, down from 675,000 over the same period.
Revenues from all segments was down $5.8 million to $1.5 billion compared to the same quarter that ended December 31 the year prior. That decrease was attributed to lower telecom and media revenues, the latter of which was down to $194.7 million compared to the $204.8 million it made in the same quarter the year prior.
Net income in the quarter, however, was $177.4 million compared to the $141.2 million it brought in the same quarter last year.
Photo of Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau
