Quebecor Inc. reports third quarter 2026 consolidated results - DEFI TECHNOLOGIES INC

Good day, everyone, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Quebecois Inc.'s Financial Results for the Third Quarter 2026 Conference Call. And I would like to introduce Hugues Simard, Chief Financial Officer of Quebecom Inc. Please go ahead. Welcome, everyone. My name is Hugues Samard. I'm the CFO. And joining me to discuss our financial and operating results as usual for the third quarter of 2026 is Pierre-Charles Péladeau, our president and CEO. Anyone unable to attend the conference call will be able to access the recorded version by logging on to the webcast available on Quebecor's website until the 3rd of February of next year. As usual, I also want to inform you that certain statements made on the call today may be considered forward-looking, and we would refer you to the risk factors outlined in today's press release and reports filed by the corporation with the regulatory authorities. Let me now turn the floor to Pierre-Claude. Merci, Hugues, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to report once again solid operational and financial results for Quebec in the third quarter of 26. In all our business sectors, we're continuing to improve our performance quarter after quarter through disciplined execution and rigorous management, resiliently and ever more successfully delivering on our expansion plan, growing our wireless market share in all markets across Canada, generating consistently strong cash flows and maintaining the best balance sheet of the industry. On a consolidated basis in the third quarter of 26, Quebecor continued to improve all its key financial indicators. Cash flow from operation increased by $67 million, or 15%, to $530 million. EBITDA improved by $79 million, ou 13%, to 707 million. And net income attributable to shareholders grew by $60 million, or 26%, to 296 million. We reduced our net debt by more than $220 million in the quarter, bringing our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio to 2.69, still the lowest leverage of the Canadian industry by some margin, after buying back more than 50 million of our stock and investing $177 million in capital expenditures for growth projects, investment in our core systems, and the continued improvement of our network and best-in-class client experience to fuel our resilient and profitable growth. I will now review our operational results, starting with our telecom segment. I am proud to report yet another record quarter for our telekom segment. In the third quarter, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $648 million, up $45 million, or 7.5% year-over-year. This is the highest quarterly adjusted EBIDDA in our history, and our strongest EBITda growth since the acquisition of Freedom Mobile. Our adjusted EBitda margins was 51%, an improvement of 160 basic points. Total revenues were $1.3 billion, up 4.2%, driven by service revenues of $1 billion and 0.5%, which grew even faster at 4.4%. Adjusted cash flow from operation reached $475 million, up 7.9%. These are outstanding results, confirming that the momentum we have built over the last several quarters is not only sustained, it is accelerating. Let me start by outlining our key achievement this quarter. We added 100,700 new mobile lines, the best quarterly growth in the history of our company. This surpasses our previous record of 130,800 lines we added in Q3 last year. All three of our brands, Videotron, Freedom Mobile, and Fizz, contributed to this performance, And we achieved this in a market that, by our national competitors' own estimates, saw total industry net additions decline by 30% to 40% this quarter. Despite the tighter market and maintaining our everyday value-driven pricing strategy, we continued to grow and even accelerated our growth, proving the strength of our business model. At the same time, our consolidated mobile ARPU continued to its progression. For the fourth consecutive quarter, ARPU increased year-over-year, reaching $36.08 in Q3, up $1.03 from $35.05 in Q2, beating again the sequential gain of $0.48 in Q4, 25, 49 cents in Q1 26, and 86 cents in Q2 26. While our competitors continue to report declining revenue per subscriber, we continue to improve and even more each quarter. Once again, we are demonstrating that volume and value are not mutually exclusive and that our ARPU growth is sustainable. Our growth is sustainable because, contrary to our competitors, it is achieved without any price increase from our existing customers across all our brands, the Videotron, Freedom Mobile, or Fizz. Over the course of this year, the Big Three have implemented successive rounds of price increases on their customer base, with some of them raising monthly rates several times since the beginning of 26. We have chosen a different path. Our ARPU growth results from our customers choosing richer plans and staying with us longer, not from raising their bill or adding various fees. Our performance is a testament to the strength of our marketing approach. built on superior customer experience, transparency, and peace of mind. Let me share with you a concrete example. On July 24th, Freedom Mobile gave access to its 5G Plus network to all customers on all plans at no additional cost. That is how we build trust and value, By giving our customers more, not by changing more, by charging more, our customers know what they pay for, they know what they get, and they know it will not change without their consent. Despite the sluggish market and the population growth and the slowing improving penetration, We're continuing to show that the runway ahead of us is still long, with very significant on-tap opportunities to continue to grow our market share profitably in all our main markets. Many, many Canadians still want to break free, free from price increases they never asked for, free from complexity, free from the feeling of being taken for granted. That is exactly why every quarter more Canadians are choosing to make the switch. We are also continuing to extend the reach of our networks. During the quarter, Freedom Mobile has already expanded its 5G, 5G Plus network in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, bringing enhanced connectivity to more than 500,000 additional Canadians. Here in Quebec, on October 1st, Vidéotron announced the expansion of its wireless service area to several communities in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, North Quebec, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, and offering more than 25,000 residents a true competitive alternative for their mobile service. Turning to Waterline, we added 8,600 Internet customers in Q3 at a higher average revenue for customers generating 3% Internet revenue growth. This is a good performance in a mature market with both well for the coming quarters. Looking at the cumulative first nine months of 26, we clearly continued to execute and perform with remarkable consistency. Year-to-date service revenues grew by 4.2% to $3.1 billion. Year-todate adjusted EBITDA grew 6.4% to 1.9 billion. Once again, a meaningful higher rate than revenue, and we consistently pare down our cost structure while expending our business. Year-to-date adjusted cash flow from operation reached $1.4 billion, or up 7.4%. These results reflect a platform bill for durable performance, not for short-term gains. Looking ahead for the fourth quarter and the holiday season, I am confident in our trajectory. Freedom Mobile National Expansion continues to gain strength, G2O3 leadership in Quebec remains strong, and FINS continues to build its position as the leading digital brand in Canada. Our cost discipline creates operating leverage that will continue to benefit our shareholders. And our Internet speed upgrade and 5G, 5G plus investment are building the network differentiation that will drive growth for years to come. We're coming to the last month of 26 with a strong momentum and the strongest value-volume combination of the entire Canadian industry. Turning to the media segment, I am pleased to report a significant improvement in our financial performance, with adjusted EBITDA reaching $40 million in the quarter, up $16 million year-over-year. This improvement mainly reflects savings from cost reduction initiatives, including lower content cost, higher TVA SPA subscription revenue driven by TVA SPA Z, a new affiliation agreement, and estimated support from Quebec New Tax Credit for news media. While encouraged by these results, we remain prudent and disciplined given outgoing industry challenges, notably in advertising. GovTVL led once again the Quebec television market in the third quarter with 43.5% market share, up 2.3 points year-over-year. The TVA network grew its share to 23.1% up one point, driven by its such-its as Chantal Masquet, which is a mass singer, and Edi Fonda, the most popular script daily program. LCN remained Quebec's most-watched specialty channel. Together, TBI and LCN led political coverage, airing the Most Watched Leader debates face-to-face on the 26th, and Election Night Quebec 26th. We also reached a new 12-year supply-sensing agreement with Rogers for the French-language broadcast rights to the NHL games through the 2037-2038 season, reinforcing PVR Spa's position as their premier destination for hockey fans in Quebec and across Canada. Games will also be available on Iluco Plus as viewing habits evolve and distribution platforms diversify. I will now let Hugues review our detailed financial results. Merci Pierre-Claude. On a consolidated basis in the third quarter, Quebec recorded revenues of $1.45 billion, up 4% from last year, and EBITDA reached $707 million, up $79 million, or 13%, helped by a $32 million decrease in stock-based compensation expense across all the corporation segments. Excluding stock- based compensation, EBITda is still up $47 million, or 7%. Re-cash flow decreased by $22 million, or 5% to $422 million due to a lower working cap adjustment, while cash flows from operating activities increased by $11 million, or 2% to $593 million compared to the same quarter last year. In our telecom segment, total revenues increased 4% to 1.3 billion. Total service revenues, our primary indicator of recurring revenue momentum, were $1.05 billion of $44 million or 4.4% year over year. Wireless service revenues were $492 million up 10%, driven by continued subscriber and ARPU growth across our three brands. Wireline service revenues were $555 million, up 0.3%, with internet revenue growth of 3%, more than offsetting the ongoing structural decline in traditional services. With rigorous cost management, adjusted EBITDA reached $648 million in the telecom sector, of course, up 7.5%. Our highest adjusted EBITDA ever recorded in a single quarter, with adjusted EBIDDA margin reaching 51%, a 160 basis point improvement, as Birkal mentioned, year over year. Once again, our adjusted EBEDDA grew at a rate significantly higher than our revenues. Operating expenses thus fell to 48.9% of revenue from 50.5% a year ago, and to 48% 8.7 percent year-to-date from 49.7. This is not a one-time optimization, and it has not come from headcount reductions. It is the compounding effect of the continued optimization of our cost base while improving the quality of our revenues. And we expect AI to continue driving efficiencies in the years ahead, and this transformation is already underway. Telecom CapEx spending, excluding Spectrum licenses was up by $10 million or 6.4% in the quarter, while we continue to invest in the deployment of our internet infrastructure and the continued 5G and 5G Plus rollout, including the expansion of Freedom Mobile's national footprint. While some of our peers are cutting back on their network investments, we continueto deploy capital with discipline, where it creates genuine competitive differentiation and lasting value for our customers and shareholders. Despite these additional investments, quarterly adjusted cash flows from operations still increased by $35 million, or 7.9% to reach $475 million. This the same cash flow generation reflects the quality and resilience of our operating model and gives us the flexibility to keep investing in our networks, expand freedom mobile nationally, and create long-term value for our shareholders. Our media segment revenues reached $154 million, up 2.1 million or 1.4%, driven mainly by higher subscription revenues and increased activity in our film and audiovisual services. EBITDA rose by $16 million to $40 million, primarily reflecting the benefits of our cost reduction initiatives along with revenue growth. Sports and entertainment segment revenues declined by $4 million to 65 million, with EBITda down 0.9 million to 14 million dollars. Quebecor reported a net income attributable to shareholders of 296 million dollars in the quarter for 1.33 cents per share compared to a net income of 236 million or 1.03 cents per share reported in the same quarter last year. Adjusted net income excluding unusual items came into 294 million or $1.32 compared to an adjusted net income of $242 million, or $1.05 per share in the same quarter last year. For the first nine months of the year, Quebecor's revenue rose 4% to $4.3 billion, and EBITDA increased 7% to 1.9 billion, held back by a $55 million increase in stock-based compensation charges. Excluding stock-base compensation, EBITda would have grown $183 million, or 10%. In our telecom segment, EBITDA grew 7%, an improvement of $131 million year-over-year, excluding SOC-based compensation. Our telecom adjusted cash flow from operation totaled $1 billion and 44, an increase of $99 million, which is 7%. As of the end of the quarter, Quebecor's net debt-to-EBITDA ratio decreased to 2.69 times, a significant improvement from the 2.87 times just a quarter ago, further widening our lead as the least leveraged telecom operator in Canada. During the quarter, Videotron repaid $200 million in its term loan tranche, in its last term loan tranche that came from the Freerim acquisition, and that was maturing April 2027, and another $100 million on October 6th after quarter end. Only $100 million now remain in this tranche, the last remaining portion of the financing put in place, as I just said, for the Freedom Acquisition. All in all, we have a best-in-class balance sheet with available liquidity of more than $900 million at the end of the third quarter. In the first nine months of the year, we purchased and canceled 3.9 million Class B shares for a total investment of $238 million. We thank you for your attention, and we'll now open the lines for your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions at this time, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will then hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. And should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star, followed by two. And if you're using a speakerphone, you will need to lift the handset first before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you have any questions thank you and your first question will be from sebastiano petty at jp morgan please go ahead hi thank you for taking the question um i guess number one can you just help us on uh update us i guess on the push into western canada i guess how we're thinking about the contribution there relative to um your your legacy or previous uh your gta as well as some of the other markets as well. I think PKP, Pierre-Carl, you talked about taking share in all markets. So just help us think about what inning are you in, in terms of the Western Canada push, just so as we kind of think about extrapolating the healthy volume gains going forward. And then for you, as you think about capital allocation, I mean, leverage continues to drift down here, as we talked about 2.69 down from 2.87 last quarter. Buyback slowed in the Can you just maybe help us, you know, update us on the capital allocation framework? You know, should we anticipate leverage continuing to drift lower? Should we anticipate a re-acceleration in buybacks in 4.2 and beyond? Thank you both. Yes, good morning, Sebastiano. Well, as you know you know Freedom started at the core of an Ontario customer base through all the years and especially probably under more shot than ever, you know, they've been investing more on the Western side, but was still, you Know, considered or at the end of the day, you have the lowest, the smallest part of customer base for freedom. And there's always two sides on a coin, you know, the first, the positive one, or the negative one is that, you know, it's a small position. The positive one is that, you know, it creates significant opportunities and a market to grow there. Certainly, you Know, the market is different. And on the western side, even it's different between Alberta and BC, there are different markets. And obviously, they're different also from Ontario, we need to look at them differently. The level of the quality of our network is also different from one to the other, we know, you don't know where we should invest. And somewhere it's tougher, you know, to invest in certain areas because of probably not as good conditions that we can find elsewhere. That would not stop us, you know, you have to continue to invest to make sure that, you know, we will be able. Obviously, you know, service is there because we go through roaming. But, you know, at the end of the day, we would like to prefer, we would prefer going our own network for cost reason. So we will continue to make our brands known. This is an exercise that we will continue to do. And where we're sitting here, we can see that we have favorable results. And our brands continue to be better known. I think that You know, for FIDS and BC is also a good positioning because the digital is something that is more in demand. So it's a matter of, you know, continue to work day to day and bringing our brands, you know, better known and our strategy and marketing strategy also as efficient as it is elsewhere. And just pointing out maybe to add a little bit to Sebastian, I know that our market share out west are still fairly limited, to be honest. As Pierre-Cal said, you know, we started from almost nothing, to be honest, but still, we're still in the single digits, to be honest so this is something that is obviously a huge opportunity ahead of us still and one that, as Pierre-Claude just said, we are diligently working on. As to your capital allocation question, I'll point out firstly that Q4 CapEx, as I've said a number of times, we're still in line with our annual CapEx guidance, which will obviously mean if you run the numbers that there'll be a bit of a pickup in Q4. There was some timing in some of our investments that will just catch up in Q4. So there should be a bit of an increase in capex in Q5. Other than that, you know, we are still, you know, at 2.69, we're well into the, you know, the sweet spot that we had outlined as our operating leverage going forward. And now that we've almost repaid all of it, there's $100 million, as we said in our scripted remarks, there is $100 million left of term loans. And we're not using margins in any way and haven't been for quite some time. So we'll just keep on focusing on our optimal refinancing of our various bonds and fixed income instruments that will come up over the next years. I mean, we don't have anything pressing in terms of our next maturities. So I would expect, you know, a continuation of our ongoing capital allocation strategy that we've been experiencing or that we'd been executing rather for the past little while in terms of dividends. We increased last quarter. We will revisit next year and continue to pay down the debt that we can, that's left to be repaid. And as you know, we have renewed our stock buyback program as well going forward. So, I wouldn't expect any change, short-term change in our capital allocation strategy, Sebastian. Great. Thank you both. Next question comes from Matthew Griffiths at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So maybe just to start, just to clarify on the the impact of the stock-based comp this quarter is the the 31 that you're quoting is that are we supposed to interpret that as the um in quarter amount or is that the year over year uh change that you'RE quoting sorry if I'm maybe the only one who um is unsure about that but if you could clarify that'd be helpful and then just um on the 5g coverage and 5g plus kind of coverage expansion um was that done like within the quarter uh or was that kind of an ongoing process throughout the year and you're just kind of kind of disclosing that you hit like a milestone of half a million people covered um and i guess the obvious next thing would be you know is this are you planning on you know continuing that that expansion um or or is this kind of more of a lumpy type of upgrade. Thanks. Thank you, Matthew. I will answer, you know, the second part quite easily. It's an ongoing process, you know, where we are not rushing anything. I remember a few years ago, you know, some companies were rushing to go 5G, thinking that, you know, it will be the end of the world and the big revolution. That never happened, you know, monetization was something people was considering. You know, we work in a competitive environment. And at the end of the day, you know, what the customers are looking for is good service, good product, but also good prices. And then, therefore, if you are moving, you Know, different to what market is expecting, customers are expecting, then, unfortunately, you go not in the right direction. So, we always thought that, you know, we will invest with discipline, not in the poor, you know, to build out our 5G network. So, just, you have to conclude again, you know, it's an ongoing process and it will continue to be in terms of quality of the network and the extension or the amplitude of the network. And your specific $31 million stock-based compensation question, Matt. The $31 million is the difference in impact for the quarter compared to last year of stock-based compensation. So just to give you the direct numbers, our EBITDA for the quarterly is $707 million, including stock-base compensation. It would have been $693 million without stock- base compensation. A positive pickup of $14 million. Last year, our EBITDA was $628 million. Excluding SBC, it would have been $646. So that's a $17 million hit on EBITda. So $14 plus $17, you've got a $31 million impact year over year for the quarter. Great. Perfect. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Matthew? Next question comes from Mahar Yagi at Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you for taking my question. Julie, I wanted to ask you just to follow up on the question on EBITDA here. If you can also take away the impact of ETIA, maybe just to have the numbers year on year clear for us in terms of the growth in the telecom business on the EBITda side. uh sure for for the quarter uh it's yes ebitda is honestly marginal it's about you know it's about five million dollars or less so um you shouldn't worry so much about that okay okay great uh so obviously very strong numbers on subscriber loading uh wanted to ask you two questions on that first one is um you know compared to q2 q1 um it seems like it looks like your market share of net new ads this quarter is closing in on 50 52 percent in your view what is the biggest driver for the improvement versus the first half Was it improved retention, lower churn, or gross loading improved beyond what we saw in the first half? And the second question is, when we see numbers like these and we look back at previous periods where you had very strong loading like that, we got followed by increased competitive dynamics in the industry that we all suffer from, I guess. is, you know, how do you think, you know, can you sustain those kind of net ads without seeing increased competitive pressure coming from the incumbents? Thank you, Maya. I will let, you know, maybe give more details, but And I would say that, you know, all the answers you mentioned are the reasons. But before going there, I'd like to, you mentioned it here. I think it was important to tell you that, financially or in terms of numbers, it's not, and we hope that maybe it's going to be a huge positive result. But what is important to remind is that Sierra Leone is a company that is providing some very strong support in a very competitive environment, where the experience we had with them, you know, for the last, what, 10 years now, almost, was very positive. We continue to think it will continue to be positive and bring us the capacity also to increase in a different kind of business the revenue growth. It reminds me, and sorry, I'll take a few seconds. It's like my father. My father, when he started Le Journal de Montréal, newspapers need to be distributed. Okay. So, sometimes what you do is that, you know, you hire your own employee that will distribute the newspaper. Instead of doing that, you know? You create a company that was distributing periodicals and newspapers. And it became a company that was also servicing other customers, you know? Which is basically was using the asset, you know? To grow the revenue. And I think of it here obviously differently because, you You know, we're talking here on IT, which is creating significant value, and for us, you know, having the capacity to grow this business in the future. So eventually, if you have additional questions, I'm sure that Hugues will be happy, you know, to answer them, but we think this as a very strategic acquisition, and instead of our, yeah, we have our own employees that work very closely with them, But we also have, you know, a different kind of intelligent network that brings value to the company. For your other piece, I guess that, you Know, what I will say is that, and we've been seeing this all day, all week, all month long, you know, our competitors don't help themselves. You know, they have fights against the regulator. they go in court, they fight fees, the CRTC are going against them, they charge that kind of fee, additional fee. So I think that the market and the customers know that. They know that they receive increases without even knowing about it. Well, I don't know what their mindset, maybe they think that, yeah, we'll lose some customers, but at the end of the day, most of our customers will not going to be able to find out and they will pay. Well, that could be something that they consider. We're not going do this. We've never been part of the big tree, and we will never be part of that. What we're doing is servicing our customers. I mentioned it in my remarks, transparency. And this is what brings the kind of financial and favorable results we had for the last, what now, almost 20 years in wireless. And we will continue to service this market with that kind of philosophy, that kindof policy. And we look forward to see this as a continuous recipe being favorable. I don't know, Eric, if you have anything else to add. Well, just adding, honestly, as you just said, you know, how did we do this, Maher? You know, as Pierre-Claude said at the beginning, all of the factors you mentioned are true in terms of gross loading, in terms of churn, in term of other things. But, I mean, our different path, as Piacal outlined in his opening remarks, is what? It's been everyday low price for many, many quarters and many years. And this is just building that confidence with the customers that there will not be surprises and that we will continue to provide the best service and the best experience at the best price. And you know what? That's why people are switching, and that's why People are coming to us, and they're staying with us, andthat is what is explaining that high loading. But if I can, let's take you guys off the loading for a minute. And if you look at wireless service revenues, you know, we've said it in terms of growth that we still have, you know, market share to gain in the West. We still have market share at the game in Ontario and obviously in Quebec as well. But we still a long runway outside ahead of us. But, you, know, looking at, you now, putting that in perspective, you we said still single-digit market share in the West, obviously a huge opportunity. But look at it from a different lens and have a look at the wireless service revenues for the industry this quarter or last 12 months, let's say, and you'll see that we're almost 8% of wireless service revenue. If you had, you know, we're just slightly under $2 billion if our calculations are correct for the last 12 months, whereas the top, you know, the top three are more than $20 billion. So, you know, 8% market share of service revenues, I think you will agree, is not, is still a sizable opportunity ahead of us because we were to clearly gain a lot more than that. You know, a year ago, we were at 7, maybe slightly ahead of 7%. Now, we're now almost 8%. And this is the path ahead of us and this is the opportunity ahead of us and doing it well as we've just explained through everyday low price approach that's been successful for many retailers in the past and is clearly successful for us right now. I will finish by adding you've been following the industry for so many years and then you know what's the difference between Quebec and the other areas in the country. We've been used to having lower prices in all our details and all our services. And accordingly, you know, we have our cost structure considering, you know, this specific environment. And, you know, we're bringing this elsewhere, and this is why, you know, we have the capacity to remain very competitive and we intend, you know, and again, as I said, one is not the opposite of the other one. You know, we can create value and we can create, you Know, volume. RGU are not going against ARPU. In fact, they go in the same direction for us. Thank you and congratulations on the quarter. next question comes from vince valentini at td carowind please go ahead hey thanks very much um first given how strong the wireless service revenue is i'm assuming there's positive operating leverage i know you don't have it broken out exactly hugh but i mean directionally do we think of wireless segment ebitda being up sort of 12 13 percent year over year yeah that that's that's reasonable yep okay thank you um just nitpicky on the the financials other revenue within the telecom segment it seems to be up every quarter this year this quarter is up 36 percent year over year like what are you putting in that other category in the wireless other wireless must no not in wireless just on your supplemental where it's on all the categories of revenue for telecom. There's an other segment, and it's up 36% year-over-year. So it's not mobile equipment revenue. It's something you call other. Power revenue. I don't know. I'll get back to you on this because I'm not quite sure what the other. Up 36, but it's a small number, right? It must be very small in the revenues. Like $60 million or thereabouts. Whatever, we can take it offline if that's easier for you. That's fine by me. The last one I have, you gave a very comprehensive answer to Mayor's question, but I just want to double-click on it. I think you have to admit that the incumbents, despite all of, yes, their potential challenges and the CRTC issues and the fact that you guys have sort of grown up with a different starting point and maybe better behavior. Despite all that, the incumbents all moved their flanker brands from $45 to $50 early in Q3. And there's a lot of moving pieces around that of promotions and so forth. But that's been the rack headline rate on their websites the entire quarter and you guys stayed at 40 for freedom. So the price gap went from $5 to $10 and instantly you've seen this massive surge in your market share. Clearly you're going to add over 50% of the sub ads in the industry this quarter. Do you not think that there's some linkage there and that maybe you're in some respects over earning this quarter and if you keep this up with a $10 price advantage that the others may be forced to respond at some point and then everybody just loses, as opposed to you guys just taking that extra ARPU and still driving strong sub-ads? Well, that's a tough question to answer, Vince. But, you know, I would say, you know, if it's not broken, don't fix it. I guess, you What we've been able to achieve are good results. And, again, you know, it's unfortunate that, and I guess that, you know, you would like to have a different answer, but, you know, again volume is not against our pool. And if we're able to reach both, you know, we'll continue to do so. So, we should not, obviously, we take care about, you know, what's taking place elsewhere. We're looking about what our competitors are doing. I think, and you will agree, I guess, as your colleague in the industry, that they probably, you know, didn't follow the right strategy and they're possibly, you know, changing their mind right now. The repricing effect was great, was hard for them. Are they changing their mind? Maybe, maybe yes, maybe no. We'll see. But for the moment, you know, what we can see is that, you know, they probably find out that it was not a good strategy. Again, you don't want to say, well, don't fix it, and we've been doing good. But there's no reason, you know, why we should change our strategies since, you know, we deliver good results. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Just back to your other revenue question. I just, okay, I guess I should have reacted, but it's fairly new. So ATR revenues are in the other revenues. So that's most of it. And we probably also in others is we put SVOD revenues and others. So that's what makes up the other revenues. And the increase is due to the fact that we now include the ATIA revenues as opposed to not having them last year. So that is the 36% increase. That makes sense. Thank you. Next question comes from Drew McReynolds at RBC, please go ahead Yeah thanks very much, good morning just for you on just back to telecom gross ex-stock compensation expense year over year, I'm not sure in your prepared remarks you actually gave that to my apologies but can you just let us know what that is Yes, it's 5.6% exactly, an increase X SBC. Okay, awesome. Thank you. And then just back to capital allocation. Obviously, you're in fantastic shape. What's preventing you from, you know, kind of taking CapEx up significantly and accelerating network expansion? Like you've been very, I think, clear and transparent. It's a gradual step up over time, you know, as you build out the network, but you seem to have so much financial capacity. Why wouldn't you step on the gas on network expansion, Drew? I'll answer it by saying, first of all, again, you're right. It is not because we have money that we will spend it stupidly, and I'm not saying that investing in our network is stupid, but we've been disciplined, and we will continue to do so. If we were to have a weak product, then we will be forced to do something. But again, roaming is certainly something that is adding our capacity to continue to offer good service. so we'll do this and we will continue to be disciplined in terms of allocation and I guess the board at the next board meeting after reviewing the year results will sit and will listen and will discuss what could be a different capital allocation it's a matter of the board And we look forward, you know, to have their own insight and to make sure that, you know, we're heading in the right direction. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Pierre-Claude. And then one final one for me, you know, maybe back to you, Hugues, this amazing work on the EBITDA margin for telecommunications, and I think you've quarter and quarter explained kind of everything behind it. As you think about Western Canada expansion and that next leg of growth, I know last quarter, you remained comfortable that you could absorb, you know, the OPEX investment as you kind of build out your brand and grow that in the West. Are you still comfortable in kind of maintaining, you knows, that margin trajectory or operating leverage as you put more into the Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, this is something, Drew, I think you know, operating margin and EBITDA margin is something of an obsession for us. And it is something we have been not only good at, but I would argue the industry standard at for many, many years. Even starting with a $20 less RQ, we keep maintaining higher margins. So this is something, and why I'm saying this is that that is the result of continuous improvement, continuous day after day and month after month, trying to find opportunities for cost savings and investing in new platforms that will lead to cost savings into OPEX reduction. And this is something that we continue. It's in our DNA and it's something that will continue. And I'm more than confident that this is something that Will always give us the flexibility to continue to invest for our growth because we are hyper tight and hyper rigorous on our cost base. Okay. Amazing performance. Thank you both. Thank you, Drew. Next question comes from Jérôme Dubreuil at Desjardins. Please go ahead. Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I guess I'll have to be that guy, but we'll see what happens after 2030 with regards to MVNO. But in the meantime, do you think it would be beneficial for Quebec or to have some sort of an agreement with SpaceX possibly for an MVNO, or do you think letting them in is too risky of a strategy? Thank you. Thank you, Jérôme. Well, maybe first of all, we'll try to – you guys, we know that you have another appointment in, what, nine minutes. So we're going to try to answer that more quickly. Yeah, obviously, a BNO is of importance. The policy is of important. You know, we've been seeing the government, the federal government, being concerned about, you know, this situation. We see the government having a narrative regarding NTN, so non-terrestrial networks. I think it's of importance for Canada, and we will continue to look at what's taking place there. As of today, as you all know, we're in a regulated business, so then, therefore, spectrum is a scarce asset, and we need to make sure that Canada will use it as most efficiently as possible. We're always open about new technology. We will need to look at that in detail. I guess that it's too early to have a final or the beginning of a final conclusion. But there's certainly some interesting movement for the future. And, yeah, networks will change, but certainly something will never change is the customer experience and our capacity to deliver a good product. This I think that we're good at, and we will continue to enhance and increase the capability of having different networks. The backhaul is there. The wireless network is there, and the end is another thing that we will need to consider, either in association or either in a different mode. Sorry, I'm just going to push a bit further on that one. And if SpaceX were to come knocking on your door and ask for an FDNO, would you say yes or no today? Just that you don't like my answer. Well, yeah, I would say, you know, I do probably, I did some politics, you knows, I will answer parallel to your question. I think this is an assumption that we didn't, you know, face yet. So I don't think it works in a dimension. I'll answer it. Thank you. That's a good one. Next question comes from Stephanie Price at CIBC. Hi, good morning. Just wanted to stick on Internet here or maybe transition to Internet a little bit after the SpaceX commentary. Internet revenue growth was strong at 3%. Just curious if you can give any additional color there on the competitive environment of Quebec. And also you can touch on bundling and thoughts on west of Quebec internet expansion. Yes, certainly some color on internet, plus 3%, as you just said. And you will remember this is after a couple of years of difficult performance on internet. You will remember, you know, we last year or two years ago at this point, we were struggling and we were, our internet revenues were actually lower. And now we are back in positive territory. The market is clearly, and why? Because we are within a very competitive environment, but a rationally competitive environment. We are able to better value our services and our client experience in Quebec. And globally, I think the market is a lot healthier, and we are certainly able to monetize that value and this superior service that we've built over the years and finally translating this in revenue growth in Quebec. So, we're quite positive on broadband in Quebec going forward. You know, even in cable, I even ask, you know, wireline is something we haven't talked much or You guys didn't ask us a lot about this quarter. You know, even on cable, you'll look at minus 4% decreases two years ago, or about 18 months ago. We're now at minus 1%, and we certainly see that as continuing. So this is, in our view, a healthy environment, one in which we are clearly demonstrating the value of our products and services. And it's a healthy cash flow generation machine for us, and it's something that we're quite positive on. I would add, Stephanie, also that I mentioned it, but I think that it's worth to add a few words there. The NHL rights renewal that we signed is of great interest for our cable or TV product. As you probably know, Montreal Canadiens have been very strong for the last months. That brings additional interest on cable and gives us the capacity also to improve our streaming and OTT capabilities, which diversify our capacity to remain strong there. So we look forward, you know, at the decent price. As you saw, prices were significantly higher. We didn't disclose, you Know, our price. But what we know is that we have gains and our penetration in terms of providing gains is higher and then, therefore, giving us an interest and edge for the future. Thank you very much. I think that there's two other there's Tim and David we'll try to go short again you know because my mother educated me politely and I don't want to make sure that you know you guys gonna miss the beginning miss our friends blue guys next question comes from Tim Casey at BMO I'm covered thanks you're covered great thanks Tim Next question will be from David McFadden at ATB Cormac. Please go ahead. Great. Thanks for squeezing me in. Maybe you could just give us an update on the network build-out, your own network build‑out in BC and Alberta. Yeah, quickly, David. Alberta, and I forgot to mention that, but Alberta is going well. We have good capabilities of growing our network there. And BC is different, you know, from one area to the other. When you go more urban, it's different. It's not as easy as elsewhere. Manpower and experience is not as easily, you know, also defined. So in terms of build-out, it is not also going at the same level that we would like us to do. And obviously, you know, if you were to report of our previous answer on capital expenditure, and this is also a reason why, you know, we've been disciplined and we're not going to do things that are going against quality. We need to make sure that, you know, the expertise of building our network will continue to be strong and then therefore continuing to be in the future providing quality service, quality product. Okay. Thanks. I'll follow up with you later on. Thank you. Good. So, I would like to thank you all. You're just fine on time, and have a nice day. Thank you! Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Scribacore, Inc.'s financial results for the third quarter 2026 conference call. Thank you for your participation and have nice day!