MTS - First Quarter 2007

Transcription

1 MTS FIRST QUARTER 2007 CONFERENCE CALL MAY 8, 2007, 4:00 P.M. EDT IAN CHADSEY, Vice-President of Investor Relations, Manitoba Telecom Services: Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the call. This morning we issued our first quarter news release, MD&A and our supplemental package which are available on our website at mtsallstream.com. Since the AGM was web cast earlier today, we will not spend time on this call repeating the comments made at that meeting. That said, today s comments may contain forward-looking information related to the finances and operations of the company including comments on revenue, EBITDA, earnings, cash flow and CAPEX. These statements are based on assumptions made by the company and run the risk that our actual results may differ from those anticipated. The statements made today reflect the assumptions of MTS as of May 8, 2007 and accordingly are subject to change after that date. MTS disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise these statements whether as a result of change in circumstances, future events or otherwise. These cautionary statements are made on behalf of each speaker whose remarks contain forward-looking information. The board of directors today approved the second quarter dividend which has been set at $0.65 per share. On today s call we have Pierre Blouin, Chief Executive Officer, Wayne Demkey, Chief Financial Officer, John MacDonald, President of the Enterprise Solutions Division, Kelvin Shepherd, President of the Consumer Markets Division, Chris Peirce, Chief Regulatory Officer and with that I ll turn the call over to Pierre. - PREPARED REMARKS - PIERRE BLOUIN, Chief Executive Officer, MTS Allstream: Thank you Ian. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining our call. And first let me say that we re very pleased that Ian has joined MTS to head up our investor relations group. We re pleased to have someone on board who knows the industry as well as Ian does from his experience at Bell Alliant. Welcome Ian. Earlier today we held our annual meeting in Winnipeg and I can report that it was a success on all counts. It gave us the opportunity to demonstrate to shareholders the progress we ve made over the past 15 months and discuss our plan and strategy going forward. Also today, we released our financial results for the first quarter of 07. These results mark our fifth consecutive quarter of solid performance and we believe they demonstrate that we have continued to build on the positive momentum we established in Canadian telecom remains a challenging and competitive environment. We can all appreciate this from the past few week s events and I m glad that we took the past year to go through a full review of our business which has prepared us to succeed in an - 1 -

2 industry which is being totally reshaped through new regulatory policies, a changing competitive landscape and an ever-increasing technological evolution. At MTS Allstream, we have been focused over the past 15 months at making progress and strengthening the fundamentals of our business and executing on our business plan. I think we are a very different company today than we were at the beginning of We re disciplined, more focused, have an improved cost structure and a clear plan which is enabling us to be more competitive than we have been in some time, and with the exception of revenue, which as we expected has remained flat to down in recent quarters, we re showing gains in nearly every important performance metric, ranging from EBITDA and free cash flow to total customer connections, which increased about 3% in the quarter. Over the past 15 months, we ve restructured our business to build a solid foundation for future growth. Our disciplined consumer bundle strategy in Manitoba is successful. Nationally, we re a more solid competitor and we continue to be the leading competitor to either TELUS or Bell in major enterprise markets. We ve regained traction among large enterprise customers and even if it s the early days of our new strategy, our mid-market national initiative is showing promising results. We also continued to bring our cost structure in line with the demands of our market. So all in all, we are steadily establishing a stronger presence as an integrated national communications provider across the country. In terms of ongoing operations, we ve made progress in a number of areas in the first quarter. Free cash flow from continuing operations was up 5.4% to $91.6 million. Earnings per share from continuing operations increased 17.5% as compared to the first quarter 06. Revenues from growth services were up close to 10% and represented 37% of revenues compared to 33% in the same period in 06. And once again, we delivered double-digit growth in terms of customers and revenues for each of wireless, high-speed Internet, digital television and converged IP services. And while our unified communication revenues were flat in the quarter, John s team has a plan in place to achieve double-digit growth in We re pleased with our results for the quarter from all our key financial metrics from continuing operations with revenues being slightly lower than expected, but looking ahead we remain on pace to meet our guidance for Revenues from our legacy services, which include local, long distance and business data, were $293 million, down 9% from Q but only 3% below the 2006 fourth quarter. This better performance comes from our focus on slowing down our NAS losses for customer winbacks and disciplined retention programmes. Our revenue performance is still masked by the Rogers and AT&T contracts decline as they continue to migrate their wholesale business with Allstream to their own networks. Excluding this impact, the first quarter 2007 revenues would have been down 1% compared to the same period last year

3 Among other highlights from the quarter, we gained further traction with our disciplined bundled-offering strategy in Manitoba as 16% of our customers have a bundled service compared to 10% for the same period last year. We saw real progress in our recently announced mid-market initiative in our Enterprise Solutions division as we realized promising sales with 137 new signed contracts. On the cost side, we remain on track to achieve an additional $40 to $50 million in cost savings in 07, having achieved in the first quarter $17 million of realized reductions. Wayne will talk in detail about the financial highlights for the quarter in a few minutes. I d like to spend a moment on some of our key operational highlights and I ll begin with the Enterprise Solutions division. During the first three months of 07, the Enterprise Solutions division continued to improve its business fundamentals and build momentum in the national business market. This is evidenced by the fact that the division contributed about $66 million of EBITDA for the last quarter. Revenue from growth services, which are combined converged IP and unified communication services, increased 11% this quarter as compared to the first quarter of 06. IP-VPN customers grew to 193 in the quarter as demand continues to grow for MTS Allstream s next-generation IP-based services from business customers and this is on par with Bell Canada. We signed new and profitable contracts with a total value of about $76 million in the quarter. These accomplishments, together with our ongoing cost reduction initiatives, contributed to a slight improvement in our Enterprise Solutions division s EBITDA margin for the first quarter relative to the first quarter of 06. We re continuing to exercise strict discipline in our pricing across our markets and are gaining traction in the marketplace with significant new contracts such as an MPLS network for an IP solution for Royal & SunAlliance, one of Canada s largest property and casualty insurance groups; a three-year agreement with the government of Newfoundland and Labrador to supply IT and information management services; a contract to provide communication solutions to the Elkhorn Resort & Conference Centre and their Edmonton and Winnipeg call centres. This is an example of how our MTS Allstream integrated solutions offering can meet customer needs with leading-edge IP solutions. We successfully won a three-year contract with Sleeman Breweries to provide converged IP services and completed a sale with Fidelity Investments relating to unified communications. The Enterprise Solutions division is making solid progress and we can now feel much better momentum with its customers. Now turning to the Consumer Markets division where we had another solid quarter. Wireless customers were up 12% and wireless revenues increased by 14%. To support our continued growth in wireless, we announced an initiative in March to expand our wireless coverage in rural areas of Manitoba by 30 new digital sites, bringing our footprint to 98% of the province. In 2007, we will invest about $15 million to upgrade digital wireless and high-speed wireless data services for customers across Manitoba; high-speed Internet customers increased by 18%, and revenues by 12% over the same quarter last year

4 Digital television revenues were up 41.4% to $9.9 million as the number of customers grew by 27% from the same period a year ago. Our market share in Winnipeg for TV service is now at about 28% and we crossed a major milestone after installing our 70,000 th digital TV customer. This represents an increase of over 30,000 customers in less than two years, and demonstrates the strong appeal and the leadership of this service. Our performance has continued to improve in the residential telephony market in Winnipeg. MTS lost about 3,000 lines in the first quarter, which followed the trend we experienced in the fourth quarter of 06. The 3,000 line loss is less than the losses experienced in the first quarter of And we continued to see steady improvements in customer winbacks in the first quarter of 2007, as we achieved an average of 53% of winbacks of gross losses. These success rates were not achieved through major price discounts but instead through specific marketing programmes and through channel sales. When we winback a customer, 80% tend to purchase two additional product lines such as Internet and TV, along with the voice product. On the regulatory front, it s been a very active beginning of the year. The recently announced rules for the deregulation of the local phone service signal the government s intention to bring accelerated deregulation to the Canadian market. The government has recognized that their regulation must be accompanied by fair access for competitors to the public networks controlled by former monopolies. By linking deregulation to competitor quality of service the government has provided the incentives for customers to receive full benefits of innovation and to enable the choice that competition cannot. The new forbearance rule announced on April 4 essentially eliminates all restrictions for talking to customers lost to competitors and brings flexibility to our winback efforts. The new rules also provide for more flexibility by removing pre-existing restrictions on promotional offers. We believe this will be positive for our consumer business, while not having a major impact on our national enterprises. And in response to the new forbearance rules, earlier today we filed our application to be deregulated in the local residential market in Winnipeg. With our application, we included the clear evidence required by the new rules to demonstrate the presence of the requisite number of competitors and indicated that we would shortly file the required evidence to demonstrate our compliance with the quality of service requirements. In so doing, our application is unique from all of the applications filed by the other incumbents, few of which provide the evidence required by the government s order. Recently the CRTC also issued a price cap framework for large incumbent local exchange carriers and we re pleased to see a decision that recognizes that residential and business markets have different states of competition. It highlights that competition is emerging rapidly in residential markets like Winnipeg, while allowing competition to continue to develop in the business market. During the quarter, the CRTC also rendered another positive decision for our company. The decision confirmed that we have been double-billed for basic service extension feature charges assessed by the incumbents for the last five years. The ruling will - 4 -

5 provide cost savings going forward as well as the recovery of past excessive charges. This is a strong signal that the CRTC is focused on continuing to ensure fair competitor access to incumbent networks. In summary, we are on plan to achieve our 2007 objectives with solid growth in growth services, strong results from our bundling strategy in Manitoba and early positive returns from our new mid-market initiative for business customers. The hard work and dedication of our employees across the country continues to be one of the key drivers for our success and I d like to acknowledge them for their contribution. In the first quarter, John, Kelvin and I recently toured the country. We visited about 5,000 of our employees to talk about our plans for 2007 and I can tell you that nothing has given me more confidence in our ability to compete than that trip. And with that I ll turn the call over to Wayne. WAYNE DEMKEY, Chief Financial Officer, MTS Allstream: Thank you Pierre and good afternoon everyone. As Pierre has mentioned, we are pleased to report our fifth consecutive quarter of solid financial results that are in line with our outlook for Our results for the first quarter underline the progress we have made to improve the fundamentals of our business. Before I review the results for the quarter, I d like to highlight that back in 2006 we announced changes to our organizational structure. Under this structure we created a Consumer Markets division and an Enterprise Solutions division. The Consumer Markets division focused on the consumer and small business segments and the Enterprise Solutions division is focused on the mid- to large-enterprise business market. Following the required system changes, effective this quarter we are now reporting in the segmented format with prior-period comparison. In addition, starting with the first quarter of 2007, we are providing a revenue split between our growth and legacy services. We believe this will highlight our success going forward with growth services and will also show the increasing importance of our growth services as a proportion of total revenues. You ll find this information in both our interim MD&A and supplemental package. Let s now turn to the results. Our first quarter results from continuing operations show that performance has been quite positive compared to the first quarter of last year. Earnings per share was $0.74, up 17.5% from $0.63. EBITDA was $165 million, up 1.1% from $163.2 million. Free cash flow was $191.6 million, up 5.4% from $86.9 million and revenues of $467.4 million or down 2.7% from $480.4 million. For the first quarter, reported results compared to the first quarter of last year: earnings per share was $0.80, up 23.1% from $0.65. EBITDA was $170.2 million, up 6.3% from $160.1 million. Free cash flow was $105 million, up from $63.9 million and revenues $466.6 million were down 2.9% from $480.4 million. Our reported results in the - 5 -

6 first quarter of 2007 reflect items that are not from continuing operations including a positive one-time adjustment of $0.10 to earnings per share related to a regulatory decision as well as restructuring costs. For the first quarter of 2006, items not from continuing operations include discontinued operations and integration costs. The decreased revenues are primarily due to decreased legacy services largely offset by the strong performance of our growth services revenues. Included in the decline of legacy services are reduced revenues associated with AT&T and Rogers, as they migrate more of their telecom activities to their own networks. We expect total revenues that are flat year-over-year and when you exclude AT&T and Rogers, we will see growth in revenues. The strong performance in our growth services was a major contributor to our first quarter results. Collectively our growth services revenues increased by 9.7% to $173.9 million in the first quarter of Growth services now represent 37% of our total revenues, up from 33% last year in the first quarter of 2006, and include wireless revenues which grew by 13.9% on the strength of an 11.6% increase in cellular customers and a 2.7% increase in average revenue per unit. High-speed Internet customers also showed significant growth increasing by 18.2% from a year earlier. Digital television continued to show strong growth with revenues up 41.4% driven by a 27% increase in our customer base and a 5.3% increase in ARPU. The popularity of our TV product is clearly demonstrated by our increasing market share which has now reached approximately 28% in Winnipeg. Our next-generation data revenues, which include converged IP and unified communications, were up 11.1% in the quarter and our IP-VPN customers - customer accounts increased to 193 reflecting the attractiveness and growing demand for our innovative product and services available to business customers. Our unified communication services generated solid results which were flat as compared to the first quarter of 2006 and slightly below our expectations. However, a healthy backlog and sales funnel suggest that the shortfall in this quarter is largely due to timing. We believe that we remain on track to achieve the expected double-digit growth in 2007 in this line of business. As expected our legacy revenues declined in the quarter by 8.8% to $293.5 million in the first quarter of 2007 compared to the first quarter of Included in this decline are reduced legacy revenues associated with AT&T and Rogers, customer migration to newer IP-based growth services and re-price, all of which continued to impact our legacy services revenues this quarter. Importantly we ve made significant progress in reducing these trends. Our residential line decrease was 5.7% over the past year. In the first quarter this equates to approximately 3,000 lines, which was less than half the amount we experienced in the same quarter last year, and is at the same level as in the fourth quarter of 2006 on a seasonally adjusted basis. This reflects the continued success of our winback and retention programmes and the strength of our customer - 6 -

7 value proposition through our bundle strategies. In addition, with the recent CRTC decision on forbearance and the elimination of the waiting period for contacting customers lost to competitors, we will be able to further capitalize on our already successful winback programme. Of note, total customer connections, which include network access service, high-speed Internet, wireless and digital TV, have increased almost 3% in the first quarter of 2007 when compared to the first quarter of Moving to the cost side, operations expense was $292.5 million, representing a 7.8% decrease from $317.2 million in 2006, demonstrating the success we ve had with our TP2 cost reduction initiatives in In 2007, our strong execution in reducing costs continues with our 2007 efficiency programme in which we have identified additional cost reduction opportunities that we expect will achieve cost savings of $40 to $50 million in As of March 31, 2007 we ve achieved annualized cost savings of approximately $17 million associated with these opportunities. Of this we ve realized in-quarter savings of approximately $8 million. The expected costs associated with this programme are $30 to $40 million. First quarter EBITDA from continuing operations of $165 million was 1.1% higher when compared to $163.2 million in This increased EBITDA and overall improvement in our consolidated EBITDA margin reflects the strong performance of our growth services and the success of our cost reduction programme. First quarter earnings per share from continuing operations was up 17.5% to $0.74 when compared to the same period a year earlier. This increase was due to improved EBITDA along with lower debt cost, higher other income and fewer shares outstanding. Free cash flow from continuing operations for the quarter totalled $91.6 million, up 5.4% from $86.9 million in the first quarter of This strong performance is driven by higher cash flows from operations. The significant cash flows that we continue to generate from our operations are a very positive indicator of the sustainability of our dividend, which at current levels, represents one of the highest dividend yields on the TSX. Capital expenditures from continuing operations during the first quarter were $48.4 million, which is slightly lower than last year due to timing differences on various capital projects. Our capital expenditure requirements for 2007 are similar to 2006; in the 14% to 15% of revenue range. At this level, we are slightly below what you are seeing in other telcos, as we are benefiting from the significant investment from state-of-the-art networks that were completed over the past number of years in each of our divisions. Additionally, we also continue to benefit from our substantial tax assets. As many of you know, the company expects to make no payment of cash taxes no earlier than As we ve stated previously, there are two items that impact our cash flow results that are not from continuing operations. The first is restructuring costs associated with our cost reduction programme, which are on track with expected costs to be $30 to $40 million in Secondly, our pension solvency funding, which was estimated to - 7 -

8 be in the $15 to $20 million range in We ve almost completed our January 1, 2007 actuarial evaluation and we are now expecting pension solvency funding in 2007 to be approximately $4 million. Additionally, on the strength of solid returns from our pension assets and a slight favourable increase in interest rates, we are now expecting annualized solvency funding beyond 2007 to be in the $20 to $25 million range, representing a significant decrease from the $40 to $45 million that was expected based on our 2006 valuation report. We ve also made significant progress with a $320 million share buyback programme that we launched last year. As at the end of May 7, 2007 we ve completed approximately half of this share buyback programme, repurchasing 3.7 million shares for cancellation at a cost of $172 million. This share buyback programme is being funded from the sale of non-core assets last year. In summary, we had a solid and productive first quarter. We re firmly focused on our business plan and we re making progress in many areas that we have identified as growth opportunities. We re confident in our ability to deliver our expected results for 2007 in part due to our success in 2006 including an aggressive cost reduction programme resulting in more than $100 million in annualized savings, along with double-digit growth in our growth services areas, solid free cash flow and an increasing proportion of revenue from growth services. Thank you and we ll be pleased to answer any questions you may have. - QUESTION-AND-ANSWER SESSION - JONATHAN ALLEN, RBC Capital Markets: Hi, thanks very much. Looking at the revenues, they seemed a little bit light and you mentioned the unified communications revenue being slightly flat year-over-year despite the guidance of being up, I believe, 45% to 50% during the year. I m just curious how material this segment is to the overall data revenue. Can you give us some sense of the size? First of all in unified communications, you re right. We are expecting significant growth in that area. It s also an area where we see revenues being somewhat lumpy from quarter to quarter and we did have an excellent quarter in Q4, which has some impact on the first quarter. When we looked at the funnel and the backlog that we have in that area, we still are expecting to see significant growth in line with what our expectations were for JONATHAN ALLEN, RBC Capital Markets: But as far as magnitude, are we talking about a segment that s worth $2 million or $50 million here? - 8 -

9 We haven t given out the number specifically with respect to each of our growth segments. JONATHAN ALLEN, RBC Capital Markets: Without giving us specific details, can you tell us if it is a material contributor? Yes, it s a material contributor. JONATHAN ALLEN, RBC Capital Markets: Okay, one other follow-up question for you. I was delighted to see the rate increases for IPTV that you put through in the quarter. Could you give us a sense of how much the rate increase was, how it was applied and whether you see room for additional ARPU growth in the segment? KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: The rate increase is $2.00 on our basic service and we implemented it midway in January. Good results, we didn t really see any significant impact from churn or slowdown acquisitions at all so the increase itself it went pretty much as we expected. In terms of additional ARPU, while we re still focusing on some additional ARPU generators including things like our video-on-demand service, pay-per-view, which was introduced relatively recently in the latter part of last year and we re just starting to really get some traction in that area. As for future rate increases, probably not in the near term but certainly on an annual basis. It s something that we would look at and we certainly see the competitive environment out there tending to do those on a fairly regular basis. JONATHAN ALLEN, RBC Capital Markets: And actually on that note, did you see Shaw in the quarter doing a similar rate increase? PIERRE BLOUIN, MTS Allstream: Yes, before Kelvin answers, Jonathan, it s Pierre. I think we re still the most expensive service out there and even with that, our performance is still quite strong, for most of these services. KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: Yes, they did, I m just not sure of the exact timing, Jonathan, but I think it was either in early Q4 or late Q3. Shaw implemented a very similar rate increase. In our case, this was the second rate increase that we d done in eight months. JONATHAN ALLEN, RBC Capital Markets: Okay, great. Thanks very much Kelvin

10 KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: Thank you. Yes, thanks very much. Can you give us some clarify on the impact of Rogers and AT&T looking at the year-over-year comparison. How important was it in the quarter-over-quarter comparison, and I have a couple of follow-ups? Thanks. The reduction in revenues would be probably a little better than half the reduction that we saw in the quarter and as Pierre talked about earlier revenues would have been down approximately 1% excluding the impact of Rogers and AT&T. Okay, that s very helpful, thanks. And can you comment generally on the in-region wireline business, you ve got excellent margins there. Should we look at this as being a clean quarter or were there any one-time influences on either the revenue or the expense side that might distort the reported margins in region, thanks? No, there weren t any one-time items other than the ones that we ve disclosed in our MD&A. Okay, thanks and just one quick follow-up. Amortization was significantly lower than last quarter. Is the Q1 run rate a good one to use for this year or is it abnormally low, thanks? Yes, the Q1 run rate is about right. You might see it go up a little bit. Essentially the decrease is due to some year-end adjustments we made last year to the evaluation of our income tax assets and that had an impact on goodwill that was originally recorded in the Allstream acquisition. As a result it impacts or lowers our amortization. PETER RHAMEY, BMO Capital Markets: Yes, good afternoon. Further to Glen s question on the enterprise side. The 27% margins in the quarter, I think are a record result for you in the last two years. I m wondering on that, but I m trying to reconcile that to margin performance and what it might look like going forward. The cost savings where you talk about $8 million of run rate savings in the quarter but $17 million realized on an annualized basis, which really implies that it s only $4 million. So I m wondering, if there s $4 million of one-time savings here that occurred in the quarter that you don t expect to be repeated? Let me just give you some clarity. Our target that we talked about, in terms of the $40 to $50 million in savings, would be an annualized number. If that refers to reduced

11 workforce or the associated changes to underlying expenses, those expenses then become realized each quarter. So that causes the difference you re seeing. If you re trying to match that up though with the decrease in expenses year-over-year, there would also be a carried-forward impact from cost savings that we ve seen in the other programmes, such as in the last year for example. It is all offset partially by growth in our growth services, where we would see cost increases. PETER RHAMEY, BMO Capital Markets: Yes. I guess, Wayne, I m just trying to look at the $8 million realized in the quarter, cost savings. I think I m quoting you correctly. That $8 million in the quarter, wouldn t that be $32 million annually as opposed to $17 million? Where am I going wrong on this? It wouldn t be $8 million necessarily this year. It would be in-quarter amount so it s the annualized number that would be based on the $17 million. Maybe, I m not understanding your question. PIERRE BLOUIN, MTS Allstream: Your $8 million, depending on when it happened in the quarter and there could be some one-time portion potentially in the in-year operational but I don t think you can equate the $8 million becoming $32 million. The $8 million that we ve reported becomes $17 million annualized as there were some one-time items in the quarter. PETER RHAMEY, BMO Capital Markets: Okay, very good, very good, Okay. And so, getting back to the margin question, 27%, I was hoping that one of you could comment. Is that a one-time spike in margins here or do you expect that it s very sustainable because, the long haul business typically doesn t have that high type of margins, given your CAPEX tends to be so low. With respect to the margin question, we have, as I mentioned, segmented our results according to the way that we manage our business now and that s a change from prior quarters. We also provide the numbers the way they used to be in the supplemental package. The increase in the margins that you re looking at is on the new segmentation which includes our enterprise customers across the country, including those that are in Manitoba. In Manitoba, we have a larger margin because a higher percentage of those customers are on net, in fact, 100% on net, whereas nationally we would supply those customers services partially through other facilities. JOHN MACDONALD, MTS Allstream: The other thing that s impacted our first quarter results would be the impact of the regulatory decisions we spoke to. That one regulatory decision in particular, as well as we have an ongoing effort to move more and more of our facilities on net to improve our margin performance

12 SANFORD LEE, Genuity Capital Markets: Hi there. My question is in regards to wireless. So is MTS truly interested in becoming a national wireless carrier and I guess if so, can MTS really sustain, you know, your current $2.60 annual dividend per share and still pursue wireless expansion? And I guess if that is the case, is MTS prepared to cut its dividend for national wireless expansion? PIERRE BLOUIN, MTS Allstream: I think it s way too early to talk about any of that. In fact, we ve said publicly that wireless is an interesting business. We run an operation that s very successful on a regional basis and we re well-positioned, if we wanted to consider it now. However, there s a long way to go before we get there. We re participating in consultations right now with Industry Canada, giving our position with many others. Much later this year, we ll understand better what the rules are around wireless spectrum and depending on these rules; we would make a decision if the national wireless business opportunity still holds interest for us and how we would go about pursuing it. I think I ve said a few times on this call that, if we were to consider a full build-out of the country in a national wireless play, this would change the profile of our company. There are multiple scenarios on how to do this: with partners, through a consortium of multiple interested parties across the country where we would be only one of many. So I think it s way too early to think and talk about how this will be financed before we understand what the rules are for wireless spectrum. Right now we re a participant in a consultation in Ottawa and we re going to see what happens as we go forward. VINCE VALENTINI, TD Newcrest: Yes, thanks guys. I m going to have to ask about the leverage environment and what we re seeing at BCE these days and how it may apply to you guys and how you guys think about the world now. I guess the first part of my question is would some sort of sales or private equity interest through a leveraged buyout be something that you feel there could be interest in? Let me try to rephrase that in saying there obviously was interest in those kinds of parties to buy out BCE but BCE for some time rejected that interest and then all of a sudden changed their mind. Would you be in a similar position where you would have people who have expressed interest but you decided at this point it s better to go the route that you re going to maximize value or do you think the interest was more just in the bigger telcos and maybe there hasn t been that same amount of interest in a company like yours? PIERRE BLOUIN, MTS Allstream: Thank you Vince. First of all I would have been disappointed if you didn t ask the question. I would tell you that there s been so much speculation for the last two years on our company. It s our policy to not comment on this type of approach but let me just discuss with you a few facts and a few positions on the company. First, as any public company, we have a duty to our shareholders so if anybody was to contact us with a meaningful offer, we would have a responsibility along with our directors to consider it. Having said that though, we ve just gone through a year or

13 11 months during last year of a business review where we ve done a whole lot of work and exploring scenarios for the company. Right now, we re out of the business review and we re really focused as you can see through the results in executing and delivering our plan. So I think I ll leave it at that. VINCE VALENTINI, TD Newcrest: And just a follow-up on that leverage in general. I mean, after the buyback I believe at the end of the year you ll be somewhere in the 1.6 or 1.7 times debt leverage range and given where interest rates are and given what s maybe happening with some of your competitors in Canada, are you rethinking that at all? Is it even somewhere in the 2 to 2.5 range, something remotely possible or do you guys think ultra-conservative and low debt is still the right place to be? PIERRE BLOUIN, MTS Allstream: Yes, I think in terms of, increasing our debt and taking a more aggressive stance, this has been asked a few times now. Over time it s potentially something to consider but for us to consider it, we have to understand better what would be happening in the market at that time and see if we would be really offside from our peers before making this type of decision. We re delivering good results and solid results for the future. If not, I m assuming that, many of the analysts covering our company would put a big negative on that. I think for now, we are executing on our business plan and delivering on our strategy. As we go through a few solid quarters again, maybe we ll be able to look at some of those more aggressive scenarios, assuming we re not too much offside from our peers. Yes, thanks very much, two quick ones. First on wireless, you had nice ARPU growth. Can you talk about how much data contributed to the growth in ARPU and confirm, as well, when you or if you put through any price hikes on the voice side in the past four or five quarters? KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: In terms of pricing action, we did introduce a price increase, a $2.00 increase in Q1 but it was in the latter part of Q1 so you wouldn t have seen a huge impact in quarter. We expect that to generate some positive effects going forward. In terms of the contribution of data, let me give you a sense of it. We did see some growth obviously in our wireless data area but not a real significant ARPU impact in quarter. The majority of the positive impact there is from general price increase and some, what I would call, more general airtime types of activity. Most of the industry moved from $0.25 to $0.30 on average and long distance last year. I can t recall, did you follow them in that or not?

14 KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: I believe we also did increase our out-of-basket per minute rate as well, Glen, and I think it was to the $0.30 rate. Okay and that was last year was it? KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: No, I believe we did that in quarter. Okay, great. And just a last one, you obviously had great success on winbacks. Can you give us a little more colour on the sort of offers you re making to customers to achieve those results? KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: Sure, I mean, our standard winback offer - 80% to 90% of our winbacks are multi-service winbacks. I think over 80% bring back TV, Internet and voice. So with our standard winback offer, you have to look at it in that context of a full service offer. Generally, we aren t offering anything different than a packaging of our promotional pricing and combined with our bundle. So, if you look at the all-in price for a customer bringing all those services back and as you can imagine there is a certain mix and match, but what I would still call basic. Basic high-speed Internet, basic TV with a limited number of feature packs and our voice feature and long-distance package, it s in the order of $90 to $100 a month, is the total price offer that we re making. And that s not discounted for a few months. That s there kind of KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: That would be the discounted price offer they would receive for between six and 12 months depending on the mix of services they re taking. Okay. KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: I mean the retail price of that package is probably more in the $125 range and would be typically priced pretty much in line with a competitor package of the same magnitude, perhaps slightly premium priced to a competitor package. Okay

15 KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: On the winback side we re not using what I would call aggressive discounting as much as we are packaging our promotional offers and our bundling, and tying that into a longer term promotional offer. Okay and the customer has to sign up just for the year or are you locked in for a term three or not? KELVIN SHEPHERD, MTS Allstream: We haven t been locking in customers longer term although in some of the bundles, customers do have a wireless contract or an alarm system contract that can be two to five years depending on what they re buying. So components of the offer can be locked-in on a contract but not the overall package. Okay, that s helpful. Thanks very much. JOHN HENDERSON, Scotia Capital: Yes, thank you. I have a question on, the wireless issue of potentially expanding nationally, could you comment on what factors in the coming auction you would consider critical in making this decision? That s part one. And part two is whether or not you have a preference for GSM versus CDMA technology? PIERRE BLOUIN, MTS Allstream: Thank you John. Well, I think there are a few factors. The first one has to be fair gains. I really believe that if Industry Canada and the government are serious about bringing a fourth wireless player in this country, they have to ensure that there are some rules around the option that will enable the process. If not, it will not happen. I don t think it would have happened in the past either if those rules had not been there. I believe that spectrum for Microcell players had been provided at that time and without competition with others. If the government wants to go to that direction, I think we have to do this again. Considering also the market that we re in and the environment, having some type of mandated tower sharing should be a requirement and at least an understanding that you ll be able to reach an agreement with your competitors on roaming, similar to today. I think these are the three main issues. It s not that the spectrum should be free but at least, the type of framework that does enable a fourth wireless player. JOHN HENDERSON, Scotia Capital: GSM versus CDMA?

16 PIERRE BLOUIN, MTS Allstream: No real opinion for now. We re a CDMA player on our side. I think we ll look at that further if ever we progress in this and decide that there is an opportunity to move forward. NEIL SENEVIRATNE, National Bank Financial: Hi guys, thanks, just a quick modelling type question here. There was clearly an improvement in margin this quarter specifically at the ILEC division versus last quarter. I was wondering if you could remind us if there is any seasonality or lumpiness to the cost-cutting programme in that division over the next three quarters or can we assume similar stability for the rest of the year? Thanks. With respect to margins, we have seen an increase year-over-year in margin of about 130 basis points on a consolidated basis. So if you re looking at the quarters sequentially, there would be some lumpiness, and mostly in the fourth quarter when we typically see a ramp-up in costs. The better comparison is versus the first quarter, the corresponding quarter of the prior year. Still, we do see that increase about 130 basis points. I would attribute that to really solid execution on our cost-cutting efforts which continue and improving margins in some of our growth businesses. We ve had ARPU increases in both wireless and TV, and cost reductions continue in those segments so we ll continue to look at that. Offsetting those types of things we would see, are increases in costs. As our growth services grow, we re going to have corresponding cost increases and also we have continuing re-pricing of some of our legacy services. We believe that we can, in time or over time, improve margins further but in the shorter term, roughly similar than over the prior year. NEIL SENEVIRATNE, National Bank Financial: So there s nothing unusual in Q1 in the ILEC division that might have been attributed to this spike? No. PETER RHAMEY, BMO Capital Markets: Given the opportunity, I ll ask a second follow-up question. Wayne, when you look at the guidance, I mean, you haven t updated your guidance in that direction. I guess you don t want to get into updating guidance every quarter, but if you take a look at any of your numbers and you annualize them, recognizing there s some seasonal downturn in earnings in the fourth quarter, you re tracking well ahead of the guidance. Is there something specific that you re aware of that you are cautious on and therefore you haven t taken the opportunity to revisit that or is it more you just don t want to get into, as they say, that quarterly revision to guidance? Thank you

17 No reservations other than it s the first quarter. Certainly if you multiply the first quarter results by four, you d see that in terms of revenue and EBITDA, we re within our guidance and tracking very well there; in terms of earnings per share, we might be a little ahead on that one. If you re looking at free cash flow and CAPEX, I think you have to look at those together and in the first quarter, being ahead on free cash flow is largely attributable to having lower CAPEX in Q1 than you would see on an annualized basis. PETER RHAMEY, BMO Capital Markets: So your capital spending annual number is so good and we ll see that reverse in the later quarters? Yes, what we ve said is that it will probably be similar to the prior year. We have CAPEX around $270 million so if you annualize that number, it would be more than the $50 or $48 million that we had in Q1. If you took the annualized number and took the effect on free cash flow, that would probably put your cash flow back in line with where our guidance is