{"id":470957,"date":"2026-02-12T21:27:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T21:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/470957\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T21:27:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T21:27:21","slug":"telus-ceo-darren-entwistle-to-retire-after-26-years-in-the-top-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/470957\/","title":{"rendered":"Telus CEO Darren Entwistle to retire after 26 years in the top job"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Telus Corp. chief executive Darren Entwistle will retire at the end of June and be succeeded by former CIBC chief executive Victor Dodig, the telecom company says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">&#8220;It has, without a shadow of a doubt, been a tremendous privilege to be part of the Telus team for the past 26 years and to have an opportunity to work alongside many of the people on this call,&#8221; Entwistle told analysts during the company&#8217;s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Dodig becomes CEO designate at Telus effective immediately and will join the company&#8217;s leadership team full-time on May 1 before becoming chief executive on July 1. He stepped down as chief executive at CIBC last year, handing the reins at the bank to Harry Culham after more than a decade in the job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Entwistle said the board was looking to &#8220;lock in&#8221; a leader who &#8220;had a set of leadership values that reflected the culture that has served the Telus organization so well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">&#8220;Victor&#8217;s proven track record leading customer-oriented businesses, driving growth and operating in a regulated sector positions him ideally to build on Darren&#8217;s legacy and to continue creating long-term, sustainable value for our shareholders,&#8221; Telus board chair John Manley said in a news release.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Entwistle will step down from the Telus board when he leaves the chief executive job on June 30.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">He will be given the title of CEO emeritus and act as an adviser and be available to Dodig until April 30, 2027.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">The announcement came as Telus reported a profit attributable to common shares of $292 million or 19 cents per share for its fourth quarter. The result compared with a profit attributable to common shares of $358 million or 24 cents per share in the same quarter a year earlier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Operating revenue and other income totalled $5.26 billion, down from $5.38 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">On an adjusted basis, Telus says it earned 20 cents per share for the quarter ended Dec. 31 compared with an adjusted profit of 25 cents per share a year earlier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">The company&#8217;s results were impacted as smaller players in the industry opted for aggressive pricing over the past few weeks, said Zainul Mawji, executive vice-president and president for Telus Consumer Solutions, on the call on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">&#8220;The industry is engaged in some irrational tactics, unfortunately, following a period of some additional sanguine behaviour that you&#8217;ve seen flow through in our results,&#8221; Mawji said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">&#8220;When we see behaviour of masking promotions to erode value at the premium level, that undermines the perception of premium brands and initiates a pretty detrimental race to the bottom in the mind of the consumer,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Mawji said that&#8217;s where Telus&#8217; flanker and prepaid brands serve an important role, catering to the value-focused demographic within the market.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">&#8220;We don&#8217;t want to be criticized or really apologetic for how we respond to that competitive aggression,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. have both said they are taking a more balanced approach and are being selective with their offers and promotions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Telus reported its mobile phone churn rate \u2014 a measure of subscribers who cancelled their services \u2014 was 1.46 per cent in the fourth quarter, which improved compared with 1.50 per cent a year ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">The company said the decrease was largely due to its &#8220;ongoing focus on customer retention and network quality, along with success in bundled offerings,&#8221; which were partially offset by customer switching decisions in response to continuing marketing and promotional price competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Telus said it added 50,000 net mobile phone subscribers in the quarter, down by 20,000 from a year ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Its mobile phone average revenue per user was $57.10 in the fourth quarter, a decrease of $0.95 from a year ago. Telus said the drop was attributable to customers signing up for base rate plans with lower prices, along with a decline in roaming revenues as more Canadians adopt unlimited data and Canada-U.S.-Mexico plans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Companies in this story: (TSX: T, TSX: CM)<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-vbsvxt\">Ritika Dubey, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Telus Corp. chief executive Darren Entwistle will retire at the end of June and be succeeded by former&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,73715,143092,85211,191663,12802,59684],"class_list":["post-470957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chief-executive","tag-darren-entwistle","tag-fourth-quarter","tag-telecom-company","tag-telus","tag-victor-dodig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}