Bell is announcing the planned expansion, which the company will start to introduce in the coming weeks, as part of a slew of updates at its Investor Day on Tuesday.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
BCE Inc.’s BCE-T Bell Canada is expanding its internet offerings into Western Canada for the first time, using the government’s mandated fibre-sharing framework to offer service bundles to millions of new potential customers over rival Telus Corp.’s T-T network.
Over the past several years, there has been fraught debate within the telecom sector that saw Bell, which opposed network sharing, split from its rival Telus, which was in favour and moved into Bell’s territory in Ontario and Quebec starting last year.
While the profit margins on internet service alone are likely to be modest, it opens up the opportunity for Bell to approach the 3.4 million homes and businesses connected to Telus’s fibre network with a range of bundled add-ons, including mobile wireless plans and television streaming packages.
“We’ll do it in a way that makes sense for the consumer, that protects and grows our wireless base, and that’s financially disciplined for Bell and our investors,” said Bell chief executive officer Mirko Bibic in an interview.
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Bell is announcing the planned expansion, which the company will start to introduce in the coming weeks, as part of a slew of updates at its Investor Day on Tuesday, the first at Bell in more than a decade.
For public companies, an investor-day event is often an important chance for executives to give shareholders a deep dive into a company’s strategy.
Why is Bell now restarting this event after the long hiatus and what has been a challenging few years for the telecom and media company? According to Mr. Bibic, it’s an opportunity to drive home a message to BCE’s shareholders: the company is now on new footing and is gaining momentum, he says, as it carries out a range of expansions designed to produce sustainable growth.
Also on the docket for Tuesday: Bell is updating guidance on its enterprise division. The company is increasing its Bell Business Markets target to $1.5-billion in revenue by 2028, citing “substantial momentum,” from the previous target of $1-billion in 2030, though this earlier guidance did not include revenues from its cybersecurity and artificial-intelligence divisions, Bell Cyber and Bell AI Fabric.
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The company says that it is projecting annual growth over the next three years of 11 per cent at Bell Cyber, 33 per cent from Bell AI Fabric, and 40 per cent at Ateko, its technology consulting brand. All together, the divisions are capital light, Mr. Bibic said, with the major expense being the company’s $300-million investment in the first 100 megawatts of compute capacity (the company is planning for 500 megawatts total capacity).
This investment is expected to return between $100-million and $150-million in EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, said BCE chief financial officer Curtis Millen.
This year, Bell made efforts to allay investor concerns about its future spending. Earlier in 2025, the company halved the dividend that had long concerned both retail and institutional investors, and brought on partner PSP Investments to share the capital burden of expanding its new U.S. internet holding, Ziply Fibre, addressing apprehension about added pressure on its already-stretched balance sheet.
After years of decline, shares of BCE appear to have bottomed out. BCE stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange is flat year-to-date, having dropped 36 per cent in 2024, representing a 30-per-cent shareholder loss when factoring in dividend payments.
Now, the company is recommitting to a leverage schedule that will see it meet 3.5 times net debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio by the end of 2027 and approach 3 times leverage in 2030, down from an expected ratio of about 3.8 by the end of 2025.
In order to reach its leverage targets and pay down debt, the company said in February that it had identified non-core assets worth $7-billion, including the August sale of its $4.7-billion stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the planned sale of northern telecom NorthwesTel for $1-billion, and the sale of its legacy home-security business for up to $170-million.
This still leaves the company with more than $1-billion in divestitures yet to announce if it is to reach $7-billion.
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Mr. Bibic said the company is “working on files” that could get it to that amount. But he made clear that Bell does not immediately have plans to sell its own towers. In recent months, Rogers made $7-billion selling a minority stake in part of its backhaul infrastructure, and Telus netted $1.2-billion on a tower deal.
As for Ziply, Bell is not planning to make any bolt-on acquisitions that could endanger its 2027 leverage goal, although Mr. Curtis said the company would consider acquiring U.S.-based “mom and pop” companies to unlock more build.
“Anything we do in any area of the business – M&A, building fiber, investing, or otherwise – will be within those commitments,” he said. While the company would look at opportunities, it is squarely ruling out anything that will cause it to exceed its 2027 leverage commitment, he said.
BCE may have to contend with another challenge down the line: as of June, a year after announcing the sale of NorthwesTel, the buyer – Indigenous coalition Sixty North Unity – had yet to raise the $1-billion it has committed to pay, and said it was still seeking support, including the possibility of loan guarantees from the federal government. The group did not respond to a request for an update.
Mr. Bibic said Bell’s “Plan A” is to help Sixty North Unity secure the funding, but that he does not know the status of those arrangements.