Operator
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the TELUS 2020 Q3 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to introduce your speaker, Mr. Robert Mitchell. Please go ahead.
TELUS Corporation (TU)
Q3 2020 Earnings Call· Sat, Nov 7, 2020
$12.31
-0.16%
Operator
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the TELUS 2020 Q3 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to introduce your speaker, Mr. Robert Mitchell. Please go ahead.
Robert Mitchell
Management
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our third quarter 2020 results, news release, MD&A and financial statements and detailed supplemental investor information were posted on our website this morning. On our call today, we will have remarks by Darren Entwistle, President and CEO; Jeff Puritt, Executive Vice President and President and CEO of TELUS International; and Doug French, Executive Vice President and CFO. And for Q&A portion of today’s call, we also have Zainul Mawji, President, Home Solutions; Jim Senko, President, Mobility Solutions; François Gratton, Group President and Chair of TELUS Health and TELUS Quebec; and Tony Garren, EVP and Chief Customer Officer. Briefly on Slide 2, this presentation and answers to questions contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties and made based on certain assumptions, accordingly, actual performance could differ from statements made today, so we ask that you do not place undue reliance upon them. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law. And we refer you to risks and assumptions as outlined in our public disclosures, including third quarter 2020 MD&A and 2019 MD&A and filings with securities commissions in Canada and U.S. With that, over to you, Darren.
Darren Entwistle
Management
Thanks, Rodrigo, and hello, everyone. For third quarter, TELUS once again achieved strong operational and financial results, characterized by excellent execution, resulting in industry-leading and record high customer growth of 277,000 net additions. This accomplishment realized mix an unprecedented operating environment reflects effectiveness of our world-leading performance culture underpinned by our highly-engaged team. Indeed, TELUS’ recent recognition is top Canadian organization on Forbes World’s Best Employers ranking is a testament to skill, passion and grit of our high-performing global team. Leveraging this differentiation, alongside the strength of our digital capabilities and product superiority, we continue to achieve robust customer growth in both wireless and wireline in the quarter. Furthermore, this achievement was supported by strong and enhanced customer loyalty across key product lines, backed by the TELUS team’s dedication to delivering premium customer experiences, overall world-leading wireless and fiber broadband networks. In Q3, consolidated revenue was up 7.7%, whilst EBITDA decreased moderately by 0.6%, reflecting pandemic-related impacts. Thanks to our team’s resiliency, including a relentless focus on improving our cost structure and realizing important growth opportunities we mitigated some of the downside pressures. Notably, had not been for the exogenous net impact of COVID-19, EBITDA would have grown by approximately 5% at the consolidated level for TELUS. Let’s take a look now at our wireless business. Third quarter network revenue decreased by 2.9% as our consistent focus on strong and profitable growth continues to be impacted by reduced roaming revenue. As a result, wireless EBITDA was down 1.6%, partially mitigated by an intense focus on cost management, leveraging the strength of our superior customer experience, our world-leading wireless network and differentiated digital channels. Our team achieved a robust 111,000 mobile phone net additions in the third quarter of 2020. In terms of connected devices, we realized strong net additions of…
Jeff Puritt
Management
Thanks very much, Darren, and hello, everyone. We’re very pleased today to announce our agreement to acquire Lionbridge AI, a leading global provider of crowd-based training, data and annotation platform solutions. Lionbridge AI is one of only two globally scaled managed data annotation service providers in the world, preparing high-quality data that’s critical for the development and training of AI algorithms for some of the world’s largest technology companies in social media, search, retail and mobile. With a crowdsource community of more than 1 million professional annotators qualified linguists and in-country language speakers located across 6 continents and competence in over 300 languages in Lionbridge AI can source multilingual training data to build premium, ground truth data for text, images, videos and audio. As the development and adoption of artificial intelligence applications continue to accelerate and proliferate the market new economy services, such as data annotation, have strong tailwinds due to AI’s dependence on digital foundations that must be trained on large amounts of clean, accurate, reliable and unbiased data. The continued growth of the data annotation market will be driven by factors including the increasing sophistication of AI that are driving demand for customized data, adoption of AI beyond big tech with use cases across a wide range of industry sectors, including agriculture, e-commerce, telecommunications and health care, driven by our desire for convenience and efficiency in our daily lives, the continuous trend of new emerging technology verticals that rely on AI, such as robotics and autonomous driving. And today’s brand desires for enhanced digital solutions, such as product recommendations, relevant search engine results, speech recognition and chatbots. The acquisition of Lionbridge AI will be immediately financially accretive, reporting 2019 revenue of approximately $260 million, which was up 29% year-over-year and an EBITDA margin consistent with TELUS International’s 20%…
Doug French
Management
Thank you, Jeff and congrats. In spite of the challenging environment, we once again demonstrated strong resiliency with 111,000 mobile phone net additions, which were flat to the prior year. Within our Q3 mobile loading, prepaid loading was down on a year-over-year basis. And as a reminder, we do not include tablets in our mobile phone addition metrics. We continue to see a strong shift mix towards our premium TELUS postpaid brand. We achieved this result while being focused on high-quality loading and reducing non-recoverable COA and COR in the face of intense promotional activity across the industry. This will benefit both our current and future ARPU and network revenue growth. The Q3 network revenue decline of 2.9% includes a decline of approximately $67 million from lower roaming revenue, as travel remained restricted throughout the quarter. Given the current outlook of the pandemic, we expect that this roaming headwind will persist into 2021. Mobile phone ARPU declined 5%. However, this decline would have been approximately 1%, excluding the COVID-19 impact. The underlying improvement in our network revenue and ARPU trends on both a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis are reflective of our consistent focus on high-quality loading and profitable customer growth. Overall, Q3 wireless adjusted EBITDA declined 1.6%, reflecting the loss of high-margin roaming revenue as a result of the ongoing pandemic. Wireline external operating revenues increased by 18% year-over-year, as we continue to see strong contribution from acquisitions as well as organic growth. Similar to wireless, we maintained excellent momentum in high-quality loading. We continue to see strong product bundling across our base, including a quarter-over-quarter increase in the number of customers the bundled our mobile and home offering. On the B2B side, the impacts from a challenging economic environment continue to pressure growth. In spite of these macroeconomic headwinds,…
Robert Mitchell
Management
Thanks, Doug. Mike, can we proceed with the questions now, please.
Operator
Operator
Of course. [Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Simon Flannery from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Simon Flannery
Analyst
Great. Thank you very much. Good after noon and good morning. On the 5G, thank you for the disclosure on the rollout there. Perhaps you could just give us some more color about where we go from here? And what are the sort of use cases that you’re seeing as most promising in the near term? And then any comments around the competitive environment, particularly with the new iPhone out there? How do you think this year compares to prior years, given COVID and everything else? Thanks.
Darren Entwistle
Management
Thanks, Simon. Why don’t I kick it off? And Jim, then maybe ask you to top up at the applications layer and also talk about the iPhone 12 launch in the competitive environment. So as it relates to 5G, Simon, as I’ve told you before, this is a journey, not a sprint. A journey that’s going to be synchronized with the increasing availability of spectrum from mid-band with the 3 5 auction at the midpoint next year and then millimeter wave coming online after that. It’s a commercialization that I would see running into 2023, 2024, as greater of frequency, i.e., bandwidth become available, which will amplify some of the exciting applications that we would like to deliver on the 5G front, particularly as it relates to certain verticals that we are very well poised to address. If you look at where we’re at right now, roughly in Canada, we’re covering about 34 markets across the Canadian landscape, which would roughly equate to about 22% of the population. And we’re generating speeds in the 1.7-gigabit per second zone. Over the remaining months of the year, we want to exit 2020 with a build program that would see us in circa 50 communities across Canada, bumping up against 30% of the population and amplifying the speed a little bit from a tweaking point of view closer to 2 gigabits per second at that particular time. We have got about 150,000 users right now on 5G, which is going to get amplify, given what’s going on within our OEM ecosystem and what you saw with the iPhone 12. We’ve got about 10 device models right now within the totality of our vendor ecosystem that are 5G enabled. And importantly, 5G is entirely tethered to our Peace of Mind endless data plans because…
Jim Senko
Analyst
Thanks, Darren. Hi, Simon. On the consumer side, we see 5G being a real tool for us to drive a step up into our Peace of Mind premium rate plant suite. So they kind of go together like hand in glove. So like the initial opportunity is driving that step up from lower plans up into a Piece of Mind. The second phase of that is the – as devices kind of get out there, speeds are up, lower latency, big – we expect bigger data buckets, higher data usage, more connected devices and also content-type applications on mobility, which will kind of drive our customers in the premium space up to higher rate plans and what we call Piece of Mind connect. So number one, driving a step-up to Peace of Mind, number two, connected devices, applications, driving a further step up and more data usage. I think, also, we’re going to see IoT applications coming into consumer space. And we are in a great position with smart home, so home automation, connected health, connected car. On the enterprise side, we expect 5G to help drive solutions in agriculture, remote health care, autonomous vehicles. And we also believe there’s a significant opportunity around manufacturing and campus-based private type deployment opportunities. So we are very optimistic. All of that to say, it’s going to happen gradually over 2021, as devices rollout and as the footprints expand. I think also the cost of premium devices right now, given COVID may influence take rates in the short term, but we’re bullish in the longer term. And with regard to your question on the iPhone 12, we saw a very strong demand during our pre-registration and preorder. It was up almost double year-over-year. Coming into market, there are inventory constraints right now, which is kind of holding back them in, but we are seeing a very good take-up to that device.
Simon Flannery
Analyst
Great. On the promotional activity, the competitive environment?
Jim Senko
Analyst
Yes. On the competitive side, in Q3, we saw a pretty significant increase in promotional activity. The delayed iPhone launch drove back-to-school promotions through September, which is quite unusual in Q3. And in the West, we saw the most aggressive promotions were in the flanker space and sparked by Shaw mobile. One of our non-Shaw competitors really led on bonus data subsidy and gave cards right down to rate plans at $45. We were disappointed in the level of promotional subsidy in Q3. We believe there are ways – other ways to drive device affordability and recover that residual value of the device through things like trade in programs and certified pre-owned. And we think going forward, having mobile clinic puts us in a great position to do those kind of things. And our goal is focused on high-value loading and continuing to drive the shift to Peace of Mind with much rather add value at $75 than at $45. And right now, as we enter Q4, October has been pretty disciplined. It’s looking more like a typical September month with the iPhone launch, but we do expect promotional activity to pick up with Black Friday.
Simon Flannery
Analyst
Okay, great color. Thank you.
Robert Mitchell
Management
Mike, next question please.
Operator
Operator
Alright. Next question comes from Tim Casey. Please go ahead.
Tim Casey
Analyst
Yes. Hi, I wonder if you could talk a little more about TI and the acquisition. In terms, can you walk us through what this new entity will provide for you in terms of capabilities to deliver to the end user? Or is it more about driving efficiency within the organization? And then maybe if you could just – in maybe, could you update us on what the pro forma financial profile and growth profile you expect from TI? And then lastly, with respect to the IPO, could you remind us what your equity position is now? And what we expect will be post-acquisition, pre-IPO, if you follow what I mean? And then are you still focused on retaining a majority position of equity in TELUS International? Or is it more about control? Thanks.
Darren Entwistle
Management
So Jeff, why don’t you handle the question? And Doug and I can top-up as required. On the pro forma basis, that’s a bit of a no-go zone for us. But I think, Jeff, can give you a flavor of our growth profile, but give you a very good expectation as to what the data annotation is all about and why we are bullish on it. And then Doug and I can top-up on Jeff’s comments as required in terms of the current and prospective equity position. So over to you, Jeff.
Jeff Puritt
Management
Thanks, Darren. So in a nutshell, data annotation, as you may know, is really the function of providing the source data, the labeling and the underpins of building AI-driven algorithms. So Lionbridge AI’s expertise is really around the labeling and annotation component of that ecosystem where they are preparing the data for labeling. So they’re selecting the relevant raw data to put into a labeling system. They are recruiting a workforce, in this case, predominantly a crowd-based workforce who have the relevant skills, whether it’s language, domain expertise, etcetera. On-boarding that crowd to a platform, ensuring that, that cloud is trained appropriately, ensuring they’re qualified and tested properly, arming that crowd with tools and workflow capabilities to allow and enable them to work more quickly through terabytes of data, the crowd then tags classifies moderates that data and submits it back to the engineers that are using that annotated data in order to build, train and refresh their AI algorithms, which are then used for a myriad of purposes around search and advertising, just by way of example. So we see that as a natural adjacency to our content moderation capabilities, which we’ve built and now scaled materially through our recent CCC acquisition that we consummated in January of this year. The growth profile for this industry globally is double digits, starting with a two. Although the hyperscalers represent the lion’s share of the community that are leveraging this capability today, we see a near and longer-term opportunity as AI proliferates across really every facet of industry and commerce, as I referenced in my comments earlier. And we see that as a really exciting element of our overall growth ambition and profile for TELUS International going forward as we continue to leverage digital transformation on behalf of our customers. I’ll hand it back to you, Doug and Darren, for the balance of the response.
Darren Entwistle
Management
Doug, do you want to top up on the equity positioning in a loose sense, if you will?
Doug French
Management
Sure. So you remember when investment, it was approximately third. So the ratio is relatively still in that zone of two-thirds, TELUS, one-third bearing. After post-IPO, we expect to still be mid-50s of ownership. And for the long-term, we expect to control. So whatever structure that would take to do that is probably the best guidance I can give you.
Darren Entwistle
Management
The very long-term, this is a core asset for us and an important asset for us, as you know, our number one priority at TELUS is having the best customer service in the world. And we can only do that with the support of TI given the talent suite that they bring to bear. But the other thing that’s critical for us is that TI is a leading practitioner of facilitating digital transformation. And that, for us, is huge because it’s TI supporting TELUS’ digital transformation where we’ve enjoyed great success. But it’s also TI productizing that capability set and supporting other organizations within their targeted verticals, go through their own digital transformation strategies.
Tim Casey
Analyst
Thank you.
Robert Mitchell
Management
Mike, next question please.
Operator
Operator
Alright. Next question comes from Jeff Fan from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Jeff Fan
Analyst
Thanks. Good morning. Just a quick follow-up on TI and then a bigger question regarding competition, just on TI, with respect to this acquisition, can you just give us the debt and equity? And how you’re going to finance this? It sounds like it’s going to be debt, basically the TI, but just wanted to see if we can get the split and what TELUS’ equity position would be after this acquisition? And then the second question, probably for Darren. Regarding the competitive environment in Western Canada, and I guess, I’ll blend the wireless and wireline into this question. Your cable competitor is now willing to really price aggressively in their wireless bundle. And I know TELUS in the past and continues to differentiate on products and bundling and customer service. But when your competitor does something like this at the price point in order to try to strengthen their internet base, how do you see the competitive landscape, I guess, both on the bundling and wireless and wireline individually evolve in Western Canada?
Darren Entwistle
Management
Okay. Thanks, Jeff. Doug, I will let you kick it off. You can hit this nail in the head pretty quickly and then Zainul, I will hand over to you and then I will top up accordingly. Doug?
Doug French
Management
Yes, got it. So before and after, we will be the same ownership for TELUS and Bearing as we are going to proportionately put in whatever cash is required. We’re still looking at the exact ratio of debt financing and an increase in the debt facility at the TI level versus the cash that would come from ourselves and Bearing. And I think the wonderful thing about this asset, and Jeff highlighted, very high growth, very low capital. So they also de-lever extremely quickly as well. And so it’s a very quick payback on de-levering from any of that increase in that debt facility.
Darren Entwistle
Management
Maybe one of the things that we can do is an additional piece of data insight is to show the TI leverage concurrent with the CCC acquisition. And where it is ex-month hence passed the CCC acquisition to actually give a metric on the speed of de-leveraging by looking at the two data points, what it was when we consummated the deal, what it is today, I think that would be very indicative and good data analytics for the street to be aware of. I will take that away to do that.
Darren Entwistle
Management
Zainul, over to you. Thanks, Doug.
Zainul Mawji
Analyst
Thank you, Darren. Hi, Jeff. I think we definitely have seen quite a bit of competitive activity in our ILEC territory in the West. And at the end of the day, we’re really pleased with our loading performance. As Darren highlighted, we have seen some of our best Internet loadings since 2002. And it’s really important to highlight that, that is driven on the back of achieving 1% churn, which highlights our customer-first priority. So the beauty of that strong churn performance is it puts less pressure on the gross loading overall. But in addition to that, we have also seen an MRC improvement quarter-over-quarter since last year by 25% on those new Internet loads. And so we continue to see customers demonstrate that they are selecting us based on the value that they see in PureFibre, as they continue to work from home, learn from home and socialize from home. We’re also seeing up-tiering speeds and bundling improvements. And I think, fundamentally, even though we are faced with competitors that are commoditizing our core services, we’re continuing to diversify our bundle and add more value. And you’ve seen that quarter-over-quarter. We are investing heavily, and our network superiority, our services and our amazing customer experience is just unmatched in the environment. So when you look at the difference between a fully bundled customer and a stand-alone high-speed customer, as an example, you can see up to a 5x improvement in lifetime value on that customer. And then if you look at how we’re continuing to diversify our bundle in terms of quarter-over-quarter adding new quality attributes and capabilities, last quarter, we talked about our inclusion and very unique partnership with Amazon Prime and our optic bundle. Just recently, we launched a multidimensional partnership with Calm as well as Norton Lifelock providing Peace of Mind capabilities from mental health to online safety and cyber insurance. We continue to expand capabilities in Babylon by TELUS Health from a virtual health perspective for our consumers. So we are very confident in the diversification of our product portfolio and our ability to drive increased household ARPU, stronger churn performance, better cost efficiency on a per product basis and higher value for our customers in the face of that competition.
Darren Entwistle
Management
I think, Jeff, Zainul hit the nail on the head. But I would just ask you just go back and look at the hard facts as it relates to sustainable performance from TELUS related to our operational and financial track record on the wireline front. It’s unsurpassed on a global basis in terms of what we have delivered from a loading point of view and from a financials point of view within our wireline operations. And then I would just ask you to do the tail to tape in terms of our structural advantages. We have scale on fiber, and we will have greater scale on 5G. Those are not easy things for a competitor’s balance sheet to replicate. And I think it’s important that, that’s understood. We have vastly greater scale on our channel front and diversity of channels to market in that regard. So it’s not just scale, but it’s also diversity. We are phenomenally progress on the digital front and still growing on that side of things, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s the selling, whether it’s fulfilling, whether it’s caring, whether it’s billing and collecting, we are a digital continuum at TELUS, buttressed by the TI operation. You know where our customer service has gone in terms of best-in-class. And when you combine that with best-in-class network, those are pretty meaningful structural advantages. And then on the product front, I guess, you would say we’re subjective, but we do believe our products are superior. But if we sweep that to one side and switch from this objective to the objective, we just have services that are unique to TELUS, whether it’s our security offering, whether it’s our health offering or whether it’s our home automation offering. And then I think there is some intangibles that will play well, whether it’s our brand strength, whether it’s our social capitalism thesis that brings us closer to communities and customers along the way, whether it’s our culture and our talent pool or just overall our financial strength. If you look at the tail of the tape, only 60% our business overlaps with Shaw, we’ve got a national footprint and a diversity of revenue and profit sources, again, that are atypical to our organization. So when I make the comment that the sources of cash are going to chronically exceed the uses prospectively, I don’t make that comment lightly. And when we have been in that type of period historically at TELUS, I think investors have done very well. That’s the competitive advantage.
Jeff Fan
Analyst
Great. Thank you.
Robert Mitchell
Management
Thanks Jess. Mike, over to the next question please.
Operator
Operator
Of course. Next question comes from Vince Valentini from TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Vince Valentini
Analyst
Yes, thanks very much. Thank you for this extra CapEx disclosure. As you can appreciate, that’s going to lead us to ask different types of questions now that you are giving us this info. Why is the projected percentage for broadband network build so similar in 2021 or even a touch higher than 2020? Aren’t you going to be past 80% on fiber to the home by the end of this year and reaching the finish line? So if you can flush that out for us a bit, it would be helpful, maybe it’s all wireless broadband instead of fix, I’m just reading it wrong? Second other thing, I am not sure I know what AFS Technologies is, and I don’t recall talking about it when it was acquired, but it looks like you spent $315 million on it. So if you could spend a second just letting us know what that company is that you bought? And then one last clarification is the 68,000 Internet for Good customers, which I commend you on for doing for society. But can you clarify that in your Internet sub count and does it form part of the 50,000 adds this quarter? Thank you.
Darren Entwistle
Management
Okay. Let me – François, I will hand over to you in a second. Vince, as it relates to broadband, that’s wireline and wireless in combination. So you’ve got the mathematical outcome of fiber build continuity complemented by the scaling of our 5G deployment, particularly as we start to complement our existing frequencies with the operationalizing of the 3.5-gig spectrum that we would hope to pick up in the spectrum auction in 2021. So that’s the math on that particular point. François, why don’t I hand it over to you? And then we can come back on the Internet for Good front or not come back to what I could just deal it up right now. Yes, it is included. That is a total number. It is an immaterial component to our 50,000 net adds. That’s the cumulative progression of what we have done on that front. Yes, we include it is immaterial as it relates to the number that we posted in the quarter. François Gratton: Okay, Darren. As it pertains to AFS, you have to take it in the context of our push into the ag-tech vertical. So as we all know, access to quality and safe food will be a growing challenge across the globe as the worldwide population continues to grow. We saw an opportunity to tackle this challenge head on. We are indeed pioneering the first end-to-end digital solution across the entire agriculture food value chain. We see an opportunity to increase yield, reduce waste and trace the quality of our food and the safety of our food from its origin all the way to our dinner table, so to speak. With AFS, we’ve actually acquired the leading global food supply chain and promotion management technology software company. AFS gives us a in the global value chain closest to the consumer and complementing the acquisitions we’ve already made in the agriculture sector. We’ve indeed acquired a collection of trusted experienced agriculture assets across North America, UK, Europe and Australia. Our approach in ag is very familiar to us. If you look at what we’ve done over the years in health, combining assets to create significant value for our customers and tell us along the way, leveraging our digital playbook we used in health and applying it now to agriculture, we see important parallels, precision health with precision agronomy, our data processing and analytics capabilities, but we also see linkages between what we do in health and what we’re doing now in agriculture because when you think about creating better food outcomes, that eventually leads to better health outcomes. So it’s also an excellent manifestation, if you think about it of our social capitalism mission in action. We’re going to be holding an event on November 12 to announce the launch of our TELUS Agriculture push. And during that event, we’re going to be able to share a lot more detail, so we will welcome you to that event.
Darren Entwistle
Management
That’s great. Vince, by the way, if you want to look at how our Internet business is performing in terms of economics, have a look at the lifetime revenue given where Zainul and the team have driven churn below 1%. And look at what’s happening on the monthly recurring revenues on the Internet base in terms of the growth and the financials that we’re deriving from our new net additions in terms of being accretive overall. I think that would be an important complement to the answer that I already provided to you, and I alluded to it this morning in my earlier remarks.
Robert Mitchell
Management
Thanks, Vince. Mike, we have time for one more question, please.
Operator
Operator
So, last question comes from David Barden from Bank of America.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
It’s Matthew for David. I just wanted to ask about the wireline EBITDA growth. I know the disclosure on the COVID impact is helpful. It sounds like TI was firing on all cylinders. I was just wondering if you could talk about some of the initiatives that are under your control that may be rolling off in the coming quarter or into next year that can see the EBITDA contribution increase? I am thinking, obviously, of ADT for one, but I’d be interested to hear how maybe some investments in health are also maybe keeping that EBITDA growth number somewhat lower this quarter and maybe into next? Any color would be helpful. Thanks.
Darren Entwistle
Management
Zainul and Doug, why don’t you take that one. Zainul, why don’t you kick it off and Doug, you can clean it up, and I’ll add anything that gets left out?
Zainul Mawji
Analyst
It sounds good. Thanks, Darren. So as you’ve highlighted, we certainly have very strong foundational elements in our EBITDA performance in the future related to the MRCs that we’re seeing and the added contribution of household ARPU to the bundles that we have in our base. What you can see from our disclosure at this period is that we have several onetime impacts due primarily to investments in post-acquisition integration efforts. As you can see, we’ve done a number of acquisitions on the wireline side across the verticals that we’ve invested in. And in addition to that, we’ve been conservative in bad debt and provisions and have also invested heavily in supporting Canadians and customers through the challenging times of COVID. So those onetime impacts have also materialized this quarter in terms of some of our expansion of the programs that Darren highlighted waving and delaying planned, pricing activity, and, of course, standing up numerous community and employee support initiatives. At the end of the day, we absolutely have been investing in profitable growth, and we see that based on our product intensity thesis and its success continued to materialize in the market. We are very confident in the prospective financial growth. But Doug, I’ll hand it to you for any top up.
Doug French
Management
Yes. I think the other two items or three items, I guess which are in the wireline margin number would be the business pressure. So we still are seeing – when you bring in the pressure under small and medium business, that is under a little bit more of the, call it, delayed COVID reaction where those government funding starts coming to an end. They are under more pressure to bring scale back to their business. And when you think of Ontario and Québec, they’re starting to get a Phase 2, that puts more obviously, price sensitivity and that group of customer base is going to need more help that we’ve extended throughout the initial COVID period. The healthcare side that François was talking to the clinics and while being services are still not firing at 100%. So that is also a cost structure in which you’re not getting the full revenue line on which is holding the margins down a little bit as well. And then a couple of the acquisitions and the – that we have done in ag tech is a good example to that, where there is a little bit of J-curve start-up, but leading to significant long-term value, which would be the third of the incremental items to what Zainul was referring to within wireline margins.
Darren Entwistle
Management
I think the other thing in terms of looking forward, when you’re delivering thousand Internet adds and a pretty good result relative to the last 18 years. And at the increment, we’re seeing a monthly recurring revenue improvement of circa 20% to 25% on those new customer additions that bodes well for us prospectively. And highlights the attributes of our underpinning pure fiber program where we’re seeing much greater product intensity on the bundling front. And we’re seeing much, much better cost efficiency, which is going to be a huge part of the story for us prospectively on the wireline front so that we can deliver very attractive financials, alongside very attractive loading, as we did with 50,000 internet loads, 18,000 security loads and 19,000 TV loads in combination so that they’re financially accretive. The other thing that is important to point out is in addition to the cost efficiency comment that I made related to fiber and how it supports home automation, how it supports fewer truck rolls, a better repair relationship, if you will, with a client and then better cost efficiencies through economies of scope by having more products on a per household basis, the other element that’s going to be key for us from a cost efficiency point of view prospectively. is the terrific progression that we’re making on digital. And I think that’s a missing component from the wireline conversation and leveraging our digital strengths in that regard, again, should give us the mutually inclusive outcomes prospectively, a very strong operational performance flowing through to attractive financials.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Great. Thanks a lot.
Robert Mitchell
Management
Okay. Thank you everyone for taking the time to join us today. Please feel free to reach out to the IR team with any follow-up questions you may have and take care everyone.
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the TELUS 2020 Q3 earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation and have a nice day.