Ready for the Big Three
Shaw president: Arrival of Apple’s iPhone has changed Freedom’s business model
The arrival of Apple’s iPhone has tripled the number of Shaw Communications Inc.’s subscribers and has completely transformed the way the company is competing against Canada’s three big national wireless carriers, the company’s president said Thursday.
The Calgary-based cable, internet and satellite company is a relatively new player in Canada’s hotly contested wireless market but Shaw president Jay Mehr told analysts he thinks Shaw’s Freedom Mobile is ready to take on the Big Three.
“It does feel like a new business, starting in December,” Mehr said on a conference call to discuss Shaw’s results for its fiscal 2018 first quarter, ended Nov. 30 — just prior to the addition of Apple’s products to its lineup for the first time.
Among other things, Shaw added 34,000 wireless subscribers during the months of September, October and November, bringing its total number of wireless customers to 1.18 million.
That was up from 9,500 net additions in the comparable months of 2016, which was a low point for Shaw since it become Canada’s fourth-largest wireless carrier with the purchase of Wind Mobile in a deal closed on March 1, 2016. Mehr said that Shaw’s wireless business — now named Freedom — has changed fundamentally with the arrival of Apple at the beginning of this year’s fiscal second quarter.
“It has changed all aspects of our wireless business,” Mehr said.
Until reaching its first commercial deal with Apple, Freedom sold few phones and focused almost entirely on customers who used their own devices (BYOD) and generated about $37 per month in average revenue.
With the arrival of the iPhone, which can only work on the portions of Freedom’s network that has been upgraded to fourthgeneration standards, Shaw is aiming to push Freedom’s average revenue per user above $50 per month.
“In Q2, we haven’t put any energy into BYOD ... It’s hard to say two things at once and we’ve been saying iPhone as loudly as anyone will listen,” Mehr said.
Among those listening were Shaw’s biggest competitors, who ramped up their pricing promotions in December and wooed away many of Freedom’s established customers.
In fact, Mehr admitted, Freedom had a record number of deactivations over a three- to four-day period when Rogers, Telus and Bell suddenly dropped some prices in limited-time offers.
“To be clear, our 3G base is exposed to those kinds of things ... We were certainly exposed over those four or five days,” Mehr said. “Our gross sales held up nicely and we continued to get lots of movement from the Big Three, but they got some movement from us over that period of time.”
He also admitted that the intense competition from the Big Three may have reduced Shaw’s optimism about the second quarter ending Feb. 28, but predicted it will be “meaningfully stronger” than it has ever been before.
“If the Big Three want to activate the market, we’ll win because we’ll benefit from people shopping around,” Mehr said.
He added that the average revenue per user will pick up in the third and fourth quarters of Shaw’s fiscal 2018, which ends Aug. 31, and continue into its 2019 fiscal year.
Analyst Drew McReynolds of RBC Dominion Securities wrote in a note after the call that “this incremental impact will remain manageable for BCE, Rogers and Telus.”