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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the BCE Q1, 2021 Results Conference Call. I would like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Thane Fotopoulos. Please go ahead, Mr. Fotopoulos.
Thank you, Donna, and good morning to everyone. Also joining me on the call today are Mirko Bibic, BCE's President and CEO; and our CFO, Glen LeBlanc. Before we begin, as usual, I'll draw your attention to our safe harbor statement reminding you that today's slide presentation and remarks made during the call will include forward-looking information, and therefore, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Results could differ materially. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by law. Please refer to the company's publicly documents for more details on assumptions and risks. With that, over to you, Mirko.
Thanks, Thane. Good morning, everyone. In every successive quarter since the onset of COVID, BCE has delivered sequential quarterly improvement in our operating results, and Q1 was no exception. Although the pandemic effects are still present, we achieved both consolidated revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth for the first time since Q4 of 2019. This is an important milestone that speaks to the stability and resiliency of our operations, our ability to operate effectively under challenging conditions, the strength of our leading broadband networks and services and our management team's focused execution. We continue to grow broadband market share, adding a leading 108,468 total mobile phone, mobile connected device, retail Internet and IPTV net subscribers this quarter, an increase of 51% over last year. And with $940 million of free cash flow generated this quarter, we have the financial flexibility with $6.5 billion of available liquidity to drive both our national investment strategy and BCE's higher common share dividend for 2021. Now for a quick update on the progress we're making in advancing our strategic priorities in 2021. Our broadband investment acceleration program is in full swing with over $1 billion in new capital spend in Q1. We equipped another 148,000 locations with either direct fiber or Wireless Home Internet technology this quarter. And another 370,000 are currently under construction, keeping us on track to reach 6.9 million total homes and businesses pathed by the end of this year. And as part of our overarching goal to advance how Canadians connect with each other and the world, we've also made several announcements recently to expand broadband connectivity to more rural and remote areas of Canada. These include a partnership with the government of Québec that will see direct fiber rolled out to 31,000 locations in 100 underserved communities and an initiative enabled by the CRTC's Universal Broadband Fund to bring faster Internet to more than 10,000 homes in Yukon and the Northwest territories, including Inuvik, which just became the first all-fiber community in the Arctic circle. I'll turn now to wireless. Bell's 5G network is on course to cover more than 50% of the population by year-end nationally. However, success in 5G and IoT leadership depends on multiple ingredients beyond coverage. It's about delivering the fastest speeds, the lowest latency and flexibility that could only be achieved through extensive self-site fiberization and slicing of the network and leveraging network points of presence such as central offices and multi-access edge computing that support product development. Bell is also the largest B2B provider in Canada benefiting from deep relationships with the biggest Canadian company that we can service almost anywhere in the country. So those are the multiple ingredients ensuring that Bell will be the leader in 5G. Although the full benefits of 5G technology won't be realized until mid-band spectrum is available and the partnership ecosystem evolves. We're already launching new services that are taking full advantage of the unprecedented speed and capacity of 5G now. These include the industry's first mobile 5G hotspot and our innovative TSN and RDS 5G view apps that offer new interactive and new ways to watch sports. We're also more generally delivering a better customer experience at every level, driving improved satisfaction, loyalty and retention and another leading performance among national carriers for a sixth consecutive year in the most recent report from the CCTS, which showed a 17% drop in the number of complaints by Bell customers. We made progress in diversifying our channel mix and expanding digital channel capabilities. Digital sales in Q1 were up more than 200% versus last year, and will grow further over time as we continue to improve online tools and functionality. This past quarter, we introduced some new self-serve features online and via the MyBell and Virgin Mobile My Account apps, which included dynamic call routing, the ability to change a rate plan or upgrade a device, as well as in-app chat features for Bell, Virgin and Lucky wireless customers. Let me turn to Slide 4 of our presentation. Corporate responsibility is an integral part of our 6 strategic imperatives that informs all of Bell's policies, decisions and actions. Bell's ESG commitment supports this purpose driving our unparalleled investments in broadband network infrastructure and service innovation, unmatched environmental leadership, investments in our teams and communities and adherence to the highest financial, operational and data governance standards, all overseen by our Board at the Corporate Governance Committee. Our networks and services are important enablers of Canada's clean economy with the power of 5G mobile connections poised to be a major factor in helping multiple sectors reduce emission. Bell is an acknowledged leader in the green economy, recently becoming the first communications company in North America to achieve ISO 50001 certification for our energy management system and announcing our objective to achieve carbon neutral operations in 2025. And I'm happy to report that Bell was again named one of Canada's greenest employers, the only national communications provider to be ranked for a fifth straight year. And of course, through Bell Let's Talk, we're supporting mental health action in communities throughout Canada, helping over 1,100 organizations since 2010 with funding commitments now totaling more than $120 million with an ultimate target of at least $155 million by 2025. We're undertaking meaningful actions to foster a more diverse workplace, including new targets for [indiscernible] representation and Bell senior management team of 25% by 2025 and 40% of all new graduate and student hires in the same time frame. Bell is also a member of the 30% Club and a signatory to the Catalyst Accord 2022, which aims to increase the proportion of women serving on Canadian corporate Boards to at least 30%. At our Annual Shareholders Meeting later this morning, we expect to exceed in that objective. All this to say that ESG is an important focus area for us. Strong environmental, social and governance practices contribute to driving better operating results and creating shareholder value. And given who we are and the role we play in our industry will continue to build on that leadership position. Okay. Over to Slide 5, on our operating metrics for Q1. I'll start with wireless. This quarter, we've modified our subscriber results reporting to align with many of our large North American peers as the Canadian industry evolves towards 5G. Specifically, we're now disclosing mobile phone and mobile connected device metrics separately. For comparability, we've restated our 2020 quarterly wireless subscriber metrics to reflect these changes. This change reflects our strategic focus on higher-value smartphone loading and the associated margin and economics in terms of lifetime value and EBITDA growth, while also enhancing the transparency of our disclosure. Wireless customer activity was strong in Q1 despite ongoing COVID restrictions. Subscriber loading showed good year-over-year growth. Postpaid churn remained low at 0.89% and ABPU continued to recover. We delivered 33,000 mobile postpaid phone net adds this quarter, up 31,000 over last year. In terms of connected devices, we realized strong net adds of 74,000 or 51% higher year-over-year, reflecting increased demand for Bell IoT solutions, including connected car subscriptions. In prepaid, despite lower year-over-year churn, our customer base decreased by 31,000 net subscribers. Lower market activity reflected a slowdown in immigration and international travel to Canada during the pandemic as well as reduced retail store traffic, resulting in 27% fewer gross adds compared to last year. That said, we've grabbed considerable market share over the past couple of years because of Lucky Mobile, which has higher-than-average ARPU, and I see prepaid growth resuming in the back half of this year. Lastly, on wireless, blended ABPU decreased 3.4%. This, of course, reflects the industry-wide pressure on roaming associated with travel restrictions, lower data revenue as customers continue described to higher data threshold and unlimited plans. Notably, around 60% of existing customers who have migrated to unlimited have upgraded to higher rate plan, which sets us up well for the mass commercialization of 5G. Let's turn to wireline. We added 21,000 total new net Internet customers, which compares well to last year's exceptionally strong results when we experienced a surge in demand as consumers began to work and spend more time at home. If we look at Internet net adds within our fiber footprint specifically, it paints an even stronger picture. We delivered 37,000 retail residential Internet net adds in our FTTH footprint. That's up an impressive 43% over last year. As our broadband footprint advantage keeps expanding, we begin to see almost immediately a favorable impact on both subscriber growth and Internet revenue, which grew a very strong 12% in Q1. It's the reason we're so confident in our accelerated capital investment plan. In TV, we added 11,000 net new IPTV subscribers, 8,000 higher than last year, representing our first quarter of year-over-year growth in 2 years. This improvement can be attributed to strong Bell Fibe TV and Virgin TV performance and lower customer churn, particularly in our fiber footprint. So that's a very positive result in a mature Canadian TV market, and it speaks to the pull-through impact and strong symbiosis between broadband Internet, content and digital media. Satellite net customer losses decreased for sixth consecutive quarter, improving more than 7% versus last year. And we continue to see a reduction in home phone customer deactivations, resulting in 17% fewer net losses. And as I've mentioned in the past, any time the rates of decline slow for these high margin services, it's accretive to cash flow. Over to Bell Media now. Although total advertising revenue was down year-over-year due to COVID impacts on radio and out-of-home, TV advertiser demand continued to recover with a full quarter of major league sports, our Super Bowl broadcast, which was the third highest in Canadian history, continued strong specialty news performance and the significant gains in prime time viewership and ad sales at our French language conventional network Noovo. Taken all together, this drove a 3.5% increase in TV advertising revenue in Q1. That's a very encouraging result that should strengthen as we're beginning to lap last year's COVID impacts.TSN and RDS remain the top English and French language specialty pay TV channels in Q1. And building on our celebration of women leaders at Bell, TSN made history just last month with the first all-female broadcast of an NBA game. Consistent with our digital-first strategic focus, we made progress on growing our streaming distribution platforms and digital advertising markets. Crave enjoyed standout performance with its best order since the final season of Game of Thrones, adding 139,000 new subscribers in Q1 to surpass 2.9 million total customers. That's up 12% over last year. Digital revenues increased 16% in Q1 and now represents 17% of total Bell Media revenue, and that's up 14% from last year. Going forward, we're expanding our digital ad inventory and modernizing our traditional distribution platforms to ensure they have the capabilities to enable dynamic adds on video-on-demand and ultimately, on live TV. We want our entire ad inventory, both digital and traditional, to be more dynamic and addressable offering targeted advertising capabilities and leveraging data insights from across Bell for advertisers will enable us to take a bigger slice of the ad spending pie on any platform we operate from Fibe TV to alt TV and Virgin TV to Bell Streamer to the traditional TV channels and the CTV AVOD app, all the way potentially to Crave. Repatriating digital ad dollars back into Canada is a good thing for our economy, consumers and certainly for Canadian broadcasters. And in support of this objective, yesterday, we announced a new partnership with AT&T, Xandr, to create Canada's first self-serve omni-channel advertising platform for TV and digital that will deliver increased automation functionalities and leverage data to facilitate new and easier media buying capability. The new platform will enable Canadian advertisers to run scaled targeted campaigns using premium inventory over multiple platforms and channels. It's a great addition to Bell's strategic asset management suite of data-enabled and privacy compliant tools and offers marketers and advertisers the ability to identify, understand and connect with the right audiences. On that, I'll hand the call over to Glen for a review of our Q1 financial results.
Thank you, Mirko, and good morning, everyone. And let me begin on Slide 7. A very positive start to the year as we have achieved consolidated revenue and EBITDA growth despite ongoing COVID impacts on our business. All Bell operating segments delivered meaningfully better performance trajectories that drove a 1.2% year-over-year increase in revenue. This translated into an EBITDA increase of 0.5% as higher-margin wireless roaming and media advertising revenues have not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Despite higher EBITDA, net earnings were down 6.3%. This was due to severance costs recorded in Q1 for workforce reductions undertaken earlier this year, notably at Bell Media, as well as higher depreciation expense driven by growth in capital assets and accelerated depreciation of 4G network elements as we transition to 5G. We invested over $1 billion in CapEx this quarter. The year-over-year increase is consistent with our 2-year plan to accelerate more than $1 billion of investment on wireline broadband networks and mobile 5G. Despite the notable step-up in capital expenditures, free cash flow increased 54% over last year to $940 million. The year-over-year improvement can be attributed to the timing of tax installment payments in '21 as well as temporary favorable change in working capital that is expected to reverse over the remainder of this year. Let's turn to Slide 8. Q1 marked the return to positive top line growth for Bell Wireless. Total revenue was up 3.2%. This was driven by a 20% higher product revenues due to increased sales of premium smartphones that reflects our strategic focus on higher-value mobile phone subscribers as well as stronger online consumer electronic sales at the source. Direct channels drove a significant portion of the year-over-year volume growth and accounted for 1/3 of total consumer and small business sales in Q1 compared to just 15% a year ago. Although year-over-year service revenues declined -- was a decline of 2.1%, it did improve sequentially this quarter. Roaming and data overage remain headwinds, which is not a surprise to anyone. Normalizing for the $62 million COVID-driven reduction in mobile roaming in Q1, service revenue was actually up 1.9%, so a very positive indicator of when borders reopen and travel resumes. Despite the loss of the high-margin roaming and overage revenue, EBITDA was right on the cusp of positive growth this quarter, decreasing by only 0.5%, which represents a notable improvement from the 3% decline we reported last quarter. Moving to Slide 9. Bell Wireline had its best top line performance of the past 2 years delivering year-over-year growth of 1.5%, which yielded a 2.1% increase in EBITDA on higher-margin of 44.2%. This result was driven by both higher service revenues, which grew approximately 1% and a 14% increase in product revenue driven by higher sales of data equipment to the government sector. Bell Residential had standout performance in Q1, growing revenue nearly 4%. This was a result of an impressive 12% year-over-year increase in Internet revenue, reduced seasonal service suspensions and an improved rate of voice decline as fewer customers are disconnecting home phone service during this pandemic. At Bell Business Markets, while overall results continue to reflect reduced telecom spending by large enterprise customers and volume declines in the SME sector because of COVID, we saw improvements in the year-over-year rates of revenue and EBITDA decline. Let's move over to Bell Media on Slide 10. Further sequential improvement this quarter as revenue declined 5.2% compared to 10% in Q4. Although TV advertising revenue was up 3.5% in the quarter, reflecting stronger sports and new specialty performance as well as incremental contribution from Noovo, out-of-home and radio advertising have been much slower to recover. Subscriber revenue reflected strong Crave streaming growth, but overall remained relatively stable year-over-year. However, growth is expected to strengthen during the course of the year due to the flow-through of contract renewals with some of the Canadian TV distributors. Operating cost decreased 4.5%, driven mainly by lower cost of revenue because of TV production shutdowns and delays as well as labor savings and a temporary waiving of Part I, Part II fees by the federal government due to the pandemic. Consistent with year-over-year decline in advertising this quarter, which is a very high revenue flow-through impact, EBITDA was down 7.7%. Let's turn to adjusted EPS on Slide 11. Detailed key components of adjusted EPS, which was $0.78 per share for Q1 as COVID-related impacts continue to moderate throughout most of Q1. Higher EBITDA, as well as lower net interest expense and pension financing costs, contributed favorably to adjusted EPS, but were effectively offset by the increased depreciation and amortization expense I mentioned earlier, and lower year-over-year tax adjustments. Turning to Slide 12. Despite the ongoing financial impacts of COVID and higher year-over-year capital spending, which I previously mentioned, free cash flow increased 54% to $940 million. We ended Q1 with 6.5% available liquidity and a steady debt leverage ratio providing us with very good financial flexibility as we continue to execute on our capital acceleration, investment strategy and we head into wireless spectrum auction in June. Free cash flow was exceptionally high this quarter as a result of higher cash from working capital, due partly to the slowdown in commercial activity that we began to experience in the latter stages of Q1 2020 as the COVID crisis began. This quarter's results also reflect an expected decrease in cash taxes due to the profiling of installment payments in calendar '21. That said, as the pace of CapEx picks up with the increased construction activity during the spring and summer months and as working capital reverses course with increased customer activity, free cash flow of growth will moderate consistent with our guidance target for the year. Lastly, a quick pension plan status update and an important milestone that I wanted to highlight regarding our funded position. For the first time ever and despite a persistently low interest rate environment, all of BCE's major defined benefit pension plans are in a surplus position on a solvency basis, with the largest of those plans being Bell Canada at over 105%. More recently, we've been able to take contribution holiday on one of our smaller plans. This bodes well for the opportunity of taking contribution holidays on our larger defined benefit plans in the near future. The thought of a contribution holiday 5 years ago wasn't even on the horizon. Fast forward to today, with all plans more than fully funded, it is reasonable to assume that a contribution holiday is imminent. To wrap up on Slide 13, we are extremely pleased by the operational execution delivered by the Bell team in Q1 with consistent, steady improvement that continues to build momentum back into every part of the business, which sets us up very nicely for the balance of the year. With this promising start to the year and the strengthening financial profile across all operating segments, I am reconfirming all of our guidance targets for 2021. And on that, I'll turn the call back over to Thane and the operator to begin the Q&A.
Thanks, Glen. So before we do start the Q&A period, I just want to remind participants that due to some time constraints this morning because of our Annual General Meeting -- Shareholders' Meeting, which is taking place shortly after this call, please limit yourself to 1 question and a brief follow-up so that we can get to as many in the queue as possible. Thank you for that. So Donna, we're ready to take our first question.
[Operator Instructions] And the first question is from Jeff Fan from Scotiabank.
Perhaps the big question that we've been getting a lot in the past week is related to the Rogers and Shaw. And I guess the revelation that BCE was involved. Mirko, I just want to give you maybe an opportunity to address that at a higher level, if you will, perhaps the rationale and whether there is a next best option? And then a very quick follow-up perhaps for Glen. Now Q1 revenue and EBITDA grew year-over-year even with a difficult comp. I'm just wondering if that was ahead of your expectations going into this year? And whether there's any color that you can give on guidance? It's a wider range than usual, and I know you didn't change your guidance, but do you have any color that you can give, given the stronger-than-expected start?
Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for the question. I'm going to keep it -- I will keep it high level, given the nature of the issue. Let me start by saying I feel -- and I've said this since I became CEO, I feel good about our current asset mix, and we're well positioned to win in a converged era, I'm talking about fiber and 5G works, 5G IoT, MEC use cases, the revenue opportunities that are going to come with that. I'm really excited about our digital shift in media and the digital ad spend monetization that we'll be able to generate and monetizing big data insights. So I think that's important to mention. I did -- I have also said consistently since I became CEO because I've been asked this, that we will always look at opportunities that come up and capitalize on the opportunities that makes sense for our shareholders. So the transaction that you refer in your question, Jeff, it came up. We looked at it and we decided not to proceed. I'm not going to add really anything beyond what's already in the public domain. Some of the reasons why we didn't proceed or have been reported on. And at this point, it's not our deal. The merging parties have a regulatory process to go through first instance. And while they're doing that, like I've also said, we'll continue to build and we'll continue to position ourselves to be a formidable competitor. I'll leave it at that, Jeff.
Jeff, it's Glen. Your question on Q1 revenue and EBITDA performance and any color I can provide. Look, we're very, very pleased to have had growth in both revenue and EBITDA. And if we remember back, we are really lapping a quarter where there was minimal COVID impact in Q1 of 2020. It was really Q2 when we started to feel the extreme impacts of this pandemic. So to be able to deliver positive top line revenue growth and earnings growth, yes, we're extremely pleased. And I wouldn't say it changes our outlook. We look to the next 3 quarters or the remainder of 2021, and we know we're going to face uncertainty and volatility during this pandemic. And let's hope that each and every quarter our country begins to heal and our economy starts to perform better. And with that, I think the confidence in our operations and the performance of our company is underpinned by the fact that we actually provided guidance this year. Others may not have. But we're very confident in our ability to continue to see sequential improvement and operational excellence. And I think that's underpinned by, firstly, providing guidance, but more importantly, reconfirming it today. So I think, Jeff, we're extraordinarily pleased with the first quarter and how we came out of the gate and the momentum we can carry into the rest of the year.
The next question is from Vince Valentini from TD Securities.
Glen, first, can you confirm the 12% Internet growth, that would all be service revenue, correct? None of the product revenue would be in that?
Yes. Correct.
Yes. That is correct. Vince, I'm just double checking, but yes. No, you're right, that is all service.
Okay. I mean that's an amazing number. I mean we can see what the subscriber growth is an area. So clearly, there's pretty healthy ARPU gain there. Can you break that down a bit for us? Is there any particular skew by any region or any particular skew to sort of pricing gains versus people tiering up versus maybe just less promotional discounting that's flowing through that revenue number?
You did a pretty darn good job there, Vince. That's exactly it. It's all of the above. It's a little bit less promotional activity. I think we're truly seeing consumers realize the value of our products now in this pandemic and how important it is to have world-class Internet speeds and upgrading to better performance products. It is happening across our entire footprint wherever we're offering services. So yes, we're extremely pleased with the 12%, but it is -- I can't give you any more granularity than the areas that you hit on, but it's all of the above.
The next question is from Drew McReynolds from RBC Capital Markets.
Yes. Mirko, I'd love to get your thoughts on the outcome of the wireless review while we have you here. And maybe as a follow-up, completely different. The digital transformation at Bell Media, you alluded 17% of revenue now digital. Is there some kind of road map or kind of forward-looking digital contribution to revenue that you're willing to share? If not, just maybe talk to some of the key levers of driving that digital contribution higher?
Thanks, Drew. So on the regulatory decision, everyone knows what our position has been quite consistently over time, including -- throughout this kind of last proceeding, it's evident and the facts on the ground, easily would have supported a decision to state, of course, with no MVNO mandate. So I think it's important to say that. But that said, given the range of potential MVNO approaches that had been considered, the CRTC did at least lay out in the decision approach that is, in a sense, consistent with our traditional facilities-based policies. We wanted the terms work through though, Drew. So we'll do that, of course, over time, and we're going to continue to assess implications of the decision. And like what we said the first day, right out of the gates when that decision came out, as we do the regulatory work that we need to do, first and foremost, we're going to continue to be focused on on our customers and that's about delivering the highest quality networks. It's about delivering a wide variety of plans and continuing to deliver ever better customer experience so we can continue to generate the results that we're seeing. On Media, I'm really, really with how well we're pivoting towards a digital-first approach to the business. And really, I can't really unpack at this stage for you, Drew, too much of the key drivers there. It's early stages. But I think kind of -- really, it's about buttressing are the suite of digital ad inventory that we can make available to advertisers and providing an easy to use one-stop platform for advertisers to engage with as they're developing their campaigns. And yes, we talk a lot about [indiscernible] strategic asset management. I think that would be a key driver right now of the success in the early days of our strategic pivot.
The next question is from David Barden from Bank of America.
It's Matt sitting in for Dave. Just two, if I could. I was wondering if you could talk about some of the underlying trends in -- that you're seeing for wireless service revenue? And if we should expect going forward, leaving aside roaming, obviously everyone can make an assumption about when that will come back and how strong. But should we assume that service revenue growth is going to be driven going forward both by subscriber growth and by underlying ARPU growth? And just secondly, on the comment, Glen, about the contribution holiday on the pension being imminent. Is that -- are you referring -- are you leading us to believe that this is a 2021 event? And is a holiday contemplated in the guidance range that you provided for free cash flow?
Okay, Glen, I'll start first on the wireless question, you could supplement as you wish on that and then go into the pension question. So on the wireless side, you can see the -- that our focus on smartphone loadings is bearing fruit. You could see it in the results there with 33,000 postpaid net adds and up 31,000 year-over-year. And as we deemphasized tablets, we haven't walked away completely from tablets, but we're focused on profitable tablets and the profitability of our tablet sales has gone up 90% year-over-year. So that's an impressive number. The digital transformation is working. And while store traffic continues to be down pretty appreciably given the restrictions, you've seen the gross add numbers. There are up. Other factors speaking to the the growth there in wireless here. Promotional intensity has been fairly rational in Q1. January and February were especially stable. I think handset discounting is acceptable so positive trajectory there. That's a good sign. And where I see growth going forward, obviously, roaming will come back. Immigration and population growth will continue when we get through this. There is pent-up demand. And with that comes penetration growth. I mentioned the mobile phone strategy, 5G monetization on the horizon. And prepaid as well, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, prepaid will come back as some of these other factors that I've mentioned improve as we get through COVID. Glen, anything to add and then pension?
Yes, I'll touch on the pension and contribution holiday that I alluded to earlier. Look, as many on this call will know it's been probably 15 or 16 years, I've been coming on these calls talking about the state of our pension deficit, whether that be at Bell Aliant or here at BCE and all of our plans. And to reach this historic milestone, where they're all fully funded with something that I wondered if I'd ever seen in my career. When I say imminent, I do not -- I am not referring to 2021, it will not be this year. It is not in the targets of the guidance we provided. But I see it now in our planning horizon, meaning in the next 12 to 24 months, so post 2021. This is now real. And it's gone from being a sizable cash flow burden of having to make special contributions into our pension plan for well over more than a decade to an opportunity that is going to present itself in our planning horizon. So not this year, Matt, but it's pretty exciting after all of these years to see it literally on the horizon.
The next question is from Aravinda Galappatthige from Canaccord Genuity.
I wanted to go back to the international revenue growth number, obviously, very impressive. And you alluded to sort of the upgrade cycle, the trend of subscribers tiering up in terms of the higher speed products. Just to sort of help us understand how much more running room there is with respect to that trend, either Mirko or Glen, I was wondering if you can talk about sort of the proportion of subscribers that perhaps have taken -- that are still taking speeds under 50 megabits or 25 megabits? In particular, your fiber customers that can obviously easily sort of tier up to its 100 -- even up to 500. I wanted to get a sense of sort of that upside.
I'm not going to break down the tiering of our fiber customers on the various plans. But let me leave it at this, Aravinda. There is definitely upside in having customers tier up from the plans they currently are on to plans all the way up to 1.5 gigabits per second, and that would come with quite clearly an ARPU bump. And so there, we are focused on that. 90% of our Internet subscribers are on unlimited plan. So really, the move is to encourage subscribers who are on plans below 1-gig, let's say, to tier up to higher rate plans and therefore, drive higher ARPU.
Yes. Aravinda, it's Glen, just to build on what Mirko said. Our fiber strategy is clear, and that is advancing our network. And our fiber-to-the-home footprint is faster and 1.7 million total Bell fiber-to-the-home Internet subscribers at the end of Q1. That's up 17% year-over-year. So as we continue to make the necessary investment in rolling fiber route and to bringing world-class connectivity to our customers, naturally, they're going to migrate to a better speed tier. And that's where a big opportunity still remains for us is to continue to roll out fiber and offer world-class Internet speeds. So I think there's a significant runway in front of us and why this fiber infrastructure investment is so critical.
Well, the fact is -- I mean, there's 3 components to it, right? There's one that Glen just mentioned, as we roll out more fiber. Just a natural growth opportunity there for our current fiber subscribers encouraging them to migrate up to higher rate plans. And of course, there is the cost side and just the customer experience, churn and cost benefits that come -- that we've talked about before with a broader fiber footprint.
The next question is from Simon Flannery from Morgan Stanley.
This is Diego Barajas filling in for Simon. Just a follow-up on that fiber point. Can you just speak to what penetration levels you're seeing in the fiber markets in year 1 and how you see that trending over time? And then on wireless, you spoke to traffic being down materially in the stores, but still had solid postpaid gross and net adds and you also spoke to the direct channel. Can you just speak to how you expect that direct channel or online sales, what percentage do you see that making up over time? And maybe any cost benefits there?
Okay. On the fiber question, again, when we enter a market in overly fiber where we didn't have fiber before, so have had FTTN or ATM, lower speed DSL technology. And by the way, the same thing goes with Wireless Home Internet. We're seeing rapid penetration gains. I'm not going to unpack that, but you see -- you can see kind of the top line numbers, the sub gains that Glen shared with you, the top line revenue, the gains that we're seeing that Vince asked us about. So clearly, the fiber strategy is working. We're taking strong revenue share. We're taking strong net add share quarter-after-quarter, where we have fiber. I mean it's the right thing to do to accelerate that plan. And we announced that in February. I was confident then, I'm more confident than ever that this is the right strategy. On the wireless side and digital, we have -- we are a lot better than we were a year ago at direct channel sales. So that would be online in the apps and through our call centers. And again, I pointed to the gross add increase year-over-year in my opening remarks, that's going to continue. I mean, those direct sales are going to continue to be a growing portion of our overall sales, and therefore, our overall channel mix. And it definitely comes with lower COA. It allows us to be more competitive. It does provide a better customer experience in the sense that those customers who want to deal with us in those channels can now do it easily intuitively. And they're a happier customer at the end of it. And then, of course, the customers who want to continue to deal with us through retail stores will continue to have that benefit because we're going to have continue to lead in traditional retail store distribution. And the omnichannel journey is going to be important, to have seamless transitioning between channels is going to be top of mind for us. And I won't give you an exact number, but I will say, Diego, that year-over-year, total cash channel cost has gone down, and that's largely a function of direct sales in the mix now. As retail stores reopen, the mix is going to rebalance a bit, but direct sales are going to continue to be a meaningful component of that and growing.
Just to build on -- as Mirko said, Diego, just one brief comment. I've said it before, and I continue to remind everyone again, where we build fiber, we take a disproportionate share of net new adds. It is that simple. It's in every footprint where we build fiber, we have the opportunity to take share and that continues. So although I won't share with you specifically what the penetration rate is in the first 6 to 12 months as it's different by region. What is important is we continue to take a disproportionate share of net new.
And your next question is from Jerome Dubreuil from Desjardins.
2 questions on ABPU growth. We saw a slight change in methodology for reporting subscribers. It's easier to see the impact on the subscriber front, but maybe if you can quantify the impact on the ABPU growth possibly? And also on the transition to unlimited, what are -- where are you in your plans to transition in terms of where you want to be?
So Glen, you want to start first on ABPU?
Sure. So the ABPU growth that we've shown now has changed due to our reporting change in removing the connected devices or items like tablets from the ABPU calculation you would have seen historically. If you look back, we restated all of calendar 2021 so that it is comparable, so that the growth rates were not skewed by that. You'll notice that the ABPU jumped, I think, saying it's in the roughly $5 or $6 on an ABPU basis.
Yes, it's about $7, It's about $6...
$7, excuse me. But all of that was restated, so as to give you clear comparability.
Yes, Jerome. If you go to last year's supplementary versus this year, you can see the differences.
And on overage, we continue to manage that nicely. Like I've said before, base management is something we're particularly good at, we're not force migrating customers. If unlimited plans are available, they're there for those who want them. It's there. With 5G, you have to get in -- you have to take an unlimited plan, we see 60% of those, as I mentioned, who migrate to unlimited plans or migrating up, which is good. And we're well positioned for 5G. I think really, for us, the spike in transitions from capped plans to unlimited plans will happen when there's a spike in adoption of 5G handsets.
And as I said in my opening remarks, when we look at ABPU and the fact that if you normalize for the sizable impact that roaming continues to have, in that number -- our service revenue number is positive and therefore, big impact on ABPU is the impacts of roaming.
The next question is from David McFadgen from Cormark Securities.
Great. So you talked earlier about it 60% of your customers have migrated to unlimited data plans. So I was just wondering -- or actually they've got higher rate plans. So I was just wondering, where do you stand on the whole journey of getting your postpaid customers over to unlimited plans. I was just wondering if you could give us some idea to -- are 60% migrated over and unlimited plans and just sort of some idea there? And then secondly, on the pension plan hiatus, when you talk about hiatus and funding 12 to 24 months, I was just wondering, could this be something material and really help your free cash flow to help you delever faster?
Well, on the first question, again, with unlimited plan, very similar to the answer I gave to Jerome. I have no set target in terms of the pace of migration to unlimited that we're seeking. I'm actually trying to manage the data over to decline in the entire kind of portfolio of services we're providing. Now, of course. We do have to provide unlimited plans. It is a good consumer initiative. It positions us well for 5G. So that migration, in terms of the Bell subscriber base, that migration will evolve naturally as customers migrate over to 5G. I did say that it's positive that when a customer migrates to unlimited, 60% of those are on higher -- kind of higher rate plans, but there is -- that's parking for a second, the data overage impact. So I'm really trying to manage the data overage decline. I think it's the right thing to do for our shareholders. That data overage is high flow-through revenue. And other than providing the suite of plans and handsets that customers want, no set target. It will come when it comes and it will come when 5G arrives for real.
Thanks, Mirko. And I'll take the pension plan funding question. The size of the prize is your annual current service cost. And if you look at what it tends to be for us, of all plans, it's in the $200 million to $250 million annually. Now there's a monthly test, and each plan has to be tested individually. So one plan could be in a contribution holiday state where another may not be. But the size of the price is absolutely material if we consider that. If you were able to have all plans in a state of a contribution holiday, it could be upwards of $200 million to $250 million in any 1 calendar year. So fingers crossed. For now, we're just -- we're extremely pleased that it's no longer requiring cash to be put into the plan and to think of that size opportunity in the future is pretty exciting.
There are no further questions registered at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Fotopoulos.
Thank you, Donna. So thanks again to everybody for their participation on the call this morning. As usual, I'll be available throughout the day for any follow-ups or clarification. On that, have a great rest of the day and take care. Stay safe. Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.