Earnings Labs

Rogers Communications Inc. (RCI)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 23, 2015

$36.19

-0.93%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Rogers Communications Q2 2015 Results Analyst Teleconference. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind everyone that this conference is being recorded on Thursday, July 23, at 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time. I will now turn the conference over to Bruce Mann with the Rogers Communications Management team. Please go ahead, sir.

Bruce Mann

Analyst

Thank you, Ron. Good morning, everyone, appreciate you joining us bright and early here in Toronto with our President and Chief Executive Officer, Guy Laurence; and our Chief Financial Officer, Tony Staffieri. What we'll do is crisply provide you with a bit of additional color and detail on the results upfront, and then we'll spend the majority of the time we've got this morning answering as many of your questions as time permits. The discussion will undoubtedly touch on estimates and other forward-looking types of things, and from that, our actual results could ultimately differ. So please review the cautionary language in the earnings release today and in our 2014 annual report. The various factors, assumptions, risks, et cetera that could cause the results to differ apply equally to our dialogue this morning. So with that, I'll turn it over to Guy and then to Tony, and then we'll be pleased to take your questions.

Guy Laurence

Analyst

Thanks, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. So last quarter, I talked about early traction and the execution of our Rogers 3.0 plan. I'm pleased to report that the quarterly results released this morning demonstrate both the continuation of positive financial trends and improvements in subscriber metrics. Our revenue and free cash flow growth is continuing, and we're delivering a steady flow of strong new commercial initiatives. Before I comment on what we've been doing from a product and customer experience perspective, let me highlight a couple of key financial points before Tony gets into the detail. As you saw, on a year-over-year basis, consolidated revenue growth was 6%, consolidated adjusted operating profit increased to 2% and free cash flow growth was up by 9%. In Wireless network, revenue grew by 2%, with adjusted operating profit flat year-over-year. Importantly, however, this represents a 3 percentage point improvement in the growth rate sequentially from Q1, despite the fact we are managing the double cohort. Also notable is the postpaid wireless subscriber net additions, which turned positive after 2 quarters of decline as we gained traction across multiple segments. At the same time, average revenue per wireless account, or ARPA, was up about 4%. And while postpaid wireless churn was up very marginally year-over-year, it was down from Q1, and importantly, there wasn't a significant spike after the start of the double cohort. In cable, the reported revenue was basically flat, as the 5% growth in Internet revenue was offset by declines in TV and Home Phone. However, we saw sequential improvements from Q1 in subscribers, with positive Internet net additions and TV sub losses improving somewhat. This part of the business is obviously operating in a highly competitive marketplace. But starting next week, we will introduce a newly enhanced guide for the…

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

Thanks, Guy, and good morning, everyone. I'll provide a bit more detail around certain aspects of the second quarter financial results, and then we can get to your specific questions. During the second quarter, we continue to generate solid cash flow and strong operating margins, while at the same time, as Guy mentioned, we continue to gain traction driving top line revenue growth, which grew 6% year-over-year. Excluding the incremental NHL portion of Media's revenues, consolidated growth was 2%. A year ago, it was flat. And adjusted operating profit this quarter of $1.34 billion was up 2%. Last quarter, it was down 3%. So we're clearly making solid progress. At Wireless, the network revenue growth of 2% was driven by our ongoing strategic shift to lifetime value over volume, as we continue to see higher ARPU in versus ARPU out. This trend is very much supported by the growing penetration of our Share Everything plans that now represent 42% of our Roger postpaid based, up from 38% last quarter. So ramping well and with plenty of room for continued growth. And importantly, we put up the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year positive postpaid ARPU growth. As I've described in previous quarters, our new roaming offerings, including our popular U.S. and European ROAM LIKE HOME plans have had and continue to have an impact on our Wireless revenue and ARPU profiles. The plans are working, and we're seeing unique users on the uptick, and the increased volumes are beginning to offset the pricing changes. And the rate of decline in roaming revenues is decelerating. If you exclude the impacts from roaming changes, postpaid network revenue and ARPU would have been up over 3%. Another important data point is that after 2 quarters of postpaid subscriber losses, postpaid net additions turned positive…

Bruce Mann

Analyst

All right. Thanks, Guy and Tony. [Operator Instructions]. So with that, why don't you please explain how you want to organize the Q&A polling, and then we'll go into it.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question will come from Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley.

Simon Flannery

Analyst

I didn't hear any reference to the macro environment. Perhaps you could just touch on the impact of the weaker macro trends and, in particular, the weak currency and what that means for handset prices, upgrade rates, CapEx, et cetera?

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

Simon, I'll take that one. Let me start with the latter part of your question. In terms of foreign exchange, as you point out, certain portion of our costs and, in particular, handsets are tied to the U.S. dollars. We for the most part hedge our foreign currency exposures many years out, and so as we look to the near term, we find ourselves in a position to be well covered from much of the foreign exchange fluctuations that you see. Longer term, we'll keep an eye on what the foreign exchange looks like, but our intent is to continue to manage our lifetime value, so to the extent that our net handset costs go up, then we'll continue to follow an approach where we adjust our prices accordingly, market allowing, so that our economics remain whole.

Simon Flannery

Analyst

And on the overall economy, bad debts, all of that kind of thing?

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

Today, we haven't seen any negative impacts from any of that. I think as you look to some of the broader trends in terms of economic factors for Canada, they're somewhat mixed, and from our perspective, we don't see any adverse implications as we look to our bad debts. Both in the consumer as well as the enterprise space, we continue to see that in line with our expectations and previous trends.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Jeff Fan with Scotiabank.

Jeffrey Fan

Analyst

A couple of questions around ARPU and ARPA. It looks like the postpaid ARPU growth slowed a little bit in the quarter, but on the other hand, Guy, as you mentioned, the ARPA growth accelerated. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that. Should we start to see the focus on ARPA and maybe multi-device accounts to see the ARPA growth continue to accelerate as we see more connections per account? And maybe you can just talk about the opportunity there in the market.

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

Thanks for the question, Jeff. A couple of things. In the near term, we see both ARPA and ARPU being relevant. Certainly, the proliferation of Share Everything and the movement of customers to that, ARPA is an important metric, and so we're pleased with the way that's moving. As we look to number of connections per device, that continues to move in a positive direction. We told you last quarter it was just under 2, and it's still trending towards 2 devices on average per account. So that's moving well. On ARPU, the slight downtick that you saw in this quarter is really a couple of things there. I should say, when we round the numbers, now this quarter was a 1% increase. Last quarter was 2%. If you added a digit to that, the difference is really less than 0.5%. But the second thing is, in the second quarter, we put in place some promotional offers that gave customers some larger data buckets. And so -- and that was on a very short-term basis, and so what that caused was a slight decline in what we typically saw as data overage revenues but isn't something that we expect to be a trend longer term.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from John Hodulik with UBS.

John Hodulik

Analyst

Now that you guys have successfully navigated the double cohort, as you look forward, just sort of should we see the inverse of some of the factors that affected the results heading into it, more specifically, some lower retention spending that could help drive margins and maybe continued improvements in churn?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

So to be clear, the -- you say we've successfully navigated the double cohort. I think we've successfully navigated the start of the double cohort. Of course, double cohort is not a one quarter wonder. So we've got a number of quarters to go on it, and we are ready and prepared in terms of our plans, and we've executed extremely well this quarter. But we have to see what the market does in the coming quarters.

John Hodulik

Analyst

Okay. If I could just -- quickly just bounce in one more question on the spectrum, you guys have said you've deployed the new spectrum you got from Shaw on the West, but can you talk a little bit about some of the benefits you may be seeing from a network performance or speed standpoint? And when can we see the extra 10 megahertz you guys picked up in Toronto deployed?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

West, we've only had it live a couple of days, so I'm not sure I've got any results to share with you, to be quite frank. In terms of when we deploy it in Toronto, it's going to be a little while yet. We've got some more work to do, but we're also not short of speed in the area anyway. So it was more future-proofing than immediate need, and it'll come onstream later this year.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Maher Yaghi with Desjardins.

Maher Yaghi

Analyst · Desjardins.

I wanted to ask you -- as it relates to Wireless, you have launched over the last couple of quarters some interesting new product offering with some attractive deals, some additions like music, et cetera. Can you talk a little bit if those new product innovations that you discussed initially on the call were the main drivers behind the improvement and the subscriber trends, or it is more related to the promotional activities that you undertook in the quarter?

Guy Laurence

Analyst · Desjardins.

No, the improvement in subscribers is related to the propositions where we're using content. So the use of promotions is somewhat muted and has been since I joined the company. So it's very much related around content.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Phillip Huang with Barclays.

Phillip Huang

Analyst

First, just want to clarify on the double cohort. Our sense is that consumer awareness of June 3 has been relatively low so far, but I was wondering -- and you guys have made significant progress on the volume-to-value strategy. I was wondering if you -- as we're heading into the more competitive back half, do you expect to see the improvement we saw this quarter on the wireless trends to sustain. And then my follow-up on the roaming side is, it looks like the decline -- while it's still dilutive to ARPU, the decline seems to be really improving. I was wondering if you could give us an update on the penetration of your ROAM LIKE HOME plans and the resulting usage growth and whether we have better visibility to it becoming accretive to ARPU.

Guy Laurence

Analyst

Can I just clarify the first part of your question? Did you say that you thought the awareness of the double cohort was low amongst consumers?

Phillip Huang

Analyst

Right, yes. Our sense is that the -- while we certainly are watching closely, consumers don't really appear to be very aware that June 3 was the date where all the senior [ph] contracts have ended, and so there wasn't a whole lot of -- there was certainly no mad dash to the retail stores for upgrades that we were concerned about months before. So I was wondering what you're seeing in the market.

Guy Laurence

Analyst

Yes, just to clarify that point. Actually, the awareness of the double cohort is quite high amongst consumers, primarily thanks to national press writing very large articles encouraging customers to look at their contracts. So I don't think it's a safe assumption that awareness is low. Behavior is certainly different to what it could have been in that you haven't queues forming out stores. But awareness continues to grow and at a relatively high base. I'll let Tony answer the question about the roaming there [ph].

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

Phillip, I believe your question was on data usage, and just to clarify, were you talking about domestic or roaming?

Phillip Huang

Analyst

Yes, my question relates to the penetration of your new ROAM LIKE HOME plans both in the U.S. and, I guess, early signs in Europe, if any at all; and also whether the usage volume growth is increasingly starting to offset the repricing impact and whether we have better visibility to when roaming might actually become accretive to ARPU rather than dilutive currently.

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

So there's 2 dynamics there. In terms of the U.S. ROAM LIKE HOME, which has been in market a little longer than the international side of it, we're seeing good traction there. So when you look at both data usage as well as number of unique roamers, that's up significantly. When you translate that to roaming revenues from the U.S., what we're seeing is we're pretty much at the inflection point where we're starting to see actual revenues flat to slightly positive. So as we continue through the summer months, it'll be something we keep our eye on, but the trajectory seems good in terms of what we expected. On the international side, that was introduced subsequent to the U.S. one, so it's still earlier days for that one. What we are seeing is very good traction, again, in terms of number of subscribers using it as well as actual data usage per subscriber. So we're getting the right behavior, and so we expect the trend to follow what we've seen in the U.S. In terms of impact on our ARPU and revenue profiles for Wireless, still several quarters we expect to have an impact. And as I said, Q3 will be an important one in terms of heavy travel season, so it probably won't be until early 2016 that we start to see a change in impact on ARPU and revenue.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Vince Valentini with TD Securities.

Vince Valentini

Analyst

Congrats on the better sub adds this quarter. Just wondering, if you're getting some traction on the better customer experience, and you certainly have identified several programs there, do have any expectation of when you think postpaid churn will flatten out or even decrease year-over-year?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

It's a good question, Vince. I think the short answer is no, because there's lots of moving parts. So you've got customer expectations, which are not static. They move over time. You've got competitors who are obviously doing stuff in addition, and then you've got the work that we're doing. So it's a difficult -- in my experience kind of over the last 15 years, it's very difficult to forecast at what point you achieve what you're describing. So I wouldn't like to hazard a guess on that, except that we're committed to the program of improving customer experience and always will be. As long as I am doing these calls, we'll be talking about our plans to continue to improve it.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Richard Choe with JPMorgan.

Richard Choe

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Just to follow up on the double cohort a little bit, I know you've talked about it a lot. But just kind of going forward, are you expecting things to get worse? Have you seen any evidence of that, or is this going to be less of a negative issue than everyone else thought? And also in terms of the prepaid business, it seems like nice rebound there. Should we expect that to continue to be positive going forward?

Guy Laurence

Analyst · JPMorgan.

So on the first one, I don't know, because it depends on what happens in the marketplace, and I only dictate what we do. I don't dictate what the market does. So it's not that it's not competitive out there. I don't think you should take away from this call that it's not competitive or that consumers are not aware of the double cohort. It's just that we have managed to navigate this quarter very well, and as we go into the next few quarters with new handset models and so on so forth, and the situation may change. It may get even better. It may get slightly worse. I don't know. But I don't think we can -- I think the point is, is that we have managed this quarter very well in terms of our retention spend, where we've invested in customers, despite the fact that awareness is high and there's been a lot of noise in the marketplace and the press. Second part of your question, I didn't catch actually. Could you repeat it please?

Richard Choe

Analyst · JPMorgan.

The prepaid business, we saw growth there. Should we expect that to kind of grow going forward? You mentioned it a little bit with the new plans.

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Yes, Richard, the prepaid piece, we're quite pleased with the way that it's trending. As you all know, we relaunched the Chatter brand with a new identity. And it's still very early days, but there's a renewed focus on that segment of the marketplace. And so we're pleased with the way it's going, but it is very early days and tough to extrapolate a trend at this point. It'll depend on a number of different dynamics.

Guy Laurence

Analyst · JPMorgan.

I think it is true to say that our -- as we, over the last year, as we've been cycling through revisiting different parts of our business, Chatter was pretty much at the back of the list, given its size. Now we've applied the same treatment as we're applying to Fido and to Rogers brands in terms refreshing them charting their commercial offers. You're seeing now a reflection of that phenomenon. I don't think we know how big the market is for prepaid yet, so we'll experiment as we go on. We just hired a new person to run prepaid for us. He has got a lot of experience. And so let's see what happens on that one.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Aravinda Galappatthige with Canaccord Genuity.

Aravinda Galappatthige

Analyst · Canaccord Genuity.

I just wanted to -- I just had a question on the enterprise side. Now that you've got the sort of team together and sort of ready to go, maybe if you can just expand on the magnitude of the opportunity there and what sort of initial milestones you're looking for as you kind of roll out there.

Guy Laurence

Analyst · Canaccord Genuity.

So we -- Nitin started at the beginning of the year, and he has been -- he had a good team that he inherited, but we supplemented that with a number of other people from Canada and beyond. And so I think they're still pulling everything together. I don't want to say too much about what the milestones because, unfortunately, our competitors listen to these calls. But what I would say is, is that, I think, as we probably get to Q4, we'll be ready to start making announcements in terms of product sets and commit new commercial offers in line with the plans that we've got. Overall, the opportunity for -- on enterprise is very large, because we are underindexed significantly. I think we are somewhere around the 20% market share, which is very low versus our consumer market. So there's lots of upside, but we're approaching the entry to that in a methodical way rather than trying to rush out into the marketplace and then say -- in terms to Nitin, he's only been here, I don't know, 25 weeks so far. I would say more to come on that. I'm sorry I can't give you more detail, but more to come, but not for this quarter, not for next quarter. It will probably be, in terms of the first announcements, probably Q4.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Drew McReynolds with RBC.

Drew McReynolds

Analyst

Just back to the roaming. Obviously, we're kind of cycling through the 9 99 year-over-year, and we got the ROAM LIKE HOME in the U.S. and international that's impacting things. Just big picture, maybe for you, Tony. Just wondering, when you look out over the medium term, do you think that the changes that you've put through, those 3 changes are roughly sufficient to what you have to do to recalibrate the business and get the volume growth? Or is it one of those scenarios where you're constantly putting kind of new -- kind of recalibrations into the roaming equation? And then just secondly, just on the double cohort, just wondering if you can update what percentage of contracts are still on the 3-year.

Guy Laurence

Analyst

I'll take the roaming one over, mate [ph]. I think the fact that the uptake on ROAM LIKE HOME is so all-encompassing for our Share Everything customers, it's so well liked, tells you that we've got the formula right. And we're constantly reviewing the consumer feedback we get on it, but it's broadly positive. So I'm not sure how much more we need to do on roaming, in fairness. There are -- there is a stubborn group of customers who still don't sign up for us even though they're eligible, believe it or not, because they just can't believe it's true. So my challenge is actually winning them over. But I think we've largely actually achieved what we wanted on roaming, and we've covered now the major destinations. So that, I think, is largely a tick in the box rather than a small part of the customer base we've yet to tackle. Also, as I said in my speech, the competitive reaction has been somewhat muted with one imitation offer out there that's 40% more expensive. But I wouldn't say I was -- I'm not flustered by that, if you know what I mean. Second half of your question, I'm going to turn over to Tony. Can you just repeat it again, please?

Drew McReynolds

Analyst

Yes, just an update on the percentage of the consumer postpaid subscribers that are still on 3-year plans.

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

So Drew, the short answer is, at the end of the quarter, it's 0, because what happens at June 30 is all of the customers then become out of contract. So going into June 3, 12% of our consumer postpaid base was still on 3-year contracts. And so as you would expect, some of those renewed into new contracts, largely 2-year contracts, if you were to look at the overall from -- for our consumer postpaid base at the end of the quarter, the impact in terms of total that are now out of contract, it was roughly a 1% impact or a 1-point impact, I should say, in terms of the total percentages.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Greg MacDonald with Macquarie.

Greg MacDonald

Analyst

Question for you is on gross adds, postpaid gross adds. After a number of quarters on decline, it showed a nice flat number there. And guys, I'm going to make the assumption that there wasn't a major industry spike this quarter that, in fact, it seems like your gross add share has improved this quarter. Guy, you talked a little bit about the decline in inbound customer service calls. That's a good indicator. Was that the single biggest driver in that gross add improvement number? Or were there other things that mixed into that? And can you talk about the profile of gross adds this quarter, Fido versus Rogers, in any way, whether Fido was bigger than Rogers, whether there was a trend toward Fido? I know this is somewhat competitively sensitive, but what can you tell us on the profile?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

I'm not sure I'd link the reduction in calls coming into the call centers with the increase in gross adds, if that's what you had in mind.

Greg MacDonald

Analyst

What I'm wondering is, overall improvements in customer service can improve customers coming to your brand, and I wonder whether that's the major thing or were there other things like product profile improvement that you're talking about.

Guy Laurence

Analyst

I think it -- I don't think it -- I think we're too early in the game for that. You are correct, but I think we're too early in the game to claim that. Now I think the increase in gross adds came down to our different propositions out there, linked back to the previous question around the inclusion of content. So I think that's what increased -- sorry, I know that's what increased the gross adds. The decrease in the number of calls coming in is because we are increasing our online self-serve, number one; and secondly, because we are -- we've got a higher first-call resolution now in fixing customers' issues when they do call us without the need for them to call back and a number of other improvements. Customer service is always a cocktail. It's never 1 or 2 things. It's a whole series of things. So I wouldn't link those 2 right now. In the -- probably in the mid- to long term, we might -- I'd like to get to that point, to be quite frank, but it's a bit early for that.

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

In terms of the split, Greg, on gross adds, we don't disclose, as you described, the specific numbers related to Rogers and Fido. But what I can tell you is 2 things: one is, the majority of the gross adds come in on the Rogers brand; and two, there hasn't been any significant or material shift between Rogers and Fido over the last several quarters.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Bob Bek with CIBC.

Robert Bek

Analyst

Guy, you highlight in your comments the inherent strength of the cable play [ph] for broadband speed and throughput. Is it fair to say you're going to start pushing these advantages more going forward? I know you've got the IGNITE product in the market for a couple of quarters. But you've got a competitor that spent a few years building a brand about fiber and just looking to see whether you're at a position now where you think you might be more aggressive as far as pushing what is a very strong inherent strength of your network.

Guy Laurence

Analyst

Well, I think, over the last year, we've -- being human beings, we can only talk to so many things at once, and we focused on the wireless business, and we've got traction there. We're certainly turning our attention now to the whole residential area. And my view was, is that we needed to accelerate the development of our legacy TV product, that we needed to reposition broadband and that we needed to make improvement to customer services there. And so we've repositioned Internet now with IGNITE. We've got new -- we got a new guide coming out on NextBox next week. And therefore, I would say we're getting ready to put our foot down to prosecute our natural advantage being a cable-co. So the short answer to your question is yes. But again, don't expect some sets of fireworks to go off tomorrow morning and then that's it. This is about steady, methodical improvements over the quarters. And given that we're coming from some way behind, it's going to take time to get traction on that. But we have a number of natural advantages. I would say those were enhanced by yesterday's decision by the CRTC in that they've created a level -- more level playing field between cable-co and telco, and I'm encouraged by that. And therefore, yes, we will put our foot down on improving that business as steadily as we have with cable -- with wireless, sorry.

Robert Bek

Analyst

Yes, that's helpful. Can I -- just a clarification for Tony while I'm on here. The tax loss carryforwards from Mobilicity, just to be clear, it's entirely used in 2015, so by 2016 we'd return to a more normalized cash tax outlook?

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

A couple of things, Bob. So one, that's correct. We are going to use all of the tax losses in 2015. And as we get into 2016, I don't want to extend myself and provide guidance for that year. There are a number of tax planning things that we continue to work on, and so stay tuned in terms of cash taxes for 2016.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Tim Casey with BMO.

Tim Casey

Analyst

Guy, you mentioned that you're releasing a new guide this week. Can you just talk a little bit more about what you're doing on the video side to try and arrest some of the declines that you've experienced over the last several quarters?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

Yes. So just to take you backwards to something I've said a couple of quarters, and I think you may have heard these comments before, Tim. But the -- so when we -- when they started the program for IPTV, which was before I joined, there was a decision to stop development of the current legacy products, which in hindsight was probably a mistake. And we had to fire that machine back up again, which has taken us a bit of time. And therefore, I'm continuing to invest in the legacy products in terms of the user experience, the way that particularly videos and -- the discovery mechanisms -- search mechanisms, discovery mechanisms, ease of use on use cases that the consumer uses repeatedly and so on, so forth. So this first release coming out is largely foundational in that what the public will actually see and play with is probably only about 25% of the codes that we're actually releasing. The other is preparation for future releases. Nevertheless, they'll see some improvements that they've been asking for, and we have had the new release out in test with 500 of our own staff for the last month or so while we've been refining it, and certainly, the feedback's been good. But I would say the general philosophy and trajectory is that we want to continue to enhance the legacy product. And whilst we continue to work on IPTV so that we can get into a better competitive situation, and that combined with my previous comments around Internet and prosecuting a revitalized residential play over a number of quarters is, if you like, encapsulates the plan.

Tim Casey

Analyst

So one of your -- one of the other cable companies has really started to de-emphasize the voice bucket and really look at other products. Are you guys changing any of the way you go to market with bundles? Or are you still pursuing a more wholesome offer?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

I think we have some basics to fix, to be quite frank. And I would say I'm more focused on that. The fact that the search capability on our service wasn't good enough and will be vastly improved and things like that, I would say our direction of travel is more that than what you've described.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from Robert Peters with Crédit Suisse.

Robert Peters

Analyst

Maybe just circling back on to roaming for a second. With the deployment of the ROAM LIKE HOME plans in Europe, I was just wondering, I think in the past, you've indicated kind of how -- or at least that the majority of your roaming comes from people traveling in the U.S. I was wondering is there any -- is there any kind of way we can think about the proportion of the roaming that's coming from the U.S. versus Europe in terms of the impact of the new European roaming plans?

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

Robert, a couple of points to be helpful. First off, when you look at our total revenue profile, 7% of our postpaid revenues are coming from roaming. So just to put it in perspective of the size of the total bucket, of that, roughly 2 to 3 points is international, with the rest being U.S. And so as I've mentioned before, the U.S. one in terms of product, it has a bit more maturity than the international, and so positive trending on that is more pronounced. Still early days for international, and as I said, we expected to closely follow what we saw in the U.S. Hopefully, that helps in terms of putting it into perspective.

Robert Peters

Analyst

No, that's fantastic color. Thank you very much. And then maybe, when you're talking about the -- some of the inherent advantages in cable and specifically when we look to see the fact that there is DOCSIS 3.1 networking gear that's going to be coming out, I believe, later this year, if not out already, that can do higher speeds and, frankly, comparable speeds that have been seen by some of the fiber offerings, how do you guys think about managing the speeds available to customers going forward in, like, say, the next year or so?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

Well, we have very clear points of view on that, and I'm absolutely not going to share them with you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we have time for 2 more questions today, the first of which will come from Adam Shine with National Bank Financial.

Adam Shine

Analyst

Guy, a lot of the talk around customer service obviously focuses on the call center. But maybe if we go into the retail stores, are you generally satisfied with where KPIs are trending? And is there an opportunity still to, perhaps, achieve some efficiencies and drive some more throughput through the retail outlets? I say that in the context of -- and I'm not suggesting the Rogers staff is slower than peers, but there's a lot of maintenance work going on, particularly on the weekends, maybe bogging down some of the sales. I'm curious if that's part of some of the back-end stuff that's being worked on to maybe drive, as I said, additional throughput through the system for low-hanging fruit in terms of additional subs going forward.

Guy Laurence

Analyst

So we were lucky enough to recruit Woessner from Deutsche Telekom, who is, no doubt, expert in retail and managing retail channels. He joined us a number of months ago. And it's true to say he is taking a firm grip of what we're doing in retail, and we have -- I mean, I'm -- I'll never be happy about what we do in any channel, to be quite frank, because I always want to improve whatever we've got. He feels the same way, and we're making a number of enhancements on the retail back end, IT systems at the moment, which will continue over the coming quarter and beyond, in fact. So we're doing -- there's some work to do on the esthetics, because formats get tired and need refreshing, and foot traffic also degrades the stores as well. But primarily, our focus is, is actually on the IT and back-end process side. In addition, we've just built our first retail training center, which we launched in this quarter that's just gone. And now our retail managers are going through much more rigorous and formal training, and that will extend down to the front line that they manage as well, which brings us more in line with the, I would say, the European norms in terms of the amount of training that's done and the rigor with which it's done. So we've got some very talented people in retail estate, and I get letters from customers on a regular basis telling me that. But it's true to say that I think that perhaps the support mechanisms for the stores have not been optimal, and the training support as we develop new products and services has also not been there. And that's really what Dirk is focused on at the moment, and I think you'll continue to see improvement in that area as a consequence.

Adam Shine

Analyst

Okay, and maybe just one quick one for Tony just in the context of the Rogers Home Phone. Particularly, as we look to see wireless substitution accelerating, and we're obviously seeing the telephony disconnects across the marketplace picking up pace, but for wireless subscriber at Rogers, you can get the Rogers Home Phone for $10, in sharp contrast to what otherwise appears to be a $35 to $45 plus-plus landline proposition. Can you speak to any acceleration in the uptake of that product?

Anthony Staffieri

Analyst

Yes, I can, Adam. If you look at trending on that, there's a couple of things. One is, on the Wireless Home Phone product, there is a propensity for it to do better outside of our -- what I would describe as our natural footprint. So that will give you a sense of the mix. And two, the volumes are low and relatively steady. So we don't see a significant increase in what you describe as substitution within the footprint. So I'd still describe it as relatively modest. Much of what you see on the revenue front for Home Phone continues to be some of the repricing that you're seeing in the market and us matching that, particularly as part of a bundle.

Operator

Operator

And your final question will come from Rob Goff with Euro Pacific.

Robert Goff

Analyst

My question would be on the 1-gig service for the high speed. To what extent do you see that as a niche service? Or is it a broadband flagship deliverable? And could you give us any additional perspective on your ability, timing cost to introduce that type of service?

Guy Laurence

Analyst

I'd love to, but I think that's going to stray into areas which I don't want to share with the -- with my competitors right now. So I think I'd say stay tuned. Sorry.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the Q&A session for today. I'll now turn the call back to Bruce Mann for any closing remarks.

Bruce Mann

Analyst

Well, thanks, everybody from the team here at Rogers, for investing some of your time with us this morning. I know it's a busy period, and I know it was a bit earlier than usual. But we very much appreciate your interest and support. If you have questions that weren't answered, please give myself or one of my colleagues, Dan or Bruce Watson, a call. Both of our -- all of our contacts are on the earnings release this morning, and we'd be happy to take care of you as quickly as possible. So this concludes today's teleconference.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. Thanks for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.