Operating under the name Bell Canada, BCE is Canada's largest communications companies based on revenue. The company has two operating segments: Bell Communication and Technology Services and Bell Media. The company's largest competitors are Rogers Communications and Telus Corporation. We note that results are reported in Canadian dollars and converted to U.S. dollars using the average exchange rate on the date of the company's earnings release for the purposes of our report and estimates. At the end of 2024, the company had about 10.3 million mobile phone subscribers and operating revenues were just over $24.4 billion, down about 1% from 2023. Of last year's revenues, about 89% were from Bell CTS Canada. The current market cap is $21.8 billion.

A Year-End Letter To Our Readers As 2025 draws to a close, the team at Argus Research wishes you and your colleagues and families a relaxing, joyful, and safe holiday season. It has been our privilege to provide our insights, commentary, forecasts, coverage, and portfolio advice to you for the past 12 months. As ever, we remain committed to delivering high-quality, well-researched, thoughtful, and timely advice and recommendations to our clients -- and we thank you for choosing to support and partner with us. As we move on to 2026, may we all look forward to a healthy and peaceful start to the New Year. During 2025, as the bull market that began in October 2023 continued to progress, Argus Research experienced numerous achievements and growth. Product Development As always, we have continued to invest in, expand, and improve the Argus Research service. One way we do this is by adding new stocks to our Universe of Coverage, ensuring that our coverage list is dynamic, relevant, and includes the stocks that investors own. In the past year, we launched coverage of Carvana Co., Coinbase Global Inc., CoreWeave Inc., Deckers Outdoor Corp., Dexcom Inc., Duolingo Inc., Edwards Lifesciences Corp., Global Foundries Inc., O'Reilly Automotive Inc., Paramount Skydance Corp., and Reddit Inc. Not all of these stocks are on the BUY list, but that's part of the advantage of being independent. We look to make more changes in 2026 -- launching coverage of new stocks from spin-offs as well as increasing coverage in Financial, Clean Energy, and Technology. Keep those suggestions coming! We always look to improve our research products and investment tools, adding new, important information or simply making our research easier to use. As an example, in 2025, we: * Focused on the sector portion of our top-down research approach to revise our related commentary in the Investment Portfolio Guide and our A6 reports. We also added the Sector Watch tool, featuring our top picks in each sector, to our website. * Updated our A6 quant model with new proprietary data, new financial calculations, and new factor weights. The result is ratings output that is substantially more aligned with the conclusions of our analysts. * Tweaked our popular webinars to update topics, promote the events more aggressively, and include more stock picks. Participation among clients is up 12% year over year. * Rolled out new marketing support tools for our popular model portfolios, including a new website, new fact sheets, and more-detailed performance information and attribution analysis. * Introduced a monthly calendar, highlighting client visits and events that our team members either host or attend. * Upgraded our content to make it more accessible for investors around the globe. On the new product front in 2025, we introduced a new suite of institutional services. This offering includes analyst access, corporate access, and earnings models, among other features. The new suite complements current institutional products such as risk surveillance and corporate action screens and surveys, watch lists, gap coverage, morning calls and IPO research. Corporate access events we hosted this year included presentations by management teams from Apollo Global Management, Chipotle Mexican Grill, DocuSign, General Motors, Humana Corp., International Business Machines, Newmont Corp., SLB NV, Uber Technologies, and others. People We added to our staff in the past year, bringing on Caroline Wygal as a Sales & Marketing Representative. She has helped introduce the calendar, as well as the new websites and marketing fliers, along with Olivia Frey. We also have had the opportunity to be thankful for the many contributions to Argus Research from Daryl Dorsey Coleman, who is retiring from Argus at the end of this year. Daryl is a granddaughter of the founder of Argus Research Group, Harold B. Dorsey. She joined Argus in 1984 and has contributed as a data analyst, editor, compliance officer, and as de facto Director of Research when we need analyst notes for the daily market reports. Daryl will remain on the Board at Argus Research Group. We wish her well in her retirement, but also will not be shy to get her opinions and views about key corporate developments and opportunities. Plans for 2026 The research industry continues to change, opening new opportunities for nimble participants. European research regulations, now in place for more than five years, have led to a reduction in research analysts and research coverage, particularly for small- and mid-cap stocks. This threatens the ability of newer entrepreneurial firms to raise capital efficiently. Argus is part of the solution to this problem. After consulting with exchanges around the globe, Argus has created a sponsored research report and distribution service. The sponsored reports differ from our Argus Analyst Reports in look and feel, do not include a rating, and are distributed for free from our website and other institutional and media channels. The offering includes press releases and earnings estimates available on the major aggregate platforms. In 2025, our sales team brought in several new sponsored companies. We are also taking advantage of institutional research opportunities on alpha-capture programs, in corporate access services, and with global accounts. Through the years, Argus has remained committed to the following. Thought Leadership. From the home page of our website, we post Christine Dooley's popular Weekly Stock List as well as a Weekly Economic Commentary from Director of Research Jim Kelleher, CFA. We publish a Daily Spotlight, written by either myself or Chris Graja, CFA, and a daily Market View. We distributed white papers this year on Innovation Investing, ESG Investing, and Dividend Growth Investing. As for sharing our expertise with the financial press, our Director of Financial Services Research, Steve Biggar, is committed to marketing the Argus brand name. In 2025, he promoted Argus through appearances with American Banker, Bloomberg TV, BNN Bloomberg Canada, Business Insider, CNBC-Asia, CNBC-U.S., Dow Jones, Marketplace Radio, Money Talk Live, Reuters, Schwab Network, The Messenger, The Wall Street Journal, and Yahoo Finance TV, among others. Numerous analysts worked with the media as well, including myself, Jim Kelleher, CFA, Joe Bonner, CFA, David Toung, Kris Ruggeri, Taylor Conrad, and Kevin Heal. Steve Biggar, Jim Kelleher, Kevin Heal, Chris Graja and I all participated in several national and global webinars with key clients. Kevin spent time in Washington, D.C., this fall talking with legislators about important regulatory developments. Caroline Wygal is now focused on raising our social media profile, sharing new product news, new coverage news, awards and media appearances. Look for us -- and follow us and like us -- on LinkedIn. To Giving Back. Argus grants employees a day off every year to donate time to their communities. Argus employees over the years have helped provide food for the food insecure, delivered food to those who could not travel to local pantries, cleaned local parks and nature preserves, and rescued foster puppies, among other initiatives. We also continue to run an excellent summer intern program, training future financial professionals on the fundamentals and skills of equity analysis. Thanks to Kris Ruggeri for leading the Argus intern program in 2025. To Looking Ahead. In 2026, in addition to adding more stocks and ETFs into coverage, we have plans to host more corporate-access events; raise our profile in social media; incubate new investment strategies to round out our portfolio of offerings; and back-test and improve quantitative approaches at our sister company Vickers Stock Research. To Personally Supporting our Clients. We are extraordinarily thankful for the support you provide us, and we like to tell you that in person. Our team has been on client visits to Maryland, California, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, upstate New York, Massachusetts, and Florida this year. Our NYC headquarters office is fully reopened and we have enjoyed hosting clients from Paris and Tokyo, among other locales. We'd like to have you visit us in 2026. So as another eventful year draws to a close and we look to the future, the professionals at Argus Research remain committed to the long-time values associated with our brand: a sharp focus on research quality and customer service, an emphasis on continual improvement and growth, and a duty to support and promote independent, ethical investing. We again thank you for your support of Argus Research, welcome your feedback to improve our products and services, and wish you a happy and healthy holiday season and all the best in 2026.

BCE provides wireless, broadband, television, and landline phone services in Canada. It is one of the Big Three national wireless carriers, with over 10 million customers constituting about 30% of the market. It is also the incumbent local exchange carrier—the legacy telephone provider—throughout much of the eastern half of Canada, including in the most populous Canadian provinces: Ontario and Quebec. BCE has a media segment that holds television, radio, and digital media assets. BCE licenses the Canadian rights to HBO Max and Starz.

Operating under the name Bell Canada, BCE is one of Canada's largest communications companies. The company has two operating segments: Bell Communication and Technology Services and Bell Media. Our rating on the Communication Services sector is Market-Weight. The hyperscale companies in this 'barbell' sector have been subject to increased volatility in 2025 around the market's perception of risks related to the returns from huge spikes in investment in generative AI, an uncertain macroeconomy, impending regulatory actions, and fallout from trade wars. After bottoming in April, shares have more or less begun to recover. The telco companies at the other end of the barbell have relatively outperformed the hyperscale companies but are contending with slow subscriber growth amid a subdued 5G smartphone cycle. As of the end of July, the sector was outperforming the market, with a gain of 13.2%. The sector accounted for 9.9% of the S&P 500. Over the past five years, the weighting has ranged from 7% to 12%. It outperformed the market in 2024, with a gain of 38.9% compared to a gain of 23.3% for the S&P 500. The sector's P/E ratio on projected 2026 EPS was 19, below the market multiple. Yields of 1.1% were above the market average. The sector's smoothed earnings growth rate of 11% was above the market average. Given the lack of historical performance data for the new sector, S&P Dow Jones Indices performed pro forma back-testing over a 10-year period to determine the general characteristics of the sector. The style mix is approximately one-third 'value' and two-thirds 'growth,' while the predecessor Telecom sector was 100% value. The sector, developed by MSCI and S&P Dow Jones, launched on 9/24/18. The sector delineation applies to all indices maintained by MSCI and S&P Dow Jones, including the S&P 500, S&P 400, and S&P 600, as well as various domestic and global indices maintained by MSCI. The sector includes two major subsectors: Media & Entertainment (80% of sector weight) and Telecommunications Services (20%). Media & Entertainment includes Media (advertising, broadcasting, cable & satellite, and publishing); Entertainment (movies & entertainment, and interactive home entertainment); and Interactive Media & Services, which includes search & social media platforms. Telecom Services includes Diversified Telecom and Wireless Telecom Services.