Speaker 0:  rogers just signaled the end of growth at all cost era in canadian tech by putting half of its workforce on the chopping block. they're trading 12,500 employees for a billion dollar in cash flow, and the market is absolutely loving the bloodbath. so rogers is trading, people for profits, but i guess that's what all the corporations are doing. rogers is offering a voluntary buyouts to roughly 12,500 employees while slashing capital ins infrastructure spending by 1,200,000,000. it's a massive pivot from building five g networks to squeezing every cent of profit out of the ones they already have. so this effective market this effectively marks the end of the post shaw merger integration phase and begins the automation phase where fewer humans run the country's largest network. what do you think about this, john?

Speaker 1:  yeah. this surprised me. this comes out of left field. i know canada, we pay some of the highest rates for cell phone, for internet, for everything. so this is surprising, but it's it makes sense it's like an organizational restructuring. so off offering buyouts across numerous divisions kind of suggests that there's redundancy element elimination post acquisitions. right? automation, replacing certain roles, and consolidation of overlapping functions. and so i guess it's not too surprising. it's it's consistent with large telecom mergers globally, where integration often leads to workforce overlap, operational inefficiencies, and need for cost synergies. but, again, there's just another reason why monopolies are not allowed because this is what happens. rogers merges with with, or takes over shaw, and now jobs get eliminated. and so they can blame it on whatever they want, but it's the fact that, and this is my opinion, that, there's redundancies. and they're just now that they own a larger chunk of the telecom space, they can cut, cut employees and, and raise prices. now, again, they're not laying off people just for thing. this is a voluntary buyout program. so what are your thoughts on this, craig?

Speaker 0:  oh, let me tell you what happens. it's a voluntary buyout program that is always followed by an unvoluntary layoff program. so, people need to keep all of that in mind when we hear this stuff. i know they're doing massive cost cutting. why should our canadian companies be any different than the massive layoffs we're seeing all over the world? but i was concerned about what this does to our tech space, what this does to the start up space, what this does to our economy. they're offering us to 12,500 people. so here's what happens. whenever they offer bio for companies like this, you know who leaves? the best ones. yeah. you know why? because they have a job or a company or whatever that they know they can go their value and they know they can go out. they're gonna take their money and they're gonna go do their own thing and they'll double their income for a period of time and they'll be like, wow. let's go. and the people who are close enough to retirement say, you know, that's fine. but the people who aren't very good, who are insecure at the job, they're gonna cling on forever. so that actually makes the company weaker, not stronger when we do these buyouts. so, i mean, it's good for the workforce who, you know, know what's going on, but that what happens next is in a couple of quarters, it won't be voluntary.

Speaker 1:  no. it won't.

Speaker 0:  so, you know, just you have to keep those things in mind. and then what happens to the industry? the job industry, how many of these are in the toronto area? and now we have 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 more people unemployed, in the tech or whatever space. so, you know, in this economy where things have gone up. so the buyouts they're buyouts, not layoff, so let's keep that in mind. it is a positive step. right now. right now. the departures are expected by late, q three twenty twenty six. and, again, we're talking this we're having this conversation on tuesday, april 28, and i believe this announcement came out on the twenty seventh, april 27. rogers is saving 900,000,000 to 1,200,000,000 in spending, and investors saw, 3.58% stock jump immediately. this affects 50% of staff excluding on air talent, sportsnet, the blue jays, and mlse, which, you know, to be expected, i guess. expect digital self-service to become your next best friend with fewer customers, support staff. rogers will push you towards ai chatbots and automated troubleshooting apps for everything.

Speaker 1:  yeah. i all i already hate calling rogers to get something fixed. i time it every time. it's like, i needed to get a new, table or tv set set box. it took me thirty five minutes to get that accomplished. and most of that time was waiting. like, it's abs and going through the menus. it's absolutely ridiculous. their chatbot is useless. sorry. my

Speaker 0:  bad. it's alright. you know, we've, i'll let you go do your rant. i rant all the time. the cap cut, specs from 3,500,000,000 down to 2,500,000,000, so it's a, 30% reduction, surging to a projected, from a free cash flow is surging from 4,100,000,000 projected to 4.3 from a cash flow perspective. so are they getting ready to buy something else or do something else as part of this? keep that in mind. improve the, to 3.8% ebitda down from four point o, four four x. so this is a shift towards a network life cycle management optimization. you know, the research i had done the articles were blaming it on. well, we're coming from the shaw expansion, and now we're going to maintenance mode so we're getting rid of all the expansion people. just like a narrative story to tell. like, let's face it. they're not, the people building the cables, along the wire, digging the things. you know? these are people that have been running your systems for a while. yeah. maybe

Speaker 1:  so they couldn't rebuild that stupid stadium every summer, instead of instead of this. like, that is the stupidest thing in the world. anyways, sorry. not a fan of rogers.

Speaker 0:  so this is the most significant shift in canadian telecom since 2023 shaw merger. it mirrors the efficiency year moves made by meta and google in 2023, but applied to the physical infrastructure. so we'll have to see this goes. rogers is likely banking on the artificial intelligence for its it operations. these systems use machine learning to predict network outages before they happen, allowing a skeleton crew to manage what used to require technicians, thousands of technicians. and as we know, these systems are great until they're not. the exclusion of, maple leafs, raptor staff is strategic. recently up rogers recently upped its stake, in mlsc to 75%, signaling that while they are done building wires, they're doubling down on owning content. and despite the voluntary nature, if not enough people take the package, rogers can trigger an involuntary separation clauses. in the industry, this is often called the quiet acts. so if you stop spending on the network, the network stops improving while roger's pockets are, the cash today, they're risking falling behind in the six g race or suffering technical debt outages as their aging hardware isn't replaced fast enough. so we'll have to see what happens. i know, a lot of people will be affected by this, and, i'm sad to see it happen. i was expecting some tightening, but not necessarily an offer to half the staff.

Speaker 1:  no.

Speaker 0:  so rogers is trimming the fat to pay the debt, turning a tech giant into a lean, mean, cash generating machine at the expense of the people that built it. is it smart to fire after staff while the crtc is breathing down your neck for better service, or is roger just setting themselves up for a massive network fail? what do you think? let us know in the chat.