Tear Sheet: BCE Inc.

BCE Inc. exited third-quarter 2023 with 3.5x leverage, which S&P Global Ratings expects will remain unchanged through year-end and likely into 2024, and which is higher than our previous expectation of 3.3x-3.4x for 2024. The higher leverage reflects the company's debt-funded network investments for the past few years, growing dividends, and wireless spectrum. Excluding spectrum expenditure, leverage in 2024 should benefit as EBITDA increases and capital expenditure (capex) spending moderates; however, we assume a C$2 billion spend on C-band spectrum for BCE and forecast the company's leverage will likely remain higher than our downside rating trigger of 3.25x through 2024. As in the past few years, we don?t anticipate BCE will generate any significant discretionary cash flow (DCF; after dividends

...Foreign currency issuer credit rating ###+/Stable/A-2 Local currency issuer credit rating ###+/Stable/## Business risk Strong Country risk Very Low Industry risk Intermediate Competitive position Strong Financial risk Significant Cash flow/leverage Significant Anchor ### Diversification/portfolio effect Neutral (no impact) Capital structure Neutral (no impact) Financial policy Neutral (no impact) Liquidity Adequate (no impact) Management and governance Strong (no impact) Comparable rating analysis Positive (+1 notch) Stand-alone credit profile ###+...

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