TD Securities downgraded the three major Canadian telecommunications companies and lowered its price targets on Thursday, citing a “price war risk.”

In a note to investors, analyst Vince Valentini dropped BCE (BCE.TO, BCE), Rogers Communications (RCI-B.TO) and Telus (T.TO, TU) to “Hold,” arguing that “the news … is not good” on core pricing and growth fundamentals.

“Very aggressive pricing” for wireless plans in the early months of 2026 has not been “stimulating better subscriber volume growth across the industry,” Valentini writes, but is rather “causing elevated churn and a negative repricing cycle.”

TD lowered its price targets on the Toronto-listed stocks of BCE from $41 to $37, Rogers from $65 to $56, and Telus from $21 to $19.

“With these rating changes today, we now have no Buy ratings among the five Canadian telco/cable names, which is unprecedented in our 30+ years of covering the sector,” Valentini notes.

Valentini was particularly cautious on Telus, forecasting a 30 per cent reduction in its dividend by the end of 2026 — a dividend that has been under growing pressure from analysts. Valentini noted that, amid challenged growth in core wireless operations, execution of asset sales (specifically in healthcare) has become critical under incoming CEO Victor Dodig.

As a result of heavy competition in wireless, Valentini notes that TD is lowering its average revenue per user (ARPU) forecasts by 100 basis points for BCE, Rogers, and Telus.

“For every dollar decline in wireless service revenue, versus our previous forecasts, we have assumed that 70 cents will flow through” to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), Valentini writes. “We have not assumed any increase in net subscriber growth because, in our view, all carriers showing similar price aggression is simply a race to the bottom with no net winner on volume.”

In another note on Thursday, Scotia Capital analyst Maher Yaghi flagged increasingly lower expectations for subscriber growth, also pointing to the negative consequences of price wars.

Yaghi had already reduced 2026 growth forecasts from 2.5 to 2.0 per cent in January, but knocked them down to 1.6 per cent on Thursday due to Statistics Canada scaling back population growth estimates.

“While the change in growth rate is not sufficiently meaningful to cause important price target revisions, we believe management narratives during Q1 earnings season will be muted,” Yaghi wrote. “We are still struggling to understand the rationale behind the elevated discounting in Q1, which has likely resulted in higher churn and more pressure on ARPU without the offsetting and hoped-for subscriber loading improvement.”

In a note about BCE, JPMorgan analyst Sebastiano Petti echoed industry concerns over “increased competitive intensity” and slower market growth from declining immigration. Petti slashed Q1 postpaid net add forecasts to just 5,000 (down from 15,000) and now projects total mobile phone net losses of 5,000 for the quarter.

However, the bank nudged its price target up from $37 to $38, opting to look past current “macroeconomic and regulatory pressures” toward high-margin growth from a new 300 MW data center deal. Yahoo Finance