BRITISH COLUMBIA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Corp Acquires 273,368 Shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

BRITISH COLUMBIA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Corp grew its stake in shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) by 132.4% during the third quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor owned 479,785 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 273,368 shares during the quarter. BRITISH COLUMBIA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Corp’s holdings in TELUS were worth $8,048,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other large investors have also recently modified their holdings of TU. Northwest & Ethical Investments L.P. grew its position in TELUS by 0.5% during the 3rd quarter. Northwest & Ethical Investments L.P. now owns 449,777 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $7,547,000 after acquiring an additional 2,196 shares during the last quarter. Public Sector Pension Investment Board boosted its stake in shares of TELUS by 2.0% during the third quarter. Public Sector Pension Investment Board now owns 77,198 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $1,297,000 after purchasing an additional 1,500 shares during the period. BNP Paribas Financial Markets grew its holdings in shares of TELUS by 188.7% in the third quarter. BNP Paribas Financial Markets now owns 135,825 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $2,279,000 after purchasing an additional 88,771 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC increased its stake in shares of TELUS by 192.0% in the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 1,326,632 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $22,257,000 after buying an additional 872,235 shares during the period. Finally, Mirabella Financial Services LLP bought a new stake in TELUS during the 3rd quarter valued at $4,521,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 49.40% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have issued reports on TU. StockNews.com cut shares of TELUS from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Thursday, November 21st. Scotiabank upgraded TELUS from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector outperform” rating in a report on Monday, October 28th. Finally, Canaccord Genuity Group cut TELUS from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 6th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $26.00.

TELUS Trading Up 0.5 %

Shares of TU opened at $15.54 on Monday. TELUS Co. has a 1-year low of $14.63 and a 1-year high of $19.14. The company has a current ratio of 0.69, a quick ratio of 0.63 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.50. The firm’s 50-day moving average price is $15.94 and its 200-day moving average price is $16.03. The firm has a market capitalization of $23.31 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 33.06, a PEG ratio of 2.24 and a beta of 0.75.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Friday, November 8th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.28 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.17 by $0.11. TELUS had a return on equity of 8.80% and a net margin of 4.56%. The business had revenue of $5.10 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.69 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $0.19 EPS. The business’s revenue was up 1.8% on a year-over-year basis. Sell-side analysts anticipate that TELUS Co. will post 0.73 EPS for the current year.

TELUS Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, January 2nd. Investors of record on Wednesday, December 11th will be paid a $0.297 dividend. This represents a $1.19 annualized dividend and a yield of 7.64%. This is a boost from TELUS’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.28. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, December 11th. TELUS’s dividend payout ratio is presently 253.19%.

About TELUS

TELUS Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides a range of telecommunications and information technology products and services in Canada. It operates through Technology Solutions and Digitally-Led Customer Experiences segments. The Technology Solutions segment offers a range of telecommunications products and services; network services; healthcare services; mobile technologies equipment; data services, such as internet protocol; television; hosting, managed information technology, and cloud-based services; software, data management, and data analytics-driven smart food-chain and consumer goods technologies; home and business security; healthcare software and technology solutions; and voice and other telecommunications services, as well as mobile and fixed voice and data telecommunications services and products.