BCE, the owner of Bell Mobility, Virgin Mobile and Lucky Mobile, had a total of 158,514 net wireless activations during the quarter, including 175,204 postpaid subscriptions - ahead of a consensus estimate of about 113,000. The company has a quick ratio of 0.48, a current ratio of 0.55 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.44.
Telus's net income rose to C$282 million ($224 million) from C$87 million a year earlier.
The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Sunday, April 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, March 9th will be given a dividend of $0.402 per share.
Barclays Capital analyst Phillip Huang wrote in a note to clients that Bell seems to have taken "significant market share" during a five-day promo in mid-December - a period when Rogers suffered technical problems. Bank of America assumed coverage on BCE in a research report on Tuesday, November 21st. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, September 14th. They now have an outperform rating on the stock. This represents a $2.30 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.81%. BCE's payout ratio is now 87.30%. Royal Bank of Canada increased their price target on shares of BCE from C$61.00 to C$62.00 and gave the stock a sector perform rating in a research note on Friday, November 3rd.
BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) had its price objective cut by National Bank Financial from C$64.00 to C$63.00 in a report published on Thursday, February 1st. Morgan Stanley boosted their price objective on shares of TELUS from $48.00 to $51.00 and gave the company an "equal weight" rating in a research report on Friday, November 17th. Finally, Scotiabank upgraded TELUS from a "sector perform" rating to an "outperform" rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 25th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and eight have given a buy rating to the company's stock. Finally, BlackRock Inc. lifted its position in BCE by 35.8% during the second quarter. The company now has a consensus rating of "Buy" and an average target price of $56.00. The stock had a trading volume of 1,210,000 shares, compared to its average volume of 943,852.
Analysts expect that BCE Inc. This is a boost from BCE's previous quarterly dividend of $0.56. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 12,643 shares of the utilities provider's stock worth $570,000 after purchasing an additional 629 shares during the last quarter. APG Asset Management N.V. now owns 4,492,016 shares of the utilities provider's stock worth $209,976,000 after acquiring an additional 2,481,400 shares during the period. The institutional investor purchased 157,052 shares of the utilities provider's stock, valued at approximately $7,062,000.
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Telus seems to have held its own in wireless against Bell during the quarter in terms of market share.
TELUS Corporation (TELUS) is a telecommunications company. Its data services include Internet protocol (IP), television (TV), hosting, managed information technology and cloud-based services, and certain healthcare solutions.
