TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) Raises Dividend to $0.28 Per Share

TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, May 9th, Zacks reports. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 10th will be paid a dividend of 0.282 per share by the Wireless communications provider on Tuesday, July 2nd. This represents a $1.13 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 6.90%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, June 10th. This is a boost from TELUS’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.28.

TELUS has raised its dividend payment by an average of 11.9% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 3 consecutive years. TELUS has a dividend payout ratio of 127.6% indicating that the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments. Research analysts expect TELUS to earn $0.85 per share next year, which means the company may not be able to cover its $1.11 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 130.6%.

TELUS Trading Down 0.4 %

TU traded down $0.07 during mid-day trading on Friday, reaching $16.34. The stock had a trading volume of 281,193 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,424,642. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.35, a quick ratio of 0.62 and a current ratio of 0.67. TELUS has a 52 week low of $15.35 and a 52 week high of $20.67. The stock has a market capitalization of $24.12 billion, a P/E ratio of 38.16, a P/E/G ratio of 2.00 and a beta of 0.71. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $16.37 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $17.24.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last released its earnings results on Friday, February 9th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.18 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.01. TELUS had a net margin of 4.18% and a return on equity of 7.81%. The firm had revenue of $5.20 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $5.24 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $0.17 EPS. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 2.8% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities analysts predict that TELUS will post 0.76 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

TU has been the topic of a number of research reports. StockNews.com lowered shares of TELUS from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 26th. Scotiabank reiterated a “sector perform” rating and set a $26.00 price objective (down previously from $28.00) on shares of TELUS in a research note on Monday, March 25th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets lowered their target price on shares of TELUS from $27.00 to $26.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, February 12th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $27.72.

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.