BCE Inc. (BCE) to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.44 on January 15th

BCE Inc. (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) announced a quarterly dividend on Monday, December 15th, TickerTech Dividends reports. Investors of record on Thursday, January 15th will be given a dividend of 0.4375 per share on Thursday, January 15th. This represents a c) annualized dividend and a yield of 5.4%. The ex-dividend date is Monday, December 15th.

BCE Stock Performance

TSE BCE traded up C$0.38 during trading on Friday, hitting C$32.62. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 5,214,254 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,737,459. BCE has a 52 week low of C$28.73 and a 52 week high of C$36.80. The company has a quick ratio of 0.43, a current ratio of 0.62 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 226.73. The firm has a market cap of C$30.42 billion, a P/E ratio of 4.90, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.67 and a beta of 0.51. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of C$32.62 and a 200 day moving average price of C$32.43.

BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 6th. The company reported C$0.79 earnings per share for the quarter. BCE had a net margin of 1.10% and a return on equity of 1.39%. The firm had revenue of C$6.05 billion for the quarter. Equities research analysts forecast that BCE will post 3.1120864 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

BCE has been the topic of several analyst reports. Scotiabank upped their price objective on BCE from C$39.50 to C$41.50 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Monday, September 8th. CIBC upgraded shares of BCE from a “neutral” rating to a “sector outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Cibc Captl Mkts raised shares of BCE from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday. TD Securities lowered their target price on shares of BCE from C$39.00 to C$38.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, November 7th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets raised shares of BCE from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a C$37.00 price target on the stock in a research report on Thursday. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have given a Buy rating, three have assigned a Hold rating and two have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, BCE currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of C$36.41.

BCE Company Profile

BCE is both a wireless and internet service provider, offering wireless, broadband, television, and landline phone services in Canada. It is one of the big three national wireless carriers, with its roughly 10 million customers constituting about 30% of the market. It is also the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrierthe legacy telephone provider) throughout much of the eastern half of Canada, including in the most populous Canadian provincesOntario and Quebec.