National Bank of Canada FI Has $438.92 Million Stock Position in TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

National Bank of Canada FI raised its holdings in shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) by 24.2% during the third quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The firm owned 26,160,789 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 5,094,269 shares during the quarter. National Bank of Canada FI’s holdings in TELUS were worth $438,922,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of TU. Fairscale Capital LLC bought a new stake in shares of TELUS during the 2nd quarter valued at $27,000. Blue Trust Inc. increased its holdings in TELUS by 60.4% in the second quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 2,533 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $41,000 after purchasing an additional 954 shares during the last quarter. Trust Co. of Vermont lifted its stake in TELUS by 19.0% in the third quarter. Trust Co. of Vermont now owns 7,623 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $128,000 after buying an additional 1,218 shares during the period. Acadian Asset Management LLC bought a new position in TELUS during the second quarter worth about $123,000. Finally, Unique Wealth Strategies LLC acquired a new position in shares of TELUS during the 2nd quarter worth about $141,000. Institutional investors own 49.40% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

TU has been the topic of a number of analyst reports. StockNews.com downgraded shares of TELUS from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Thursday, November 21st. Scotiabank raised shares of TELUS from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector outperform” rating in a research report on Monday, October 28th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have given a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, TELUS currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $26.00.

TELUS Trading Down 0.3 %

NYSE:TU opened at $15.72 on Friday. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $15.86 and its 200-day simple moving average is $16.01. TELUS Co. has a fifty-two week low of $14.63 and a fifty-two week high of $19.01. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.50, a current ratio of 0.69 and a quick ratio of 0.63. The stock has a market capitalization of $23.58 billion, a PE ratio of 33.45, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.26 and a beta of 0.73.

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

TELUS Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, January 2nd. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, December 11th will be issued a dividend of $0.297 per share. This represents a $1.19 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 7.56%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, December 11th. This is a boost from TELUS’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.28. TELUS’s dividend payout ratio is 244.69%.

TELUS Company Profile

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.