TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) Plans Quarterly Dividend of $0.28

TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) declared a quarterly dividend on Friday, February 14th, Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, March 11th will be given a dividend of 0.2829 per share by the Wireless communications provider on Tuesday, April 1st. This represents a $1.13 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 7.15%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, March 11th.

TELUS has raised its dividend payment by an average of 7.0% annually over the last three years. TELUS has a dividend payout ratio of 141.3% 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 $0.78 per share next year, which means the company may not be able to cover its $1.13 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 144.9%.

TELUS Stock Performance

NYSE:TU opened at $15.82 on Friday. TELUS has a 1-year low of $13.24 and a 1-year high of $17.39. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $14.58 and a 200-day simple moving average of $15.37. The firm has a market cap of $23.72 billion, a PE ratio of 32.28, a P/E/G ratio of 5.18 and a beta of 0.72. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.52, a current ratio of 0.68 and a quick ratio of 0.61.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 13th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.18 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.16 by $0.02. TELUS had a net margin of 4.85% and a return on equity of 9.07%. The firm had revenue of $3.85 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.64 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $0.10 earnings per share. On average, equities analysts expect that TELUS will post 0.71 EPS for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. StockNews.com upgraded shares of TELUS from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, February 10th. National Bank Financial downgraded shares of TELUS from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a research note on Friday, December 13th. Morgan Stanley began coverage on shares of TELUS in a research note on Monday, December 16th. They set an “equal weight” rating for the company. Finally, Cormark downgraded shares of TELUS from a “moderate buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 4th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $26.00.

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.