Beverly Hills Private Wealth LLC Trims Stock Position in TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

Beverly Hills Private Wealth LLC cut its position in shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) by 12.7% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 15,668 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock after selling 2,273 shares during the period. Beverly Hills Private Wealth LLC’s holdings in TELUS were worth $279,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of TU. Norges Bank purchased a new position in TELUS during the fourth quarter worth about $91,279,000. Mackenzie Financial Corp increased its position in shares of TELUS by 8.3% during the fourth quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 59,637,886 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $1,149,047,000 after acquiring an additional 4,574,843 shares during the last quarter. 1832 Asset Management L.P. increased its position in shares of TELUS by 8.0% during the fourth quarter. 1832 Asset Management L.P. now owns 27,323,495 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $527,617,000 after acquiring an additional 2,021,793 shares during the last quarter. Triasima Portfolio Management inc. acquired a new stake in shares of TELUS during the fourth quarter valued at about $38,447,000. Finally, Quadrature Capital Ltd acquired a new stake in shares of TELUS during the third quarter valued at about $28,436,000. 49.40% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities research analysts have weighed in on the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut shares of TELUS from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 4th. StockNews.com cut shares of TELUS from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 26th. Scotiabank reiterated a “sector perform” rating and set a $26.00 price target (down from $28.00) on shares of TELUS in a research report on Monday, March 25th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets dropped their price objective on shares of TELUS from $27.00 to $26.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Monday, February 12th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, TELUS has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $27.72.

TELUS Trading Down 0.5 %

Shares of TU stock opened at $15.77 on Tuesday. TELUS Co. has a fifty-two week low of $15.47 and a fifty-two week high of $21.34. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $16.88 and a 200 day moving average price of $17.28. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.35, a quick ratio of 0.62 and a current ratio of 0.67. The stock has a market capitalization of $23.27 billion, a P/E ratio of 36.66, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.91 and a beta of 0.72.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, February 9th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.18 earnings per share (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 company had revenue of $5.20 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.24 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $0.17 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 2.8% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts predict that TELUS Co. will post 0.77 EPS for the current fiscal year.

TELUS Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, April 1st. Investors of record on Monday, March 11th were paid a $0.2793 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Friday, March 8th. This represents a $1.12 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 7.09%. This is an increase from TELUS’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.27. TELUS’s payout ratio is currently 258.14%.

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.