TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) Increases Dividend to $0.30 Per Share

TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) announced a quarterly dividend on Monday, May 12th, Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, June 10th will be paid a dividend of 0.2989 per share by the Wireless communications provider on Wednesday, July 2nd. This represents a $1.20 annualized dividend and a yield of 7.50%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, June 10th. This is a 5.7% increase from TELUS’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.28.

TELUS has increased its dividend payment by an average of 7.0% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 4 years. TELUS has a dividend payout ratio of 151.9% meaning the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments. Equities research analysts expect TELUS to earn $0.78 per share next year, which means the company may not be able to cover its $1.20 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 153.8%.

TELUS Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:TU traded down $0.06 during trading on Monday, reaching $15.94. The stock had a trading volume of 2,810,958 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,894,345. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.52, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a current ratio of 0.68. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $14.80 and a 200-day moving average price of $14.82. The stock has a market cap of $24.13 billion, a PE ratio of 32.52, a PEG ratio of 5.18 and a beta of 0.73. TELUS has a 1-year low of $13.24 and a 1-year high of $17.27.

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

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms have recently weighed in on TU. Bank of America downgraded TELUS from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, March 21st. StockNews.com upgraded TELUS from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, February 10th. Finally, Cormark cut TELUS from a “moderate buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, March 4th. Six analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, TELUS has a consensus rating of “Hold”.

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.