Topic: Dividend Stocks

Canadian dividend stocks: BCE continues to reward conservative investors

Many investors are concerned about today’s market outlook. However, a strong point over the past few years has been the reliability of Canadian dividend stocks. A good example of this is BCE, a utility stock that has grown its dividend and continues to provide capital gains to patient investors.

BCE faces challenges and opportunities

BCE Inc. (Toronto symbol BCE; www.bce.ca) earned $663 million in the three months ended June 30, 2011. That’s up 11.4% from $595 million a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 10.3%, to $0.86 from $0.78, on more shares outstanding. The latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $0.81 a share.

BCE’s revenue rose 11.6% in the quarter, to $5.0 billion from $4.4 billion. However, revenue fell 2.0% at the wire-line division, which accounts for 53% of BCE’s total revenue. This division, which includes BCE’s traditional land-line business, is facing rising price competition. As well, many customers are cancelling their land lines and switching to wireless devices. These losses offset higher revenue from the wire-line division’s satellite and Internet-based TV services.

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More wireless gains for BCE

Still, revenue from wireless services rose 6.1%. The company’s recent network upgrades continue to attract new subscribers and prompt existing customers to upgrade their mobile-phone plans. This division added 36,507 subscribers in the quarter (net of deactivations).

BCE could benefit from rising use of smart-phones, which generate higher monthly fees than regular cell-phones. BCE now has a total of 7.3 million wireless customers. However, this market continues to attract very stiff competition.

BCE is one of the Canadian dividend stocks that we cover in our Safety-Conscious Stock Portfolio in our advisory for conservative investors, Canadian Wealth Advisor. In the latest issue we updated our advice in light of the competitive market that it operates in and its recent price rise. We conclude with our clear buy-sell-hold advice on the stock.

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