Telus again hikes its dividend

Article Excerpt

TELUS CORP. $43 (Toronto symbol T; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 591.0 million; Market cap: $25.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.0; Dividend yield: 4.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.telus.com) is Canada’s secondlargest wireless telephone service provider, after Rogers Communications. It also sells landline phone, high-speed Internet and TV services in B.C., Alberta and eastern Quebec. The company earned $383 million in the three months ended September 30, 2016. That’s down 3.8% from $398 million a year earlier. Due to fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share fell just 1.5%, to $0.65 from $0.66. The decline is due to Telus’s higher spending on its wireless and high-speed Internet networks. Thanks to these upgrades, revenue in the quarter improved 2.6%, to $3.24 billion from $3.16 billion a year earlier. The company added 87,000 wireless users under long-term contracts, net of cancellations. That’s up 26.1% from a net gain of 69,000 a year ago. Telus ended the quarter with a total of 8.5…