Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, June 21, 2024

Article Excerpt

BCE INC., $44.65, Toronto symbol BCE, is still a buy. The company is Canada’s largest traditional telephone service provider. It has 1.98 million residential customers in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces. It also has 4.50 million high-speed Internet users and 2.08 million fibre-optic TV subscribers. In addition, the company sells wireless services to 13.01 million users across Canada, and it owns TV and radio stations. With the April 2024 payment, BCE raised your quarterly dividend by 3.1%. Investors now receive $0.9975 a share instead of $0.9675. The new annual rate of $3.99 yields a high 8.9%. The company, through its Bell Media division, has now completed its acquisition of the Canadian operations of U.S.-based Outfront Media Inc. (New York symbol OUT). Those operations consist of over 9,300 displays (billboards and digital screens). To secure approval from competition regulators, BCE will have to sell 699 of those displays in Quebec (Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke and Montreal) as well as the greater Toronto area. Even so,…