Telus is a buy for income and gains

Article Excerpt

Telus continues to upgrade its wireless and Internet services, spending $2.2 billion on these improvements in 2014. That’s helping it attract more subscribers in a highly competitive market. As well, last year the company bought $1.1 billion worth of wireless frequencies, or spectrum, that should let it cover more of Canada, particularly smaller cities and rural areas. TELUS $43.63 (Toronto symbol T; Shares outstanding: 611.0 million; Market cap: $26.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.7%; www.telus.com) gets 55% of its revenue from its 8.0 million wireless subscribers across Canada. It also has 3.2 million phone customers, 1.5 million high-speed Internet users and 888,000 TV subscribers. In the three months ended September 30, 2014, Telus’s earnings per share rose 10.3%, to $0.64 from $0.58 a year earlier. Revenue increased 5.4%, to $3.03 billion from $2.87 billion. Wireless revenue rose 6.6%, thanks to new subscribers and rising use of smartphones, which generate higher fees than regular cellphones. Revenue gained 2.5%…