Telus is now a hold

Article Excerpt

TELUS $34.25 (Toronto symbol T; Shares outstanding: 653.8 million; Market cap: $22.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.0%; www.telus.com) has jumped 8% on news that U.S.-based Verizon Communications Inc. (New York symbol VZ) is buying the 45% of Verizon Wireless that it does not already own from U.K.-based Vodafone Group plc (Nasdaq symbol VOD) for $130 billion U.S. In the wake of the Vodafone deal, Verizon announced that it would not enter Canada’s wireless market at this time. Fears that Verizon would buy two smaller Canadian wireless carriers, Mobilicity and Wind Mobile, and bid on new wireless frequencies, or spectrum, pushed down Telus’s stock from its recent peak of $37.94 on May 22, 2013, to $29.52 on June 27. Telus is Canada’s third-largest provider of wireless services, with 7.71 million subscribers as of June 30, 2013. It gets a high 53% of its revenue and 67% of its earnings from wireless services. That makes it particularly vulnerable to…