Another wireless star

Article Excerpt

TELUS $48.57 (Toronto symbol T.A; Shares outstanding: 335.6 million; Market cap: $16.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.5%; www.telus.com) is Canada’s second-largest telephone and wireless provider after BCE Inc.. Telus has 7.1 million wireless subscribers across Canada, and gets twice as much of its revenue from wireless as BCE (52% compared to BCE’s 26%). The company continues to expand its wireless business. Telus gets the remaining 48% of its revenue from its traditional phone business, which has 3.7 million customers in B.C., Alberta and eastern Quebec. Telus also has 1.2 million Internet subscribers. In the three months ended June 30, 2011, Telus’ earnings per share rose 4.3%, to $0.98 from $0.94 a year earlier. Rising demand for wireless and high-speed Internet services helped push up revenue by 6.4%, to $2.6 billion from $2.4 billion. Right now, about 73% of Canadians use a wireless device. That should rise to around 80% in the next two years as more consumers upgrade from standard cellphones…