TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) Increases Dividend to $0.28 Per Share

TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU - Get Free Report) TSE: T announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, May 9th, Zacks reports. Investors of record on Monday, June 10th will be given a dividend of 0.282 per share by the Wireless communications provider on Tuesday, July 2nd. This represents a $1.13 annualized dividend and a yield of 7.00%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, June 10th. This is a boost from TELUS's previous quarterly dividend of $0.28.

TELUS has raised its dividend payment by an average of 11.9% annually over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 3 years. TELUS has a dividend payout ratio of 127.6% indicating that the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments. Analysts expect TELUS to earn $0.85 per share next year, which means the company may not be able to cover its $1.11 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 130.6%.

TELUS Trading Down 1.8 %

NYSE TU traded down $0.30 on Friday, hitting $16.11. 4,331,018 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 2,469,969. The company's 50-day moving average price is $16.35 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $17.24. The company has a market capitalization of $23.78 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.47, a P/E/G ratio of 2.00 and a beta of 0.71. TELUS has a 52-week low of $15.35 and a 52-week high of $20.67. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.35, a current ratio of 0.67 and a quick ratio of 0.62.

TELUS (NYSE:TU - Get Free Report) TSE: T last posted its quarterly earnings results on Friday, February 9th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.18 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts' consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.01. TELUS had a net margin of 4.18% and a return on equity of 7.81%. The business had revenue of $5.20 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $5.24 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $0.17 earnings per share. The firm's revenue was up 2.8% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts predict that TELUS will post 0.76 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several analysts have recently issued reports on the company. BMO Capital Markets decreased their price target on TELUS from $27.00 to $26.00 and set an "outperform" rating for the company in a research note on Monday, February 12th. StockNews.com downgraded TELUS from a "hold" rating to a "sell" rating in a report on Tuesday, March 26th. Finally, Scotiabank restated a "sector perform" rating and issued a $26.00 price objective (down from $28.00) on shares of TELUS in a research note on Monday, March 25th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the company's stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of "Hold" and a consensus target price of $27.72.

About TELUS

TELUS Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides a range of telecommunications and information technology products and services in Canada. It operates through Technology Solutions and Digitally-Led Customer Experiences segments. The Technology Solutions segment offers a range of telecommunications products and services; network services; healthcare services; mobile technologies equipment; data services, such as internet protocol; television; hosting, managed information technology, and cloud-based services; software, data management, and data analytics-driven smart food-chain and consumer goods technologies; home and business security; healthcare software and technology solutions; and voice and other telecommunications services, as well as mobile and fixed voice and data telecommunications services and products.