DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale Sells 979,283 Shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale lessened its holdings in shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU - Free Report) TSE: T by 52.5% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 884,419 shares of the Wireless communications provider's stock after selling 979,283 shares during the quarter. DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale owned 0.06% of TELUS worth $15,632,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of TU. Advisor Group Holdings Inc. boosted its stake in shares of TELUS by 60.9% during the 1st quarter. Advisor Group Holdings Inc. now owns 14,694 shares of the Wireless communications provider's stock valued at $260,000 after buying an additional 5,560 shares during the last quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. boosted its stake in shares of TELUS by 36.2% during the 1st quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. now owns 29,093 shares of the Wireless communications provider's stock valued at $761,000 after buying an additional 7,737 shares during the last quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of TELUS by 59.3% during the 1st quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 5,666 shares of the Wireless communications provider's stock valued at $148,000 after buying an additional 2,109 shares during the last quarter. Aviva PLC boosted its stake in shares of TELUS by 156.0% during the 1st quarter. Aviva PLC now owns 479,131 shares of the Wireless communications provider's stock valued at $12,536,000 after buying an additional 291,979 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Cetera Investment Advisers purchased a new position in shares of TELUS during the 1st quarter valued at approximately $206,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 49.40% of the company's stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

TU has been the subject of several research analyst reports. BMO Capital Markets reduced their target price on TELUS from $27.00 to $26.00 and set an "outperform" rating for the company in a research note on Monday, February 12th. Scotiabank restated a "sector perform" rating and set a $26.00 price objective (down from $28.00) on shares of TELUS in a research note on Monday, March 25th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut TELUS from an "overweight" rating to a "neutral" rating in a research note on Thursday, January 4th. Finally, StockNews.com cut TELUS from a "hold" rating to a "sell" rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 26th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of "Hold" and an average target price of $27.72.

TELUS Stock Performance

Shares of TU traded up $0.20 during trading hours on Tuesday, reaching $16.43. 2,870,216 shares of the company's stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 2,505,049. The firm has a market capitalization of $24.25 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.79, a P/E/G ratio of 1.92 and a beta of 0.72. 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 Co. has a twelve month low of $15.47 and a twelve month high of $21.34. The business's fifty day simple moving average is $17.05 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $17.30.

TELUS (NYSE:TU - Get Free Report) TSE: T last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, February 9th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.18 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.01. The company had revenue of $5.20 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $5.24 billion. TELUS had a return on equity of 7.81% and a net margin of 4.18%. The company's quarterly revenue was up 2.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company earned $0.17 earnings per share. Analysts predict that TELUS Co. will post 0.78 earnings per share for the current year.

TELUS Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, April 1st. Stockholders of record on Monday, March 11th were issued a dividend of $0.2793 per share. This represents a $1.12 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 6.80%. This is a positive change from TELUS's previous quarterly dividend of $0.27. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, March 8th. TELUS's dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 258.14%.

TELUS Profile

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.