Walter Public Investments Inc. Purchases 708 Shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

Walter Public Investments Inc. increased its position in TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) by 1.9% during the 3rd quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The fund owned 38,161 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock after buying an additional 708 shares during the period. Walter Public Investments Inc.’s holdings in TELUS were worth $640,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Several other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Virtu Financial LLC bought a new position in shares of TELUS during the 4th quarter worth about $376,000. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of TELUS by 4.8% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 22,834,015 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $406,217,000 after purchasing an additional 1,044,988 shares during the period. B. Riley Wealth Advisors Inc. bought a new position in shares of TELUS during the 4th quarter worth about $188,000. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of TELUS by 57.3% during the 4th quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 17,049 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $303,000 after purchasing an additional 6,211 shares during the period. Finally, Nexus Investment Management ULC increased its holdings in shares of TELUS by 9.6% during the 1st quarter. Nexus Investment Management ULC now owns 1,841,818 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $29,487,000 after purchasing an additional 160,600 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 49.40% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

TU has been the topic of several research reports. Canaccord Genuity Group downgraded shares of TELUS from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 6th. StockNews.com upgraded shares of TELUS from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, September 6th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $26.00.

TELUS Price Performance

Shares of TELUS stock opened at $16.24 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a current ratio of 0.66. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $16.41 and its 200-day simple moving average is $16.13. TELUS Co. has a twelve month low of $14.63 and a twelve month high of $19.14. The firm has a market cap of $24.06 billion, a P/E ratio of 40.59, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.44 and a beta of 0.74.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last issued its earnings results on Friday, August 2nd. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.25 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.16 by $0.09. The business had revenue of $3.64 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.70 billion. TELUS had a net margin of 3.87% and a return on equity of 8.50%. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $0.14 EPS. As a group, research analysts expect that TELUS Co. will post 0.73 EPS for the current fiscal year.

TELUS Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 1st. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, September 10th were given a $0.284 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, September 10th. This is a positive change from TELUS’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.28. This represents a $1.14 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 7.00%. TELUS’s payout ratio is 287.50%.

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.