Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. Buys Shares of 10,536 TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. acquired a new position in shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) during the fourth quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm acquired 10,536 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock, valued at approximately $187,000.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. VisionPoint Advisory Group LLC raised its stake in shares of TELUS by 80.8% during the 3rd quarter. VisionPoint Advisory Group LLC now owns 1,654 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $27,000 after purchasing an additional 739 shares in the last quarter. Value Partners Investments Inc. raised its stake in TELUS by 7.6% in the 3rd quarter. Value Partners Investments Inc. now owns 14,259 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $234,000 after acquiring an additional 1,010 shares during the period. Wrapmanager Inc. raised its stake in TELUS by 8.2% in the 3rd quarter. Wrapmanager Inc. now owns 14,438 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $236,000 after acquiring an additional 1,093 shares during the period. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. raised its stake in TELUS by 9.4% in the 3rd quarter. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. now owns 13,541 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $221,000 after acquiring an additional 1,162 shares during the period. Finally, Pacifica Partners Inc. raised its stake in TELUS by 1.8% in the 4th quarter. Pacifica Partners Inc. now owns 80,043 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $1,491,000 after acquiring an additional 1,435 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 49.40% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms recently weighed in on TU. BMO Capital Markets dropped their price target on TELUS from $27.00 to $26.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, February 12th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut TELUS from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 4th. StockNews.com cut TELUS from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 26th. Finally, Scotiabank restated a “sector perform” rating and issued a $26.00 price target (down previously from $28.00) on shares of TELUS in a research note on Monday, March 25th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, TELUS currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $27.72.

TELUS Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE TU opened at $16.07 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.35, a current ratio of 0.67 and a quick ratio of 0.62. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $16.68 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $17.27. TELUS Co. has a one year low of $15.35 and a one year high of $21.28. The firm has a market cap of $23.72 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.37, a P/E/G ratio of 1.96 and a beta of 0.72.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last issued its quarterly earnings data 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. TELUS had a return on equity of 7.81% and a net margin of 4.18%. The firm had revenue of $5.20 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $5.24 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $0.17 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 2.8% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities analysts forecast that TELUS Co. will post 0.76 EPS for the current year.

TELUS Increases Dividend

The business also recently announced 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 is a positive change from TELUS’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.27. This represents a $1.12 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 6.95%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, March 8th. TELUS’s dividend payout ratio is 258.14%.

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.