BCE (TSE:BCE) Raised to Strong-Buy at Cibc Captl Mkts

BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) was upgraded by equities researchers at Cibc Captl Mkts from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note issued on Tuesday,Zacks.com reports.

A number of other brokerages have also recently weighed in on BCE. CIBC upgraded BCE from a “neutral” rating to a “sector outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Desjardins increased their target price on BCE from C$41.00 to C$42.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Friday, November 7th. National Bankshares set a C$35.00 target price on BCE and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 12th. TD Securities lowered their price target on shares of BCE from C$39.00 to C$38.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, November 7th. Finally, Scotiabank increased their price objective on shares of BCE from C$39.50 to C$41.50 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Monday, September 8th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, five have assigned a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and two have assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of C$36.23.

BCE Trading Down 0.2%

TSE BCE opened at C$32.01 on Tuesday. BCE has a one year low of C$28.73 and a one year high of C$37.45. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of C$32.63 and a 200-day simple moving average of C$32.41. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 226.73, a quick ratio of 0.43 and a current ratio of 0.62. The firm has a market capitalization of C$29.85 billion, a PE ratio of 4.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.67 and a beta of 0.51.

BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 6th. The company reported C$0.79 earnings per share for the quarter. BCE had a net margin of 1.10% and a return on equity of 1.39%. The firm had revenue of C$6.05 billion for the quarter. On average, equities analysts forecast that BCE will post 3.1120864 earnings per share for the current year.

About BCE

BCE is both a wireless and internet service provider, offering wireless, broadband, television, and landline phone services in Canada. It is one of the big three national wireless carriers, with its roughly 10 million customers constituting about 30% of the market. It is also the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrierthe legacy telephone provider) throughout much of the eastern half of Canada, including in the most populous Canadian provincesOntario and Quebec.