State of Tennessee Department of Treasury Reduces Stock Holdings in TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

State of Tennessee Department of Treasury reduced its stake in shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) by 3.3% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 62,537 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock after selling 2,131 shares during the quarter. State of Tennessee Department of Treasury’s holdings in TELUS were worth $847,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in TU. Bank of Nova Scotia grew its position in shares of TELUS by 28.3% in the 4th quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia now owns 30,219,141 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $409,662,000 after buying an additional 6,659,564 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of TELUS by 3.6% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 25,801,407 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock valued at $349,841,000 after purchasing an additional 903,921 shares during the last quarter. Invesco Ltd. boosted its position in shares of TELUS by 3.1% in the 4th quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 10,993,662 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $149,074,000 after purchasing an additional 326,531 shares in the last quarter. First Trust Advisors LP grew its stake in shares of TELUS by 7.6% in the 4th quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 7,254,608 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $98,372,000 after buying an additional 509,976 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank bought a new position in TELUS during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $70,212,000. 49.40% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

TELUS Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:TU opened at $15.02 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.52, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a current ratio of 0.68. The firm has a market cap of $22.74 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.65, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 5.18 and a beta of 0.70. The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $14.82 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $14.87. TELUS Co. has a fifty-two week low of $13.24 and a fifty-two week high of $17.27.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 13th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.18 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.16 by $0.02. TELUS had a net margin of 4.85% and a return on equity of 9.07%. The firm had revenue of $3.85 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.64 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.10 earnings per share. On average, analysts expect that TELUS Co. will post 0.71 earnings per share for the current year.

TELUS Cuts Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, April 1st. Investors of record on Tuesday, March 11th were given a dividend of $0.2829 per share. This represents a $1.13 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 7.53%. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, March 11th. TELUS’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 226.53%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms have recently commented on TU. Cormark cut TELUS from a “moderate buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 4th. Bank of America lowered shares of TELUS from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, March 21st. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded shares of TELUS from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, February 10th. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold”.

TELUS Company 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.