National Bankshares Reiterates C$35.00 Price Target for BCE (TSE:BCE)

National Bankshares set a C$35.00 price objective on BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) in a research note published on Friday morning,BayStreet.CA reports. The firm currently has an outperform rating on the stock.

Several other equities research analysts also recently weighed in on the stock. Scotiabank upgraded shares of BCE from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating and set a C$39.00 target price for the company in a research note on Monday, June 2nd. TD Securities lifted their price target on shares of BCE from C$31.00 to C$33.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, February 7th. National Bank Financial upgraded shares of BCE from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 3rd. Canaccord Genuity Group lifted their price target on shares of BCE from C$31.50 to C$32.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, May 9th. Finally, UBS Group reduced their price target on shares of BCE from C$34.00 to C$32.00 in a research report on Wednesday, May 21st. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have assigned a hold rating, one has assigned a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, BCE currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of C$37.04.

BCE Stock Performance

Shares of BCE stock opened at C$29.82 on Friday. The stock’s 50-day moving average is C$30.20 and its two-hundred day moving average is C$32.89. The firm has a market cap of C$27.01 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 100.04, a PEG ratio of 4.67 and a beta of 0.48. BCE has a 1 year low of C$28.73 and a 1 year high of C$49.13. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 226.73, a quick ratio of 0.43 and a current ratio of 0.62.

BCE Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, April 15th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, April 15th were paid a $0.9975 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Friday, March 14th. This represents a $3.99 annualized dividend and a yield of 13.38%. BCE’s payout ratio is currently 1,338.57%.

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.