Vest Financial LLC Buys 19,430 Shares of TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU)

Vest Financial LLC grew its stake in TELUS Co. (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) by 43.3% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 64,340 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 19,430 shares during the period. Vest Financial LLC’s holdings in TELUS were worth $872,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A number of other large investors also recently modified their holdings of TU. Barclays PLC raised its position in TELUS by 38.5% in the 3rd quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 467,148 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $7,839,000 after purchasing an additional 129,934 shares during the last quarter. Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board raised its position in shares of TELUS by 159.6% during the third quarter. Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board now owns 140,539 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $2,360,000 after acquiring an additional 86,393 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC raised its position in shares of TELUS by 192.0% during the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 1,326,632 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $22,257,000 after acquiring an additional 872,235 shares during the last quarter. Entropy Technologies LP bought a new position in TELUS in the third quarter valued at about $945,000. Finally, Nicola Wealth Management LTD. increased its position in TELUS by 35.7% in the third quarter. Nicola Wealth Management LTD. now owns 1,060,819 shares of the Wireless communications provider’s stock worth $17,801,000 after purchasing an additional 279,000 shares during the period. 49.40% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

TELUS Stock Down 1.4 %

TELUS stock opened at $14.40 on Monday. The firm has a market capitalization of $21.60 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.64, a PEG ratio of 4.85 and a beta of 0.75. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $14.30 and its 200 day simple moving average is $15.48. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.50, a current ratio of 0.69 and a quick ratio of 0.63. TELUS Co. has a fifty-two week low of $13.24 and a fifty-two week high of $18.16.

TELUS (NYSE:TU) (TSE:T) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Friday, November 8th. The Wireless communications provider reported $0.28 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.11. TELUS had a net margin of 4.56% and a return on equity of 8.80%. The company had revenue of $5.10 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.69 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.19 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that TELUS Co. will post 0.72 EPS for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

TU has been the topic of a number of research reports. Morgan Stanley assumed coverage on shares of TELUS in a research report on Monday, December 16th. They set an “equal weight” rating on the stock. StockNews.com lowered shares of TELUS from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Thursday, November 21st. National Bank Financial lowered shares of TELUS from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a report on Friday, December 13th. Finally, Scotiabank raised TELUS from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector outperform” rating in a research note on Monday, October 28th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, TELUS currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $26.00.

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.