FRONTIER COMMUNICATIONS CORP. $6.36 (Nasdaq symbol FTR; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 1.0 billion; Market cap: $6.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.4; Dividend yield: 6.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www. frontier.com) recently completed its $2.0-billion purchase of AT&T’s traditional phone business in Connecticut. It now has 3.0 million customers in 28 states.
By combining these operations with its existing systems, Frontier has already cut its annual costs by $150 million. That should rise to $200 million a year by the end of 2017.
Thanks to these expected savings, Frontier has increased its quarterly dividend by 5.0%, to $0.105 a share from $0.10. The new annual rate of $0.42 yields 6.6%.
Frontier is still a hold.