BCE INC. $59.10

BCE INC. $59.10 (Toronto symbol BCE; Shares outstanding: 868.1 million; Market cap: $50.8 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.6%; www.bce.ca) is Canada’s largest provider of telephone, Internet and wireless services. It also offers satellite and Internet TV across the country. In the three months ended March 31, 2016, the company’s earnings per share rose 1.2%, to $0.85 from $0.84 a year earlier. Revenue increased slightly, to $5.27 billion from $5.24 billion. Revenue from wireless services (30% of the total) rose 5.3% as the company’s network upgrades continued to attract new subscribers. BCE also benefited from the rising use of smartphones. It can charge higher service fees for those devices than for regular cellphones. Sales for BCE’s wireline business (57% of total revenue) fell just 1.5% on strong growth from Fibe TV. There are 1.2 million subscribers to that service. BCE also has 1.5 million satellite TV users. BCE has now made a $3.1 billion takeover offer for Manitoba Tel (see page 33). The purchase looks like a great fit for the company. It will invest $1 billion over five years to expand its broadband and other networks in Manitoba. This will let it offer more services—including Fibe TV—to Manitoba Tel’s existing customers. The stock trades at 16.6 times BCE’s forecast 2016 earnings of $3.57 a share. The company raised its quarterly dividend by 5.0% with the April 2016 payment, to $0.6825 a share from $0.65. The new annual rate of $2.73 yields 4.6%. BCE is still a safety-conscious buy.

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Blue Chip Stocks

Blue chip stocks are big, well-established, dividend-paying corporations with strong business prospects. These are companies that also have sound management that should be able to make the right moves to keep competing successfully in a changing marketplace.

Dividend Stocks

Dividend stocks make cash payouts that serve as a way for companies to share the wealth they’ve accumulated. These payouts are drawn from earnings and cash flow and paid to the shareholders of the company. Typically, these dividends are paid quarterly, although they may be paid annually or even monthly as well.

Value Stocks

What are value stocks?

One of the sweetest and most profitable pleasures of successful investing is to buy high-quality “value stocks” (or stocks that are reasonably priced, if not cheap, in relation to its sales, earnings or assets), then hold on to them as mainstream investors recognize the value and push up the share price.

Growth Stocks

Growth stocks are companies that are likely to have sales and earnings growth well above market average. Frequently they pay few, if any, dividends. Instead they typically reinvest any extra cash flow to promote further growth. Chosen wisely—according to Pat McKeough’s advice—high-quality growth-oriented stocks can be worthwhile additions to most well-diversified portfolios.

ETFs

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ETF is an acronym for exchange traded fund.. These exchange traded funds are used to track indexes as closely as possible, since investors cannot actually buy an index outright.

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Wealth Management

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AI Investing

Artificial intelligence (AI) is essentially the merging of today’s big computing with big data. This has resulted in breakthroughs in everything from creating machines to recognize faces with more accuracy than a human, to the development of chatbots able to collect, organize and simplify all the Internet has to say on any topic.

Spinoffs

One of the ways a company can try to unlock its own hidden value is by creating a separate company out of a corporate subsidiary. The parent company can either sell stock in the new company to the public, or spin it off—hand the stock out to its own investors.

Penny Stocks

A penny stock in general trades for under five dollars a share, and as the name implies, sometimes for pennies. Most of the time they’re young companies, or start-ups in speculative markets like mining or technology.

Mining Stocks

Mining stocks are investments in companies that produce or explore for minerals. Some of these minerals include uranium, coal, molybdenum (which is used in steelmaking), copper, silver and gold. They are affected by fluctuating commodity prices in addition to their own business and operating risks.

Energy Stocks

What are energy stocks?

Businesses that work in the extraction, refining and delivery of energy sources such as natural gas, oil, uranium and coal, are considered energy stocks.