telus

TELUS $37.34 (Toronto symbol T; Shares outstanding: 623.2 million; Market cap: $23.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.9%; www.telus.com) continues to benefit from heavy investments in its wireless networks.

Thanks to rising demand for smartphones and wireless data, Telus’s earnings rose 18.4% in the third quarter of 2013, to $0.58 a share from $0.49....

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TELUS CORP. $37 (www.telus.com) continues to benefit from heavy investments in wireless networks. Thanks to rising demand for smartphones and wireless data, earnings in the third quarter of 2013 rose 18.4%, to $0.58 from $0.49. Telus also increased its dividend by 5.9%....

EMERA INC. $30 (www.emera.com) earned $0.29 a share before unusual items in the three months ended September 30, 2013, down 17.1% from $0.35 a year earlier. That’s mainly due to higher income taxes and maintenance costs at its main Nova Scotia Power subsidiary....

SUNCOR ENERGY INC., $36.80, Toronto symbol SU, announced this week that it will develop its Fort Hill oil sands property north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. Suncor owns 40.8% of Fort Hills, and will operate the project. Total S.A. of France owns 39.2%, while Teck Resources (see below) holds the remaining 20.0%. Fort Hills’ reserves should last 50 years. The company will contribute $5.5 billion to Fort Hills’ $13.5-billion cost. The project should begin operating in the fourth quarter of 2017. It should ultimately produce 180,000 barrels a day; Suncor’s share is 73,440 barrels. To put that in context, Suncor’s average daily production in the third quarter of 2013 rose 11.2%, to 595,000 barrels of oil equivalent from 535,300 barrels a year earlier....

ALLIED PROPERTIES REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST (Toronto symbol AP.UN; www.alliedpropertiesreit.com) owns 134 office buildings, mostly in major Canadian cities. These mainly Class I properties contain over 9.5 million square feet of leasable area....

TELUS CORP. $33 (Toronto symbol T; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 645.7 million; Market cap: $21.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.0; Dividend yield: 4.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.telus.com) moved up on news that U.S.-based Verizon Communications (New York symbol VZ) is buying the 45% of the Verizon Wireless joint venture that it does not already own from U.K.-based Vodafone Group (Nasdaq symbol VOD). Verizon Wireless has 100.1 million subscribers in the U.S. In the wake of the this deal, Verizon announced that it would not enter Canada’s wireless market at this time.

Ottawa still plans to set aside wireless spectrum for new entrants at an auction in January 2014. That could encourage other foreign carriers besides Verizon to expand into Canada. Telus gets a high 53% of its revenue and 67% of its earnings from wireless, so it’s particularly vulnerable to new competition. As well, new regulations that limit roaming charges and let customers cancel their contracts early could dampen the company’s earnings growth.

Telus is still a hold.

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TELUS CORP. $33 (Toronto symbol T; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 645.7 million; Market cap: $21.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.0; Dividend yield: 4.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.telus.com) moved up on news that U.S.-based Verizon Communications (New York symbol VZ) is buying the 45% of the Verizon Wireless joint venture that it does not already own from U.K.-based Vodafone Group (Nasdaq symbol VOD)....

TELUS CORP., $33.31, Toronto symbol T, rose 3% this week on news that U.S.-based Verizon Communications (New York symbol VZ) is buying the 45% of Verizon Wireless that it does not already own from U.K.-based Vodafone Group (Nasdaq symbol VOD). Verizon is a recommendation of Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our newsletter that focuses on U.S. stocks. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture that sells wireless services to 100.1 million subscribers in the U.S. Verizon is paying $130 billion U.S. for Vodafone’s stake, which is just below its $132.6-billion U.S. market cap (or the total value of all its outstanding shares). Shares of Telus fell from their recent peak of $37.94 on May 22, 2013, to $29.52 on June 27 on fears that Verizon would buy two smaller Canadian wireless carriers, Mobilicity and Wind Mobile, and bid on new wireless frequencies, or spectrum. However, in the wake of the Vodafone deal, Verizon announced that it would not enter Canada’s wireless market at this time....

BCE INC. $44.58 (Toronto symbol BCE; Shares outstanding: 775.9 million; Market cap: $34.8 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Yield: 5.2%; www.bce.ca) has gained in response to U.S.-based Verizon Communications’ (New York symbol VZ) announcement that it will not enter the Canadian wireless market right now (see box below).

BCE is Canada’s second-largest wireless carrier, with 7.72 million subscribers....