telus

LOBLAW COMPANIES $38.50 (Toronto symbol L; Shares outstanding: 298.5 million; Market cap: $11.5 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 2.2%; www.loblaw.ca) started selling mobile phones and prepaid plans under the President’s Choice Mobile brand in 2005. It sells these products through self-serve kiosks in about half of its 1,000 supermarkets. Loblaw now plans to open full-service mobile phone shops in up to 200 of its stores by the end of 2012. These shops will sell more sophisticated mobile products, such as smartphones and tablet computers, in addition to the basic phones that Loblaw currently carries. They will also offer mobile service plans from national wireless providers, like Bell and Telus. The new shops should help Loblaw attract more customers to its supermarkets and increase its sales. The company aims to become Canada’s third-largest mobile phone seller by the end of 2013....

ISHARES DOW JONES CANADA SELECT DIVIDEND INDEX FUND $19.60 (Toronto symbol XDV; buy or sell through a broker; ca.ishares.com) holds 30 of the highest-yielding Canadian stocks. Its selections are based on dividend growth, yield and payout ratio. The weight of any one stock is limited to 10% of its assets. The fund’s MER is 0.50%. Its yield is 2.7%. The fund’s top holdings are CIBC, 6.6%; Bank of Montreal, 5.3%; Bonterra Energy, 5.2%; National Bank, 4.9%; TD Bank, 4.9%; Telus, 4.8%; IGM Financial, 4.3%; Enbridge, 4.2%; BCE, 4.2%; Canadian Utilities, 3.7%; and Manitoba Telecom, 3.7%. The fund holds 50.2% of its assets in financial stocks. Utilities are next, at 26.4%. The top Canadian finance stocks have sound prospects. However, if you invest in this ETF, be sure to adjust the rest of your portfolio so it won’t be overly concentrated in the financial sector....

TELUS $48.57 (Toronto symbol T.A; Shares outstanding: 335.6 million; Market cap: $16.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.5%; www.telus.com) is Canada’s second-largest telephone and wireless provider after BCE Inc.. Telus has 7.1 million wireless subscribers across Canada, and gets twice as much of its revenue from wireless as BCE (52% compared to BCE’s 26%). The company continues to expand its wireless business. Telus gets the remaining 48% of its revenue from its traditional phone business, which has 3.7 million customers in B.C., Alberta and eastern Quebec. Telus also has 1.2 million Internet subscribers....

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may have a place in your portfolio. That’s because, unlike many other financial innovations, they don’t load you up with heavy management fees, or tie you down with high redemption charges if you decide to get out of them. Instead, they give you a low-cost, flexible, convenient alternative to mutual funds. ETFs trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. Prices are quoted in newspaper stock tables and online. You’ll have to pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell ETFs. However, ETFs’ low management fees still give them a cost advantage over most conventional mutual funds. As well, shares are only added or removed when the underlying index changes. As a result of this low turnover, you won’t incur the regular capital-gains bills generated by the yearly distributions most conventional mutual funds pay out to unitholders. Below, we update our advice on six ETFs — five buys and one we don’t recommend....

TELUS CORP. (Toronto symbols T $53 and T.A $51; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 352.9 million; Market cap: $18.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.7; Dividend yield: 4.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.telus.com) continues to expand its wireless business. As a result, it now gets 52% of its earnings from its 7.1 million wireless subscribers across Canada. The company gets the remaining 48% of its earnings from its traditional phone business, which has 3.7 million customers in B.C., Alberta and eastern Quebec. Telus also has 1.2 million Internet subscribers. The company continues to profit from rising demand for smartphones and wireless data. Smartphones now account for 42% of its wireless users under long-term contracts, up from 25% a year earlier....

BCE, Telus and Manitoba Telecom are facing rising competition from cable companies, as well as new entrants in the wireless market. However, all three companies have spent heavily on their wireless and high-speed Internet networks in the past few years. That’s letting them launch new services, like Internet-based TV. The extra cash flows from these services should let all three firms raise their already high dividends. BCE INC. $39 (Toronto symbol BCE; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 777.5 million; Market cap: $30.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.6; Dividend yield: 5.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.bce.ca) is Canada’s largest provider of telephone, Internet and wireless services. The company’s main subsidiary, Bell Canada, has 6.3 million residential and business customers in Ontario and Quebec....

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One of our favourite Canadian dividend stocks continues to boost its payout

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ISHARES DOW JONES CANADA SELECT DIVIDEND INDEX FUND $21.64 (Toronto symbol XDV; buy or sell through a broker; ca.ishares.com) holds 30 of the highest-yielding Canadian stocks. Its selections are based on dividend growth, yield and payout ratio. The weight of any one stock is limited to 10% of assets. The fund’s MER is 0.50%. It yields 2.7%. The fund’s top holdings are CIBC, 6.4%; Bonterra Energy Corp., 6.0%; National Bank, 5.2%; Bank of Montreal, 5.2%; TD Bank, 5.1%; Telus, 4.6%; IGM Financial, 4.5%; AG Growth International, 4.2%; Royal Bank, 3.9%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 3.8%; BCE, 3.7%; and TMX Group, 3.6%. The fund holds 51.8% of its assets in financial stocks. Utilities are next, at 24.0%. The top Canadian finance stocks have sound prospects. However, if you invest in this ETF, be sure to adjust the rest of your portfolio so it won’t be overly concentrated in the financial sector....

TELUS CORP. $51.88 (Toronto symbol T.A; Shares outstanding: 335.6 million; Market cap: $17.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.2%; www.telus.com) continues to benefit from its heavy investments in its wireless networks. Thanks to its rising wireless revenue, Telus has tripled its dividend since 2003. The dividend paying stock now plans to raise its payout twice a year to 2013, and increase the rate by 10% a year. In the three months ended March 31, 2011, Telus’ earnings per share rose 18.8%, to $1.01 from $0.85. Revenue rose 6.5%, to $2.5 billion from $2.4 billion....

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may have a place in your portfolio. That’s because, unlike many other financial innovations, they don’t load you up with heavy management fees, or tie you down with high redemption charges if you decide to get out of them. Instead, they give you a low-cost, flexible, convenient alternative to mutual funds. ETFs trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. Prices are quoted in newspaper stock tables and online. You’ll have to pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell ETFs. However, ETFs’ low management fees still give them a cost advantage over most conventional mutual funds. As well, shares are only added or removed when the underlying index changes. As a result of this low turnover, you won’t incur the regular capital-gains bills generated by the yearly distributions most conventional mutual funds pay out to unitholders....