Updating BCE Inc., Telus Corp., and Imperial Oil Ltd.

Article Excerpt

BCE INC. $58 (www.bce.ca) and TELUS CORP. $47 (www.telus.com) have both used equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. in their wireless networks. Canada and the U.K. are now considering joining other members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing group (U.S., Australia and New Zealand) in banning Huawei equipment from their planned ultrafast 5G wireless networks. That would add to BCE and Telus’s future costs. However, Ottawa is unlikely to force BCE and Telus to replace Huawei equipment inside their current 4G LTE systems. BCE is a Best Buy, while Telus is a Buy. IMPERIAL OIL LTD. $36 (www.imperialoil.ca) produced an average 431,000 barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2018. That’s up 8.0% from 399,000 a year earlier. Most of that gain is due to higher production from its Syncrude (up 23.6%) and Kearl (up 6.6%) oil sands operations. However, revenue fell 2.3%, to $7.89 billion from $8.08 billion, due to lower prices for Canadian crude. Thanks to higher results from its refining operations, which benefit from lower crude…