CRTC gives BCE a boost

Article Excerpt

BCE INC., $61.94 is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol BCE; Shares o/s: 904.6 million; Market cap: $55.7 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 5.7%) now benefits from a move by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to reverse a rate cut for smaller Internet service providers looking to access the high-speed networks of BCE and other large telecoms. BCE will use the resulting bump in its cash flow to speed up its fibre-optic network and ultrafast 5G wireless infrastructure projects. The company will now earmark between $1.5 billion and $1.7 billion to those projects over the next two years. That’s up from its original plan to spend $1.0 billion to $1.2 billion. As a result, BCE will spend a total of $14 billion on its networks between 2020 and 2022. That’s $2 billion more than it originally planned. Those upgrades will continue to help the company attract more customers and hang on to its existing users. BCE Inc. is still a..