BCE looks to the cloud

Article Excerpt

BCE INC. $41.54 (Toronto symbol BCE; Shares outstanding: 773.6 million; Market cap: $32.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 5.2%; www.bce.ca) is teaming up with a group of other investors, including the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, to buy privately held Q9 networks Inc. Toronto-based Q9 provides data-storage and web-hosting services to businesses across Canada. It has 11 data centres in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. This investment will help BCE take advantage of growing demand from business clients for reliable cloud-computing services (the general term for shifting software and data off of users’ machines and onto service providers’ machines via the Internet). The company already operates six data centres. It will open a seventh later this year. BCE will pay $180 million for a 30% stake in Q9 when the deal closes, probably by the end of 2012. The purchase price is equal to 31% of the $580 million, or $0.75 a share, that BCE earned in the quarter ended March 31, 2012. BCE…