Regulators trip up Telus

Article Excerpt

TELUS $35.16 (Toronto symbol T; Shares outstanding: 654.0 million; Market cap: $23.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.9%; www.telus.com) recently agreed to buy rival wireless carrier Mobilicity for $380 million. Mobilicity began operating in 2010 and has 250,000 subscribers, mainly in large cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. To put that in context, Telus has 7.7 million wireless customers across Canada. Like other new entrants into Canada’s wireless market, Mobilicity has had a hard time competing with large, established carriers like Telus. As a result, it is close to bankruptcy. Still, communications regulators have blocked the takeover. They cited the terms of Mobilicity’s original license, whereby it can’t sell its wireless frequencies, or spectrum, until February 2014. But even if Telus were to wait until 2014, the government is unlikely to approve the deal, as it still aims to increase wireless competition. Telus is still a buy. buy…