BCE Inc. (TSE:BCE) Announces $0.44 Quarterly Dividend

BCE Inc. (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) declared a quarterly dividend on Monday, December 15th, TickerTech Dividends reports. Shareholders of record on Thursday, January 15th will be given a dividend of 0.4375 per share on Thursday, January 15th. This represents a c) annualized dividend and a yield of 5.4%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, December 15th.

BCE Trading Up 1.2%

Shares of TSE BCE traded up C$0.38 during midday trading on Friday, reaching C$32.62. The stock had a trading volume of 5,214,254 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,737,459. The company’s 50 day moving average price is C$32.62 and its 200 day moving average price is C$32.43. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 226.73, a quick ratio of 0.43 and a current ratio of 0.62. BCE has a twelve month low of C$28.73 and a twelve month high of C$36.80. The firm has a market cap of C$30.42 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 4.90, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.67 and a beta of 0.51.

BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, November 6th. The company reported C$0.79 earnings per share for the quarter. The business had revenue of C$6.05 billion during the quarter. BCE had a net margin of 1.10% and a return on equity of 1.39%. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that BCE will post 3.1120864 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts recently commented on the company. BMO Capital Markets upgraded BCE from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a C$37.00 target price on the stock in a research report on Thursday. TD Securities reduced their price objective on shares of BCE from C$39.00 to C$38.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, November 7th. Desjardins boosted their target price on shares of BCE from C$41.00 to C$42.00 and gave the company a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Friday, November 7th. Royal Bank Of Canada upgraded shares of BCE from a “sector perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and raised their price target for the stock from C$35.00 to C$47.00 in a report on Wednesday, October 15th. Finally, Cibc Captl Mkts raised shares of BCE from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have issued a Buy rating, three have given a Hold rating and two have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, BCE presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of C$36.41.

About BCE

BCE is both a wireless and internet service provider, offering wireless, broadband, television, and landline phone services in Canada. It is one of the big three national wireless carriers, with its roughly 10 million customers constituting about 30% of the market. It is also the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrierthe legacy telephone provider) throughout much of the eastern half of Canada, including in the most populous Canadian provincesOntario and Quebec.