BCE (TSE:BCE) Upgraded at Barclays

Barclays upgraded shares of BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) from a strong sell rating to a hold rating in a research report sent to investors on Tuesday,Zacks.com reports.

A number of other equities research analysts have also issued reports on BCE. Royal Bank Of Canada raised 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. Scotiabank dropped their target price on shares of BCE from C$40.75 to C$40.25 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, January 20th. Cibc Captl Mkts upgraded BCE from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, December 9th. CIBC raised BCE from a “neutral” rating to a “sector outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 9th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets upgraded BCE from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a C$37.00 price objective on the stock in a research report on Thursday, December 11th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, seven have given a Buy rating, three have assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of C$36.83.

BCE Price Performance

Shares of BCE stock opened at C$34.37 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 226.73, a current ratio of 0.62 and a quick ratio of 0.43. BCE has a one year low of C$28.73 and a one year high of C$36.59. The business’s 50 day simple moving average is C$32.73 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is C$32.97. The stock has a market capitalization of C$32.05 billion, a P/E ratio of 5.16, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.67 and a beta of 0.48.

BCE (TSE:BCE) (NYSE:BCE) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 6th. The company reported C$0.79 earnings per share for the quarter. BCE had a return on equity of 1.39% and a net margin of 1.10%.The firm had revenue of C$6.05 billion during the quarter. Analysts forecast that BCE will post 3.1120864 EPS for the current year.

BCE Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, January 15th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, January 15th were issued a $0.4375 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Monday, December 15th. This represents a $1.75 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 5.1%. BCE’s dividend payout ratio is 43.09%.

About BCE

Bell Media is Canada’s leading media and entertainment company with a portfolio of assets in premium video, audio, out-of-home advertising, and digital media. This includes Canada’s most-watched television network, CTV; the largest Canadian-owned video streamer, Crave, with a premium add-on to include STARZ; a powerful suite of specialty channels; the most-trusted news brand, CTV News; Canada’s cross-platform sports leaders, TSN and RDS; leading out-of-home advertising network, Astral; Québec’s fast-growing conventional French-language network, Noovo; the country’s leading radio and podcast app, iHeartRadio Canada; and a range of award-winning original productions, brands, and services.