BCE is a great stock to own right now, this portfolio manager says

So far, those of us lucky enough to have bagged BCE (BCE Stock Quote, Chart TSX:BCE) during the stock’s low points in October and November of last year have been richly rewarded.

Not only has BCE posted impressive gains of more than 24 per cent over the past eight months but the stock is still paying one of the best dividends in the telco space. And while it’s tough to predict how BCE and the sector in general will fare over the second half of 2019, BCE represents a solid stock to own, says portfolio manager Ian Fung of investment firm Davis Rea.

“We tend to think of things in a longer term and if you buy BCE, it’s a great Canadian company with a good dividend yield, and it’s got stable cash flows —all the telcos in Canada, we know how regulated and stable they are,” said Fung, vice president at Davis Rea, to BNN Bloomberg on Thursday.

At $62 and change per share, BCE is nearing its all-time high of $63 set back in 2016, a notable turnaround for a stock that dipped as low as $50 last October. Those gains have been reflected sector-wide, as investors seek the safe haven of the utilities during this period of general market instability. Interest rates haven’t hurt the telcos, either, as a freeze on hikes in both Canada and the United States make high-yield names like BCE all the more attractive.

But BCE has been delivering in its quarterly numbers, too. Last month, the company reported its first quarter 2019 financials, which featured a modest consensus beat on revenue and roughly matched expectations on earnings. For the quarter ended March 31, BCE posted operating revenues of $5.73 billion, up 2.6 per cent year-over-year and better than the expected $5.71 billion, while the company generated adjusted earnings of $0.77 per share as compared to the expected $0.78 per share.