4-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: BCE (BCE)

4-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: BCE

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, Canadian telecom giant BCE (NYSE: BCE ) has earned a respected four-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at BCE's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

BCE facts

Headquarters (founded)	Verdun, Canada (1880)
Market Cap	$29.9 billion
Industry	Integrated telecom services
Trailing-12-Month Revenue	$18.77 billion
Management	CEO George Cope (since April 2011) CFO Siim Vanaselja (since January 2001)
Return on Equity (average, past 3 years)	12.3%
Cash/Debt	$278.25 million / $15.06 billion
Dividend Yield	5.3%

Sources: S&P Capital IQ, Morningstar, and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 91% of the 229 members who have rated BCE believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include Indymonkey and scoobster007.

Earlier this year, Indymonkey succinctly summed up the opportunity: "Nice growth, good dividend."

Over the past three years, in fact, BCE has grown its dividend at a brisk rate of 38% annually. That's much faster than that of other telecom plays like AT&T (NYSE: T ) (2.3%), Verizon (NYSE: VZ ) (3.9%), and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD ) (5.8%).

CAPS member scoobster007 expands on the outperform argument:

BCE, the largest telephone company in Canada also sells satellite TV, Internet, wireless Internet, cell phones and increased its interest in media (CTV) recently. [I]t has a high dividend (>5%), its stock has increased about 5% in the last year and will continue to do well [...] in the medium and possibly long term as long as there are no mis steps by management. It can use its size to cross sell and marketing to gain deeper market share in its various markets. While land lines are slowly decreasing, it is holding its own and growing in its various other businesses. It has plenty of cash to keep increasing its dividend as it has in the past. I think the next 2-4 years will tell if it will be a market leader in the long term as well as the short and medium term.

What do you think about BCE, or any other stock for that matter? If you want to retire rich, you need to put together the best portfolio you can. Owning exceptional stocks is a surefire way to secure your financial future, and on Motley Fool CAPS, thousands of investors are working every day to find them. CAPS is 100% free, so get started!

Interested in another easy way to track BCE? Add it to your watchlist.

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Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Vodafone. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Fool's disclosure policy always gets a perfect score.

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