RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:TELUS to Purchase Up to 3.75 Million Common Shares Under ItsI don't think there are a lot of potential major takeover targets right now. The only one that jumps out is MTB (now that they've unloaded Allstream) and I suspect BCE will take a run at it. Although I think T would love to grab MTB's wireless business, I'm not sure if they'd want the headache of integrating their wireline business. Plus, why can't T just issue more stock at the point they do have an acquisition need?
Yes, share buybacks can be an artificial way of increasing EPS so it's important to look at various aspects of the quarterly results to get the full picture of how a company is performing. In T's case, Q3 continues to show growth in key areas like revenue, free cash flow, and wireless and wireline subscribers. Everything wasn't completely rosy of course as some of the wireless numbers while still good, showed a bit of potential weakness likely due to the renewal competition of double cohort. Add in a bunch of layoffs and the stock price takes a bit of a dive on jitters. That said, I'm pretty curious what the next few quarters will deliver.