Telus’ share price declined by 17.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Telus Corp. T-T executives and board members are hoping to send a message of confidence to investors by snapping up company shares and taking compensation in stock, following a slide in the company’s share price and a pause to dividend growth.
The share purchases reflect Telus’s “compelling value proposition and long-term growth prospects,” and align with the company’s plans to meet its deleveraging goals, the company said in a release Monday morning.
Over November and December, Telus chief executive officer Darren Entwistle and other executives and board directors acquired nearly 360,000 Telus shares on the open market, the company said.
Collectively, Telus’s senior leaders and directors held about 2.4 million common shares as of Dec. 31. The company had about 1.5 billion shares outstanding at the end of September, according to financial statements.
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In December, the Vancouver-based telecom company also repurchased 2.2 million shares on the open market for cancellation, which it said reflects its belief that the current share price “does not reflect the strong fundamentals of Telus’ business and its significant growth opportunities.”
The buyback is part of a program which would allow Telus to repurchase and cancel up to 28 million shares for an aggregate purchase price of up to $500-million in 2026 – a limit which represented about 1.8 per cent of the company’s outstanding common shares, as of Dec. 10.
The company also said Monday that Mr. Entwistle will take his compensation for the foreseeable future entirely in stock. Starting in August, 2024, Mr. Entwistle took his base salary for the year, $1.6-million, in Telus shares. (His total compensation, including other share-based awards for that year, was $20.6-million, according to the company’s 2025 proxy circular.)
“This firm alignment of interests between Telus’ leadership, board of directors and shareholders reinforces the company’s commitment to creating sustainable shareholder value,” Telus said in the release Monday.
Telus’s share price declined by 17.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025, and about 7 per cent last year, as financial analysts raised concerns that the company’s dividend growth was becoming unsustainable. The company had already downwardly revised its dividend growth plan earlier in the year, but said in late November that there were no imminent plans to change that rate further.
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On Dec. 3, Telus made an about-face, pausing dividend growth until its share price “reflects growth prospects,” the company said.
As of market close Monday, the company’s dividend yield stood at 9.3 per cent.
Earlier in the year, Bell Canada parent company BCE Inc. BCE-T halved its own dividend after facing similar pressure from analysts and investors.
Royal Bank of Canada analyst Drew McReynolds said in a December report he was surprised to see the speed at which investors lost confidence in the dividend growth policies of BCE and Telus.
That loss of confidence “ultimately translated to a punitively high cost of equity that we believe played a major role in forcing the hand of each board to either cut the dividend (BCE) or pause annual dividend growth (Telus),” he wrote.
In 2026, Telus and rivals Bell and Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T will continue to roll out strategies to deleverage over the coming years, with plans that include a range of asset sales and expansion of new divisions. All three have heavy debt loads, amid slower growth across the sector.
Telus’s plan includes growing its health and data centre divisions, selling unused real estate and copper assets, buying back shares and debt, and removing the discount on its dividend reinvestment plan. The company is also expanding its internet offerings into Bell’s territory in Eastern Canada.
Telus said Monday the share purchases are complementary with the company’s deleveraging plan to reach a ratio of three times net debt to adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) by the end of 2027.
Mr. McReynolds said in his December report that Telus can maintain its valuation position relative to peers if it meets a number of thresholds, including sustaining telecom growth, meeting its capital intensity objective, pausing mergers and acquisitions, and reducing leverage.
“Telus maintains a premium valuation relative to large cap peers, suggesting a higher performance bar must be met in what remains a low revenue growth environment,” he told investors.