Darren Entwistle became CEO of Telus in 2000 and was executive chairman of the board for more than a year until this August, when he resumed the role of CEO.BEN NELMS/Reuters
In the wake of job cuts, a less-than-stellar quarter and the threat of stiff new competition in the west, Telus Corp. CEO Darren Entwistle is reaffirming his confidence in the company, investing a further $10-million of his own funds in Telus stock.
Meanwhile, Joe Natale – a long-serving Telus executive who held the chief executive officer post for a little over a year before ceding it to Mr. Entwistle again in August – has been steadily selling his own stock in advance of his official departure at the end of the year.
Mr. Natale held more than 200,000 common shares before Telus announced the CEO switch in August, according to information filed with the System for Electronic Disclosure by Insiders. He began selling blocks of shares in November, and as of Dec. 16, he held about 30,000 common shares.
Vancouver-based Telus said in a statement Tuesday that Mr. Entwistle, in combination with his family trust, recently purchased a total of 263,000 common shares representing an investment of about $10-million.
He made the purchases on Thursday, the day after Telus's western cable rival Shaw Communications Inc. announced after markets closed that it had struck a $1.6-billion deal to buy startup carrier Wind Mobile Corp. and enter the wireless business.
Shaw's purchase of Wind will give it another platform from which to compete with Telus in Alberta and British Columbia.
Shaw hopes to close the deal in the first half of 2016, pending regulatory and court approvals.
Telus declined to comment beyond its statement on Tuesday. In November, after the company reported weaker-than-expected (although still positive) wireless results and announced plans to cut 1,500 jobs, Mr. Entwistle reassured investors that Telus has two reliable sources of revenue growth, both its wireless division and its land-line business, which includes residential and business customers.
He has long been vocal about his personal commitment to Telus as an investment and has received his salary in shares for six years in a row. Greg MacDonald, head of research at Macquarie Capital Markets, said the recent share purchases are likely meant as a statement of Mr. Entwistle's ongoing "confidence in the company and its ability to continue growing the dividend."
Shares of Canada's three biggest wireless carriers – Telus, Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. – were all down on Thursday. Telus stock was hit the hardest, closing down 6.65 per cent or $2.70 a share at $37.92.
Almost 11 million shares of the company traded hands that day, and Telus Tuesday disclosed that Mr. Entwistle himself purchased 79,000 shares at an average price of $37.76 while his family trust purchased 180,000 shares at an average price of $37.86.
Since Thursday, Telus stock has regained some ground and closed at $38.67 on Tuesday, up 0.57 per cent on the day.
Telus chief financial officer John Gossling responded to news of Shaw's purchase of Wind last week in an e-mailed statement, saying Telus looked forward to competing with Shaw in the wireless market.
"We are confident that our national LTE network combined with our highly differentiated customer service experience will continue to position us well with existing and future wireless and wireline customers," Mr. Gossling said.
Mr. Entwistle became CEO of Telus in 2000 and was executive chairman of the board for more than a year until this August, when he resumed the role of CEO after Mr. Natale stepped down from that role.
Mr. Entwistle established a family trust in December, 2014, saying at the time that he was transferring almost one million Telus shares to the trust as part of an estate and tax planning transaction.
According to the statement Tuesday, he now personally owns 233,865 shares of Telus and 392,517 restricted stock units representing a total value of $24-million, more than 17 times his annual salary.