BCEBCE Inc.
Is it safe?
Mostly sound, with a caveat: steady price behavior, but heavy debt (BB).
Moderately leveraged. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Relatively steady, low volatility. Worst drawdown -57% · now 27% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can BCE take a bad year?
BCE Inc. carries $37.1B of net debt at 4.57× EBITDA: a heavy load to carry through a bad year.
Net debt · as at Q2 2025 · over four years of earnings before interest, tax and depreciation, heavy
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 4.57×
Net debt / EBITDA · 4.28× a year ago · the load is going up
- Interest cover
- 1.76×
Interest cover · operating profit barely covers the interest bill
- Annualised volatility
- 23%
Annualised volatility · about as steady as the market itself
Details›
- Total debtQ2 2025
- $37.6B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $507M
- Net debt
- $37.1B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $8.10B
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $3.01B
- Debt / equity
- 2.08×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 4.64×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 23%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −57%
- Below its 52-week high
- 27%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.