Key points
- Telstra shares have had an impressive run over the past 12 months or so
- But even so, the company is still trading at around half of its all-time highs
- Can the Telstra share price ever hit close to $9 again?
The Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) share price has been a bit of a crowd pleaser over the past year or so. Since reaching a low under $2.70 a share back in October 2020, Telstra shares have been on quite the run. At today's price of $4.12 (at the time of writing), Telstra is now a healthy 53.5% above that low watermark. It was better just a few days ago too, when the company hit a new 52-week high of $4.31 a share. Take these gains and add them to Telstra's hefty dividend payments and you have an ASX 200 blue-chip share that has been very kind to investors over this period.
But those investors with a longer memory might not be as pleased with this telco. Telstra, after all, used to be a government-owned company prior to its gradual privatisation over the late 1990s and early 2000s. As it happens, the highest share prices Telstra has ever commanded occurred around the time the government was offloading it to the private sector. Although it's hard to picture in light of recent history, Telstra was going for close to $9 a share back in the glory days of 1999. That's more than double its current share price.
So is it possible for Telstra to ever reclaim those highs?
Can Telstra shares ever hit close to $9 again?
Well, the answer is yes, only because the future is unlimited in its scope, and at some point from here to judgement day, we can't rule out a $9 share price for Telstra. But let's take a look at what some experts are saying about this telco's prospects over the next 12 months, which is probably what most investors today are most concerned about.
As my Fool colleague James covered earlier this week, one broker who has high hopes for Telstra is Morgans. This broker reckons Telstra shares have a good chance at hitting $4.55 over the next 12 months (just over a 10% potential upside). It is also anticipated that Telstra's annual 16 cents per share dividend will continue to flow into investors pockets without too much interruption.
Fellow broker Goldman Sachs is also very bullish on Telstra right now. Goldman currently rates the company as a buy, this time with a 12-month share price target of $4.40. Goldman likes Telstra's fundamentals and dividends right now, as well as its recent acquisition of Digicel Pacific.
So it appears that these top ASX brokers, while bullish on Telstra shares over the next 12 months, don't see the company coming close to its all-time highs anytime soon. But you never know with investing. Perhaps we'll one day see Telstra with a near-$9 share price again. But only time will tell.
At the current Telstra share price, this ASX 200 telco has a market capitalisation of $48.4 billion, with a trailing dividend yield of 3.88%
