October ended up being a pretty great month for ASX shares on the whole. Over the month just passed, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) rose by a healthy 6%, rising from 6,747.2 points to 6,863.5. But how did the Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) share price go?
Telstra shares had quite an interesting month. Investors were a little confused when the telco seemed to change its longstanding ticker code from TLS to TLSDA.
But, as we went through last month, this was just a byproduct of Telstra going through a corporate restructure. As of yesterday, the telco has reverted back to its original TLS ticker code.
So that means we can still check out how Telstra shares performed last month. The company started October at a share price of $3.85. By the end of the month, Telstra was trading at $3.92.
That's a gain of 1.82%. Nothing to turn one's nose up at, perhaps. But certainly not a shoot-the-lights-out performance from the telco, seeing as the ASX 200 beat it by more than 4%.
Telstra shares now sit at a loss of 6.87% over 2022 thus far on today's figures (at the time of writing). However, the telco is up slightly over the past 12 months with a gain of 0.77%. Both figures are a slight outperformance on the ASX 200, which remains down by 7.7% and 4.4% over those periods respectively.
So what now for Telstra shares?
Is the Telstra share price a buy this November?
Well, one ASX broker who reckons the Telstra share price is looking ripe right now is Morgans.
As my Fool colleague James covered late last month, Morgans currently has an add rating on the company, with a 12-month share price target of $4.60. That implies a further upside of 17% from today's pricing over the coming year, not including Telstra's current 4.3% dividend yield.
The broker reckons Telstra shares could benefit from the structural separation the telco has just completed:
TLS currently trades on ~7x EV/EBITDA. However some of TLS's high quality long life assets like InfraCo are worth substantially more, in our view.
We don't think this is in the price so see it as value generating for TLS shareholders. This, free option, combined with likely reputational damage to its closest peer, following a major cybersecurity incident, means TLS looks well placed for the year ahead.
No doubt Telstra shareholders will be happy with that assessment.
