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Topic: Dividend Stocks

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $11 – Toronto symbol MFI

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $11 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 140.0 million; Market cap: $1.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.3; Dividend yield: 1.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaf.ca) is acquiring Puratone Corporation, a private company that raises over 500,000 hogs a year at 50 barns in Manitoba.

The takeover will give Maple Leaf control of 30% of the hogs used by its processing facility in Brandon,
Manitoba.The company will pay $42 million for Puratone when the deal closes in the next few weeks. To put that in context, Maple Leaf earned $30.2 million, or $0.21 a share, in the three months ended September 30, 2012. That’s down 24.5% from $39.9 million, or $0.28 a share, a year earlier.

If you exclude unusual items, such as a writedown on the value of livestock the company is currently holding, earnings per share would have fallen 14.7%, to $0.29 from $0.34. Higher prices for wheat and other ingredients were the main reason for the lower earnings. Sales fell 1.8%, to $1.24 billion from $1.26 billion.

The company plans to raise its selling prices to offset the higher commodity costs.

Maple Leaf Foods is a buy.

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