Buy these safe, high yields at a bargain

Article Excerpt

Torstar has struggled in the past few years as more people get their news from the Internet, rather than newspapers. Meanwhile, Pengrowth (see box) has also suffered as rising North American shale production has cut oil and gas prices. The resulting share-price declines are why both companies’ dividend yields appear so high. But both are doing a good job of responding to their challenges, which should let them improve their earnings and maintain their current payouts. TORSTAR CORP. $7.11 (Toronto symbol TS.B; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 80.1 million; Market cap: $569.5 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 7.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.torstar.com) publishes the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper by circulation. It also publishes three other daily papers and over 100 weeklies. The slow economy continues to hurt advertising sales at Torstar’s newspapers. In the quarter ended June 30, 2014, the company’s revenue fell 7.4%, to $225.6 million from $243.6 million a year earlier. …