Lower costs fuel Maple Leaf ’s profits

Article Excerpt

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $35 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 128.6 million; Market cap: $4.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.3; Dividend yield: 1.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaffoods.com) sells fresh and prepared meats under the Maple Leaf and Schneider brands. The company continues to benefit from a recently completed restructuring plan. For the most part, that involved shifting meat production to newer, more-efficient plants. Thanks to those savings, earnings in the second quarter of 2017 jumped 28.1%, to $0.41 from $0.32. Sales improved 8.3%, to $925.9 million from $854.6 million. That was partly due to Maple Leaf’s recent acquisition of Lightlife, a maker of plant-based protein foods. The stock trades at a somewhat high 23.5 times the company’s projected 2017 earnings of $1.49 a share. Maple Leaf Foods is still a hold. hold…