AGRIUM INC. $99 - Toronto symbol AGU

AGRIUM INC. $99 (Toronto symbol AGU; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 143.7 million; Market cap: $14.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.9; Dividend yield 3.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.agrium.com) has suspended operations at its Vanscoy, Saskatchewan, potash mine because the main hoist system failed. Agrium will use the shutdown to speed up its plan to increase the mine’s capacity.

The company expects the outage to cost $40 million (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars).

To put that in context, Agrium earned $625 million, or $4.34 a share, in the second quarter of 2014. That’s down 16.0% from $744 million, or $5.00 a share, a year earlier. Record earnings from Agrium’s retail stores, which sell fertilizers and seeds to farmers in North America, South America and Australia, offset lower bulk fertilizer prices.

Agrium is a buy.

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Blue Chip Stocks

Blue chip stocks are big, well-established, dividend-paying corporations with strong business prospects. These are companies that also have sound management that should be able to make the right moves to keep competing successfully in a changing marketplace.

Dividend Stocks

Dividend stocks make cash payouts that serve as a way for companies to share the wealth they’ve accumulated. These payouts are drawn from earnings and cash flow and paid to the shareholders of the company. Typically, these dividends are paid quarterly, although they may be paid annually or even monthly as well.

Value Stocks

What are value stocks?

One of the sweetest and most profitable pleasures of successful investing is to buy high-quality “value stocks” (or stocks that are reasonably priced, if not cheap, in relation to its sales, earnings or assets), then hold on to them as mainstream investors recognize the value and push up the share price.

Growth Stocks

Growth stocks are companies that are likely to have sales and earnings growth well above market average. Frequently they pay few, if any, dividends. Instead they typically reinvest any extra cash flow to promote further growth. Chosen wisely—according to Pat McKeough’s advice—high-quality growth-oriented stocks can be worthwhile additions to most well-diversified portfolios.

ETFs

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ETF is an acronym for exchange traded fund.. These exchange traded funds are used to track indexes as closely as possible, since investors cannot actually buy an index outright.

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AI Investing

Artificial intelligence (AI) is essentially the merging of today’s big computing with big data. This has resulted in breakthroughs in everything from creating machines to recognize faces with more accuracy than a human, to the development of chatbots able to collect, organize and simplify all the Internet has to say on any topic.

Spinoffs

One of the ways a company can try to unlock its own hidden value is by creating a separate company out of a corporate subsidiary. The parent company can either sell stock in the new company to the public, or spin it off—hand the stock out to its own investors.

Penny Stocks

A penny stock in general trades for under five dollars a share, and as the name implies, sometimes for pennies. Most of the time they’re young companies, or start-ups in speculative markets like mining or technology.

Mining Stocks

Mining stocks are investments in companies that produce or explore for minerals. Some of these minerals include uranium, coal, molybdenum (which is used in steelmaking), copper, silver and gold. They are affected by fluctuating commodity prices in addition to their own business and operating risks.

Energy Stocks

What are energy stocks?

Businesses that work in the extraction, refining and delivery of energy sources such as natural gas, oil, uranium and coal, are considered energy stocks.