TRANSCONTINENTAL INC. $12 (Toronto symbol TCL.A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 77.9 million; Market cap: $934.8 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.4; Dividend yield: 4.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.tctranscontinental.com) gets 68% of its revenue from its commercial printing business, which is the largest in Canada. The remaining 32% comes from publishing newspapers and magazines.
In its 2013 second quarter, which ended April 30, 2013, Transcontinental’s revenue fell 0.2%, to $521.3 million from $522.4 million a year earlier. Revenue from six recently acquired printing plants in Canada helped offset the loss of a contract to print flyers for the now-closed Zellers retail chain.
So far, the company has realized annual savings of $30 million by combining the new plants with its current operations. Even so, earnings fell 2.0% in the latest quarter, to $34.8 million from $35.5 million. Earnings per share were unchanged at $0.44 on fewer shares outstanding.
The company has renewed several multi-year printing contracts worth a total of $200 million. That, plus the savings from merging the new plants, should support its annual dividend rate of $0.58 a share, which yields 4.8%.
Transcontinental is a buy.