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HONDA MOTOR CO. LTD. ADRs $29 (New York symbol HMC; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; ADRs outstanding: 1.8 billion; Market cap: $52.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 2.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.honda.com) is Japan’s secondlargest carmaker and the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer.

In the three months ended September 30, 2014, Honda sold 1.07 million cars and trucks, up 2.3% from 1.05 million a year earlier. New models spurred gains in Asia (up 13.3%) and Europe (up 12.5%). However, sales fell 2.9% in the U.S. and 2.2% in Japan. Motorcycle sales rose 8.7%.

Due to unfavourable currency rates, revenue fell 2.0% in the quarter, to $27.6 billion from $28.1 billion. However, lower costs helped increase the company’s earnings per ADR by 10.8%, to $0.72 from $0.65 (each ADR equals one common share).

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TOYOTA MOTOR CO. ADRs $122 (New York symbol TM; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; ADRs outstanding: 1.7 billion; Market cap: $207.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.9; Dividend yield: 2.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.toyota.com) is the world’s biggest carmaker by sales.

In its fiscal 2015 second quarter, which ended September 30, 2014, Toyota sold 2.24 million vehicles, unchanged from a year ago. North American sales jumped 12.5%, thanks to strong demand for sport utility vehicles. That offset declines in Japan (down 8.9%), other parts of Asia (down 4.2%) and Europe (down 3.3%).

Overall revenue fell 6.5%, to $59.8 billion from $63.9 billion, but revenue improved 4.3% in Japanese yen. A cost-cutting plan helped boost earnings per ADR by 10.3%, to $3.11 from $2.82 (each American depositary receipt equals two Toyota common shares).

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PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. $89 (New York symbol PG; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 2.7 billion; Market cap: $240.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.1; Dividend yield: 2.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.pg.com) aims to sell its Germany-based Wella hair care operation, which makes shampoos, dyes and styling products.

The company would probably receive $7 billion for Wella, roughly what it paid for it in 2003.

This sale is part of Procter’s plan to sell about 100 less-profitable brands. That will leave it with around 80 that together account for 90% of its sales and 95% of its profits. This tighter focus will also cut Procter’s manufacturing and distribution costs...

VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC. $46 (New York symbol VZ, Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 4.2 billion; Market cap: $193.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.3; Dividend yield: 4.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.verizon.com) says strong price competition will likely slow its wireless division’s growth, particularly sales of cheaper mobile phones and service plans. Wireless accounts for 70% of Verizon’s revenue.

However, the company is doing a good job of getting customers to upgrade from basic cellphones to more profitable smartphones. In addition, demand for its FiOS high-speed fibre optic Internet and TV services continues to improve.

Verizon is a buy.

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QUAKER CHEMICAL CORP. $85 (New York symbol KWR; Income Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 13.3 million; Market cap: $1.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.5; Dividend yield: 1.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.quakerchem.com) makes lubricants and chemicals that keep mechanical parts from rusting.

The company continues to buy smaller firms that add to its expertise.

For example, it recently paid $18.9 million for Binol AB, a Swedish firm that makes lubricants from vegetable fats and oils. Binol, which sells its products to clients in the metalworking, forestry and construction industries, will add $15.3 million to Quaker’s annual sales.

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NEWELL RUBBERMAID INC. $35 (New York symbol NWL; Aggressive Growth and Income Portfolios, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 271.1 million; Market cap: $9.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.7; Dividend yield: 1.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.newellrubbermaid.com) makes plastic storage bins, tools, window blinds, pens and many other household goods.

The company makes most of its products from oilbased resins, so it stands to gain from the recent drop in oil prices.

Newell continues to streamline its manufacturing and distribution operations, which should cut $270 million from its annual costs by mid-2015. The company now feels it can save an additional $200 million a year by the end of 2017.

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SHERWIN-WILLIAMS CO. $246 (New York symbol SHW; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 96.0 million; Market cap: $23.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.2; Dividend yield: 0.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.sherwin-williams.com) is North America’s largest paint and varnish producer.

Sherwin sells to consumers through over 4,100 company-owned stores in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. It also distributes its products through other retailers and makes paint for carmakers and other industrial users.

In September 2013, the company paid $165 million for Mexican paint maker Comex’s U.S. and Canadian operations, including 314 stores.

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PETSMART INC. $81 (Nasdaq symbol PETM; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 99.4 million; Market cap: $8.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.2; Dividend yield: 1.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.petm.com) has accepted an $83.00-a-share takeover offer from a group of private firms.

The purchase price works out to a 159.4% gain since we first recommended PetSmart at $32 in our October 2007 issue.

The buyers aim to complete the takeover in the first half of 2015. Investors should hold their shares and tender them to avoid paying brokerage fees.

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Every Thursday we bring you one of our best U.S. stock picks. You get our specific recommendation on the stocks we profile, with a full explanation of how we arrived at our opinion. You will read about stocks making moves you should know about, most often from coverage in our newsletter on U.S. investing, Wall Street Stock Forecaster.

TUPPERWARE BRANDS CORP. (New York symbol TUP; www.tupperwarebrands.com) makes household goods, mainly plastic food and beverage containers, as well as cosmetics and fragrances.

In the quarter ended September 27, 2014, Tupperware’s sales fell 2.4%, to $588.7 million from $603.2 million a year earlier.

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GANNETT CO., INC. $30 (New York symbol GCI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector: Shares outstanding: 225.8 million; Market cap: $6.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.3; Dividend yield: 2.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.gannett.com) is the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., with 82 dailies, including USAToday, its flagship paper.

The company offers subscribers in 35 markets a special rate if they also take USAToday, which is partly why USAToday is the top-selling newspaper in the U.S., at 1.1 million copies a day.

Gannett also publishes 443 non-daily papers in the U.S., as well as 17 dailies and over 200 weekly papers and magazines in the U.K. Publishing accounts for 57% of its revenue but just 22% of its profits.

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If you’re looking for stock-market bargains, December is the best time of year to find them.

Here’s why: Investors love to sell stocks for a profit, but they hate to sell at a loss. That’s why many investors spread their selling-for-a-profit throughout the year, while holding on to stocks that have dropped.

Toward year-end, it occurs to these investors that they’ll have to pay taxes on their capital gains, regardless of whether they made money overall. This leads some investors to dump their losers near year-end, simply to establish a capital loss for tax purposes, to offset a capital gain.

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Every Tuesday we bring you “Best Canadian Stocks.” You get our specific recommendation on the stocks we profile, with a full explanation of how we arrived at our opinion. You’ll read about stocks making moves you should know about, from coverage in one of our three newsletters featuring Canadian stocks - The Successful Investor, Stock Pickers Digest and Canadian Wealth Advisor.

CAE INC. (Toronto symbol CAE; www.cae.com) gets 55% of its revenue by selling flight simulators and pilot-training services to commercial airlines. Another 40% comes from simulators and training for military clients, mainly in the U.S.

CAE gets the remaining 5% of its sales by making medical-simulation products, such as mannequins, for training nurses and medical students.

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Every Monday we feature “A Stock to Sell” as our daily post. With every stock or investment we recommend as a sell, we give you a full explanation of why we advise against investing in it at this time.

RepliCel Life Sciences Inc., (symbol RP on Toronto; www.replicel.com), aims to develop and patent its hair-loss treatment.

RepliCel’s technology uses cells taken from each patient’s own healthy hair follicles to reproduce and “reintroduce” cells to the affected areas. RepliCel also believes it can use its technology to treat a variety of issues that stem from cell deficiencies, including chronic tendinosis and aging skin.

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Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific tips on trading stocks as well as questions on investment strategy and the economy. Every week, his comments and recommendations on the most intriguing questions of the past week go out to all Inner Circle members. And each week we offer you a report on one of the stocks profiled in these Q&A sessions. We give you Pat’s buy-hold-sell recommendation as well as his analysis of the stock. This is part of the specific buy, hold and sell advice we offer you in our daily posts. Every week you get “A Stock to Sell” on Monday, “Best Canadian Stocks” on Tuesday, and “U.S. Stock Picks” on Thursday.

This week an Inner Circle member asked us about Canadian engineering firm WPS Group. This firm’s growth strategy centres on the steady acquisition of smaller firms. This approach (similar to that of Edmonton-based engineering firm Stantec, a stock we follow in Stock Pickers Digest) has been producing profitable results for WPS. Pat examines all four of the company’s 2014 acquisitions and assesses the risk that comes with the acquisition and integration of new firms.

Q: Dear Pat: I would like to have your opinion on WSP Global. Thank you very much.

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Every Thursday we bring you one of our best U.S. stock picks. You get our specific recommendation on the stocks we profile, with a full explanation of how we arrived at our opinion. You will read about stocks making moves you should know about, most often from coverage in our newsletter on U.S. investing, Wall Street Stock Forecaster.

VISA INC. (New York symbol V; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest electronic payments network, through which it processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial transactions.

Visa gets most of its revenue from fees it charges the card issuers and merchants that use its network. It bases these fees on transaction volumes and other factors. The banks that issue the cards are responsible for evaluating customer creditworthiness and collecting payments, not Visa.

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Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a beginning or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific investment tips and stock market advice. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investment advice, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away.

Today’s tip: “Bottom-up investors have the great advantage of basing their decisions on what they know about stocks, rather than trying to guess how stocks might be affected by a random series of events.”

In the early chapters of any good book on fundamental stock market advice, you will come across the two basic ways to make investment decisions: bottom-up and top-down....

Every Tuesday we bring you “Best Canadian Stocks.” You get our specific recommendation on the stocks we profile, with a full explanation of how we arrived at our opinion. You’ll read about stocks making moves you should know about, from coverage in one of our three newsletters featuring Canadian stocks—The Successful Investor, Stock Pickers Digest and Canadian Wealth Advisor.

SHERRITT INTERNATIONAL (Toronto symbol S; www.sherritt.com) sold off all of its coal interests for $793 million in cash in April 2014.

The company is now focused on nickel production, with operations in Cuba and Canada. As well, it has a 40% interest in the Ambatovy nickel mine on the island nation of Madagascar, off Africa’s east coast. Sherritt also produces oil and gas in Cuba, Spain and Pakistan and manages 506 megawatts of power generation capacity in Cuba.

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ATLANTIC TELE-NETWORK $67.08 (Nasdaq symbol ATNI; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (340- 777-8000; www.atni.com; Shares outstanding: 15.9 million; Market cap: $1.1 billion; Dividend yield: 1.7%) closed the sale of its Alltel wireless business to AT&T (symbol T on New York) late last year. As a result, it now holds cash of $423.7 million, or $26.65 a share, and has paid off its $271.1 million of debt.

Atlantic now has wireless and wireline telecom operations in the U.S. Southwest, New England, New York State, Guyana, Bermuda and parts of the Caribbean islands.

The company continues to upgrade its wireless capacity, cellular coverage and technology. That’s paying off as customers use more mobile data for profitable services like music downloads, mobile gaming and e-books.

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RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL $42.73 (Toronto symbol QSR; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (212-333-3810; www.rbi.com; Shares outstanding: 483.3 million; Market cap: $20.7 billion; Dividend yield: n/a) is the new company formed by the merger of Tim Hortons (old symbol THI) and Burger King Worldwide (old symbol BKW).

Restaurant Brands is the world’s thirdlargest fast-food chain, after McDonald’s and Yum Brands, with 14,000 Burger King restaurants and 4,590 Tim Hortons outlets in 100 countries. In all, these locations have annual sales of over $23 billion.

Roughly 72% of Tim Hortons shareholders opted to receive 3.0879 shares of the new company for each Tim Hortons share they held. A further 26% chose the default option of $65.50 (Canadian) in cash plus 0.8025 of a Restaurant Brands share, while 2% picked the all-cash option of $88.50 (Canadian) a share.

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ALIMENTATION COUCHE-TARD $42.54 (Toronto symbol ATD.B; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (1-800-361-2612; www.couche-tard.com; Shares outstanding: 565.8 million; Market cap: $24.4 billion; Dividend yield: 0.4%) has successfully rolled out its Simply Great Coffee program in Europe.

The company says the program’s launch at 20% of its Statoil Fuel & Retail locations last spring boosted those stores’ coffee sales by more than 10%.

Couche-Tard now plans to test the concept in more Canadian markets. It began selling its own brand of coffee in Sherbrooke, Quebec, this summer and will add about 20 locations in two different Canadian test markets in the coming months.

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STUART OLSON INC. $7.65 (Toronto symbol SOX; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (780-454-3667; www.stuartolson.com; Shares outstanding: 25.0 million; Market cap: $191.3 million; Dividend yield: 6.3%) has agreed to buy Red Deer, Alberta-based Studon Electric & Controls for $76.2 million. The price could increase by up to $25.8 million over the next three years if Studon meets certain profitability targets.

Studon, which employs 500 to 1,000 electricians and instrumentation tradespeople at any given time, offers construction and maintenance services to the Western Canadian oil and gas, pipeline and petrochemical industries.

This business’s management team will keep leading its day-to-day operations, while Studon will report its results as part of Stuart Olson’s Industrial Group.

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YAMANA GOLD $4.38 (Toronto symbol YRI; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative)(416-815-0220; www.- yamana.com; Shares outstanding: 880.8 million; Market cap: $3.9 billion; Dividend yield: 1.6%) owns eight operating gold mines in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. It also holds a 12.5% stake in the Alumbrera copper/gold mine in Argentina and has a number of other properties in advanced stages of development.

Yamana now plans to form a subsidiary to hold some of its Brazilian assets. This will let the company focus on its main projects, including the Canadian Malartic gold mine in Quebec, in which it owns a 50% stake.

The new subsidiary, to be named Brio Gold Inc., will hold Yamana’s Fazenda Brasileiro and Pilar gold mines, as well as its C1 Santa Luz development project. Yamana will retain its Chapada and Jacobina mines in Brazil.

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FAIR ISAAC CORP. $68.40 (New York symbol FICO; TSINetwork Rating: Average)(415-472-2211; www.fairisaac.com; Shares outstanding: 32.1 million; Market cap: $2.2 billion; Dividend yield: 0.1%) earned $1.10 a share in its fiscal 2014 fourth quarter, which ended September 30, 2014. That was up 39.2% from $0.79 a year earlier.

Sales rose 16.4%, to $221.6 million from $190.3 million. The company saw stronger sales at its applications division (66% of total revenue) on increased licensing revenue from software that detects bank fraud.

The company expects to earn $2.78 to $2.88 a share for all of fiscal 2015, and it trades at a high 24.2 times the midpoint of that range. As well, the banking industry supplies 75% of Fair Isaac’s revenue, and slowing mortgage demand could hurt sales of its credit-scoring software.

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ADOBE SYSTEMS INC. $74.00 (Nasdaq symbol ADBE; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (408-536-6000; www.adobe.com; Shares outstanding: 498.7 million; Market cap: $36.9 billion; No dividends paid) makes software that lets computer users create, edit and share documents in the popular PDF format. Graphic designers also use its programs to create print publications and web pages.

In its fiscal 2014 fourth quarter, which ended November 28, 2014, Adobe earned $180.3 million, up 9.5% from $164.6 million a year earlier. Per-share earnings improved 12.5%, to $0.36 from $0.32, on fewer shares outstanding. Revenue rose 3.0%, to $1.07 billion from $1.04 billion.

Adobe continues to shift to a subscription-based model for selling software. It now gets 66% of its sales from recurring subscriptions, up from 44% a year ago.

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SYMANTEC CORP. $25.19 (Nasdaq symbol SYMC; TSINetwork Rating: Average)(408-517-8000; www.symantec.com; Shares outstanding: 690.1 million; Market cap: $17.4 billion; Dividend yield: 2.4%) sells computersecurity technology, including antivirus and emailfiltering software, to businesses and consumers.

In its fiscal 2015 second quarter, which ended October 3, 2014, Symantec’s earnings fell 7.5%, to $332 million from $359 million a year earlier. Per-share earnings declined 5.9%, to $0.48 from $0.51, on fewer shares outstanding. Revenue slipped 1.2%, to $1.62 billion from $1.64 billion.

The declines are mainly because consumers bought less security software and Symantec spent a high 17% of its revenue on research. But the company continues to restructure, including cutting jobs and simplifying product lines. That should lift its profits.

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