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HILLSHIRE BRANDS CO. $63 (New York symbol HSH; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 123.4 million; Market cap: $7.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.0; Dividend yield: 1.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.hillshirebrands.com) took its current form on June 28, 2012, when the old Sara Lee Corp. split into two separate companies: Hillshire and European coffee maker D.E. Master Blenders.

D.E. Master accepted a $16.50-a-share takeover offer in June 2013, for a 55% gain since the Sara Lee breakup.

Hillshire makes a variety of packaged meat products. Its main brands include Ball Park hot dogs, Jimmy Dean sausages and Hillshire Farm deli meats. Other foods include Sara Lee frozen desserts and Chef Pierre pies.

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KRAFT FOODS GROUP INC. $57 (Nasdaq symbol KRFT; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 595.3 million; Market cap: $33.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.9; Dividend yield: 3.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.kraftfoodsgroup.com) makes a variety of grocery products, including Kraft macaroni and cheese, Maxwell House coffee, Oscar Mayer meats, Philadelphia cream cheese, Jell-O desserts and Miracle Whip salad dressing.

Following the split from Mondelez, Kraft began consolidating plants and eliminating less-profitable products. The company expects to spend $625 million by the time it completes the plan in late 2014.

In the three months ended June 28, 2014, Kraft’s earnings fell 41.9%, to $482 million, or $0.80 a share. A year earlier, it earned $829 million, or $1.38 a share. If you disregard unusual items, earnings per share increased 7.9%, to $0.82 from $0.76.

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MONDELEZ INTERNATIONAL INC. $37 (Nasdaq symbol MDLZ; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 1.7 billion; Market cap: $62.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.9; Dividend yield: 1.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.mondelezinternational.com) took its current form on October 1, 2012, when the old Kraft Foods Inc. broke itself into two publicly traded companies: Mondelez International and Kraft Foods Group.

Mondelez makes cookies and biscuits (Oreo, Chips Ahoy, Ritz), chocolate bars (Cadbury, Toblerone) and gum and candy (Trident, Chiclets and Halls cough drops). It also makes coffee and other beverages, as well as grocery and cheese products for overseas markets.

The company has agreed to merge its packaged coffee business with European coffee maker D.E. Master Blenders. Under this deal, Mondelez will contribute its coffee brands, including Jacobs, Gevalia and Tassimo, to a new firm called Jacobs Douwe Egberts. In return, it will get $5 billion in cash and 49% of the new company when the deal closes later this year.

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WINDSTREAM HOLDINGS INC. $11 (Nasdaq symbol WIN; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 602.7 million; Market cap: $6.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.2; Dividend yield: 9.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.windstream.com) gets 73% of its revenue from high-speed Internet and business telecommunications. It also sells regular phone services, mainly in rural parts of the U.S.

The stock jumped 20% after the company announced that it would transfer its fibre-optic and copper networks, along with some land and buildings, to a new real estate investment trust (REIT). The company will then lease these assets from the REIT.

Windstream plans to hand out units in the new REIT to its own shareholders in the first quarter of 2015.

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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. $194 (New York symbol IBM, Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 1.0 billion; Market cap: $194.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.1; Dividend yield: 2.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.ibm.com) started up in 1911 making machines that processed U.S. census data, as well as other industrial equipment such as time clocks and scales.

The company now gets 55% of its revenue by designing computer systems and managing them for business and government clients. It typically does this under long-term contracts, which cuts its risk.

In the past few years, IBM has aggressively expanded its software business. It’s particularly interested in analytics software, which helps clients gather and analyze a wide variety of data. Software now supplies 27% of IBM’s revenue.

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Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific advice on specific 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 one of the highlights from these Q&A sessions. While we reserve our buy-hold-sell advice for Inner Circle members, these excerpts provide a great deal of information and analysis on stocks we’ve covered for members of Pat’s Inner Circle. This week we had a question from an Inner Circle member about an offshore drilling company that has grown quickly in less than 10 years in business. Pat looks at the advantages Seadrill derives from its modern, high-quality drilling rigs as well as the pressure building new rigs puts on the company’s balance sheet. He also examines a recent deal Seadrill made with Russian oil producer Rosneft and the complications that may arise from European Union economic sanctions against Russia. Q: Hi Pat: What are your thoughts on Seadrill? Thanks....

North American and European consumers continue to shift away from cash and toward credit and debit cards. As a result, banks on those two continents are buying fewer automated teller machines. But ATM demand remains high in developing nations, where many stores only accept cash. ATM makers NCR and Diebold are also diversifying into related products and offering more software and support services. We cover both of these stocks in our newsletter on U.S. investing, Wall Street Stock Forecaster. NCR CORP. (New York symbol NCR; www.ncr.com) gets 52% of its revenue from ATMs. It also makes cash registers and self-serve checkouts (32% of revenue) and kiosks for theatres and arenas (10%). Maintenance services supply the other 6%. Overseas markets account for 60% of NCR’s revenue....

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 advice on specific investment topics. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investing strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “Ethical or socially responsible investing can be a misleading concept. Often it’s an oversimplified reaction to a complex situation, having little impact on the companies targeted while limiting perfectly good investment opportunities.” From time to time, we are asked about ethical investing (or “socially responsible investing”). I’d say it works as a marketing angle for a handful of small investment companies, and it may make you feel better about your investments. But it won’t do much to improve your investment results, or cut down on what you see as unethical corporate behaviour....

COMPUTER MODELLING GROUP (Toronto symbol CMG; www.cmgroup.com) sells software and consulting services that help oil and gas producers use advanced recovery techniques to get more out of their wells. It has customers in over 50 countries and offices in Calgary, Houston, London, Caracas, Bogota, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai. The company is a leader in complex heavy oil and oil sands simulations. In the quarter ended March 31, 2014, Computer Modelling’s revenue rose 3.6%, to $20.0 million from $19.3 million a year earlier. Software licence sales (89% of total revenue) rose slightly, but consulting and professional services (11%) jumped 39.1%, thanks to new projects and a large consulting agreement. Earnings gained 6.7%, to $7.7 million from $7.25 million. Per-share earnings jumped 18.8%, to $0.095 from $0.08, on fewer shares outstanding....

Bombardier recently had to suspend test flights of its CSeries passenger plane because of a problem with its Pratt & Whitney engines, which are 20% more fuel-efficient than current models. This was the first major issue with this new engine in over three years of testing. The delay will probably add to the CSeries’ development costs, but Bombardier still expects to begin deliveries in the second half of 2015. BOMBARDIER INC. (Toronto symbols BBD.A and BBD.B; www.bombardier.com) is the world’s third-largest commercial aircraft maker, behind Boeing and Airbus. It is also the world’s leading passenger railcar manufacturer....

Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific advice on specific 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 one of the highlights from these Q&A sessions. While we reserve our buy-hold-sell advice for Inner Circle members, these excerpts provide a great deal of information and analysis on stocks we’ve covered for members of Pat’s Inner Circle. This week an Inner Circle member asked us about one of the energy stocks involved in developing alternate sources of fuel. Clean Energy Fuels serves customers who operate commercial vehicles powered by natural gas. T. Boone Pickens, a leading proponent of alternative energy to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, is a major shareholder in the company. Pat examines Clean Energy’s business and assesses its prospects as various alternatives to the internal combustion engine continue to compete for government support and consumer confidence. A: Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (symbol CLNE on Nasdaq; www.cleanenergyfuels.com), is a North American seller of compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Its customers operate natural-gas-powered vehicles in the refuse, transit, ports, shuttle, taxi, regional trucking, airport and municipal fleet markets....

The shift toward online shopping continues to pick up speed: over the next 10 years, e-commerce could account for 40% of all retail sales in developed nations and 30% in emerging markets. We feel the best way to profit from this trend is through shares of companies that process online payments and fulfill orders. Here are two such stocks we cover 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....

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 advice on specific investment topics. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investing strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “Selling half of hot stocks that surge helps you guard your profits. But apply this rule only to more aggressive stocks, and not to the well-established stocks that may surprise you by going a lot higher in the long run.” As you probably know, our Successful Investor business model has two parts. We publish investment advice through The Successful Investor Inc., and we manage investor portfolios through Successful Investor Wealth Management Inc. (These two companies are affiliated by common ownership; I own both but set them up as separate companies for regulatory purposes.)...

MCCOY GLOBAL $6.48 (Toronto symbol MCB; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (780-453-8451; www.mccoyglobal.com; Shares outstanding: 27.6 million; Market cap: $175.6 million; Dividend yield: 3.1%) is the new name of McCoy Corp.

The company changed its name after the recent sale of its Mobile Solutions heavy-duty truck-trailer unit to focus on its faster-growing and more profitable Energy Products and Services segment. This business sells hydraulic gear, including power tongs, for drilling rigs worldwide. (Power tongs are large wrench-like tools that tighten and loosen the pipe in the drill hole.)

New global focus adds appeal

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WAJAX CORP. $35.12 (Toronto symbol WJX; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (905-212-3300; www.wajax.ca; Shares outstanding:16.8 million; Market cap: $586.4 million; Dividend yield: 6.8%) sells and services cranes, forklifts and other heavy equipment. It also provides related parts (such as bearings, motors, hoses and fittings) and power systems (including diesel engines and transmissions).

The company’s customers are in the natural resource, construction, manufacturing and transportation industries.

In the three months ended March 31, 2014, Wajax’s revenue fell 1.5%, to $331.4 million from $336.3 million a year earlier. The decline mostly came from weakness in oil and gas and mining markets.

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CALIAN TECHNOLOGIES $19.92 (Toronto symbol CTY; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (613-599-8600; www.calian.comtarget=”_blank”; Shares outstanding: 7.3 million; Market cap: $147.1 million; Yield: 5.6%) has acquired Ottawa-based DWP Solutions for an undisclosed amount.

DWP has been in business for 18 years and helps government and defence customers secure their computer networks. The company’s annual revenue is around $6 million. To put that in context, Calian reported $51.2 million of revenue in the latest quarter.

The purchase is small for Calian, but it will be a good fit with the company’s Business and Technology Services division, which supplies engineers, health care workers, information technology professionals and other personnel on a contract basis.

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SASOL LTD. (ADR) $60.80 (New York symbol SSL; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (082-883-9697; www.sasol.comtarget=”_blank”; ADRs outstanding: 650.5 million; Market cap: $40.5 billion; Dividend yield: 2.5%) has won its appeal to the European General Court to have a fine for its involvement in the European paraffin wax cartel reduced. The European Commission imposed the fine, for 318.2 million euros ($430.5 million U.S.), on Sasol in October 2008.

The company states that it was unaware of any price-fixing activities before the European Commission commenced its investigation into the European paraffin wax industry in April 2005.

It paid the fine in January 2009 but viewed it as excessive. The court has now cut the fine by 168.22 million euros, to 149.98 million euros.

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AIMIA INC. $18.95 (Toronto symbol AIM; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (514-205-7315; www.aimia.com; Shares outstanding: 173.9 million; Market cap: $3.3 billion; Dividend yield: 3.8%) owns and operates Aeroplan, Canada’s largest loyalty program, with over 4.8 million members who collect Aeroplan miles from participating companies. Members can exchange their miles for flights, car rentals, hotel rooms and merchandise.

The company’s members can now earn and redeem points for travel on Air India, the Indian government’s flagship carrier. That brings Aeroplan’s total number of airline partners to 32.

The agreement will give Aeroplan members more choice on routes connecting North America, Europe, Asia and Australia via India.

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AMAZON.COM $358.14 (Nasdaq symbol AMZN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (206-266-1000; www.amazon.com; Shares outstanding: 460.2 million; Market cap: $166.1 billion; No dividends paid) has enticed Babik Parviz, a key director at Google’s secretive Google X labs, to join the company.

Parviz pioneered the development of Google Glass, a wearable computer that displays information on a small display attached to a pair of glasses. More recently, Parviz led the Google team working on contact lenses with embedded electronics.

Amazon recently introduced its long-awaited Amazon Fire smartphone, which features a screen that can display seemingly 3-D images without the need for special glasses. This new technology—called Dynamic Perspective—uses retina-tracking technology embedded in four front-facing infrared cameras to make some images appear to be 3-D, similar to a hologram.

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WESTJET $26.85 (Toronto symbol WJA; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (1-877-493- 7853; www.westjet.com; Shares outstanding: 127.8 million; Market cap: $3.4 billion; Dividend yield: 1.8%) now plans to operate its own wide-body, twoaisle aircraft, starting in 2015.

The planes will offer greater range than its current fleet of Boeing 737s and let it compete with Air Canada on international routes.

WestJet aims to start with four wide-body planes, with the first flights going between Alberta and Hawaii during the winter season, beginning in late 2015. Right now, it is using two Boeing 757-200s operated by Thomas Cook for its Alberta-to-Hawaii winter service.

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DOMINO’S PIZZA $75.43 (New York symbol DPZ; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (734-930-3030; www.dominos.com; Shares outstanding: 55.6 million; Market cap: $4.2 billion; Dividend yield: 1.3%) is the world’s largest chain of pizza stores that offer takeout and delivery. It operates 11,000 outlets in the U.S. and over 70 other countries. Franchisees run most of these stores. In the quarter ended June 15, 2014, the company’s earnings per share rose 17.5%, to $0.67 from $0.57 a year earlier. That beat the consensus estimate of $0.65. Sales gained 8.8%, to $450.5 million from $414.0 million also exceeding the consensus estimate of $441.3 million. Same-store sales rose 7.7% internationally and 5.4% in the U.S.

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WYNDHAM WORLDWIDE $76.55 (New York symbol WYN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (973- 753-6000; www.wyndhamworldwide.com; Shares outstanding: 127.3 million; Market cap: $9.8 billion; Dividend yield: 1.8%) is one of the world’s largest hospitality companies, with 7,500 franchised hotels worldwide.

Wyndham also manages vacation resorts, rental properties, luxury clubs and time-shares. The company now has 107,000 vacation-rental properties in 100 countries.

In the three months ended June 30, 2014, the company’s revenue rose 7.2%, to $1.34 billion from $1.25 billion a year earlier. Wyndham gets most of its revenue from vacation rather than business travel, and vacation bookings rose in the latest quarter. That helped push up the company’s occupancy rate by 2.8%.

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ZARGON OIL & GAS $9.03 (Toronto symbol ZAR; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (403- 264-9992; www.zargon.ca; Shares outstanding: 30.1 million; Market cap: $270.9 million; Dividend yield: 8.0%) produces natural gas and oil in Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota.

In the quarter ended March 31, 2014, the company produced 6,662 barrels of oil equivalent a day, down 12.9% from 7,648 a year earlier. That’s mainly because the company sold some less important properties.

The lower output was more than offset by higher oil and gas prices in the latest quarter, increasing Zargon’s cash flow per share by 10.9%, to $0.51 from $0.46.

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CIMAREX ENERGY $148.50 (New York symbol XEC; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (303-295-3995; www.cimarex.com; Shares outstanding: 87.0 million; Market cap: $12.5 billion; Dividend yield: 0.4%) produces and explores for natural gas and oil. Gas makes up 48% of its output.

Cimarex’s properties are in the Mid-Continent region of the U.S., which includes Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas (50% of production); the Permian Basin of western Texas and southeastern New Mexico (47%); and the Texas Gulf Coast (3%).

In the three months ended March 31, 2014, Cimarex’s production averaged 740.4 million cubic feet of natural gas equivalent per day (including oil). That’s up 12.0% from 661.1 million cubic feet a year earlier.

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CARFINCO FINANCIAL GROUP $9.00 (Toronto symbol CFN; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (1-888-486-4356; www.carfinco.com; Shares outstanding: 26.5 million; Market cap: $238.8 million; Dividend yield: 5.3%) provides car loans to consumers who can’t meet the criteria of banks and other traditional lenders.

The company reports that its Canadian operations provided loans at a record pace in the quarter ended June 30, 2014. New loans rose 6.6% from a year ago, to $45.4 million from $42.6 million.

In addition, Carfinco’s U.S. division, Persian Acceptance, achieved new loans of $7.9 million U.S., its highest quarterly total since Carfinco acquired it in September 2013.

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