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FRONTIER COMMUNICATIONS CORP. $5.95 (Nasdaq symbol FTR; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 1.0 billion; Market cap: $6.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.2; Dividend yield: 6.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.frontier.com) sells phone, Internet and TV services to 3.1 million customers in 27 states.

The company recently agreed to pay $2.0 billion for AT&T’s traditional phone business in Connecticut. These operations sell phone, high-speed Internet and digital TV service to over 900,000 customers.

Frontier expects to close the deal by the end of 2014. The move should increase its annual revenue by 26% and its operating earnings by 18%.

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ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND CO., $44 (New York symbol ADM; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 654.5 million; Market cap: $28.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.3; Dividend yield: 2.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.adm.com) processes corn, wheat, soybeans, canola, flax seed, peanuts, cocoa and other crops into a wide variety of food ingredients, such as flour, oils and sweeteners. It is also the largest maker of ethanol from corn in the U.S.

The company is making good progress with its plan to improve its efficiency and sell less-profitable businesses. As a result, it now expects these moves to cut its annual costs by $400 million by the end of this year, up from its earlier goal of $200 million. To put these figures in context, Archer Daniels earned $1.3 billion, or $2.02 a share, in 2013.

Archer Daniels Midland is a buy.

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CHEVRON CORP. $123 (New York symbol CVX; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 1.9 billion; Market cap: $233.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; Dividend yield: 3.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.chevron.com) plans to increase production at its Permian shale oil properties in west Texas by two-thirds, to 250,000 barrels a day, by 2020. That’s equal to 9.7% of its overall production in the first quarter of 2014.

Moreover, the company does not have to pay royalties to landholders on over half of its Permian holdings, which will make these properties more profitable.

In addition, Chevron raised its dividend by 7.0%. The new annual rate of $4.28 a share yields 3.5%.

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MOLSON COORS BREWING CO. $64 (New York symbol TAP; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 184.8 million; Market cap: $11.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.9; Dividend yield: 2.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.molsoncoors.com) is the world’s fifth-largest brewer by volume.

Beer sales are rising slowly in developed regions like North America. That’s why Molson Coors bought StarBev, which owns nine breweries in central and eastern Europe, for $3.5 billion in June 2012.

The company continues to do a good job of cutting StarBev’s costs and making it more efficient.

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DIAGEO PLC ADRs $126 (New York symbol DEO; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; ADRs outstanding: 627.8 million; Market cap: $79.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 4.2; Dividend yield: 2.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.diageo.com) is the world’s largest premium alcoholic beverage company. Its major brands include Guinness stout, Smirnoff vodka, Johnnie Walker whisky and Captain Morgan rum.

The company recently offered to buy a further 26% of United Spirits, India’s largest distiller. This publicly traded business also imports and distributes alcoholic drinks made by companies outside of India.

Diageo’s offer is worth $1.9 billion. If successful, its stake would rise to 54.8%.

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PEPSICO INC. $87 (New York symbol PEP; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 1.5 billion; Market cap: $130.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.0; Dividend yield: 3.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.pepsico.com) is the world’s second-largest soft drink maker after Coca-Cola. It also makes other products, such as Frito-Lay snack foods, Gatorade sports drinks, Tropicana fruit juices and Quaker Oats cereals.

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about the health effects of soft drinks, as well as potato chips and other snacks. The company continues to develop more nutritious alternatives in response.

For example, it owns the exclusive soft drink rights to a new type of sweetener called Sweetmyx, which lets food makers use less sugar in their products. At the same time, PepsiCo is cutting salt and fat from its foods.

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NVIDIA CORP. $19 (Nasdaq symbol NVDA; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 558.0 million; Market cap: $10.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.6; Yield: 1.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.nvidia.com) earned $166.1 million in the quarter ended April 27, 2014. That’s up 45.9% from $113.8 million a year ago. Per-share earnings jumped 61.1%, to $0.29 from $0.18, on fewer shares outstanding.

Sales rose 15.5%, to $1.1 billion from $954.7 million, thanks to strong demand for Nvidia’s new high-end video chips. However, it faces strong competition from larger chip makers as it expands into new markets, like mobile devices and data centres.

Nvidia is a hold.

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ADOBE SYSTEMS INC. $65 (Nasdaq symbol ADBE; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 497.7 million; Market cap: $32.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 8.3; No dividends paid since June 2005; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.adobe.com) earned $151.3 million, or $0.30 a share, in its fiscal 2014 first quarter, which ended February 28, 2014. That’s down 14.9% from $177.9 million, or $0.35, a year ago. Revenue fell 0.8%, to $1.00 billion from $1.01 billion.

The declines are mainly because Adobe is now selling its Creative Cloud package of photo-editing and desktop-publishing programs as a subscription instead of a one-time purchase. That hurts the company’s short-term growth, but it should provide stable revenue streams as more users switch over. Subscriptions now supply over half of Adobe’s revenue.

The company spends 21% of its revenue on research, which hurts its earnings. That’s partly why the stock trades at a high 59.1 times the $1.10 a share that Adobe will likely earn in fiscal 2014. A high p/e increases the risk of a sudden price drop if its growth stalls. As well, Adobe mainly serves customers in cyclical businesses, like publishing.

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GOOGLE INC. $562 (Nasdaq symbol GOOG; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 674.5 million; Market cap: $379.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 6.1; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.google.com) recently handed out its new class C non-voting shares to its class A (one vote per share) and class B (10 votes per share) shareholders. Investors received one class C share for each stock held, for an effective 2-for-1 split.

The new class C shares trade on Nasdaq under the GOOG symbol, while the class A shares ($570), now trade under the new GOOGL symbol.

If voting and non-voting shares trade for roughly the same price, you are better off buying the voting shares. That’s because the voting shares sometimes go on to trade at a premium, possibly due to buying by a shareholder who is only seeking to acquire a control position, or because institutions refuse to buy non-voters.

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MICROSOFT CORP. $40 (Nasdaq symbol MSFT; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 8.3 billion; Market cap: $332.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 4.1; Dividend yield: 2.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.microsoft.com) is the world’s largest software company. It went into business in 1975 and grew rapidly over the next 25 years as its Windows operating system dominated the personal computer market. About 90% of the world’s computers now use the Windows operating system.

In the late 1980s, the company launched its Office suite of business programs, including a word processor (Word), spreadsheets (Excel) and slide presentations (PowerPoint). Office accounts for over 90% of this market.

Microsoft also controls about 75% of the market for software that runs corporate network servers. That helps support sales of Windows and Office, because businesses prefer to have their servers and employees’ computers running the same software. This compatibility makes it easier for users to upgrade their software and protect sensitive data.

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CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAY CO. (Toronto symbol CNR; www.cn.ca) operates Canada’s largest railway. Its 32,350-kilometre network stretches across the country and through the U.S. Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to strong shipping volumes in the wake of the recession, CN’s revenue rose 43.5%, from $7.4 billion in 2009 to $10.6 billion in 2013....

We think most conservative investors could hold up to 10% of their portfolios in foreign stocks. One way to do that is to buy carefully chosen exchange traded funds (ETFs) that have an overseas focus. The best ETFs offer very low management fees and well-diversified, tax-efficient portfolios of high-quality stocks. Today we examine two international ETFs covered regularly in Canadian Wealth Advisor....

Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific advice about stock picks 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 asked us about one of the few major pharmaceutical stocks based in Canada. Valeant Pharmaceuticals was purchased in 2010 by Biovail, then Canada’s largest pharmaceutical firm, and the new company adopted the Valeant name. Valeant is making headlines with its hostile takeover bid for U.S. drug maker Allergan, the maker of the cosmetic drug Botox. ...

DEVON ENERGY CORP. (New York symbol DVN; www.dvn.com) is one of the largest U.S.-based oil and natural gas explorers and producers. Its production mix is 57% gas and 43% oil. In 2011, Devon sold all of its international and Gulf of Mexico properties, which it saw as risky and expensive to develop. The company aimed to focus on its North American projects, which include conventional production, Texas shale oil and Alberta oil sands....

Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you advice on the stock market and other investment topics that will help you develop a successful approach to investing. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental tip and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “In theory, there is nothing wrong with hedge funds, but in practice it’s much more difficult to make money shorting bad stocks than it is buying good ones.”...

Natural gas prices are now at $4.72 U.S. per thousand cubic feet, up 159% from their low of $1.82 in April 2012. The best low-risk way to profit in natural gas is to invest in companies that are steadily increasing their production and cash flows. Here are two producers we cover in our newsletter on safety-conscious investing, Canadian Wealth Advisor. Note: ARC Resources has just released its first-quarter results and these will be reviewed in an upcoming issue of Canadian Wealth Advisor....

We’ve had great success with companies spun off from larger parent firms in the past few years. That’s mainly because spinoffs let both companies focus on their already well-established businesses. As well, a parent will only hand out a subsidiary’s shares to its own investors if it’s confident the spinoff will benefit both companies. Last week, we covered a spinoff that has been successful so far, Mondelez (see the article here). This week we examine the company that spun it off, Kraft Foods. We cover both of these stocks in our advisory on U.S. investing, Wall Street Stock Forecaster....

Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific advice about buying 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 one of Canada’s three big grocery chains. Already the owner of Sobeys, Empire made a major acquisition late last year when it added the Canadian stores of U.S. chain Safeway. The deal gave the company a much larger presence in Western Canada to offset its concentration of Sobeys stores in eastern Canada. Pat examines the company’s business with Safeway on board and assesses the rewards and potential hidden risks of this big acquisition. ...

ENERFLEX LTD. $17.15 (Toronto symbol EFX; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (403-387-6377; www.enerflex.com; Shares outstanding: 78.3 million; Market cap:
$1.3 billion; Dividend yield: 1.8%) rents and sells equipment and services for natural gas production, including compression and processing plants, refrigeration equipment and power generators.

The company has a strong position in three expanding markets: U.S. and Canadian shale gas; Australian natural gas from coal beds; and conventional Middle Eastern natural gas, most of which gets converted to liquefied natural gas (LNG) for shipping worldwide.

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TOROMONT INDUSTRIES LTD. $26.96 (Toronto symbol TIH; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (416-667-5511; www.toromont.com; Shares outstanding: 76.9 million; Market cap: $2.1 billion; Dividend yield: 2.2%) distributes a broad range of industrial equipment, including machinery made by Caterpillar Inc. It also makes refrigeration systems through its CIMCO division.

The company completed the spinoff of Enerflex Ltd. (see right) in July 2011. Shareholders received shares of both the new Toromont Industries and Enerflex.

In the three months ended March 31, 2014, Toromont’s revenue fell slightly, to $311.7 million from $313.1 million a year earlier.

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AEROPOSTALE $4.68 (New York symbol ARO; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (646-485-5410; www.aeropostale.com; Shares outstanding: 78.5 million; Market cap: $378.4 million; No dividends paid) is undertaking a number of major initiatives to increase its sales and profits.

These moves are in response to the slow U.S. economy, which has increased the unemployment rate among teenagers, hurting sales at teen retailers like Aeropostale.

In the three months ended February 1, 2014, Aeropostale’s sales fell 16.0%, to $670.0 million from $797.7 million a year earlier. Same-store sales declined 15%. It lost $70.3 million, or $0.90 a share, compared to loss of $671,000, or $0.01.

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ALIMENTATION COUCHE-TARD $29.82 (Toronto symbol ATD.B: TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (1-800-361-2612; www.couche-tard.com; Shares outstanding: 538.2 million; Market cap: $17.1 billion; Dividend yield: 0.4%) has split its shares on a 3-for-1 basis.

When a company’s stock price goes up, it has an incentive to split the stock to make it seem cheaper to investors, who may then buy more. This can make the stock more liquid than if it refrained from splits and let its share price go to uncommonly high levels.

Alimentation Couche-Tard is a buy.

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SYMANTEC CORP. $21.41 (Nasdaq symbol SYMC; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (1-408-517-8000; www.symantec.com; Shares outstanding: 691.6 million; Market cap: $14.7 billion; Dividend yield: 2.8%) reports that its revenue fell 5.6% in its fiscal 2014 fourth quarter, which ended March 28, 2014, to $1.65 billion from $1.75 billion a year earlier.

However, earnings per share rose 6.8%, to $0.47 from $0.44, mainly due to savings from a new restructuring plan that includes job cuts and simplifying the company’s product lines.

Symantec now expects to earn $1.84 to $1.92 a share in fiscal 2015, which is higher than the consensus estimate of $1.83. The stock trades at just 11.4 times the midpoint of that range, mainly due to investor uncertainty after Symantec fired its CEO over the slow progress of its restructuring.

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SHERRITT INTERNATIONAL $4.63 (Toronto symbol S; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (1-800-704-6698; www.sherritt.com; Shares outstanding: 297.3 million; Market cap: $1.4 billion; Dividend yield: 0.9%) has fended off activist investor George Armoyan’s attempt to put three of his nominees on its nine-person board of directors.

Meanwhile, Armoyan has put forward a number of proposals for Sherritt to cut costs, reduce its debt and better align what he sees as the interests of shareholders, management and the board directors.

Even though he lost the board vote, Armoyan’s ongoing involvement, and his 5% interest in the company, should keep drawing investor attention to Sherritt’s strong long-term prospects. Sherritt is already putting a number of his proposals in place.

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MAJOR DRILLING $8.48 (Toronto symbol MDI; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (1-866-264-3986; www.majordrilling.com; Shares outstanding: 79.2 million; Market cap: $672.9 million; Dividend yield: 2.4%) is a large contract-drilling firm that mainly serves the mining industry.

In the three months ended January 31, 2014, Major’s revenue fell 41.7%, to $71.8 million from $123.3 million a year earlier. The company’s loss also widened to $12.8 million, or $0.16 a share, from $4.3 million, or $0.05. The latest earnings included a $3.3-million foreign exchange loss.

Many of Major’s large- and medium-sized mining customers, particularly gold companies, slowed their drilling activity in the latest quarter, and orders from junior miners dropped sharply.

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