amazon

ALIMENTATION COUCHE-TARD, $31.94, symbol ATD.B on Toronto, reported sharply higher sales and earnings in the latest quarter. The company is the largest convenience store operator in Canada, with over 2,000 outlets. It also has nearly 3,700 U.S. stores. The Canadian stores operate under the Couche-Tard and Mac’s banners, while the U.S. stores mainly use the Circle K brand. In the three months ended January 29, 2012, Couche-Tard’s earnings rose 24.7% to $86.8 million from $69.6 million a year earlier (all figures except share price in U.S. dollars). Earnings per share rose 28.9%, to $0.49 from $0.38, on fewer shares outstanding....

POWERSHARES QQQ ETF $61.02 (Nasdaq symbol QQQQ; buy or sell through brokers; www.invescopowershares.com), formerly called Nasdaq 100 Trust Shares, holds the stocks that represent the Nasdaq 100 Index. That index is made up of the 100 largest shares on the Nasdaq exchange, based on market cap.

The Nasdaq 100 Index contains shares of companies in a number of major industries, including computer hardware and software, telecommunications, retail/wholesale trade and biotechnology. It does not contain financial companies. The fund’s expenses are about 0.20% of its assets.

The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Apple, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Google, Cisco Systems, Intel, Amazon.com, Oracle Corp., Comcast Corp. and Amgen Inc.

...

WYNDHAM WORLDWIDE $42.99 (New York symbol WYN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (973-753-6000; www.wyndhamworldwide.com; Shares outstanding: 154.0 million; Market cap: $6.6 billion; Dividend yield: 2.1%) is one of the world’s largest hospitality companies, with 7,205 franchised hotels worldwide. Aside from Wyndham and Ramada, it owns a variety of other brands, including Days Inn, Super 8, Wingate, Baymont Inn & Suites, Microtel Inns & Suites, Hawthorn Suites, Howard Johnson, Travelodge and AmeriHost Inn. In addition to hotels, Wyndham manages vacation resorts, rental properties, luxury clubs and time-shares. Wyndham now has 100,000 vacation rental properties worldwide. This wide range of operations gives the company more consistent cash flow than most of its competitors, which mainly focus on hotels. In the three months ended December 31, 2011, Wyndham’s revenue rose 6.7%, to $1.0 billion from $937.0 million. The company gets most of its revenue from vacation rather than business travel, and vacation bookings rose in the latest quarter. That helped push up Wyndham’s occupancy rate by 3.8%. Before one-time items, earnings rose 2.2%, to $0.47 a share from $0.46. Wyndham continues to buy back its shares. In the latest quarter, it repurchased 6.7 million shares for $225 million. In all of 2011, it bought back 28.7 million shares for $902 million. The company has also raised its quarterly dividend by 53.3%, to $0.23 from $0.15. It now yields 2.1%....

AMAZON.COM $184.47 (Nasdaq symbol AMZN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (206-266-1000; www.amazon.com; Shares outstanding: 454.8 million; Market cap: $83.9 billion; No dividends paid) is a major online retailer. Books, music and videos make up about 40% of its sales. Other products, including electronics, computer games and toys, make up the other 60%. Amazon Marketplace lets other companies sell their products through Amazon’s websites.

In the three months ended December 31, 2011, Amazon’s earnings fell 57.5%, to $177 million, or $0.39 a share. A year earlier, it earned $416 million, or $0.93 a share. The decline came despite a 34.6% jump in sales, to $17.4 billion from $12.9 billion.

During the quarter, the company spent $862 million on “technology and content,” up 66.1% from $519 million a year earlier. That was the main reason for the lower earnings. This additional spending included investments in new models of its Kindle electronic book reader, including the Kindle Fire tablet computer.

...

RUGGEDCOM INC., $32.81, symbol RCM on Toronto, jumped 26% this week after it received a friendly takeover bid from Siemens Canada Ltd. Siemens is offering $33 a share in cash. The company is a subsidiary of giant German conglomerate Siemens AG. RuggedCom, which makes computer networking equipment that is used in harsh environments, was the target of a hostile takeover bid from Belden Inc., a U.S. cable and networking equipment maker. Belden recently reaffirmed its offer of $22 in cash for each RuggedCom share. RuggedCom’s board of directors has advised shareholders to accept Siemens’ offer....

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) may have a place in your portfolio. That’s because, unlike many other financial innovations, they don’t load you up with heavy management fees or tie you down with high redemption charges if you decide to get out of them. Instead, they give you a low-cost, flexible, convenient alternative to mutual funds. ETFs trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. Prices are quoted in newspaper stock tables and online. You’ll have to pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell ETFs. However, ETFs’ low management fees still give them a cost advantage over most conventional mutual funds. As well, shares are only added or removed when the underlying index changes. As a result of this low turnover, you won’t incur the regular capital gains bills generated by the yearly distributions most conventional mutual funds pay out to unitholders....

PLEASE NOTE: Next week, The Successful Investor, our newsletter that focuses on high-quality Canadian stocks, will reveal its #1 pick for 2012. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to profit. MACY’S INC., $34.56, New York symbol M, rose 7% this week after it reported better-than-expected sales for December 2011. Same-store sales during the month were 6.2% higher than in December 2010. That beat the consensus estimate of a 5% rise. The company now expects same-store sales for its full 2012 fiscal year, which ends January 31, 2012, to be 5.3% higher than fiscal 2011. That’s up from its earlier prediction of a gain of 4.8% to 5.0%....

HRT Participacoes em Petroleo S.A., $2.84, symbol HRP on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 4.6 million; Market cap: $13.1 million; www.hrt.com.br), is a Brazilian oil and gas exploration holding company that owns properties in Brazil’s Amazon region and off the coast of the southern African country of Namibia. HRT Participacoes was formed by a group of senior geoscientists and engineers who previously held positions at Petroleo Brasileiro SA. Its main listing is on the Brazilian stock exchange. The company chose its drilling targets offshore Namibia with a geological theory in mind. This is the theory that present-day continents once formed a single land mass or super-continent known as Pangea. This super-continent is thought to have broken up into pieces that became today’s existing continents. After the breakup, the pieces moved to their present locations, in a gradual process known as continental drift that began about 250 million years ago....

AMAZON.COM $211.99 (Nasdaq symbol AMZN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (206-266-1000; www.amazon.com; Shares outstanding: 461.0 million; Market cap: $97.7 billion; No dividends paid) reported sharply lower earnings in the latest quarter. In the three months ended September 30, 2011, Amazon’s earnings fell 72.7%, to $63 million, or $0.14 a share. A year earlier, it earned $231 million, or $0.51 a share. The decline came despite a 43.9% jump in sales, to $10.9 billion from $7.6 billion. During the quarter, the company spent $779 million on “technology and content,” up 74% from $442 million a year earlier. That was the main reason for the lower earnings....

TRANSCANADA CORP., $40.81, Toronto symbol TRP, fell 4% this week after the U.S. State Department said it wants the company to re-route its proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline around underground water tables in Nebraska. Keystone XL will pump oil from oil-sands projects in Alberta through Oklahoma to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. TransCanada had hoped to receive final approval for the project by the end of 2011, but finding an acceptable new route will take around 18 months. These delays would add to Keystone XL’s $7-billion U.S. cost, and might prompt oil shippers and refineries to cancel their commitments....