investment

TUPPERWARE BRANDS CORP., $74.04, New York symbol TUP, makes household products, including educational toys and plastic food and beverage containers. It also produces a range of cosmetics, bath oils and fragrances. This week, the company reported quarterly earnings that matched the consensus estimate. However, weaker sales in developed markets like North America and Europe prompted it to cut its full-year sales and earnings projections. That caused the stock to fall 12%. Excluding unusual items, Tupperware’s earnings declined 4.1% in the three months ended June 28, 2014, to $75.1 million from $78.3 million a year earlier. Per-share earnings rose 0.7%, to $1.47 from $1.46, on fewer shares outstanding....

Beginning today, we launch Our Top U.S. Stocks, a feature which will appear every Thursday as our daily post. We are also launching a new approach—you will get our specific advice on whether to buy, hold or sell 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 covered in our newsletter on U.S. investing, Wall Street Stock Forecaster. On Monday, look for our new weekly feature on stocks we believe investors should avoid, A Stock to Sell. YUM! BRANDS INC. (New York symbol YUM; www.yum.com) has 40,324 fast-food restaurants in over 110 countries. Its main banners include KFC (fried chicken), Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Mexican food). Franchisees operate 80% of these outlets....

ALLIED PROPERTIES REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $34.31 (Toronto symbol AP.UN; Units outstanding: 69.5 million; Market cap: $2.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 4.1%; www.alliedpropertiesreit.com) owns 138 office buildings, mostly in major Canadian cities. These mainly Class I properties contain over 9.9 million square feet of leasable area.

Class I refers to 19th- and early-20th-century light industrial buildings that have been converted to retail space. They usually feature exposed beams, interior brick and hardwood floors.

The trust bought $400 million worth of properties in 2012 and $182.4 million more in 2013. So far in 2014, it has added five more for $101.7 million.

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MANULIFE FINANCIAL $21.67 (Toronto symbol MFC; Shares outstanding: 1.9 billion; Market cap: $40.2 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 2.4%; www.manulife.ca) sells life and other forms of insurance, as well as mutual funds and investment management services. The company operates globally and has $635 billion of assets under management.

In the three months ended March 31, 2014, Manulife’s earnings per share rose 15.6%, to $0.37 from $0.32 a year earlier. Revenue gained 2.1%, to $9.0 billion from $8.8 billion, as its assets under management grew and its foreign operations benefited from favourable currency movements.

Manulife has made substantial progress cutting its U.S. insurance business’s exposure to unpredictable stock markets and interest rates.

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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 specific stock market advice 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: “If you rely on one or two simple rules to cut your risk when you pick stocks, you may simply cut your profits.” Investors are always looking for simple ways to avoid risk in their investments. They want a rule that is easy to follow, foolproof, and compact enough to fit on a T-shirt....

RIOCAN REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $27 (Toronto symbol REI.UN; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Units outstanding: 304.8 million; Market cap: $8.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 5.9; Dividend yield: 5.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.riocan.com) continues to work with joint venture partners to buy mixed-use properties, particularly in urban areas. This way, the trust can apply its expertise to the retail portion of these developments, while leaving the residential and office aspects to its partners.

In the first quarter of 2014, RioCan paid $138 million for interests in six properties under development. It also bought two existing retail properties for $21 million.

Thanks to these moves, RioCan’s cash flow rose 2.4% in the quarter, to $127 million, or $0.42 a unit. A year earlier, its cash flow was $124 million, or $0.41 a unit. The lower Canadian dollar also boosted its U.S. properties’ contribution.

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Investor shorthand can help you think about and talk about large blocks of investment information. But it may also lead you to make associations and come to conclusions that can cost you money. For example, think about the common investor shorthand term, low-p/e stocks. It encompasses four statistics: price per share; per-share earnings; the p/e (the ratio of a stock’s price to its per-share earnings); and low p/e (which suggests a normal range exists for p/e’s generally, or for p/e’s of stocks of a particular type or description, and that these stocks are near the lower half of the range). Some investors, beginners especially, see special appeal in stocks with low p/e’s. They jump to the conclusion that the p/e is low because the “p” or stock is low, and that this is a sure sign of a bargain. When you use that term to generalize, however, you can lose sight of the fact that p/e’s can be (or can seem) low for all sorts of reasons....

BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA $73 (Toronto symbol BNS; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.2 billion; Market cap: $87.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.0; Dividend yield: 3.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.scotiabank.com) is the third-largest bank in Canada, with $791.8 billion of assets.

The bank continues to expand overseas. It recently agreed to pay $300 million for 51% of the credit card operations of Cencosud S.A., Chile’s largest retailer. The deal will make the bank Chile’s third-largest credit card issuer.

In the quarter ended April 30, 2014, Bank of Nova Scotia’s earnings rose 13.9%, to $1.8 billion, or $1.39 a share. A year earlier, it earned $1.6 billion, or $1.22 a share. Revenue gained 9.8%, to $5.7 billion from $5.2 billion.

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ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $79 (Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $110.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.0; Dividend yield: 3.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rbc.com) is Canada’s second-largest bank, with $895.9 billion of assets.

Royal recently completed the sale of its moneylosing Jamaican operations, which included 13 branches. The bank will record a one-time loss of $97 million on the deal, up from its earlier estimate of a $60-million loss.

Meanwhile, Royal earned $2.2 billion in the quarter ended April 30, 2014, up 15.3% from $1.9 billion a year ago. Per-share earnings rose 17.6%, to $1.47 from $1.25, on fewer shares outstanding.

Overall revenue gained 7.2%, to $8.3 billion from $7.7 billion. Revenue at Royal’s retail banking division (which supplied 40% of the total) gained 5.1%, thanks to stronger loan demand in Canada. The lower Canadian dollar also improved the results of its U.S. and Caribbean operations.

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DragonWave Inc. (symbol DWI on Toronto; www.dragonwaveinc.com) makes equipment that wirelessly transmits broadband voice, video and other data. That lets customers send and receive data in places that fibre optic networks haven’t yet reached. The company’s clients are mainly high-speed Internet and wireless providers. It also sells to organizations that operate their own networks, such as universities, hospitals, cities and businesses. DragonWave prefers to focus on product design and support; it outsources most of its manufacturing to other firms....