investment

CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY LTD., $209.09, Toronto symbol CP, gained 6% this week after reporting better than expected quarterly results. In the three months ended June 30, 2014, CP’s earnings jumped 47.2%, to $371 million, or $2.11 a share, beating the consensus estimate of $2.09. A year earlier, the company earned $252 million, or $1.43 a share. The higher earnings mainly resulted from CP’s plan to improve its efficiency with new locomotives, better tracks and software that optimizes train loads and speeds....

The Successful Investor organization was something of a pioneer, in print and online, in the Canadian investment advisory newsletter publishing industry. I launched the company in 1994 with one goal in mind: to give Canadian investors a source of investment advice (and, ultimately, portfolio management) that would differ from the alternatives in one key measure. Our Successful Investor service is free of the conflicts of interest that warp other sources of investment advice. I expected a big market for this kind of service. After all, our best business prospects have always been informed investors who understand that conflicts of interest can taint investment advice and make it costly and dangerous to investors....

The U.S. Federal Reserve has indicated that it will probably end its bond-purchasing program, known as quantitative easing, as early as October 2014. After that, the Fed may raise interest rates, particularly if inflation becomes a problem. Higher interest rates in the U.S. would likely push up rates in Canada and elsewhere, slowing demand for mortgages and car loans. However, Canada’s big banks continue to expand into feebased services, like wealth management, which are less sensitive to interest rates. We continue to like all five banks, but we prefer TD and Bank of Nova Scotia for new buying....

Thinking of buying Aecon Group Inc. stocks. Get answers why or why not.

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 advice on successful investing. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental tip and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Tip of the week: “With short selling, you have to balance the slim chance of making money fast against the greater probability that you will lose money—possibly a lot of it.” There are plenty of references in the financial media to “shorts”—those seeking to profit from stocks that fall in price. But this strategy comes with considerable risk....

Here’s the text of the quarterly letter I recently sent to our Portfolio Management clients: “We’ve been managing investment portfolios for 15 years, and doing a good job of it, judging by our investment performance, the clients we have attracted, and the funds they have entrusted to our care. Many of our clients credit our performance to our stock-picking ability. Stock-picking enters into it, of course. But I’d say our results also owe a great deal to our use of what I call the “Successful Investor method”. I call it that because it’s based on what I’ve learned over the years from people who have actually succeeded as investors. (For the same reason, I chose “Successful Investor” as the name for our organization and our flagship newsletter.)...

Stornoway Diamond Corp., $0.71, symbol SWY on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 175.0 million; Market cap: $124.3 million; www.stornowaydiamonds.com), remains focused on bringing its Renard diamond project in Quebec into production. Renard has all necessary regulatory approvals, and the company has just arranged $944 million of financing to build the mine. The agreement lays out a series of loans, including $360 million U.S. from the Orion Mine Finance Group, a mining-focused private equity business; $220 million from Ressources Québec, a subsidiary of the province’s investment agency; and $105 million from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, a large institutional fund manager. The agreement also includes a public share offering and an equipment financing facility with Caterpillar Financial....

LEON’S FURNITURE LTD. (Toronto symbol LNF; www.leons.ca) has steadily opened new stores, growing from 27 in 2003 to 78 today. But the company more than quadrupled in size overnight with its March 28, 2013, purchase of its main rival, The Brick, for $700 million. The Brick has 228 outlets across Canada. Leon’s and The Brick will continue to operate as separate chains. As a result of the acquisition, Leon’s sales jumped to $426.0 million in the three months ended March 31, 2014, from $162.5 million a year earlier. Earnings fell sharply, to $818,000, or $0.01 a share, from $5.4 million, or $0.08....

BROADRIDGE FINANCIAL SERVICES INC. $41 (New York symbol BR; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 120.7 million; Market cap: $4.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.0; Dividend yield: 2.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.broadridge.com) began trading on April 2, 2007, after former parent Automatic Data Processing handed out Broadridge stock to its own investors as a special dividend.

The company serves the investment industry in three main areas: investor communications, securities processing and transaction clearing. It processes 85% of all proxy votes in the U.S.

Broadridge earned $55.1 million in its fiscal 2014 third quarter, which ended March 31, 2014. That’s up 11.3% from $49.5 million a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 12.8%, to $0.44 from $0.39.

...

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.

...