maple leaf foods

A key element of our investment advice is to spread your money across most if not all the five economic sectors: Finance; Utilities; Consumer Goods & Services; Resources & Commodities; and Manufacturing & Industry. That way, you avoid overloading yourself with stocks that are about to slump simply because of industry conditions or changes in investor fashion.


Generally speaking, stocks in the Resources & Commodities sector and the Manufacturing & Industry sector expose you to above-average volatility....

A key element of our investment advice is to spread your money across most if not all the five economic sectors: Finance; Utilities; Consumer Goods & Services; Resources & Commodities; and Manufacturing & Industry. That way, you avoid overloading yourself with stocks that are about to slump simply because of industry conditions or changes in investor fashion.


Generally speaking, stocks in the Resources & Commodities sector and the Manufacturing & Industry sector expose you to above-average volatility....

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $28 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 134.6 million; Market cap: $3.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; Dividend yield: 1.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaffoods.com) sells fresh and prepared meats under the Maple Leaf and Schneider brands.


Thanks to savings from a restructuring plan, including shifting meat production to newer, more-efficient plants, Maple Leaf earned $31.8 million in the third quarter of 2016....

These three Consumer sector companies continue to benefit from improving efficiency. That has spurred their earnings and stock prices. We still like the outlook for all of them, but they’re now expensive in relation to their immediate prospects.

RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC....

The trust is once again focused on Canada’s largest real estate markets after selling all of its malls in the U.S. The proceeds will bolster cash flow and protect high-yield distributions to unitholders.



RIOCAN REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST (Toronto symbol REI.UN; www.riocan.com) owns all or part of 303 shopping centres in Canada, including 16 under development....

Maple Leaf Foods raised its earnings—and share buybacks—in the latest quarter through higher pricing, but its new focus on healthier meats should also boost future sales.

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $30 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 134.6 million; Market cap: $4.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.3; Dividend yield: 1.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaffoods.com) is Canada’s largest food processor. It mainly sells its products, including fresh and prepared meats and poultry, under the Maple Leaf and Schneider brands. The company recently completed a multi-year restructuring plan that involved closing older meat processing plants and shifting their operations to newer, more efficient ones. Thanks to the success of this plan, Maple Leaf earned $42.3 million, or $0.31 a share, in the three months ended March 31, 2016. The results are a big improvement over the $2.9 million, or $0.02, it lost a year earlier. If you factor out unusual items, earnings per share jumped to $0.28 from $0.05....

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $30 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 134.6 million; Market cap: $4.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.3; Dividend yield: 1.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaffoods.com) is Canada’s largest food processor. It mainly sells its products, including fresh and prepared meats and poultry, under the Maple Leaf and Schneider brands. The company recently completed a multi-year restructuring plan that involved closing older meat processing plants and shifting their operations to newer, more efficient ones. Thanks to the success of this plan, Maple Leaf earned $42.3 million, or $0.31 a share, in the three months ended March 31, 2016. The results are a big improvement over the $2.9 million, or $0.02, it lost a year earlier. If you factor out unusual items, earnings per share jumped to $0.28 from $0.05....

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $27 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 134.6 million; Market cap: $3.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; Dividend yield: 1.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaffoods.com) is Canada’s largest foodprocessing company. It mainly sells its products, including fresh and prepared meats and poultry, under the Maple Leaf and Schneider brands. The company will soon complete a multi-year restructuring that involves closing older meatprocessing plants and shifting their operations to newer, more efficient ones. Thanks to these new plants, Maple Leaf earned $0.58 a share in 2015 compared to its loss of $0.56 in 2014. Sales rose 4.3%, to $3.3 billion from $3.2 billion. That’s partly because the lower Canadian dollar boosted the contribution of its exports to customers in the U.S. and Japan. Without exchange rates, sales gained 2.6%....

These two leading food makers continue to benefit from the recent drop in the Canadian dollar, which enhances the value of their overseas sales. However, both trade at high multiples to their projected earnings. That could hurt their share prices if the dollar rebounds. SAPUTO INC. $40 (Toronto symbol SAP; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 392.9 million; Market cap: $15.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.5; Dividend yield: 1.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.saputo.com) is Canada’s largest producer of dairy products, including milk, butter and cheese. It also operates dairies in the U.S., Australia and Argentina. The company’s sales rose 2.8% in its fiscal 2016 third quarter, which ended December 31, 2015, to $2.9 billion from $2.8 billion a year earlier. It gets 65% of its sales from outside Canada, and the lower Canadian dollar added $261 million to the latest quarter’s sales. Lower selling prices for cheese and butter cut sales by $191 million....