PepsiCo Inc.
New York symbol PEP, is the world’s second-largest maker of soft drinks after Coca-Cola. Other businesses include Frito-Lay snack foods, Tropicana fruit juices and Quaker Oats.
Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment-management companies. The group manages over $1 trillion U.S. in 150 mutual funds. Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S., because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces. Canadians can, however, buy Vanguard exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that trade on U.S. stock exchanges. We don’t recommend all of Vanguard’s ETFs, but here are two we do see as low-fee buys:...
HEWLETT-PACKARD CO., $38.00, New York symbol HPQ, wants to buy California-based 3PAR Inc. (New York symbol PAR), which makes data-storage systems for large corporations and government agencies. Hewlett is offering $30.00 a share, or a total of $1.9 billion, for 3PAR. That tops an earlier offer of $27.00 a share from rival computer maker Dell Inc. (Nasdaq symbol DELL). This is small purchase for Hewlett. The price is just 2% of its $88.7-billion market cap (or the value of all of its outstanding shares). But adding 3PAR would expand Hewlett’s expertise in the rapidly growing field of “cloud computing.” That’s where data and software reside on one or more centralized computer servers. Users connect to these servers over the Internet through a variety of devices. By centralizing data and programs, cloud computing cuts a client’s costs and improves security....
VANGUARD GROWTH ETF $52.22 (New York symbol VUG; buy or sell through brokers) aims to track the MSCI U.S. Prime Market Growth Index, a broadly diversified index that mainly consists of stocks of large U.S. companies. The fund has an MER of just 0.14%. The $17.1-billion fund’s top holdings are Microsoft, IBM, Apple Inc., Cisco Systems, Wal-Mart Stores, Google Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Oracle Corp., Philip Morris International and PepsiCo. Vanguard Growth ETF is broken down by economic segment as follows: Information Technologies (35.0%), Health Care (13.3%), Consumer Discretionary (12.8%), Consumer Staples (11.0%), Industrials (8.8%), Energy (7.6%), Financials (6.4%), Materials (4.1%), Telecommunication Services (0.7%) and Utilities (0.3%)....
Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment-management companies. It manages over $1 trillion U.S. in 150 mutual funds. Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S., because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces. Canadians can, however, buy Vanguard exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that trade on U.S. stock exchanges. We don’t recommend all of Vanguard’s ETFs, but here are two that we do see as low-fee buys:...
PEPSICO INC. $61 (New York symbol PEP; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 1.6 billion; Market cap: $97.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.2; Dividend yield: 3.2%; WSSF Rating: Above Average) will invest $2.5 billion in China over the next three years. To put this cost in perspective, PepsiCo earned $1.4 billion, or $0.89 a share, in the three months ended March 20, 2010. The company will use the money to build new soft-drink and snack-food plants. It will also spend more on research and advertising. These moves should help PepsiCo expand on its roughly 7% share of China’s soft-drink market. Rival Coca-Cola has about 15% of this market. PepsiCo is a buy....
The Coca-Cola Company, $54.91, symbol KO on New York (Shares outstanding: 2.3 billion; Market cap: $126.6 billion), is the world’s largest beverage company. It distributes its major brands (including Coca-Cola, diet Coke, Sprite, Barq’s, Mr. PiBB, Fanta, Fresca, Dasani, Evian, Danone, Powerade and Minute Maid) through bottlers around the world. Coke gets roughly 75% of its sales from outside of North America. In the three months ended December 31, 2009, Coke’s revenue rose 5.3%, to $7.5 billion from $7.1 billion a year earlier. Earnings rose 54.7%, to $1.5 billion, or $0.66 a share, from $995 million, or $0.43 a share. Worldwide sales volumes rose 5%, led by 6% growth outside of North America. That offset 1% sales in North America. Coke is now buying the North American operations of its largest bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises, for $12 billion. The move follows rival PepsiCo’s $7.8-billion purchase of its two largest North American bottlers. The purchase will let Coke cut costs. It will also give it more control over its North American distribution channels....
PEPSICO INC. $66 (New York symbol PEP; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 1.6 billion; Market cap: $105.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.4; Dividend yield: 2.7%; WSSF Rating: Above Average) is developing a new type of salt that contains less sodium than regular salt. That will help it achieve its goal of cutting the sodium in its potato chips by 25% over the next five years. PepsiCo also aims to use less sugar in its soft drinks. Healthier products should help PepsiCo offset slowing sales in North America, particularly as baby boomers consume fewer soft drinks and snack foods as they grow older. PepsiCo is a buy.
PEPSICO INC., $66.56, New York symbol PEP, rose 2% this week after the company raised its dividend and announced a new share buyback plan. PepsiCo’s new quarterly dividend is $0.48 a share. That’s up 6.7% from $0.45. The new annual rate of $1.92 yields 2.9%. The company also plans to buy back up to $15 billion of its common shares over the next three years. That’s equal to 14% of its $104.5-billion market cap....
VANGUARD GROWTH ETF $51.35 (New York symbol VUG; buy or sell through brokers) aims to track the MSCI U.S. Prime Market Growth Index, a broadly diversified index that mainly consists of stocks of large U.S. companies. The fund has an MER of just 0.15%. The $15.7-billion fund’s top holdings are Microsoft, IBM, Apple Inc., Cisco Systems, Wal-Mart Stores, Google Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Oracle Corp., Philip Morris International and PepsiCo. Vanguard Growth ETF is broken down by economic segment as follows: Information Technologies (36.1%), Health Care (13.8%), Consumer Staples (11.3%), Consumer Discretionary (11.8%), Industrials (8.0%), Energy (7.5%), Financials (5.9%), Materials (4.5%), Telecommunication Services (0.8%) and Utilities (0.3%)....
Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment-management companies. It manages over $1 trillion U.S. in 150 mutual funds. Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S. because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces. Canadians can, however, buy Vanguard exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are listed on U.S. stock exchanges. We don’t recommend all of the Vanguard index funds, but here are two that we do see as low-fee buys:...