public offering

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $22 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 140.8 million; Market cap: $3.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.0; Dividend yield: 1.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaf.ca) gets 8% of its revenue by exporting packaged meats to the U.S., and the lower Canadian dollar makes these products cheaper to American buyers. The weak dollar also makes imported meats more expensive in Canada. These benefits come while Maple Leaf takes steps to improve its long-term outlook, including a major restructuring involving closing older plants and shifting their operations to newer facilities. However, it could take a year or more before the company realizes the plan’s full benefits. Maple Leaf Foods is a hold....

BOMBARDIER INC., Toronto symbols BBD.A $1.75 and BBD.B $1.63, has denied media reports that it’s planning to merge its passenger-railcar business (Bombardier Transportation) with Germany-based Siemens AG. However, the company still plans to sell shares in Bombardier Transportation through an initial public offering later this year—though it will continue to own a majority stake. Bombardier will probably use the cash from this sale to pay down its $8.9-billion U.S. long-term debt, which is a high 315% of its $3.7-billion (Canadian) market cap....

Kina Securities plans to undertake an initial public offering and list on the Australian Securities Exchange and Papua New Guinea’s Port Moresby Stock Exchange. The IPO aims to raise $97 million Australian ($93 million Canadian), giving the company a $164-million (Australian) market cap. Kina is one of Papua New Guinea’s largest financial institutions, offering services such as fund management, investment advice, corporate consulting, custodian and trustee services, and financial planning, in addition to a stock brokerage. It has over $2.5 billion (Australian) under management. The company will use part of the IPO funds to buy the Papua New Guinea subsidiary of Malaysia’s Maybank. This business is Papua New Guinea’s fourth-largest bank, offering commercial banking and advisory services, mostly in the timber and fisheries industries....

Tucows, $38.60, symbol TC on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 11.0 million; Market cap: $404.8 million; www.tucows.com), provides network access, domain names and other Internet services, such as email hosting, through its OpenSRS division. OpenSRS manages over 14 million domain names, while the company’s Ting subsidiary offers mobile phone service to individuals and small businesses. In the three months ended March 31, 2015, Tucows’ revenue rose 17.6%, to $40.5 million from $34.4 million a year earlier (all figures except share price in U.S. dollars). Earnings per share jumped to $0.25 from $0.04....

GENERAL ELECTRIC CO., $28.51, New York symbol GE, rose 11% on Friday on news that it is selling most of its GE Capital subsidiary, which mainly provides loans to GE’s clients. The company has scaled back GE Capital over the past few years, after the division suffered big losses in the 2008/09 financial crisis. Under the plan, GE will sell most of GE Capital’s office buildings and real estate loans to a group of investors for $26.5 billion. That’s equal to 10% of GE’s $259.0-billion market cap (or the value of all of its outstanding shares)....

Alibaba Group Holding (ADR), $91.02, symbol BABA on New York (Shares outstanding: 2.5 billion; Market cap: $224.5 billion; www.alibaba.com), the huge Chinese e-commerce company, raised a total of $25 billion last fall, in its IPO or Initial Public Offering. That figure is a world record for a new issue. Alibaba’s new issue price was $68 a share, but it opened for public trading at $92, and moved up to $93.89, 38% above its new issue price. Since then, the company’s sales and earnings growth, although strong, has fallen short of expectations. In the three months ended December 31, 2014, Alibaba’s revenue rose 39.7%, to $4.22 billion from $3.02 billion. However, that was below the consensus estimate of $4.44 billion. It’s also slower than the company’s 54% sales growth in the 2014 third quarter. The company reports that its earnings per share, excluding one-time items, rose 13.5% in the latest quarter, to $0.81. That beat the consensus estimate of $0.74. However, the company’s earnings figures include a number of difficult-to-evaluate one-time items such as pre-IPO stock awards to employees and executives, and the amortization of intangible assets on newly acquired companies....

Yahoo! Inc., $48.38, symbol YHOO on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 947.4 million; Market cap: $46.8 billion; www.yahoo.com), offered one of the Internet’s first search engines when the company launched in 1994. Since then, it has become one of the Internet’s most popular destinations for content, search and navigational services. Yahoo’s sites also have a range of other features, including shopping and email. In July 2012, Yahoo appointed Marissa Mayer as president and CEO. Mayer joined Google in 1999 and helped develop many of that company’s most popular services. Before she left, she was a vice-president at Google....

Every Monday we now feature “A Stock to Sell” as our daily post. With every stock we recommend as a sell, we give you a full explanation of why we advise against investing in the stock at this time. EL POLLO LOCO (symbol LOCO on Nasdaq; www.elpolloloco.com), specializes in Mexican-style grilled chicken. El Pollo Loco means “the crazy chicken” in Spanish. The company fire-grills citrus-marinated chicken in front of its customers. El Pollo Loco first sold shares to the public and began trading on the Nasdaq exchange on Friday, July 25, 2014. The quick-serve restaurant chain raised $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO) of 7.1 million shares priced at $15 each....

El Pollo Loco, $33.22, symbol LOCO on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 35.9 million; Market cap: $1.3 billion; www.elpolloloco.com), specializes in Mexican-style grilled chicken. El Pollo Loco means “the crazy chicken” in Spanish. The company fire-grills citrus-marinated chicken in front of its customers. El Pollo Loco first sold shares to the public and began trading on the Nasdaq exchange on Friday, July 25, 2014. The quick-serve restaurant chain raised $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO) of 7.1 million shares priced at $15 each. The stock has more than doubled since its initial listing, and it continues to hit new highs....

Every Thursday we bring you “Our Top U.S. Stocks” as our daily post. In these posts, you’ll get our specific recommendation on 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. “Our Top U.S. Stocks” is part of our new approach offering you regular buy, hold and sell advice in our daily posts. Every week you get “A Stock to Sell” on Monday, “Best Canadian Stocks” on Tuesday and on Friday, our advice on one of the stocks our Inner Circle members have asked about in their weekly Question & Answer sessions. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. (New York symbol GE; www.ge.com) saw its shares drop from $42 in 2007 to under $6 in 2009, as the financial crisis caused big losses at its banking division. In response, the company decided to shrink this business’s assets to half of what they were before the recession. It expects to complete these cuts by the end of 2014....