stock exchange

TELUS CORP. (Toronto symbols T $63 and T.A $62; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 325.8 million; Market cap: $20.4 billion; Priceto- sales ratio: 1.9; Dividend yield: 3.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.telus.com) continues to expand its wireless business. Its 7.4 million subscribers across Canada now supply 53% of its revenue and 63% of earnings.

The remaining 47% of Telus’s revenue and 37% of its earnings come from its wireline division, which mainly consists of 3.5 million traditional phone customers in B.C., Alberta and eastern Quebec. This business also includes 1.3 million Internet users and 595,000 TV customers.

Telus’s revenue rose 6.4%, from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $9.7 billion in 2008, mainly on rising wireless demand. Revenue slipped 0.5%, to $9.6 billion, in 2009 because Telus cut its prices to compete with new entrants in the wireless market. However, revenue rebounded to $9.8 billion in 2010, and to $10.4 billion in 2011.

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Over the past 10 years, Telus has spent over $16.5 billion on upgrades to its telecommunication networks. Thanks to these investments, wireless subscribers jumped to 7.4 million from 2.6 million, while high-speed Internet users soared to 1.2 million from 215,000. These gains have helped it offset a drop in traditional phone customers, to 3.5 million from 5.0 million. These upgrades are the main reason why Telus’s stock has soared 480% for us in the past decade. Even so, we feel it still has lots of growth ahead. That’s because ongoing investments in its networks will help Telus attract more new customers. TELUS CORP. (Toronto symbols T $63 and T.A $62; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 325.8 million; Market cap: $20.4 billion; Priceto- sales ratio: 1.9; Dividend yield: 3.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.telus.com) continues to expand its wireless business. Its 7.4 million subscribers across Canada now supply 53% of its revenue and 63% of earnings....

Pat McKeough responds to many personal questions on specific stocks and other investment topics from the members of his Inner Circle. Every week, his comments and recommendations on the most intriguing questions of the past week go out to all Inner Circle members. And each week, we offer you one of the highlights from these Q&A sessions. While we reserve our buy-hold-sell advice for Inner Circle members, these excerpts provide a great deal of information and analysis on stocks we’ve covered for the Inner Circle. This week, an Inner Circle member asked a question about one of China’s biggest budget hotel operators. In response, Pat gives an assessment of the potential rewards—and many risk factors—that come with investing in China. ...

7 Days Group (ADR), $9.48, symbol SVN on New York (Shares outstanding: 50.0 million; Market cap: $474.0 million; www.7daysinn.cn), is China’s second-biggest budget hotel operator, behind Home Inns & Hotels Management (ADR), symbol HMIN on Nasdaq. The company’s hotels operate under the 7 Days Inn brand. It now has a total of 1,044 hotels, consisting of 417 hotels operated by the company and 627 franchised hotels managed by the company. That gives it a total of 104,191 rooms across 162 cities. The company’s franchised hotels operate under the 7 Days Inn banner but are owned by third parties. 7 Days Group charges a fee to operate these hotels, including hiring managers and staff. In the three months ended June 30, 2012, 7 Days Group’s revenue rose 27.1%, to $99.6 million from $78.1 million a year earlier. Earnings per American Depositary Receipt (ADR) rose to $0.19 from $0.17....

The Greek Organisation of Football Prognostics SA, $3.18, symbol GOFPY on the U.S. over-the-counter bulletin board (ADRs outstanding: 638.0 million; Market cap: $2.0 billion; www.opap.gr), is a public company based in Athens, Greece. Its main listing is on the Athens Stock Exchange. Greeks call the company OPAP for short. OPAP was founded as a state-owned company in 1958. It was reorganized in 2000 and granted a 20-year license as the sole operator of lottery and sports-betting games in Greece. It first sold shares to the public and listed on the Athens Stock Exchange in 2001. The Greek government owns 34% of the company’s shares. OPAP conducts six numerical lottery games, LOTTO, JOKER, PROTO, SUPER 3, EXTRA 5 and KINO, as well as three sports-related games, STIHIMA, PROPO and PROPO-GOAL. The company has also designed two new lottery games, Bing and Super 4....

You might say we specialize in “plain vanilla” stocks, bonds and mutual funds—the ordinary kind, in other words, without any special features. We almost always stay out of new issues. We’ve always been highly selective in our income trust and royalty trust recommendations. We advise against trading in options and futures. The only investment innovation we’ve added to our list is the exchange-traded fund or ETF. But ETFs are unlike other investment innovations; they aim to simplify your investing, rather than complicate it. Of course, we stay out of ETFs that use leverage, or that aim to pursue some sort of market theory, or that invest in a narrow market segment or theme. We’ve found that our exclusionary rules leave us plenty of scope for sound investing, with lots of high-value opportunities and few surprises. In investment innovations, surprises tend to be unpleasant. That’s because innovations aim at selling more “product” (as brokers say) to investors, rather than raising investor returns. In fact, innovations may give you greater stability, steady income or tax deferral, but you generally pay for these advantages out of total investment return....

ISHARES MSCI CHILE INVESTABLE MARKET INDEX FUND $62.32 (New York Exchange symbol ECH; buy or sell through brokers) is an ETF that aims to track the MSCI Chile Investable Market Index. This index consists of stocks that are mainly traded on the Santiago Stock Exchange.

The fund’s top holdings are LAN Airlines SA (Chilean national airline), 9.4%; Empresas Copec SA (conglomerate), 8.5%; Quimica y Minera de Chile (mining), 8.2%; Empresa Nacional de Electricidad (electric power), 6.8%; Cencosud SA (retailer), 6.5%; Banco Santander Chile (banking), 6.1%; Enersis AS (electric power), 5.9%; Empresas CMPC (pulp and paper), 4.8%; S.A.C.I. Falabella (retail), 4.7%; and CAP SA (iron mining and steel), 4.1%.

The fund’s industry breakdown is as follows: Utilities, 23.7%; Industrials, 21.6%; Financials, 16.9%; Materials, 15.6%; Consumer Staples, 11.1%; Consumer Discretionary, 11.1%; Telecommunications, 3.3%; and Information Technology, 1.5%.

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The New York Stock Exchange defines a blue chip as stock in a company with a national reputation for quality, reliability and the ability to operate profitably in good times and bad. The problem is that “reputation” plays a key role in the definition. Many companies acquire a blue-chip reputation by displaying the qualities that the definition suggests. Others get it through a strong public relations effort or by being in the right industry or business situation at the right time and place. Regardless of how it got there, this blue-chip label sticks with companies long after they quit living up to it....

We think conservative investors could hold up to, say, 10% of their portfolios in foreign stocks. One way to do that is to buy carefully chosen exchange traded funds (ETFs) that have an overseas focus. The best ETFs offer very low management fees and well-diversified, tax-efficient portfolios of highquality stocks. Here are six foreign ETFs we like: ...

GKN plc, 181.50 pence, symbol GKN on the London Stock Exchange (Shares outstanding: 1.6 billion; Market cap: 2.9 billion British pounds; www.gkn.com), mainly sells parts for automobiles and aircraft. The company was established in 1900 as Guest, Keen and Company. It changed its name to Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds, Ltd., in 1902 when it acquired a screw- and wire-making business founded by John Sutton Nettlefold. In 1986, the growing conglomerate became GKN plc. In the first quarter of 2012, GKN’s revenue rose 17.1%, to 1.74 billion pounds from 1.49 billion pounds a year earlier (1 British pound = $1.60 Canadian). Excluding contributions from acquisitions, revenue rose 8%. Operating profit rose 19.3%, to 142 million pounds from 119 million pounds....