wall street

NEWELL RUBBERMAID INC., $32.45, New York symbol NWL, makes a variety of everyday items, such as trash cans and food-storage containers. Aside from Rubbermaid, its main brands include Sharpie, Paper Mate, Waterman and Levolor. The company recently agreed to buy Ignite Holdings, a private firm that makes reusable water bottles and thermal mugs under the Contigo and Avex brands. Newell will pay $308 million when it completes the purchase later this year. Newell feels its expertise will cut Ignite’s manufacturing costs. It can also use its extensive global distribution networks to increase Ignite’s annual sales of $125 million....

Every Thursday we bring you “Our Top U.S. Stocks” as our daily post. In these new 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 FEDEX CORP. (New York symbol FDX; www.fedex.com) delivers packages and documents in the U.S. and over 220 other countries through its fleet of 650 planes and over 108,000 trucks and other surface vehicles....

Every Monday we now feature “A Stock to Sell” as our daily post. With each sell, we give you a full explanation of why we advise against investing in these stocks. This is part of our new approach offering you buy, hold and sell advice in our daily posts. You also get “Best Canadian Stocks” on Tuesday, “Our Top U.S. Stocks” on Thursday, and every Friday, our advice on one of the stocks that members of Pat’s Inner Circle have asked about in their weekly Question & Answer sessions. Rite Aid (symbol RAD on New York; www.riteaid.com), is one of the largest drugstore chains in the U.S., with 4,623 outlets in 31 states and Washington, D.C....

TUPPERWARE BRANDS CORP., $74.04, New York symbol TUP, makes household products, including educational toys and plastic food and beverage containers. It also produces a range of cosmetics, bath oils and fragrances. This week, the company reported quarterly earnings that matched the consensus estimate. However, weaker sales in developed markets like North America and Europe prompted it to cut its full-year sales and earnings projections. That caused the stock to fall 12%. Excluding unusual items, Tupperware’s earnings declined 4.1% in the three months ended June 28, 2014, to $75.1 million from $78.3 million a year earlier. Per-share earnings rose 0.7%, to $1.47 from $1.46, on fewer shares outstanding....

Beginning today, we launch Our Top U.S. Stocks, a feature which will appear every Thursday as our daily post. We are also launching a new approach—you will get our specific advice on whether to buy, hold or sell 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. On Monday, look for our new weekly feature on stocks we believe investors should avoid, A Stock to Sell. YUM! BRANDS INC. (New York symbol YUM; www.yum.com) has 40,324 fast-food restaurants in over 110 countries. Its main banners include KFC (fried chicken), Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Mexican food). Franchisees operate 80% of these outlets....

TRANSCANADA CORP. $51.93 (Toronto symbol TRP; Shares outstanding: 708.0 million; Market cap: $36.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.7%; www.transcanada.com) has agreed to build a $1.9-billion, 260-kilometre pipeline that would pump natural gas from northeastern B.C.’s Dawson Creek area to a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Kitimat, on the
province’s coast.

The plant is a joint venture between Chevron Corp. (New York symbol CVX) and Apache Corp. (New York symbol APA). Both are recommendations of Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our newsletter that focuses on U.S. stocks.

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Unilever plc (ADR), $45.24, symbol UL on New York (Shares outstanding: 1.3 billion; Market cap: $57.9 billion; www.unilever.com), is one of the world’s largest makers of branded and packaged consumer goods. Asia and Africa account for 40% of its sales, followed by the Americas (33%) and Europe (27%). Emerging markets supply 56% of its overall sales. Unilever operates through four divisions: 1) Personal Care (36% of sales) makes skin and hair care products, deodorants and oral care products. Top brands include Dove (soap), Lux (soap), Sunsilk (shampoo), Axe (deodorant), Pond’s (skin cream), Vaseline (petroleum jelly) and Close-Up (toothpaste)....

DragonWave Inc. (symbol DWI on Toronto; www.dragonwaveinc.com) makes equipment that wirelessly transmits broadband voice, video and other data. That lets customers send and receive data in places that fibre optic networks haven’t yet reached. The company’s clients are mainly high-speed Internet and wireless providers. It also sells to organizations that operate their own networks, such as universities, hospitals, cities and businesses. DragonWave prefers to focus on product design and support; it outsources most of its manufacturing to other firms....

INTEL CORP., $33.70, Nasdaq symbol INTC, rose 8% this week after announcing better than expected first quarter earnings and a new share buyback plan. In the three months ended June 28, 2014, Intel’s earnings jumped 39.8%, to $2.8 billion from $2.0 billion a year earlier. The company spent $2.1 billion on share buybacks during the quarter. As a result, earnings per share rose at a faster pace of 41.0%, to $0.55 from $0.39. That beat the consensus estimate of $0.52. Overall revenue rose 8.0%, to $13.8 billion from $12.8 billion, beating the consensus forecast of $13.7 billion. Revenue from making chips for personal computers (63% of the total) rose 6.2%, mainly because businesses are buying new machines after Microsoft stopped supporting its older Windows XP operating system....

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....