wall street
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 a selection of 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. Last week, one Inner Circle member asked for stock investing advice on one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers. Pat notes that the company has made headway with new specialty chemicals, but that its future is closely tied to the economic recovery. ...
PLEASE NOTE: Our next Hotline will go out on Thursday, April 5, 2012. MCCORMICK & CO. INC., $54.43, New York symbol MKC, makes spices, herbs, seasonings, specialty foods and flavours. It sells these products to grocery stores and other clients in the food industry. In its fiscal 2012 first quarter, which ended February 29, 2012, McCormick’s sales rose 15.8%, to $906.7 million from $782.8 million a year earlier. About half of this increase came from recently acquired spice makers and food companies in India and Eastern Europe....
Yesterday, we discussed U.S. drug store chain Walgreen, a name familiar to many Canadian investors. Today we examine a U.S. drug distributor that has a strong and growing Canadian presence, but is not as well known. We first included this stock in the Aggressive Growth portfolio of Wall Street Stock Forecaster in June, 2002. McKesson Corp. (New York symbol MCK; www.mckesson.com) is the largest wholesale drug distributor in the U.S. and Canada. It also owns 49% of Mexico’s largest drug distributor....
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 a selection of 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. This week, we heard from an Inner Circle member asking for investment advice on America’s largest drug store chain. Pat discussed the company’s prospects following a big acquisition last year, and this year’s decision to put an end to a key commercial relationship....
APPLE INC., $596.05, Nasdaq symbol AAPL, hit a new all-time high of $609.65 this week after the company said it would begin paying a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share in the fourth quarter of its current fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2012. The annual rate of $10.60 yields 1.8%. The company will also buy back $10 billion of its shares over the next three years. That’s equal to 2% of Apple’s $555.7-billion market cap. In all, these moves will cost the company $45 billion. It held cash and investments of $97.6 billion, or $104.70 a share, at the end of 2011, so it will still have plenty of cash to keep developing new products and investing in other growth projects....
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 a selection of 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. Last week, one member asked about one of Canada’s more intriguing commodity investments—a high-yielding stock that supplies chemicals to the pulp and paper industry and shipping services to the oil and gas industry....
J.P. MORGAN CHASE & CO., $44.57, New York symbol JPM, has passed the Federal Reserve’s latest “stress test”, which measures how well banks and other financial firms would cope with a sharp jump in unemployment, falling stock prices and other unfavourable economic conditions. As a result, Morgan raised its quarterly dividend by 20.0%, to $0.30 a share from $0.25. The new annual rate of $1.20 yields 2.7%. Morgan also announced that it would buy back $15 billion of its shares. That’s equal to roughly 9% of its $170.1-billion market cap. Morgan will repurchase $12 billion of its stock this year and an additional $3 billion in 2013. The dividend hike and buybacks prompted the stock to jump 9% this week. However, low interest rates continue to hurt the revenue the bank receives on loans. Financial reforms passed by Congress also imposed new restrictions on debit card fees....
Pat McKeough responds to many personal questions on investing in stocks and other investment topics from the members of his Inner Circle. Every week, his comments and recommendations on a selection of 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. This past week, one member sought long-term advice on one of North America’s best-known big-box discount chains, which faces stiff competition in a race for retail revenue that has spread well beyond North America. ...
MCDONALD’S CORP., $96.84, New York symbol MCD, reported lower-than-expected same-store sales for February 2012. That caused the stock to fall 2% this week. The restaurant chain’s same-store sales rose 7.5% during the month. That missed the consensus forecast of a 7.7% increase. Even so, it’s a big jump from the 3.9% sales gain the company reported in February 2011. Most of the increase came from its U.S. operations, where same-store sales rose 11.1% thanks to strong demand for a new popcorn chicken product (Chicken McBites), premium coffees and breakfast items. Same-store sales rose 4.0% in Europe, where strong gains in the U.K. and Russia offset lower sales in other markets due to severe winter weather. Same-store sales rose just 2.4% in Asia, partly due to lower sales in Japan, which is still recovering from last year’s earthquake/tsunami....
CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY LTD., $75.25, Toronto symbol CP, continues to expand its rail network in the Bakken area, which could contain more than 500 billion barrels of oil. This region covers parts of Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan. Oil was first discovered at Bakken in 1951, but it has always been hard to extract from the shale rock. However, modern techniques, such as horizontal (or slant) drilling, have made this oil much easier to access. Texas-based U.S. Development Group LLC is currently building a new hub in North Dakota to handle Bakken’s rising production. This hub, which should begin operating in mid-2012, will transfer oil from trucks to trains, which will then ship it to market....