CP boosts investor appeal

Article Excerpt

CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY $316.00, is a buy. The Canadian blue-chip leader (Toronto symbol CP; shares outstanding: 147.7 million; Market cap: $42.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 1.1%; www.cpr.ca) is now buying 774 kilometres of track in Quebec and Maine. That includes the rail line at the centre of the July 2013 Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, explosion of a train hauling crude oil. The purchase is good news for investors, as it will improve CP’s access to east coast ports at Searsport, Maine, and Saint John, New Brunswick. That will cut its reliance on shipping goods to and from China through ports on Canada’s West Coast. It also adds value for investors. The company will pay $130 million U.S. for this acquisition when the deal closes in De-cember 2019. To put that in context, CP earned $640 million (Canadian), or $4.61 a share, in the three months ended September 30, 2019. Through CP’s shares, investors tap a com-pany shipping freight over a 22,000-kilometre rail network between Montreal and…