Thomson gains from cutting its costs

Article Excerpt

THOMSON REUTERS CORP. $60 (Toronto symbol TRI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 721.9 million; Market cap: $43.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.9; Dividend yield: 3.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.thomsonreuters.com) sells information products to financial clients such as banks and brokerages. It also sells specialized information to professionals in the legal, and tax and accounting fields. In addition, the company owns the Reuters news service. Thomson has started to see some of the benefits of its recent plan to lower its workforce by 4%. Those moves should cut around $200 million from the company’s annual costs, starting in 2017 (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars). Excluding unusual items, Thomson’s earnings in the three months ended March 31, 2017, jumped 30.5%, to $458 million from $351 million a year earlier. Due to fewer shares outstanding, per-share earnings gained 37.0%, to $0.63 from $0.46. Revenue in the quarter gained 0.8%, to $2.82 billion from $2.79 billion. If you disregard…