Our latest advice on two Canadian icons

Article Excerpt

A key part of successful investing involves picking stocks with hard-to-replace assets, like popular brand names. Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons are two leading examples. Both firms have built their brands over decades, and both have become synonymous with Canada. That gives them a big advantage when launching new products and competing with bigger U.S. chains. CANADIAN TIRE CORP. $103 (Toronto symbol CTC.A; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 79.7 million; Market cap: $8.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.7; Dividend yield: 1.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.canadiantire.ca) operates 492 Canadian Tire stores, which specialize in automotive, household and sporting goods. It also owns other retail chains, such as Mark’s (casual clothing) and SportChek. The company is selling 20% of its credit card operations to Bank of Nova Scotia (see page 74) for $500 million. Canadian Tire has an option to sell an additional 29% to the bank over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, Canadian Tire earned $70.6 million in the…