Two picks for your aggressive holdings

Article Excerpt

These two resource stocks have strong potential as the global economy recovers. But they’re more volatile than our favourites in the resource sector, such as Teck and Imperial Oil (see box), so they should only make up a small part of your holdings. PRECISION DRILLING CORP. $8.40 (Toronto symbol PD; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 276.3 million; Market cap: $2.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; Dividend yield: 2.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.precisiondrilling.com) sells contract drilling services to oil and gas producers, mainly in North America. It ended 2012 with 321 active rigs. The company is slowly expanding its international operations: it now has a total of eight rigs in Mexico and the Persian Gulf region. In 2012, Precision’s earnings fell 72.9%, to $52.4 million, or $0.18 a share. It earned $193.5 million, or $0.67 a share, in 2011. If you exclude writedowns of older rigs, earnings per share would have declined by 12.9%, to $0.81 from $0.93. Low…