Recovery now underway

Article Excerpt

TORSTAR CORP. $11 (Toronto symbol TS.B; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 79.0 million; Market cap: $869.0 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.6; Dividend yield: 3.4%; SI Rating: Above Average) at one time was, like Canadian Tire, a good example of a cyclical growth stock. For decades, ad revenue from The Toronto Star rose and fell with the economic cycle, but generally moved upward. Today, however, some investors feel Torstar is in a long-term or “secular” decline, due to growing competition from free or low-cost news and ads on the Internet. However, the company’s online businesses have offset some of the lost ad revenue at the print division. In January 2010, The Toronto Star’s web site (thestar.com) attracted 37% more unique visitors than in January 2009. Torstar’s Harlequin subsidiary is the world’s largest publisher of romance novels. Its earnings have risen in each of the past three years. But meanwhile, investors focused on Torstar’s Internet competition. The stock fell from $22 in mid-2008 to a..