Two ways to enhance your Finance holdings

Article Excerpt

These two high-quality firms are a great way to diversify your Finance-sector holdings outside of the big banks. Given their current stock prices, we see just one of the two as a buy for right now. GREAT-WEST LIFECO INC. $30 (Toronto symbol GWO; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Finance sector; shares outstanding: 988.7 million; Market cap: $29.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.6; Dividend yield: 5.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.greatwestlifeco.com) is Canada’s second-largest insurance company, after Manulife Financial. It also offers mutual funds and wealth management services. In the three months ended March 31, 2019, the company’s revenue jumped 74.2%, to $16.9 billion from $9.7 billion a year earlier. That’s due to a $4.4 billion gain on its investment portfolio compared to a loss of $398 million in the year-earlier quarter. Earnings in the quarter declined 10.0%, to $0.665 a share (or a total of $657 million) from $0.74 a share (or $9.7 billion). That’s due to higher income taxes, lower fee income from wealth management…