Winemaker profits from high dollar

Article Excerpt

ANDREW PELLER LTD. $9.05 (Toronto symbol ADW.A; Income Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 14.3 million; Market cap: $129.4 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 4.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.andrewpeller.com) is Canada’s second-largest wine producer, after Vincor Canada. Peller operates wineries in B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia. It also sells home-winemaking kits and imports wines from other countries. In its 2011 fiscal year, which ended March 31, 2011, Peller’s sales rose 0.9%, to $265.4 million from $263.2 million in fiscal 2010. The company launched new wines during the year, and saw strong sales of its premium wines. That helped offset new taxes on certain wines sold through company-owned stores in Ontario. These taxes cut the company’s 2011 sales by $3 million. Peller earned $11.0 million, or $0.76 a share. That’s up 15.4% from $9.5 million, or $0.66 a share, in fiscal 2010. If you exclude gains in the prior year on hedging contracts that Peller uses to lock in foreign-exchange…