Topic: Growth Stocks

Stock Pickers Digest Hotline – Friday, February 13, 2015

Article Excerpt

FIRSTSERVICE CORP., $71.99, symbol FSV on Toronto, announced this week that it plans to spin off its Colliers International commercial real estate business. It will form a new company, called Colliers International Group Inc., and hand out shares to FirstService shareholders. Colliers is one of the world’s top three commercial real estate firms, offering a range of services in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Latin America. In 2014, this subsidiary had revenue of $1.7 billion U.S. After the spinoff, FirstService will carry on with its residential property management and property improvement operations, which reported $1.1 billion U.S. of revenue in 2014. FirstService shareholders won’t pay income taxes on the transaction until they sell shares of the new FirstService or Colliers International. The move adds appeal to FirstService’s shares—in our experience, and in most academic studies of the subject, both the parent and the spinoff generally do better than comparable firms for at least several years after the split takes…