Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of October 29, 2013?

Article Excerpt

Here’s another item in the series we started last week, about the way investors value individual stocks. Q: Pat: Bombardier has annual sales of $18 billion, earnings of $600 million and cash of $3 billion. CP Rail has sales of $6 billion, earnings of $1 billion, and cash of $442 million. Why then is Bombardier’s market cap of $9.3 billion so much lower than CP’s market cap of $26.0 billion? CP is just a random comparison, but I don’t understand why an international giant like Bombardier has such a low value. A: The funny thing is that in the fall of 2011, CP and Bombardier had about the same “market cap” (total value of all shares outstanding). At that time, activist investor Bill Ackman, a U.S. hedge fund manager, began accumulating CP stock. Soon after, Mr. Ackman began a campaign to lure Hunter Harrison, the former CEO of Canadian National, to come out of retirement and take over management of CP. When Mr…