Topic: How To Invest

The Successful Investor Hotline – Friday, March 1, 2019

Article Excerpt

TORONTO-DOMINION BANK, $75.16, Toronto symbol TD,now announces dividend increases annually instead of two or more times per year. It plans to raise its quarterly dividend with the April 2019 payment. Shareholders will then receive $0.74 a share, up 10.4% from $0.67. The new annual rate of $2.96 yields 3.9%. In November 2018, the bank paid $817 million for Regina-based wealth management firm Greystone Managed Investments. As a result, TD is now Canada’s largest wealth management firm. In its fiscal 2019 first quarter, ended January 31, 2019, the bank earned $2.95 billion, unchanged from a year earlier. Due to fewer shares outstanding, per-share earnings rose 0.6%, to $1.57 from $1.56. Those figures exclude several unusual items, mainly costs related to the Greystone purchase and a new credit card loyalty program with Air Canada. On that basis, the latest earnings missed the consensus estimate of $1.72 a share. The lower-than-expected earnings is mainly due to a $17 million loss at the bank’s wholesale-banking division, as volatile…