Cenovus recently announced a deal to buy rival oil sands producer MEG Energy. While big acquisitions add risk, MEG’s properties are adjacent to Cenvous’s. That gives it plenty of opportunities to cut costs. The company’s experience in integrating Husky Energy, purchased in 2021, also cuts risk for investors.

BCE INC. $33 is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol BCE; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 932.5 million; Market cap: $30.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.1; Dividend yield: 5.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.bce.ca) has now completed its purchase of Ziply Fiber, which offers high-speed Internet access and telephone services through a fibre-optic network to 1.3 million residential and business customers in Washington State, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. BCE paid $3.65 billion U.S. in cash ($5.04 billion Canadian) for this business. It also assumed $2.65 billion (Canadian) of Ziply’s debt.

SOUTH BOW CORP. $38 is a hold. The company (Toronto symbol SOBO; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 208.2 million; Market cap: $7.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.8; Dividend yield: 7.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.southbow.com) operates a 4,900-kilometre pipeline network that pumps crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and the U.S. Gulf Coast. That network includes the Keystone pipeline, which ships about 20% of Western Canadian oil to the U.S.

Canada’s big banks continue to report strong earnings growth, even in the face of tariff uncertainty. That’s because their solid balance sheets put them in a strong position to absorb higher loan losses.


We still recommend all investors strive to own two to three of these top banks.

Exchange-traded funds are set up to mirror the performance of a stock-market index or sub-index. They hold a more or less fixed selection of securities that represent the holdings of that index or sub-index and will allow the fund to “track” its performance.


The MER (Management Expense Ratio) is generally much lower on traditional ETFs than on conventional mutual funds. That’s because most traditional ETFs take a much simpler approach to investing. Instead of actively managing clients’ investments, ETF providers invest so as to mirror the holdings and performance of a particular stock-market index.

Small companies have generated attractive returns over the long run, although those returns have come with considerable volatility. Nevertheless, the outstanding returns generated by large U.S. companies over the past decade have diminished interest in smaller companies to such an extent that valuation discounts on small companies are now historically significant. A positive change in small company sentiment could drive higher returns on these stocks over time.


One popular method of dividing listed equities into groups is by market value. This normally results in three groups: large, medium, and small companies.

Value investing has long been regarded as the investment style that yields superior returns over the long term. However, for more than a decade, “growth investing” produced much better results. That may, however, be changing as the valuation gap between value stocks and growth stocks widens.


There is no universal definition of value investing. However, most value investors will focus on the price that they pay for a stock relative to the company’s estimated value, earnings or assets—aiming to get a substantial discount to the perceived value of the assets. Growth investors, on the other hand, are more interested in a company’s growth prospects and tend to pay premiums for those with strong growth potential.



Most ETF managers focusing on value investing have pre-determined criteria for selecting stocks. Here are examples of their strategies:

This month, we highlight an interesting dividend-focused ETF from Franklin as well as a leveraged single-stock ETF from Purpose Investments.

Switzerland is home to several globally competitive businesses, particularly in the fields of luxury goods, machinery, chocolates, and pharmaceutical products. These companies perform well in the export markets. But this is also one of the reasons why the country was recently slapped with one of the highest import duties by the U.S. administration—39%.