Alimentation Couche-Tard (B) (ATD.B.TO)

(Top Pick Feb 25/16, Up 0.05%) They had several disappointing quarters. You can imagine that when oil started going back up, margins on gasoline start to shrink. Their convenience sales weren’t great. You are waiting for the synergies to come from their latest acquisition.

(Top Pick May 6/16, Up 10%) They are still digesting their most recent acquisition. It is a slow and steady on this one.

This had a bit of an earnings miss when their margins weren’t quite what people thought they were going to be. This has been a great growth story. All great growth stories need to have time to congeal and build themselves up for the next level. As a buyer, be disciplined. Set a price target at where you would want to own. If you get it, you got it on sale.

(A Top Pick Jan 13/16. Up 4%.) A little surprising that this hasn’t been stronger. A fantastic company considering its compounding growth rate. Every time they’ve done an acquisition, management gets put under the microscope, but they manage to pull lots of synergies out.

A lot of the consumer staple names in Canada have become pricey because a lot of investors have merged over to those low volume defensive, high dividend type of names. Trading at about 17X earnings with a still pretty good growth rate. However, a lot of attention has moved away from those defensive names.

(Market Call Minute.) He doesn’t know how gas stations are going to play in a world of electric cars and autonomous vehicles. That is years away, but for now it is okay.

A very interesting company and a very good business. They own gas stations and convenience stores across North America. Made a very large acquisition of CST very recently, which is going to close in Q2. He struggled with the valuation. He would like to see another 5%-10% pullback before getting interested.

Thinks this is a victim of consolidation and a little bit of index competition. If you are in Canada, this is a great place to hide until energy stocks do really well. At 15X earnings it is about as cheap as you are going to find it for really good long-term growth. They continue to do an extremely good job with M&A. Dividend yield of 0.6%. (Analysts’ price target is $77.50.)

The key concern is how this is going to continue its growth profile. They have to find some decent tuck-in acquisitions. It’s at premium valuation because they have been very successful in growing the company to date. We really have to see that trend continue to support the price on a go forward basis, and he sees that. He would be a buyer.

(A Top Pick Aug 29/16. Down 7.79%.) Acquired CST Brands which should be quite accretive to earnings. However, the resource sector has got its feet back under it and has been funded from some of the safer secular growth stories like this. It is starting to perk up lately on the charts. A tremendous, long-term performer, growing earnings at a 20%+ compound rate over 2 decades. Great management team. They are quite likely to get the final regulatory clearance to go ahead on the CST Brands position.

Largely a growth by rollup story. In his experience, that can go very well for a number of years, and then come to an end. It’s a company where you are always paying for this anticipated rate of growth keeping up. As a value investor, he doesn’t put as much weight on growth as he does on actual solid earnings and the underpinning of a company’s financial.

(A Top Pick Jan 26/16. Down 2.64%.) If you think about it, they have 10,000 locations, including Circle K and Macs, and are rebranding a lot of their stores. They did 2 huge acquisitions. This is still an amazing growth story, and is still a Buy.

(A Top Pick Dec 9/15. Up 0.79%.) This has flatlined of late. If you look at the history, it has these periods of going up and then going sideways to digest their transactions. Management has done a phenomenal job of growing, and there is still lots of room for them to grow.

Growth by acquisition, and have done a very good job over the years of taking over places, reinventing them, etc. Expects there is good growth, especially in the US. Possibly looking at growing in the UK and Ireland. Dominating the convenience store business. Still a lot more room in the US to do that. Acquisitions have to be bigger to make a difference to them, but when they make an acquisition, the stock will probably pull back and that’s when you need to be a buyer. They are very good at integrating acquisitions, bringing down their costs and making the supply chain really work to their benefit. Trading at 17X next year’s earnings, so it is not expensive.

A great operator of convenience stores, as well as being good acquisitors. As a value manager, she has always had difficulty on the valuation, but it is always on her watch list. This $10 pull back could just be with the postelection rally, where we saw money flowing from groups that had done fairly well into the more cyclical areas. If you are more of a growthier investor, you could start picking away at this.