AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. (ATRL.TO)

In the thick of it right now. Pops every time they divest of something. Their earnings stream is somewhat suspect. Declining backlog and it is suspect. Reputational risk – there could be more skeletons. They are going to need cash to fund a lot of the projects they are bidding on.

Sold it early on when news of the scandals broke. It will take time for their new culture to seep through. He would hold off here and watch it. It does not thrill him at this point.

Because of scandal he is not ready to wade into it at this point. The business that they are in requires a bit of this finessing of governments. He thinks they would have been okay if they had hiked the dividend when the news hit.

He is staying away from this for the time being. Has become a little more interesting because of the recent contract in Colombia. Expect that the performance from here would depend more on how investors feel about future potential scandals and to what extent they perceive the balance sheet to be cleaned up.

(Top Pick Jul 27/12, Up 3.16%) Did a pretty good job of cleaning it up. There were a few bad apples. They are good at what they do and have world wide exposure. Will continue to grow because of third world countries. One of his few growth stocks. He feels the stock will continue to grow.

(3 Top Picks have a theme of needing some shareholder activism because there is so much value in some of the stocks they are going to be recognized and will be forced into some changes.) This one already has an activist and he thinks it is now time. Had a horrific quarter but that was just its engineering business. No one is paying attention to its beautiful infrastructure and concession assets. They became even more important after its quarter because of good growth from Highway 407 and Alta Link and they own some other assets as well. This could be spun off. Dividend yield of 2.27%.

He continues to believe that any time you see something in the paper about the company’s issues with bribery, etc., it is really hashing old stuff. Company has new management and has addressed those issues. Looking forward, this is a great worldwide engineering company that continues to get major contracts.

Has recovered from its horrific plummet. He tries to ignore the headline stuff and focus on the asset value. What troubles him is that he hasn’t seen any new contracts in the past month or so. At some point he expects there will be an activist investor come in.

He doesn’t understand why the stock is not lower and why people are willing to pay such a high multiple on a company that is not very clear where you stand on any of the issues. A lot of the businesses they did was very unclear as to what the margin was. It is clear that they bribed people to get the business. He wouldn’t own it.

(A Top Pick June 26/12. Up 20.87%.) Still believes in this story. Likes that they are cleaning up their act. Good business prospects going forward.

He feels that all the negative press SNC has been having is actually old news, and it's pushing the stock down past where it should be. Has a lot of confidence in the new management.

Recommended at $37.32 now $42.04 up 15.17% Bought a bit early, but still feels it's a great buying opportunity. They will be fined a lot of money, but their balance sheet can take it. They have new contracts coming on.

Performance of the company on an operating basis over the last few quarters. They've been good at keeping their back logs at very high levels. But it may be that we are seeing those back logs are due to underbidding too aggressively, and the low margins we are seeing on these back logs may be the results of this. (He's speculating) He would have liked to have seen better operating performance.

Thinks it's a good company but doesn't own due to concerns about corruption issues they are facing. Fears there may be cancelled contracts.

They have all these legal issues. There are some big question marks. Are their margins on all the contracts any more. It is not cheap.