Stock price when the opinion was issued
Great environment for engineering and similar services. ROE is ~13%. PE's of all these companies are getting up around 40x trailing earnings. Rather fully priced. Very good exposure to the US, and the USD is strong and likely to remain so for a while.
In a trade war, services may not be as badly affected as some products, so these companies could be somewhat of a haven.
We continue to like STN, but at the time we felt its valuation was lofty relative to its historical averages, and we were looking for higher growth opportunities elsewhere. We think it is a solid moderate growth name, and for a long-term investor, we would be comfortable holding it over the long term. It can go down along with the market if we continue to see declines for the TSX, but it has a strong history of margin expansion, revenue growth, and free cash flow growth.
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Likes the sector of engineering services, instead of construction. 77% of STN revenue comes from NA. She owns WSP. Nothing wrong with STN, though it's smaller. Since STN is smaller, it might be able to grow faster.
WSP revenue from NA is 50% or slightly below, so it's more global. Starting to see organic growth pick up from its bigger acquisitions in very attractive markets. Growth profile slightly better.
Both grow organically and through M&A. Both have balance sheet support to do M&A.