Andrew Guy, CFASysco CorpSYYTOP PICKApr 17, 2009

When the company announced it was buying Jetro Restaurant Depot, the street dumped shares. This is wrong. This deal should increase SYY revenue by 20% and free cash flow by 55%. Before the deal, SYY was doing well.

It shot up after reporting this week with a modest top and bottom line beat. January business is strong, so they expect fiscal 2026 to come in at the high end of their guidance. It's cheap at 18x PE and pays a 2.6% dividend.

(A Top Pick Oct 9/15. Down 2.01%.) At the time he wanted to be a bit more defensive. October to May is really a cyclical time where you want to take on a lot of risk in your portfolio, but he was just not liking the market action, so was being fairly defensive at the time. On this stock, the average gain between Oct 10 to Dec 31 is about 9%, but this hit resistance at about $41.50. During the period of seasonal strength, it ended up with a marginal gain of about 0.12%.

Oct 10 to Dec 31, it averaged 9.14% 21 out of 25 of the past years. Sometimes they don’t go all the way to the end of year. It could be the end of November.

(A Top Pick March 23/15. Down 5.83%.) The premise was that this was in a defensive sector. There are talks of a merger and being taken to court, so there is some negativity around the stock. Just too much going on here.

It is a consumer staples stock and already starting to show positive signs. Normally it does not have seasonal strength until April 23^rd, but now is the time to get into it this year. A one to two month hold.

Consumers’ staples companies tend to be well in the summer. More of a defensive play. Has done well and is holding above its 20 day moving average. The trend is all positive and he can’t say anything negatively about it technically, it’s just that the seasonals are not backing it up.