Thomson Reuters Corp (TRI.TO)

Great company in terms of electronic data management for legal, health and financial services. Likes this company. Paying a reasonable dividend.

Solid company, but the multiples have crept up. Have always had a bit of a higher multiple. It is currently 23 or 24 times earnings, and 22 times next year’s earnings. A little rich. They have never really recovered from the 2008-2009 financial crises, where a lot of terminals got pulled. A good solid hold, but not anything that is table pounding. Dividend yield of 3.3%.

It has done well recently. Money has flowed out of energy and into consumer sectors. There is more strength in the stock price than is justified. Wait for a pullback before buying it.

(A Top Pick Aug 14/14. Up 26%.) Still likes this. Sold his holdings last year when he saw other opportunities in the market. This is a stock that he probably would look at if it came down a little more. They have a platform called iCom where they are merging all of their products onto. This will streamline their expenses. It will be fully integrated in about 1.5 years.

(Top Pick Jan 10/14, Up 25.20%) Sold in November. It got attached to the safety trade. If he saw a pullback of 15% he would buy it again. They are not as geared to the economy as he would like.

(A Top Pick Jan 15/14. Up 20.79%.) This is one of the key benefactors of the Cdn$ going down. This is helping in translating their earnings back in Canadian dollars and, as well, the dividend is paid in Cdn$. The company is still turning itself around and trying to get to positive net sales in its financial division. Feels this is a holding he will have for a while.

The 2 areas of service include legal services and wealth management support services. Modest growth, but is in 2 areas where it is near the top of the sector. Probably has a good intermediate term growth trajectory, but more of a gradual one.

Has had the best year in about a decade. If you own, you are just kind of breaking even after 10 years. This last year was the good year. He would think the low hanging fruit has been picked now. It is a very difficult area. There is so much content on the Internet and so much of it is free. Also, they are against a very formidable competitor in Bloomberg. He owns some of their bonds.

(A Top Pick Jan 10/14. Up 13.11%.) Sold his holdings because there were other stocks in his portfolio that had been beaten up, and this was considered a safe company, which the market was bidding up. A great company and there is a good margin story, but not a good revenue story now.

A reasonably good entry point. Energy in the Canadian sector is off about 7% in the last 2 months. That reflects that the WTI, the North American benchmark, has weakened quite a bit. In general, the Canadian market is a gas market for drillers and you are coming into the historically strong period from October to March. This company has a relatively new fleet relative to most of its competition.

Beginning to see some margin expansion. The recent quarter wasn’t so much about revenues being ahead, but that the earnings themselves were expanding. We are seeing good cost control and some sales growth in the financial and risk area. Legal area still tends to do very well. We are finally seeing the ROE expanding along with the margins. We could see a few more dollars in this. He would be looking at taking some profits at around $44-$45.

A serial underperformer of the last 5 years. 4% dividend and they generate a lot of free cash flow. The story is their new Icon platform. It will be a master platform for all other platforms allowing them to get out of a lot of legacy costs. Their service is cheaper than Bloomberg. They are selling a lot of the systems.

Owns this in his income portfolio. Earnings were in line, but not anything super spectacular. Expects to continue to see this business grow. As capital markets and the economy pick up, there is a migration from one of their services to a newer one that has higher revenues and higher margins.

They failed being able to compete with Bloomberg as originally planned. She didn’t like their products, and is a reason why it is down so much. Potential here, but you are taking a risk on execution.

Does not expect a dividend increase here. Financial and risk area is the biggest business for them right now. As financial services has recovered, TRI-T has been gaining some market share. About 26% of revenues come from legal so now that we see more M&A activity, this area should be stronger as well. They should continue to improve going forward. If it got close to $40 he would take profits.