Bruce Tatters

Market. Since the Trump election, there has been a lot of optimism about policy change happening, both in a tax and a regulatory front. We are now at a digestion stage. There is a lot of Senate confirmations on his cabinet in the next few days. This is followed by his inauguration, and analysts are waiting for the change to happen. This is a healthy. He tries to always populate his portfolios with a basket of the best reward returns. When cyclicals shift, whether it is materials, energy, etc., it can be years of a changeover. Cycles happen because of over investment and supply. When things get really bad in multiple years, there is under investment and supply. These can be longer cycles.

Visa and MasterCard (MA-N) have been terrific performers over the last few years. There was so much regulation in other parts of financial services, there was no earnings growth, other than a few names. These 2 were getting all of money and valuations kept getting pushed. On earnings valuation, they are in the mid-20s. They’ve actually come down, because they continue to grow and the stocks flattened out a little. When the other parts of financial services, US banks, US brokerage firms start to do better, money will come out of these high flyers. He prefers things like Bank of America (BAC-N), Goldman Sachs (GS-N), Morgan Stanley (MS-N) which are probably going to have similar, if not better earnings growth over the next couple of years.

Sort of a dual company ever since they bought Aurora a couple of years ago, so it has heavy oil assets in Western Canada, and really, really high quality Permian Basin assets in West Texas. It’s older legacy assets are higher cost and the Permian Basin are low cost. They went into this down cycle with too much debt, and got slammed. This is interesting here, because he is constructive on oil prices, and that oil will make its way higher up to the $60 range later this year. Even though that is only a 15%-20% move in oil, it has a much bigger impact on companies like this. He likes this here.

This looks like it has decent earnings growth into 2017 off of 2016. It has had a big run with the Trump rally, but remember all these life insurance companies fare a lot better in a rate environment where rates aren’t at zero and the curve isn’t flat. It should continue to do better here. There is nothing wrong with this company.

For US technology, there are a bunch of cross currents for a lot of them. There is a potential big benefit if the US allows repatriation of foreign cash. Some, including this one, would be big recipients. This one continues to grow very, very nicely, both its core business and its YouTube franchise. Has a bunch of businesses that are not generating a lot of profits yet, which at some point could crystallize. A 25% grower trading just over the market multiple at closer to 20X earnings.

On his radar screen, because it has a growth outlook to its earnings. A very high quality business. It has capital abroad that could be repatriated. The valuation is very, very reasonable at about 12.5X 2017 earnings.

In the hardware group in technology, Cisco (CSCO-Q) is one of the key names he is taking a close look at. AMD and a number of the semiconductors have had a monstrous run and valuations just aren’t there for an entry point.

(A Top Pick Aug 17/16. Down 13.44%.) A terrific company, and shows up as the highest quality company in its group. Unfortunately, they got painted by the specialty pharmaceutical brush. It is getting a bit of a reprieve right now. He still likes this. It has one of the best growth profiles of any of the specialty pharmaceutical companies. The majority of its businesses are not subject to the same type of price controls that could come under government scrutiny.

(A Top Pick Aug 17/16. Up 21.34%.) This had really terrific results shortly after he had recommended it. A very well-run company. It doesn’t face a lot of the same type of problems that a lot of energy companies face. A very disciplined and well run company.

(A Top Pick Aug 17/16. Up 21.05%.) A global freight logistics company. One of those businesses in 2015 that got hit really hard because it had done too many acquisitions with a little bit too much debt into early 2016. Likes that it is a very high, free cash flow business. Trading at about 8.5X EBITDA, and growing in the 20%-25% rate. A fantastic business.

A packaging company for a lot of consumer products. Has done extremely well over the last couple of years. As long as the Cdn$ stays weak, it is a nice tailwind for them. There are some US competitors, so there may be some US legislation coming down which may drop the US tax rates from 30% to 15%, which would make the US competition a lot more competitive.

Of the Big 6 Canadian banks, would it be wise to buy the laggards? Looking across the banks, they have differentiated businesses. He has focused on the ones with the largest US exposure. TD Bank (TD-T) would probably be the key name. The ones with the highest multiples, around 12X this year’s earnings, are the ones with the larger exposure to US wholesale. Those are the ones that are going to have the best earnings growth.

He is constructive on oil and thinks prices will do better this year. For the very first time, this coming quarter you are going to get really strong year-over-year comparisons in energy, so energy is a good place to be. This one tends to be a more defensive, but in this environment it is going to do just fine. It wouldn’t be his 1^st preference, especially when you have a company like Suncor (SU-T) in your backyard.

North American rail stocks had a pretty difficult 2014-2015. He got more constructive on them early last year. The stocks have had a pretty big recovery over the course of the year. In the transportation arena, rails are very properly valued. In most cases they are at or above the market multiple. Canadian Pacific (CP-T) stands out as a little cheaper, so there may be a bit more opportunity in that. There has been a real change going on in the North American airline industry, and he thinks those names are going to do the best. (See Top Picks.)

There are a lot of these types of companies that have very, very fast hyper growth periods for the brand. This one has had one of the longer runs of any brand, to the point where athletic apparel, a little over a year ago, was at the point where people thought that is all that people were going to wear. Because of this, valuations just got too high. A fantastic business, but everything can have too much of a run. Although this has pulled back, it is still too rich for him, relative to its growth rate.