COMMENT

You are going to see a very strong season coming because of Christmas. Not an expensive stock, trading at around 18X earnings. One of the premier companies in this space. As more and more people move to online e-commerce, this will really benefit.

PAST TOP PICK

(A Top Pick Oct 27/16. Up 13%.) Felt that a lot of the pharmaceutical companies had been beaten up and there would be a big uptick. The stock actually went down for quite a while. They did very, very well because of their HIV and hepatitis C drug. The problem with the hepatitis C drug is that they were curing people too quickly. Just made a recent acquisition on the cancer side which pushed the stock up a great deal. He still likes this.

PAST TOP PICK

(A Top Pick Oct 27/16. Down 9%.) Has actually bought more of this. They are good at cutting costs and getting higher margins. What you have to expect from this company is a bigger acquisition. That’s how they operate.

PAST TOP PICK

(A Top Pick Oct 27/16. Up 4%.) Sold this a while ago. Felt there was a lot more competition on the clothing side, and they were losing share there.

WAIT

Movies have had a difficult time of late. They’ve had a very bad summer season for blockbusters. People are not as eager to go to movie theatres unless there is something really, really important they want to see. The company has done a very good job with concessions. He would wait for another quarter or so before looking at this.

HOLD

He likes this. It is not expensive and pays a decent dividend. A couple of things have happened that has hurt. Other companies cut back on fixed income, currency and commodity (FCC) side of the business because it is a very highly intensive capital business from a regulatory point of view. Goldman decided not to do that as much. They are still #1 in cash equities, etc.

COMMENT

People think of this as a credit card, but it really is a toll road. They get paid every time someone uses a visa card. There have been very few pullbacks where you can buy the stock. The one slight risk to these companies is that a lot of times the payment side is being disintermediated globally with new FinTech technology. Nevertheless, this has been a great story.

BUY

One of the premier oil companies in Canada. They are very astute at making acquisitions and integrating them, and have made a bunch in the last little while. Also, every time they have worked on a project through the years, they have always been on time. At this level, this should be okay.

COMMENT

The trouble with these kind of drug companies is that they made lots of acquisitions, which is how they have grown. Many were considered growth companies because they came out with social drugs, and ended up with huge multiples. There are lots of good things in their pipeline, but there are not going to be these massive, massive blockbuster drugs they used to have.

COMMENT

Not the kind of stock he would buy, because the valuation doesn’t work for. They have 52 million US subscribers and 52 million international subscribers. They have a great brand and are way ahead of everybody else, and are developing their own products. He can see them having great pricing power over the next little while because of their strong brand. Thinks there is still a lot of growth to the story.

COMMENT

Likes their Asian franchise, a really great group business. Feels the John Hancock business takes up a lot of capital, and doesn’t have a very high Return on Equity. They need to exit that. If they can do so, they can really concentrate on the other strong businesses they have.

COMMENT

Not expensive, trading at about 10X earnings and has a very good dividend yield of about 3.4%. They sold Bright House, and can now concentrate on their core business. They need to bring costs down by about $1 billion, and he thinks there will be better capital allocation between dividends and buybacks. All in all, you should see the stock price go up.

DON'T BUY

A very interesting company. Lost their phone business and had to rediscover themselves. Went into a deal with Lucent. They are moving along nicely, it is just a very slow process. Business can be very lumpy and volatile. There are a lot of better stocks to own.

TOP PICK

Owns 10% of deposits in the US, so they could grow through retail acquisitions. However, they are going to grow by organic growth. They have a great retail franchise and great asset management, brokerage and investment banking business, a well-rounded company. Trading close to BV, which he thinks is going to go up to $26.66 next year. The intrinsic value is somewhere around $38-$40. Dividend yield of 1.9%. (Analysts’ price target is $27.)

TOP PICK

There was the crash in oil prices, and this company didn’t restructure as fast as everybody else, and got really hurt. Recently did a very big acquisition and had to issue a bunch of shares, and the stock has fallen even more. This is probably the time to own the stock because of new management coming in, who will probably exit some businesses allowing them to pay down some debt. Dividend yield of 1.6%. (Analysts’ price target is $13.)