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Stars & Dogs

Some standout selections from a sardonic stock watcher

By Andrew Bell

Stars

Royal Bank of Canada
>Top 1000 Rank:
1
>Profit:
$2.8 billion
>Stock:
up 12.2%

Sat on and flattened your summer quota of patio chairs yet? Hard to stop a giant moving object. Ask happy folks who invested in this mastodon. RBC grazes on fees from vacant, shuffling consumers. It also avoided loans to corporate nutbars, with their wild eyes and unappealing death stench.

BCE Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
2
>Profit:
$2.5 billion
>Stock:
up 14.2%

"I don't think there's anything really remarkable," muttered CEO Michael Sabia after a year of dull earnings. Suits telecom investors. When the years of riding high on magical profits turned into a stumble across a poisoned desert, they got plenty and more of "really remarkable."

Power Financial Corp.
>Top 1000 Rank:
10
>Profit:
$988 million
>Stock:
up 11.5%

Why, here come the Desmarais lads now. All leather, spikes and violent swagger. Oh, by no means grey financiers in dull suits. Standing by with great canvas duffel bags to catch the gush of cash from their, yes, financial empire. Shareholders catching some steamy action too—a nice rising dividend that even an auditor can count.

Petro-Canada
>Top 1000 Rank:
11
>Profit:
$974 million
>Stock:
up 22%

Can be a rough life—minus 60 in a 100-kilometre-an-hour gale, struggling with a giant frozen valve, in nothing but unspeakable jeans and asbestos gloves. Makes up for it when you hit a gusher. Like Petrocan chief Ron Brenneman did when he bought German gas monkey Veba.

RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust
>Top 1000 Rank:
58
>Profit:
$172 million
>Stock:
up 4.2%

The mall income trust rents to nice retailers, with clean and well-lit stores, who pay it big rent cheques. Ka-ching. Here come rising distributions. Not like your career as a landlord—that was a good one. How they snivelled about the cardboard ceiling!

Finning International Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
77
>Profit:
$132 million
>Stock:
up 22.2%

SUVs? They're for wusses! You need a backhoe to impress 'em in the parking lot. And traffic's never a problem. Just smash your way through. It's all about momentum: Profit's up 80% in two years as this heavy equipment dealer gobbles up rivals in South America and the U.K.

Torstar Corp.
>Top 1000 Rank:
80
>Profit:
$125 million
>Stock:
up 7.8%

The watery-left newspaper publisher likes to warble about squandering money on the poor. Let's hope we don't see any synergies with its Harlequin empire of increasingly steamy romantic stories. The Toronto Star's hirsute night crew strip down and… No. Please, no.

Gildan Activewear Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
116
>Profit:
$66 million
>Stock:
up 7.2%

Okay, okay, you're not alone. Millions of lethargic, stubbly-cheeked consumers have given up. They're just stumbling around in a T-shirt. Great news for Gildan, which supplies one-third of the North American market. But, well, come on… Could you not have at least worn a clean one?

Astral Media Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
126
>Profit:
$57 million
>Stock:
up 16.9%

Can't beat joining in with Avril in the morning drive: "…Whydja have to go and make things so complica-a-a-ted?" Investors in media giant Astral love radio, too, as profits spew from jabbering DJs. Amazing what small lemurs can be trained to do.

Patheon Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
208
>Profit:
$28 million
>Stock:
up 11.9%

Hey, dreamy…better knock off the stuff for a while. Spend the money investing in the industry instead. Here's one idea: a cash-machine contract drug maker that churns out stuff like NeoCitran in Whitby, a wasteland east of Toronto. And do something about that drippy nose.

Dogs

Theratechnologies Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
854
>Loss:
$14 million
>Stock:
down 6.1%

Easy to spot a biotech investor. No mistaking that quiet, sickly specimen. Pallid, from a lack of real human nourishment. Feverishly clutching a few test tubes, each with its horrid sampling within. Proffering them, with white shaky hands. But still no cure comes.

Hemosol Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
947
>Loss:
$55 million
>Stock:
down 61.8%

There's planning: A $90-million factory is waiting to churn out the company's blood substitute. But the goo may never go on sale after "adverse cardiac events" in patients in clinical trials. Probably didn't add enough oregano. Hey, maybe they can switch to something else—say, artificial spines for corporate directors.

Toronto-Dominion Bank
>Top 1000 Rank:
961
>Loss:
$76 million
>Stock:
down 2.6%

Results in '02 were a high-speed collision—the bank's first-yet annual loss. Seems investors in this growth story enjoy flaming wreckage. This spring brought another half-a-billion or so in write-downs and restructuring charges to cover lunch for a year-old team of traders in U.S. equity options.

Nova Chemicals Corp.
>Top 1000 Rank:
973
>Loss:
$81 million (U.S.)
>Stock:
down 20.2%

Betting on chemicals—about as predictable as inviting violent one-eyed pirates to spend the night. Uh, if you could park the cutlasses and curved hook things over by the door. Then there's Nova's exciting debt, cut to junk in '02. Let's try to keep the shooting down now, please.

Norske Skog Canada Ltd.
>Top 1000 Rank:
972
>Loss:
$123 million
>Stock:
down 54.1%

The pulp market can get nastier than a year-old cold sore. Never mind, there's always time for a prank. Send a fresh recruit naked up the chimney to check for soot. Smelly? Clutch some burning rags and you won't notice. Now let's divvy up the new kid's stuff.

Corus Entertainment Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
981
>Loss:
$166 million
>Stock:
down 15.6%

The entertainment tent bought kids' cartoon factory Nelvana, breeder of Babar the elephant, for a half-billion adorable squirrels in 2000. Since then, investors have been trampled, torn apart and tossed into the mud flats by the river for the turtles to peck at.

Air Canada
>Top 1000 Rank:
991
>Loss:
$428 million
>Stock:
down 76.3%

Goodness, the jagged quartz peaks rush up quickly. Be nice if there were more signs of harmony between cockpit and crew. So it's great to see CEO Bob Milton reach out to union leaders. "Get with the program," he cheerily blares over the PA.

Bombardier Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
994
>Loss:
$615 million
>Stock:
down 69.6%

Investors once thought they were onside with an air-sea-land blitzkrieg. It's been a jaunt aboard a comical runaway train instead. So there's to be less tinkering with fanciful creations featuring giant fins, jets and paddles: Chief engineer Paul Tellier is snarling for "profitable."

Celestica Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
955
>Loss:
$445 million (U.S.)
>Stock:
down 41.8%

Here's a lesson you learn on your first day as a second-hand denture salesperson: It can be hard to squeeze out a buck in a low-margin business. Ask investors in this electronic assembly shed. Profits keep evaporating as orders vanish and the stock's come down with gum disease.

Noranda Inc.
>Top 1000 Rank:
996
>Loss:
$700 million
>Stock:
down 35.8%

Ah, look. How clever and ironic! A perfect life-size replica of a brand-new giant magnesium plant. Identical in every way and cost—in fact, completely usable. If you're insane, that is, because the Chinese have flooded the market with the stuff.