INVESTMENT EDITOR
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
It's hard to find earnings growth in Canadian stocks this year, so let's look back and look for the best earnings track record over the past five years.
MORE ABOUT TODAY'S SCREEN
We'll screen for average annualized earnings growth over the past five years for companies with market capitalization greater than $100-million. We'll use Thomson ONE, the institutional portfolio management tool from Thomson Reuters Corp.
The way Thomson calculates its average annualized EPS growth is fairly complicated, but it requires at least 11 quarters of EPS data to qualify. Zero and negative figures are excluded. For a more complete explanation, you can check the blog.
WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?
Earnings growth in Canada has been robust in the past five years, so there are 41 companies that can show greater than 50 per cent average growth. We included the earnings outlook from analysts for this fiscal year and the next two. As you can see, the analysts expect growth at many of these stocks to stall, especially the commodity-related stocks.
More research is required to find stocks with consistent growth. Many of these companies also increased their earnings per share from very small bases. For instance, Eldorado reported earnings of 46 cents per share last year, 10 cents the year before, 1 cent the year before and a loss before that.
| Best earnings track record of Canadian companies over the past five years | ||||||||||
| Projected | ||||||||||
| Projected | Projected | earnings | Historical | |||||||
| earnings | earnings | growth | 5-year | |||||||
| growth | growth | for fiscal | annualized | Market | ||||||
| $ Price | 52-wk | 52-wk | for this | for next | two years | EPS | cap | |||
| Ticker | Company | Currency | Mar. 20 | high $ | low $ | fisc yr % | fisc yr % | from now % | growth % | ($-mil) |
| ELD-T | Eldorado Gold Corp | USD | 8.27 | 9.43 | 2.75 | -34.5 | 35.1 | 0.7 | 578.2 | 3,061 |
| CLL-T | Connacher Oil & Gas Ltd | CAD | 0.61 | 5.26 | 0.60 | NA | NA | NA | 347.2 | 129 |
| VRO-T | Vero Energy Inc | CAD | 3.42 | 11.34 | 2.70 | -115.4 | NA | 163.8 | 309.3 | 126 |
| PMG-T | Petrominerales Ltd | CAD | 10.46 | 19.11 | 5.00 | -61.9 | 186.8 | NA | 186.1 | 1,040 |
| FM-T | First Quantum Minerals | USD | 31.31 | 95.05 | 9.86 | -20.9 | 57.9 | 59.6 | 143.1 | 2,153 |
| LUN-T | Lundin Mining Corp | CAD | 1.30 | 9.15 | 0.69 | NA | NA | 152.1 | 121.4 | 634 |
| CUQ-T | Churchill Corp. | CAD | 7.72 | 24.00 | 4.45 | -22.8 | -11.5 | -41.6 | 121.3 | 137 |
| FNX-T | FNX Mining Co Inc | CAD | 4.92 | 31.14 | 2.00 | -91.7 | -250.9 | NA | 103.4 | 418 |
| PBG-T | Petrobank Energy & Res. | CAD | 23.05 | 61.72 | 16.26 | -59.6 | 177.0 | 64.6 | 102.3 | 1,925 |
| IDG-T | Indigo Books & Music Inc | CAD | 10.84 | 17.00 | 10.51 | -33.9 | 6.3 | NA | 100.5 | 266 |
| POU-T | Paramount Resources Ltd | CAD | 5.23 | 22.30 | 4.79 | NA | NA | NA | 99.3 | 348 |
| AAK-T | Arawak Energy Ltd | CAD | 0.98 | 2.98 | 0.33 | 3.5 | -73.8 | -66.3 | 94.9 | 179 |
| WAV-T | Breaker Energy Ltd | CAD | 3.08 | 13.05 | 1.63 | -130.5 | NA | NA | 92.8 | 142 |
| FFH-T | Fairfax Financial Holdings | CAD | 308.48 | 404.00 | 221.94 | -72.6 | 44.4 | NA | 91.0 | 5,198 |
| ABX-T | Barrick Gold Corporation | USD | 33.56 | 52.12 | 17.38 | -3.6 | 0.8 | 10.7 | 86.0 | 29,285 |
| IMX-T | Imax Corp | CAD | 5.06 | 8.32 | 3.10 | NA | NA | NA | 84.5 | 221 |
| POT-T | Potash Corp Sask Inc | USD | 77.07 | 241.95 | 48.82 | -9.1 | 32.2 | NA | 80.6 | 22,755 |
| PBI.UN-T | Premium Brands Incm Fd | CAD | 8.00 | 14.64 | 6.55 | -4.1 | -15.7 | NA | 78.8 | 136 |
| GO-T | Galleon Energy Inc | CAD | 3.43 | 21.16 | 2.28 | -135.4 | NA | 1,431.4 | 76.9 | 258 |
| PAA-T | Pan American Silver Corp | USD | 17.86 | 41.13 | 9.04 | -30.0 | 112.7 | NA | 75.2 | 1,557 |
| CVI.A-T | Calvalley Petroleum Inc | CAD | 1.20 | 5.10 | 0.85 | -12.2 | -161.8 | NA | 72.9 | 120 |
| WJA-T | WestJet Airlines Ltd | CAD | 10.90 | 19.21 | 8.34 | 3.0 | 13.2 | 10.8 | 72.2 | 1,353 |
| SJR.B-T | Shaw Communications | CAD | 19.36 | 24.20 | 17.37 | 10.6 | 13.6 | 13.2 | 71.0 | 7,884 |
| SOURCE: THOMSON ONE |