Investment Editor
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
Yesterday we looked at the best long-term earnings trends for Canadian companies. Today, we'll do the opposite and look at the short trend. Let's see what companies produced the best earnings surprises in their most recent quarters.
MORE ABOUT TODAY'S SCREEN
We'll move our minimum market capitalization down to $25-million today so that we can find some small, beaten-up or ignored names that may be producing some surprisingly strong earnings. We'll sort the stocks by largest surprises by percentage. We'll also use Thomson ONE again, the institutional portfolio management platform from Thomson Reuters Corp.
WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?
There are plenty of companies that are beating the pants off of analyst expectation, or at least they are at first glance. You'll need to sort through this list and exclude companies that produced large gains in the most recent quarter. Analyst earnings estimates usually reflect operating earnings only and exclude unusual gains and losses. For instance, Altius Minerals Corp. appears to have had a spectacular quarters, beating analyst expectations by several thousand per cent. However, the company reported earnings of $31.6 million, or 1.11 per share, which included a special gain of $38.2-million and income tax expense of $6.7-million. The quarter actually fell short of analyst expectations by about a penny per share, according to BMO Nesbitt Burns' analyst.
| Canadian stocks with recent postive earnings surprises | ||||||||||
| Actual | Last quarter | Last | Market | |||||||
| $ Price | 52-wk | 52-wk | 1-mo. % | 3-mo % | last quarter | EPS | quarter | cap. | ||
| Ticker | Company Name | Mar. 23 | high $ | low $ | price chg | price chg | EPS | consensus | % surprise | ($-mil) |
| ALS-T | Altius Minerals | 6.71 | 17.14 | 3.58 | 3.2 | 52.5 | 1.11 | 0.02 | 5,450.0 | 190 |
| PWT.UN-T | Penn West Energy | 13.70 | 35.60 | 8.82 | 24.7 | 3.4 | 1.04 | 0.04 | 2,500.0 | 5,573 |
| ATP.UN-T | Atlantic Power | 7.24 | 10.50 | 4.90 | -6.0 | -0.1 | 1.04 | 0.05 | 1,914.3 | 441 |
| CPG.UN-T | Crescent Point | 27.73 | 41.67 | 18.13 | 32.4 | 28.4 | 2.84 | 0.20 | 1,356.4 | 3,769 |
| CX-T | Cyberplex Inc | 0.78 | 1.00 | 0.27 | 119.7 | 129.4 | 0.09 | 0.01 | 800.0 | 42 |
| EXF-T | Exfo Electro-Op | 4.28 | 6.19 | 2.46 | 4.4 | 11.2 | 0.12 | 0.02 | 519.8 | 98 |
| PGF.UN-T | Pengrowth Energy | 7.90 | 21.56 | 5.84 | 12.7 | -13.9 | 0.58 | 0.10 | 500.0 | 2,029 |
| DAY.UN-T | Daylight Res. | 7.10 | 13.45 | 5.12 | 8.7 | -4.1 | 0.48 | 0.09 | 433.3 | 641 |
| SW-T | Sierra Wireless | 2.95 | 20.94 | 2.62 | -11.7 | -41.0 | 1.12 | 0.23 | 387.0 | 92 |
| ELD-T | Eldorado Gold | 8.46 | 9.43 | 2.75 | -7.8 | 21.4 | 0.28 | 0.06 | 335.6 | 3,129 |
| MDF-T | Mediagrif | 3.39 | 6.50 | 1.71 | -3.1 | 54.1 | 0.18 | 0.04 | 315.4 | 48 |
| IPI.A-T | IPL Inc | 2.45 | 4.15 | 1.10 | -2.0 | 44.1 | 0.04 | 0.01 | 300.0 | 36 |
| TSK-T | Tusk Energy | 2.12 | 3.24 | 0.57 | 0.0 | 194.4 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 200.0 | 192 |
| ITX-T | Iteration Energy | 0.90 | 9.08 | 0.63 | 23.3 | -21.7 | 0.16 | 0.06 | 190.9 | 149 |
| HW-T | Harry Winston | 2.49 | 31.52 | 1.70 | -0.2 | -41.8 | 1.17 | 0.41 | 183.7 | 153 |
| AGT.UN-X | Alliance Grain | 8.50 | 16.25 | 7.10 | 3.4 | 11.4 | 0.83 | 0.31 | 167.7 | 51 |
| FCC-T | Frontera Copper | 0.58 | 5.70 | 0.17 | -2.0 | 44.9 | 0.13 | 0.05 | 147.6 | 38 |
| IPL.UN-T | Inter Pipeline | 7.39 | 10.44 | 5.59 | 4.7 | 9.5 | 0.46 | 0.19 | 142.1 | 1,650 |
| PMG-T | Petrominerales | 10.86 | 19.11 | 5.00 | 40.3 | 84.1 | 0.24 | 0.10 | 140.0 | 1,079 |
| BAM.A-T | Brookfield Asset | 17.55 | 36.96 | 14.48 | 5.4 | 1.7 | 0.33 | 0.14 | 132.4 | 10,049 |
| CMT-T | Compton Petro | 0.97 | 13.45 | 0.55 | 70.2 | 7.8 | 0.46 | 0.20 | 127.2 | 122 |
| ERF.UN-T | Enerplus Res Fd | 22.27 | 49.85 | 16.75 | 16.0 | 1.0 | 1.15 | 0.51 | 127.0 | 3,627 |
| CUS.UN-T | Canexus Income | 2.98 | 5.44 | 2.50 | -2.3 | -0.7 | 0.11 | 0.05 | 120.0 | 98 |
| SMT-T | Samuel Manu Tech | 4.30 | 11.24 | 4.27 | -31.4 | -30.8 | 0.76 | 0.35 | 117.1 | 138 |
| AER-T | Groupe Aeroplan | 9.45 | 18.78 | 6.00 | 6.8 | 32.2 | 0.44 | 0.22 | 103.1 | 1,890 |
| BNP.UN-T | Bonavista Energy | 16.29 | 37.65 | 11.74 | 29.9 | 3.1 | 1.09 | 0.54 | 101.9 | 1,600 |
| CFT-T | CE Franklin Ltd | 6.60 | 10.64 | 2.94 | 15.6 | 108.9 | 0.47 | 0.24 | 100.0 | 122 |
| SOURCE: THOMSON ONE |