Barlow’s Research Roundup: Top picks in income-heavy energy infrastructure stocks from CIBC analyst

Daily roundup of research and analysis from The Globe and Mail’s market strategist Scott Barlow

Infrastructure

CIBC analyst Robert Caterllier published his top picks in the income-oriented energy infrastructure sector,

“We are expecting a number of dividend increases that are generally in line with recent history as companies favour allocating capital to growth projects. The most important upcoming potential catalyst surrounds KEY’s pending acquisition of the Plains NGL assets in Canada, but the Canada-Alberta MOU milestones starting April 1, 2026 will also be critical for the industry … Top Picks Heading Into Q4 Results: We favour KEY due to unrealized value in the pending acquisition of Plains’ NGL assets, although the timing is more likely at quarter-end. We expect that WMB will have a strong outlook statement due to U.S. gas exposure and growing developments in power. PPL also has some upside in the Greenlight Energy Centre project, although propane pricing may pressure 2026 marketing results. In general, we believe the constant macro news flow may create trading opportunities for investors that are nimble and can tolerate the related portfolio turnover.”

Picks

RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria finds eight stocks attractive after a pullback in the sector,

“As we have written about before, we do not believe AI means the “death of software” – rather, we believe AI will benefit the software companies who invest the most in innovation and customer success … CRWD (-5%): CRWD remains a key platform consolidator in cybersecurity and is set to benefit from AI adoption with multiple FY/27 drivers including continued traction around Re-Flex and industry consolidation, CCP customer renewals and the opportunity for better pricing and additional module conversion, accelerated SIEM migrations, and emerging opportunities in identity and agentic security. DDOG (-9%): Despite investor worries around the OpenAI relationship, we continue to believe Datadog is an AI winner as AI workloads ramp and see room for core customers to continue to accelerate from here. HUBS (-11%): In our view, HUBS has an innovative AI roadmap that can drive improved win rates and real AI monetization over time. INTU (-6%): We believe AI can meaningfully benefit INTU, especially in its core TurboTax and QuickBooks businesses. MDB (-9%): MDB is in pole position to benefit from AI, owing to its flexible, developer-focused database, well-leveraged to unstructured data. MSFT (-10%): We believe the quarter was solid, with broad-based strength, and believe the stock can work as more 1P capacity comes online. NOW (-10%): We thought results were strong, and we think management did a good job addressing. SNOW (-8%): We continue to see SNOW as a well-positioned AI winner and we believe the company is in a good position to enable AI transformation by offering both data management/analytic capabilities, but can also bring AI capabilities to the data,”

Economics

The domestic economy is already diversifying away from the United States,

“Trade diversification is one of the pillars of Canada’s strategy to adjust to the new global environment. And, business and consumers have started to pivot. Over the past year, the share of imports from (and, to a lesser extent, exports to) the U.S. has fallen dramatically. To be clear, the import share has been on the decline as U.S. manufacturing has been outsourced over the decades. Still, in the 12 months to November 2025, the U.S. made up its lowest share of Canadian imports on record (back to the late 90s). Of course, tariffs are the main story. While Canadian countertariffs were smaller and didn’t last very long, public response has generally shifted away from U.S. products. And, goods from other countries—which had previously entered Canada via the U.S.—are being rerouted to avoid tariffs. On the export side, despite the recent dip, over 70% of Canadian shipments are destined for the U.S.—aside from specific sectors, these goods are largely protected from tariffs thanks to the USMCA. With that deal up for review this year, its future could determine how long this momentum to diversify is sustained”

“BMO: “in the 12 months to November 2025, the U.S. made up its lowest share of Canadian imports on record”” – (excerpt, chart) Bluesky

Bluesky post of the day

Diversion

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