Stocks

Although we are now deep into the recovery phase of the COVID downturn, I still remain shocked at just how resilient Google’s parent company Alphabet has proved these past 18 months. I mean, a brief sequential drop in revenue and profit was about as bad as it got in FQ2 2020, and even then California-based Alphabet still managed to mint billions in net income and…

My coverage of Wells Fargo (WFC) to date has basically been to channel a kind of Michael O’Higgins “Dogs of the Dow” approach. O’Higgins hypothesized that, thanks to their size, big blue chip firms often have a bit more breathing space to sort out any issues that may be plaguing their stock prices. In the meantime, reinvesting larger than average dividends yields (which is of…

Despite being a disappointing performer, I remain a big fan of Budweiser and Stella Artois owner AB InBev (BUD). I know that may sound daft given its ongoing struggle to digest the $110b purchase of SABMiller a few years ago, and that’s before even mentioning the woeful stock returns in that time too. Ultimately the SAB deal has left AB InBev with a bloated balance…

As regular readers will know, Molson Coors (TAP) had its issues even before COVID hit. In very broad terms I think you can boil those down to two points. Firstly, the company took on a bunch of debt to buy out the rest of the MillerCoors JV in 2016. Debt net of cash clocked in at circa $11.5b at its peak, roughly equivalent to 4.5-5x…

A year ago it might have been tough to imagine Toronto Dominion (TD) putting down the kind of financial results it has of late. The economic environment was obviously pretty darn scary back then, with the early economic data resembling nothing ever seen before. The potentially devastating impact to bank stocks in the form of credit losses probably doesn’t require much extra commentary. Indeed, that…