Topic: Dividend Stocks

SAPUTO INC. $40

SAPUTO INC. $40 (Toronto symbol SAP; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 392.9 million; Market cap: $15.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.5; Dividend yield: 1.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.saputo.com) is Canada’s largest producer of dairy products, including milk, butter and cheese. It also operates dairies in the U.S., Australia and Argentina.

The company’s sales rose 2.8% in its fiscal 2016 third quarter, which ended December 31, 2015, to $2.9 billion from $2.8 billion a year earlier. It gets 65% of its sales from outside Canada, and the lower Canadian dollar added $261 million to the latest quarter’s sales. Lower selling prices for cheese and butter cut sales by $191 million.

Earnings gained 15.8%, to $0.44 a share from $0.38. That’s mainly due to better efficiency and lower ingredient costs.

The stock is expensive at 25.3 times the $1.58 a share that Saputo will probably earn for all of fiscal 2016. The $0.54 dividend yields 1.4%.

Saputo is still a hold.

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