These blue chips work to protect your returns

Article Excerpt

CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY, $301.29, is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol CP; shares outstanding: 147.7 million; Market cap: $41.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 1.1%; www.cpr.ca) ships freight over a 22,000-kilometre rail network between Montreal and Vancouver, with links to hubs in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast. CP’s investors continue to benefit from its improved efficiency, which offsets its declining volumes. In the third quarter of 2019, earnings gained 8.7%, to $640 million from $589 million a year earlier. Due to fewer shares outstanding, per-share earnings rose at the faster rate of 11.9%, to $4.61 from $4.12. The gains are despite a 1.2% drop in the railway’s revenue ton miles (a measure of freight volumes). Higher freight rates nonetheless spurred revenue in the quarter: it rose 4.3%, to $1.98 billion from $1.90 billion a year earlier. The company’s operating ratio improved to 56.1% from 58.3%. (Operating ratio is regular operating costs divided by revenue—the lower the better.) That reflects CP’s improved terminal dwell times (down…