Lower costs will help these food stocks

Article Excerpt

All three of these leading Canadian food processors are down from their 2008 highs. However, they should all benefit from falling prices for wheat and other raw materials. As well, the recession may actually help their sales by prompting more people to eat at home. Even so, we only see two of them as buys right now. SAPUTO INC. $22 (Toronto symbol SAP; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 207.1 million; Market cap: $4.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.8; SI Rating: Average) is Canada’s largest producer of dairy products such as milk, butter and cheese. It also has operations in the United States, Argentina and Europe. Last December, Saputo bought Neilson Dairy, the dairy division of Weston Foods, for $465 million. Neilson makes a wide variety of dairy products in Ontario, and generates $600 million a year in sales. Thanks to Neilson, as well as Saputo’s earlier acquisition of a Wisconsin-based cheese maker for $161 million, its revenue rose 14.5% in the…