New wines fuel Peller’s earnings

Article Excerpt

ANDREW PELLER LTD. $8.99 (Toronto symbol ADW.A; Income Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 14.3 million; Market cap: $128.6 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 4.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.andrewpeller.com) is Canada’s second-largest wine producer, after Vincor Canada. In its 2012 first quarter, which ended June 30, 2011, Peller’s sales rose 7.7%, to $69.4 million from $64.5 million a year earlier. The company launched a number of new products, and is seeing rising demand for its more-profitable premium brands. That offset higher taxes on wines sold in its Ontario stores and slower sales of its home winemaking kits. Peller’s earnings fell 2.3%, to $3.9 million from $4.0 million. Earnings per share were unchanged at $0.28. The drop was mainly due to losses on hedging contracts that the company uses to lock in foreign-exchange rates. If you exclude all unusual items, earnings would have jumped 26.9%. Andrew Peller is a buy. buy…