Hold off on new buying

Article Excerpt

These three Consumer sector companies continue to benefit from improving efficiency. That has spurred their earnings and stock prices. We still like the outlook for all of them, but they’re now expensive in relation to their immediate prospects. RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC. $58 (Toronto symbol QSR; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding:460.9 million; Market cap: $26.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.4; Dividend yield: 1.5%; TSI Network Rating: Average; www.rbi.com) is the world’s third largest fast-food operator, after McDonald’s (No. 1)and Yum Brands (No. 2). It has 15,100 Burger King outlets and 4,464 Tim Hortons stores in 100 countries. Thanks to much lower expenses, earnings in the three months ended June 30, 2016, jumped 36.5%,to $192.4 million, or $0.41 a share (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars). A year earlier, it earned $141.0 million, or $0.30. The high U.S. dollar hurt contributions from the company’s overseas operations. As a result, overall sales dipped to $1.040 billion from $1.042 billion…