Latest purchase should pay off

Article Excerpt

TRANSCONTINENTAL INC. $17 (Toronto symbol TCL.A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares o/s: 87.3 million; Market cap: $1.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 5.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.tctranscontinental.com) completed its $1.7 billion acquisition of Chicago-based Coveris Americas in May 2018. That firm makes plastic packaging for consumer and industrial products at plants in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand and China. With the Coveris purchase, Transcontinental now gets over half of its revenue from packaging. That cuts the company’s reliance on its traditional commercial printing operations and advertising flyer distribution. Thanks to the new operations, total revenue in the fiscal 2019 first quarter, ended January 27, 2019, jumped 49.8%, to $751.6 million from $501.7 million a year earlier. Due to higher interest costs as a result of the loans that Transcontinental used to help fund the Coveris acquisition, earnings fell 12.2%, to $45.5 million from $51.8 million. The company also sold shares to help pay for the acquisition, so earnings…