Three ways to profit from construction boom

Article Excerpt

Canada’s population rose by 1 million in the past year and now exceeds 40 million. If current immigration levels and other trends continue, the population could top 50 million by 2043. The influx of new people is accelerating the construction of residential housing across the country. In turn, that will spur greater demand for repair, maintenance and related services from FirstService and Colliers. However, only aggressive investors should consider adding them to their portfolios. For more-conservative investors, a good way to profit from the boom in housing construction is with Finning. It’s also a good pick for income seekers. FIRSTSERVICE CORP. $211 is a buy for aggressive investors. The company (Toronto symbol FSV; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 44.6 million; Market cap: $9.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.8; Dividend yield: 0.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.firstservice.com) set up its commercial real estate business, Colliers International Group (see next page), as a separate firm on June 2, 2015. Investors received one share of Colliers for each…