As we begin a new year, there is palpable relief that the old year is over! For investors, the main question is where should you invest in 2021? The answer is always, “It depends”. Where you invest depends on (among other things) your financial goals, your time horizon, and your risk tolerance.
If however, you want to invest in stocks, you have a few options. As of December 21st, 45 stocks were trading below our fair value estimates (FVEs). The cheapest of these are in Cannabis. However, none of them have an ‘economic moat’. A company with an economic moat can fend off competition and earn high returns on capital for many years to come. The Morningstar Economic Moat Rating represents a company's sustainable competitive advantage. A company whose competitive advantages we expect to last more than 20 years has a wide moat; one that can fend off their rivals for 10 years has a narrow moat; while a firm with either no advantage or one that we think will quickly dissipate has no moat.
Today, we decided to look at 10 Canadian stocks that are trading below our fair value estimates, and also have an economic moat. Of the 10, three are telecom companies, three are financial services firms (including banks) and two are in oil and gas and three are oil and gas companies. Two of them have a ‘Wide’ economic moat, while the rest are narrow. Here’s the list:
Name | Ticker | FVE | Economic Moat | Moat Trend |
Enbridge Inc | ENB | 0.74 | Wide | Stable |
Nutrien Ltd | NTR | 0.78 | Narrow | Stable |
TC Energy Corp | TRP | 0.81 | Narrow | Stable |
CI Financial Corp | CIX | 0.82 | Narrow | Negative |
Shaw Communications Inc Class B | SJR.B | 0.84 | Narrow | Negative |
BCE Inc | BCE | 0.85 | Narrow | Stable |
Cameco Corp | CCO | 0.86 | Narrow | Positive |
Telus Corp | T | 0.88 | Narrow | Stable |
The Toronto-Dominion Bank | TD | 0.91 | Wide | Stable |
National Bank of Canada | NA | 0.92 | Narrow | Stable |
Morningstar Direct Data as of Dec. 21, 2020
The telecom companies are a new addition from last quarter’s list of moat-y stocks. Morningstar analyst Matthew Dolgin points out that the businesses of the three major telecom players in Canada have been hurt quite a bit by the pandemic, especially their wireless businesses, which faced a tough time “These actually have caused major headwinds to the wireless revenue and that's been especially hurtful to Rogers, BCE also had, it was probably the next most hurt, and Telus (T) a little bit less so. But essentially each of their wireless businesses really did get affected quite a bit by the pandemic, and it's not certain how quickly they'll come back. We might be looking at a couple of years until we get back to 2019 revenue,” he points out.
In terms of moats, Dolgin notes that the two sources of the moat are efficient scale and cost advantages. “For telecom companies, you're talking about a wireline or wireless network, there are really high costs to build those, so these firms that have these networks already have significant advantages over those that might want to come in and compete. We see these incumbents as having significant advantages over more upstart type of competitors, and we think they're protected for that reason,” he says.
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