People walk by the Hudson's Bay Company flagship department store in Toronto in January, 2014.Mark Blinch/Reuters
Strong bank earnings and a major real estate deal for retailer Hudson's Bay sent the Toronto stock market slightly higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index rose 53.20 points to 15,218.17.
Shares in Hudson's Bay Co. soared $4.47 or 20.14 per cent to $26.66 after it announced it was joining with two major real estate trusts – Toronto-based RioCan and Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group – to create two real estate joint ventures.
HBC estimates it will get $1.1-billion in cash from the transactions over time.
"We're talking about some very prime locations, major metropolitan areas in North America," said Chhad Aul, portfolio manager at Sun Life Global Investment.
"This is really just the latest in a trend that we saw with Loblaws and Canadian Tire – they're trying to spin out and unlock the value of those real estate portfolios."
Meanwhile, Royal Bank posted a quarterly profit of $2.456-billion, up 17 per cent from a year ago and raised its quarterly dividend by two cents to 77 cents per share. Its shares advanced $2.43 to $77.48.
The Canadian dollar was up 0.36 of a U.S. cent to 80.39 cents.
New York indexes were little changed as traders monitored a second day of congressional testimony from U.S. Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen for clues about the pace of interest rate hikes by the central bank. Stocks rallied on Tuesday after Ms. Yellen said in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee that inflation and wage growth remain too low for the central bank to raise rates at its next meeting. She signalled that a change in the Fed's guidance on interest rates won't lock it into a timetable for tightening.
The Dow Jones industrials gained 13.84 points to 18,223.03, the Nasdaq rose 5.85 points to 4,973.98 and the S&P 500 index added 0.49 of a point to 2,115.97.
The consumer discretionary sector was the leading TSX advancer, up 1.9 per cent as auto parts giant Magna International earned $509-million or $2.44 a share, up 11 per cent from a year ago. Sales rose about two per cent to $9.39-billion. Analysts had expected a profit of $2.24 per share and revenue of $9.08-billion. Magna also cut its revenue forecast for 2015, hurt by weak demand from Europe.
Along with the financial results, Magna announced a two-for-one stock split and hiked its quarterly dividend by 16 per cent to 44 cents per share from 38 cents. Its shares jumped $9.20 to $136.88.
The gold sector was ahead 0.6 per cent while the April gold contract was up $6.40 to US$1,190.90.
The energy sector led decliners, down 0.4 per cent, while oil prices ticked 17 cents lower to US$49.11 a barrel as the U.S. The Department of Energy says U.S. inventories rose 8.4 million barrels last week, about double the amount expected.
Encana is cutting its 2015 capital budget to between $2-billion and $2.2-billion, down about $700-million. Encana joins a host of other energy companies that have been forced to chop spending in response to a 40 per cent slide in oil prices since the end of November.
Encana's operating profit, which excludes extraordinary items, came in at $35-million, or five cents per share for the quarter. Encana shares were 50 cents higher to $16.78.
The March copper contract edged a penny lower to US$2.64 and the base metals group declined 0.2 per cent.
In the U.S., Dollar Tree Inc. and TJX Cos. added more than 3 per cent to pace gains among retailers. Hewlett-Packard tumbled 9.5 per cent after saying earnings will be hurt by the rising dollar. Chesapeake Energy lost 9.7 per cent as earnings fell short of analysts' projections.
New homes in the U.S. sold at a faster pace than forecast in January, a sign of stabilization in the housing industry. The 481,000 houses purchased last month at an annualized pace were little changed from a more than six-year high of 482,000 in December, figures from the Commerce Department showed. The median forecast of 76 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 470,000.
With files from Bloomberg News