What are we looking for?
A round of applause, thank you. But not for us: We want stocks that are collecting more and more cheers from analysts.
More about today's screen
Craig McGee, senior consultant at CPMS Morningstar Canada, created today's offering. He screened the hundreds of Canadian stocks followed by CPMS for firms that are showing the greatest improvements in expectations.
He restricted his choices to stocks with market capitalizations of more than $500-million. Among them, he looked for the stocks that had enjoyed the best combinations of three-month sales, cash flow and earnings estimate revisions from Canadian brokerages.
Today's table shows the top 20 names, ranked in order. To avoid being too heavily exposed to any single industry, Mr. McGee limited any single sector to no more than five names.
More about CPMS
CPMS, a division of Morningstar Canada, provides quantitative North American equity research and portfolio analysis to institutional clients and financial advisers through software and Web-based tools. It covers more than 700 Canadian and 2,200 U.S. stocks, and adjusts for unusual accounting items in each company's quarterly results to make sure screens can perform correctly.
What did we find out?
Our list was heavy with energy and gold companies, but also features a prominent retailer – Lululemon – and a fast-growing drug maker, Valeant Pharmaceuticals.
"Firms with the best prospects will be able to consistently improve their results with top- and bottom-line growth," says Mr. McGee. But remember that expectations, like cheers, don't necessarily last. Do your own research before buying any of the stocks here.
Ian McGugan