A humorous look at the companies that caught our eye, for better or worse, this week
TECK RESOURCES (STAR)
Things you wish, in hindsight, you had done to better prepare for retirement:
1) Bought six or seven detached houses in Toronto and Vancouver 10 years ago;
2) Become an orthodontist;
3) Loaded up on Teck Resources when it traded for less than $5 earlier this year. Buoyed by cost cuts and recovering commodity prices, the miner of copper, coal and zinc posted a small profit in the second quarter, giving its surging stock another boost.
TCK.B (TSX), $20.81, up $2.96 or 16.6% over week
MCDONALD’S (DOG)
What? The novelty of eating Egg McMuffins for breakfast, lunch and dinner has worn off? After receiving a fleeting lift from all-day breakfast, same-store sales at McDonald’s rose just 1.8 per cent in the second quarter – far below the growth of 3.2 per cent that analysts had expected. With the boost from breakfast fading, McDonald’s will have to come up with another plan to keep sales growing. All-day lunch and dinner, perhaps?
MCD (NYSE), $117.65 (U.S.), down $10.61 or 8.3% over week
TWITTER (DOG)
Despite Donald Trump’s heroic efforts to single-handedly prop up Twitter’s traffic, the social network’s popularity continues to wane. The microblogging service added just three million net new users in the second quarter – up a scant 1 per cent from the previous quarter – as revenue grew at the slowest quarterly rate since Twitter’s 2013 IPO. It’s not helping that Twitter’s notorious bullies and trolls keep scaring people away. Sad!
TWTR (NYSE), $16.64 (U.S.), down $1.73 or 9.4% over week
FACEBOOK (STAR)
Where have all the Twitter users gone? To Facebook, apparently. Shares of the world’s biggest social network surged to a record after the company – with more than 1.7 billion monthly active users – said revenue leaped 59 per cent to $6.43-billion (U.S.) in the second quarter, smashing analyst expectations of $6.02-billion. Users may not like all the ads showing up on Facebook, but you won’t hear any complaints from investors.
FB (Nasdaq), $123.94 (U.S.), up $2.94 or 2.5% over week
FORD (DOG)
Call a tow truck – there’s black smoke rising from Ford’s shares. Even as the auto maker spent more on incentives, sales in North America were flat in the second quarter as the U.S. market hit a plateau after years of solid growth. The slowdown, combined with an expected sharp drop in revenue from Britain following the pound’s nosedive, is putting Ford’s full-year guidance at risk. The stock could be in the shop for a while.
F (NYSE), $12.66 (U.S.), down $1.18 or 8.5% over week