Wednesday was another interesting day in the markets. The S&P 500 was little changed while Toronto was down 0.25%.
SNC Lavalin (not on our list but one I have mentioned) was up 19% after avoiding a trial by pleading guilty to one charge of defrauding the Libyan government and agreeing to a fine of $280 million. They were facing the risk of being barred from Federal projects for a period of years. That is probably not going to happen. The stock may get another boost if the federal government announces that SNC will not be barred. Or perhaps that is already priced into the stock.
FedEx fell 10% on its weak earnings report and outlook.
Aecon was up 3.0% after announcing some significant new contract wins.
After the close, Boston Pizza Royalties announced that the distribution to be paid on January 31 will remain at the 11.5 cents level. They had announced nine days ago ago that the December 31 distribution would remain at 11.5 cents. At this point they should be reasonably aware of how the Q4 same-store sales are looking. This presumably means that they are at least not too ugly. If they intended to cut based on the Q4 results, now would have been a good time to do so. The unit price is already down in expectation of a cut. With this news, a cut announcement in February while still quite possible seems a little less likely.
CRH Medical was up 6.8%. I don’t see any news to explain that. Possibly an analyst upgrade.