Q: Do you feel it is time to drop Canadian banks and move on to something better for income?
5i Research Answer:
We would be quite comfortable owning Canadian banks today. The Canadian financial space continues to be one of the more robust across the globe, and their lending standards are considered to be quite high. While challenging economic events are putting downward pressure on earnings, we feel that an eventual turnaround in the macro outlook will be a benefit to these names down the road. Canadian banks continue to pay high dividend yields and have long track records of returning value to shareholders. While there may be some near-term or intermediate downward price pressure on these names, for an investor with a long-term timeframe, we would be comfortable owning the Canadian banks here.