Investment Q&A

Q: Office vacancies are at basically a three decade high.Interest rates have risen dramatically and are likely not going to materially fall for many years .Work from home is here to stay.How is Bam….with its monstrous office space exposure and huge debt going to be a favourable investment in the near future?

Q: There was a recent question as to the significance of GSY's $41m credit risk at Canada Drives and why it was not reported, I asked this very question of a Hedge fund tht holds GSY and below is their response. Feel free to publish if you think it will be of interest to your members.

"The are a few moving parts to the Canada Drives story.

The business is split into two segments 1. Retail 2. Lead Business

The retail business is the new business that was losing money and is being wound down. They expect to liquidate their inventory over the next couple months and pay off all existing debt facilities.

The Lead business was Canada Drives original business from 2010 and has been consistently profitable. It generated $11m in EBITDA on $86m in sales in 2020. This business is asset light and doesn’t take the balance sheet risk like the retail business did.

GoEasy owned $40m of the $50m of convertibles notes. The court documents show that GSY may acquire or end up owning the Leads business which has been stated that it will continue to operate.

Overall, I don’t think GSY disclosed much of this publicly because it doesn’t breach materiality. $40m of capital on a $2.9B enterprise value."

Q: Followin on the other question regarding TRI, if you held it, would you opt out or take the cash?

If you're a patient investor, opting out seems like the way to go but interested in your thoughts as that doesn't seem to be the default. An investor has to take a positive step to opt out.

Robert

Q: Are any of the Canadian Banks heavily leveraged to commercial real estate?
Thank you.

Q: Bloomberg headline "Toronto-Dominion Becomes Biggest Bank Short With $3.7 Billion on the Line". Is this just noise or should I be concerned?
Thanks
John

Q: Is the TRI reverse split effectively a share buyback? What are the advantages to this approach as opposed to a NCIB? Do you view this news as a strong positive for the stock or this basically neutral?

Q: Saturday morning on CBC Mark Warner warned viewers not to be too overconfident about Canadian banks compared to US banks. His reasoning was that Canadian banks have been buying banks in the US.
As I am a holder of Canadian banks this has me concerned. I was wondering if you could shed some light on his comment and which banks might be at the most risk.

Q: Hi Peter, Ryan, and Team

In your answers to other members, I’ve observed that National Bank isn’t one of your recommendation, and I’m wondering why.

Their 5 year CAGR is 9.4%. For the 3, 5, and 10 year periods, the beat their peers (BMO, CM, RY, BNS, and TD) by 6%, 6%, and 3% respectively.

Watching the negative news involving GSY, I’m considering switching it to NA. Since we’ve held GSY for some time, we’re still up quite substantially.

In our combined accounts, we also own TD, which we’ll keep.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on this proposed switch. Thanks in advance for your insight.

Q: Hi . If I buy BAM shares on the NYSE, and hold them in my cash account, will I be able to keep the dividends in $US. and benefit from the Canadian dividend tax credit? I am a Canadian citizen and reside in Canada. Thanks. Ben

Q: With TD's purchase price of FHN @ $25, is FHN a buy since it is trading around $17.50 currently???

Thanks!

Q: value plus dividend is their a bank that sticks out as an ok buy

Q: Hi, has there been any recent negative news about BNS as its price is falling today whereas all the other major banks are up?

Q: Hello,

If you ultimately think Go Easy will be fine. And as per their CEO at the National Bank conference saying that they will “continue to grow and meet targets”. How is this not a buying opportunity with the company down 25% and out of favour?

Q: When the initial shock at SVB happened, I traded First Republic shares and made enough profits to buy a long position when the shares went into the 12's. I don't believe that the US Govt. will allow these "small" banks to fail. Ex: FRC has over 7000 employees.
Are there any other US "small" banks that you screen that have been hammered but have a good prospect of surviving and flourishing? I have a very high risk tolerance.
Thank you Gordo

Q: Hi

We still have 500 shares of GSY in our RRSP accounts

Thinking of selling and buying BAC. Both are beaten up. However I am thinking BAC
has a better chance of recovering in a shorter time frame with less government interference.

Your comments or other suggestions in the US are most welcome.

We already have CROX, BRK.B, CELH, PERI, NIO, INMD, LNTH, IFRA,XYLD, IYW

Thank you

Mike

Q: thoughts on this long term thanks

Q: Good afternoon,

Could you please contrast BN and BAM with respect to exposure and sensitivity to the commercial real estate market. If one was looking to underweight commercial real estate, which would be your choice (or not at all)?

Thank you

Q: SCHW is down ~6% today, March 30, after a downgrade by Morgan Stanley. CFRA issued brief research yesterday rating SCHW a “Strong buy”. Although TD owns (I think) a chunk of SCHW , TD:us is up today. I had been planning to buy SCHW thinking it was being overly punished for the sins of others. Granted, deposits are flying out, but its CEO is quoted a couple of weeks ago to say that even if clients demanded all their deposits back, SCHW would still remain liquid. I am going from memory and am now unsure of the veracity or reliability of information I refer to above.

SCHW still strikes me a reasonably good opportunity at today's price. Would appreciate your comments, preferably with some depth, if you would please. Thanks

Q: Dear 5i team.

There have been a few questions lately on HMAX vs ZWB and all the responses thus far discuss the upside potential and difference in strategy. What are the downside risks of these two aproaches to their covered call strategies? Has the recent volitility in Banks given us any insights into this part of the question, or are we still in speculate on outcomes mode. If the latter, please provide some educated speculation on impact of continued downward draft in Bank equity prices.

Thanks for your insights.

Arthur.

Q: Is BAM exposed much to commercial real estate? What percentage of their cash flow is from this sector? Thanks