CTV National News: How Ottawa bungles the awarding of federal contracts
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The auditor general found that federal workers ignored rules for nearly a decade when awarding contracts the company behind ArriveCan. Judy Trinh reports.
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Globe and Mail
38 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
2 Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy Hand Over Fist and 1 to Avoid
Warren Buffett's value-oriented, buy-and-hold approach isn't everyone's preferred stock-picking style. The fact is, it works. Over the course of the past three decades, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) has more than doubled the performance of the S&P 500, and it is still widening the gap. That's why you'd be wise to poach a few of Buffett's picks for yourself. Just remember that not every name Buffett has picked to be part of Berkshire's portfolio has panned out as initially hoped. To this end, here's a rundown of two Warren Buffett stocks to buy hand over fist sooner rather than later, and one Buffett stock you may not want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Buy American Express Through steady growth and the sheer attrition of its other stock selections, American Express (NYSE: AXP) has quietly become Berkshire Hathaway's second-biggest holding. As of the most recent look, Berkshire is sitting on 151.6 million shares of AmEx, collectively worth $45.6 billion. That's 16% of Berkshire's overall stock portfolio, and 21.6% of American Express itself. American Express is, of course, a credit card company, in the same vein as Mastercard and Visa. Except the comparison isn't a great one. Visa and Mastercard operate card-based payment networks meant to serve card issuers like banks or merchants. American Express is a payment middleman as well as the issuer. And yet, that description still doesn't do the company justice. AmEx's core business is actually managing a perks and rewards program built around a credit card platform that encourages the revenue-bearing usage of its plastic. Indeed, some cardholders will pay as much as $700 per year in exchange for hotel discounts, credit toward entertainment and ride-hailing, access to airport lounges, and more. While the upfront annual fee is steep, for more affluent spenders who don't worry too much about the economy, it's an investment that pays for itself in almost any environment. In this vein, despite the current economic headwinds, AmEx grew its top and bottom lines by 6% year over year during the first quarter of 2025. The analyst community expects both to accelerate later this year and beyond. Be warned that American Express stock isn't exactly cheap right now. Shares trade at about 20 times this year's expected earnings and a tad above the analysts' consensus price target of $294.46. Don't sweat that too much, though. As Buffett himself has often explained, "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." Quality usually ends up more than paying for itself. Buy Domino's Pizza Plenty of investors are still a bit surprised Berkshire Hathaway started building a position in Domino's Pizza (NASDAQ: DPZ) late last year. While not a bad company, it's not quite Warren Buffett's usual kind of pick. And perhaps someone besides Buffett made the call. Whatever the backstory is behind this trade, it's more Buffett-esque than it may seem. Chief among the qualities that the Oracle of Omaha likes to see in any investment is the durable profitability of the pizza business itself. There's not a lot of overhead involved here, since most Domino's Pizza locales are small-footprint carry-out or delivery stores that can be run with a minimal amount of staff. The ingredients needed to make a pizza are also relatively cheap, while the pizza-making process itself is relatively simple. Pizza pricing is also fairly elastic, if greater input costs force price increases. Of course, pizza is consistently marketable as well. There's good reason, however, Berkshire specifically chose Domino's. It's not only the biggest name in the business with over 21,300 stores, but it's also one of the best-run pizza chains. The company hasn't failed to turn a quarterly profit in over a couple of decades, and not counting the period after the COVID-19 pandemic's peak -- when food delivery finally slowed down -- Domino's has produced reliable profit growth too. It's clearly doing something right. Data by YCharts. Berkshire's stake in Domino's Pizza isn't huge, at least not yet. It's only got about 2.6 million shares of the pizza chain worth roughly $1.2 billion. For perspective, that's less than 1% of the value of all of Berkshire Hathaway's stock holdings combined. But the fact that Buffett and his lieutenants are interested in owning even a relatively tiny stake in Domino's still speaks volumes about what they see for its future. Avoid Kraft Heinz Kudos to Warren Buffett and his team for being patient with Berkshire's position in Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ: KHC). Its 326 million shares are currently trading down more than 70% from their 2017 peak, and are knocking on the door of 2020's multi-year low thanks to four years of subpar performance from the company itself. Berkshire isn't giving up, though, even though most other investors are. And perhaps Buffett and his team will eventually be vindicated. There's certainly no denying Kraft Heinz has some of the best brand names in the food business to work with, after all. Things have been so bad for so long here, however, that interested investors might be better served by not jumping into a name Berkshire Hathaway likely wishes it had dumped a while back. Now it can't -- at least not without facing some serious credibility fallout. Not only would an exit lock in a sizable loss, but such a sale would put the spotlight back on the fact that Buffett largely helped orchestrate the 2015 merger of Heinz and Kraft that was supposed to create an unstoppable food powerhouse. It never happened, though, proving that even the Oracle of Omaha doesn't get things right every single time. So what went wrong? At the time, the premise of a pairing made enough superficial sense. Several high-profile mergers and acquisitions in the early 2000s had panned out nicely, like ExxonMobil, Facebook's purchase of Instagram, and Google's 2006 acquisition of YouTube. Moreover, the food business itself is a simple one that tends to see higher margins with greater scale. There was corporate-culture friction for Kraft Heinz from the get-go, however, and perhaps worse, not enough of the right people were focusing on the actual underlying motivation for doing the deal in the first place. That motivation was slowing sales growth for the entire (and highly saturated) food production industry, which was finally allowing smaller players to chip away at the titans' dominance of the business. At the same time, consumers themselves were changing. Most of them became far more interested in more narrowly focused options and brands, making Kraft Heinz's now-bigger size even more of a liability. This would have been a tough shift for anyone to see at the time, including Warren Buffett. Yes, this stock's forward-looking dividend yield of 6% is compelling. Just keep in mind the quarterly dividend payment hasn't budged since being dialed back to $0.40 per share in 2019. It's not clear when -- or even if -- the company might be in a safe enough position to start raising it again. Should you invest $1,000 in American Express right now? Before you buy stock in American Express, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and American Express wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $649,102!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $882,344!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is996% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to174%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 American Express is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, Domino's Pizza, Mastercard, Meta Platforms, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends Kraft Heinz. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
'Not here to scare people,' but P.E.I. watchdog raising alarm bells about historic debt levels
Social Sharing P.E.I.'s auditor general says the province's net debt, the highest in the province's history, is unsustainable. Darren Noonan told MLAs the net debt is closing in on $3 billion, or nearly $15,000 for every single person in the province. He said if the current trend continues, that net debt could hit $5 billion in the next five years. Noonan says the province may need to make some tough decisions soon. "I'm not here to scare people, but I'm here to let people know that we have to start thinking about this. It has to be paid at some point," P.E.I.'s financial watchdog said in an interview with CBC News. "Our net debt continues to grow… The only way to bring it down is to address it through increased taxes or decreased spending. It's a tough thing for politicians to have to do." The auditor general was speaking as the legislature's public accounts committee met this week. This is not the first time Noonan has raised concerns about the province's mounting debt, prompting provincial officials to describe his comments as "alarmist." "I wasn't offended at the word 'alarmist,'" Noonan told MLAs at the committee meeting. "In fact, if you have to be a bit alarmist to get some attention to it… that's what it takes." In a statement, the Department of Finance said it works to ensure the province can manage its debt levels and agrees that it is important to monitor the province's debt. However, it added, "fiscal planning is complex, and it is necessary to balance a number of perspectives and factors, including Islanders' needs and being prudent financial stewards while monitoring today's uncertainties." 'We're spending money that we don't have' Liberal MLA Gord McNeilly, who chairs the public accounts committee, said these debt levels are accumulating while the province is getting record transfers from the federal government. He said the province has to control its spending. "We're spending money that we don't have," McNeilly said. "All Islanders should be concerned about this." Green Party Leader Matt MacFarlane said the more the province has to pay to service the debt, the less money it will have to deliver programs and services. "It means that we're losing programs and services and capital infrastructure that we could be having, simply because the debt is growing and growing and growing," MacFarlane said in an interview. We need the infrastructure, we need the repairs to our hospitals and schools, but what's the cost that's going to come at?... We're going to have to cut programs that we've come to rely on. — Green Party Leader Matt MacFarlane "We need the infrastructure, we need the repairs to our hospitals and schools, but what's the cost that's going to come at? It's either going to come at increased debt, which we're going to have to keep passing on to future generations to pay… or we're going to have to cut programs that we've come to rely on – social programs – and we can't do that either, really. "It's a tough position that we're in right now." Interest costing more than corporate tax brings in Noonan highlighted some other troubling trends as well. He said P.E.I.'s economy is more dependent on government spending than the economy of any other province in Canada; the province is the most dependent on federal funding; and interest charges have hit a record high of $165 million, or 5.5 per cent of total revenues. "One of our significant sources of revenue for the province is corporate income tax, and last year, we took in $157 million in corporate income revenue. Our interest expense was over $160 million," the auditor general pointed out. Noonan said the government's record-breaking capital spending is also a concern. His office reviewed eight "significant" capital budget projects, comparing the original budget to the actual completed cost in the last three fiscal years. Those projects were completed at a cost nearly 50 per cent above the amounts originally budgeted, and some were nearly 80 per cent over budget. The five-year capital plan for fiscal years 2020 to 2024 included total spending of about $610 million, but the actual capital spending over the period amounted to more than $1 billion. Noonan said his office intends to keep digging deeper into the capital spending, to find out why so many of these projects are going over budget. "There's been a lot of discussion about investment but there hasn't been any discussion on repaying the debt or how we're going to pay it back," Noonan said.
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
A Hollywood Giant Gives Up on Comeback Dreams
When Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ: WBD) was formed, the idea was that the collection of assets would be more valuable than they were individually. Now, it's splitting again in a deal that will likely empower the biggest companies in streaming. *Stock prices used were end-of-day prices of June 10, 2025. The video was published on June 11, 2025. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue » Should you invest $1,000 in Warner Bros. Discovery right now? Before you buy stock in Warner Bros. Discovery, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Warner Bros. Discovery wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $649,102!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $882,344!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is996% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to174%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Netflix, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Travis Hoium is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through their link they will earn some extra money that supports their channel. Their opinions remain their own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.
