A person walks into the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec building in Montreal on Feb. 7, 2020.
Christinne Muschi/Christinne Muschi/The Globe and
Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real-estate arm of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, will likely sell a third of its 25 shopping centres after its 2019 returns dragged down the entire fund.
The Caisse failed to beat its investment benchmark in 2019 as Ivanhoé Cambridge recorded a negative 2.7-per-cent return. The Caisse said its real-estate portfolio was “notably affected by the weak performance” of its Canadian shopping centres.
Nathalie Palladitcheff, president and chief executive officer of Ivanhoé Cambridge, said Thursday at a news conference that while “there are 25 shopping centres and there will be 25 solutions,” she added that “of the 25, at least a third need to be sold eventually, because the possibility of transformation in relation to the capital that needs to be invested does not correspond to our priorities at Ivanhoé Cambridge.” (Her remarks were made in French and translated by the Caisse.)
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Ivanhoé Cambridge made attempts to sell portions of its Canadian shopping-centre portfolio starting in 2018, but ultimately made no major deal. Early in 2018, the company took its Calgary Market Mall off the market. Last year, it was seeking to sell a 50-per-cent non-managing interest in two top-performing malls, Vaughan Mills north of Toronto and Conestoga Mall in Waterloo, Ont., as well as up to 100 per cent in eight other shopping centres from Victoria to Quebec City. The Globe and Mail reported in August, 2019, that it had halted the sale because it couldn’t get the price it wanted.
The Caisse also said declining residential real-estate rents in New York City played a lesser role in its real-estate performance. Its real-estate benchmark returned 1.4 per cent.
The Caisse says Ivanhoé Cambridge will accelerate a move from more traditional assets and into “tomorrow’s sectors,” driven by trends in urbanization, socio-demographic changes and new technologies.
Overall, the Quebec pension plan said it produced a 10.4-per-cent return in 2019, increasing its assets by $31.1-billion to $340-billion. A benchmark portfolio the Caisse uses to evaluate its performance, however, returned 11.9 per cent.
Charles Émond, the new president and chief executive officer of the Caisse, called global markets “highly euphoric” and said “we succeeded here. The portfolio, overall, performed exactly the way we thought it would perform in this type of environment.” Mr. Émond, a former Bank of Nova Scotia investment banker, replaced Michael Sabia as Caisse CEO earlier this month.
While the pension manager’s infrastructure portfolio returned 7.1 per cent, it was below its benchmark index’s return of 17.7 per cent. While the Caisse’s infrastructure portfolio is primarily private assets, the benchmark index includes more than 200 publicly traded stocks, which the Caisse said “benefited greatly from surging stock markets.”
All told, the Caisse’s “real assets” class, which contains real estate and infrastructure and makes up about one-fifth of the portfolio, returned 1.0 per cent, compared with a benchmark of 7.2 per cent.
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Caisse’s equity portfolio, which represents about half of its assets, also missed the mark, returning 15.3 per cent compared with a 16.3-per-cent benchmark. The fixed-income portfolio was the only winner, posting an 8.9-per-cent return, beating its 8.0-per-cent benchmark.
The fund closed the year with $340-billion in net assets, with $47.6-billion invested in 750 companies in Quebec’s private sector. Total Quebec-based assets were $66.7-billion at year-end.
The Caisse’s annualized return over five and 10 years was 8.1 per cent and 9.2 per cent, respectively. Over those periods, it said it generated $11-billion and $18-billion in value-added compared to its benchmark portfolio.
Mr. Émond says the pension fund manager expects the next decade “to be more challenging than the past one, during which all investors benefited from the longest bull market in history.”
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CALGARY – TC Energy Corp. has lowered the estimated cost of its Southeast Gateway pipeline project in Mexico.
It says it now expects the project to cost between US$3.9 billion and US$4.1 billion compared with its original estimate of US$4.5 billion.
The change came as the company reported a third-quarter profit attributable to common shareholders of C$1.46 billion or $1.40 per share compared with a loss of C$197 million or 19 cents per share in the same quarter last year.
Revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 totalled C$4.08 billion, up from C$3.94 billion in the third quarter of 2023.
TC Energy says its comparable earnings for its latest quarter amounted to C$1.03 per share compared with C$1.00 per share a year earlier.
The average analyst estimate had been for a profit of 95 cents per share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
BCE Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter as it recorded $2.11 billion in asset impairment charges, mainly related to Bell Media’s TV and radio properties.
The company says its net loss attributable to common shareholders amounted to $1.24 billion or $1.36 per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with a profit of $640 million or 70 cents per share a year earlier.
On an adjusted basis, BCE says it earned 75 cents per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of 81 cents per share in the same quarter last year.
“Bell’s results for the third quarter demonstrate that we are disciplined in our pursuit of profitable growth in an intensely competitive environment,” BCE chief executive Mirko Bibic said in a statement.
“Our focus this quarter, and throughout 2024, has been to attract higher-margin subscribers and reduce costs to help offset short-term revenue impacts from sustained competitive pricing pressures, slow economic growth and a media advertising market that is in transition.”
Operating revenue for the quarter totalled $5.97 billion, down from $6.08 billion in its third quarter of 2023.
BCE also said it now expects its revenue for 2024 to fall about 1.5 per cent compared with earlier guidance for an increase of zero to four per cent.
The company says the change comes as it faces lower-than-anticipated wireless product revenue and sustained pressure on wireless prices.
BCE added 33,111 net postpaid mobile phone subscribers, down 76.8 per cent from the same period last year, which was the company’s second-best performance on the metric since 2010.
It says the drop was driven by higher customer churn — a measure of subscribers who cancelled their service — amid greater competitive activity and promotional offer intensity. BCE’s monthly churn rate for the category was 1.28 per cent, up from 1.1 per cent during its previous third quarter.
The company also saw 11.6 per cent fewer gross subscriber activations “due to more targeted promotional offers and mobile device discounting compared to last year.”
Bell’s wireless mobile phone average revenue per user was $58.26, down 3.4 per cent from $60.28 in the third quarter of the prior year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
TORONTO – Canada Goose Holdings Inc. trimmed its financial guidance as it reported its second-quarter revenue fell compared with a year ago.
The luxury clothing company says revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 29 totalled $267.8 million, down from $281.1 million in the same quarter last year.
Net income attributable to shareholders amounted to $5.4 million or six cents per diluted share, up from $3.9 million or four cents per diluted share a year earlier.
On an adjusted basis, Canada Goose says it earned five cents per diluted share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of 16 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
In its outlook, Canada Goose says it now expects total revenue for its full financial year to show a low-single-digit percentage decrease to low-single-digit percentage increase compared with earlier guidance for a low-single-digit increase.
It also says it now expects its adjusted net income per diluted share to show a mid-single-digit percentage increase compared with earlier guidance for a percentage increase in the mid-teens.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
