The Canadian Investor - Canadian Investors Now Have Over 1,500 ETFs to Choose From

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

In this episode, we break down the market’s reaction to the announced ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran and what it means for investors. With oil prices pulling back sharply and equities rallying, we discuss why this remains a highly headline-driven market—and why having a clear portfolio strategy matters more than ever. We then shift to earnings, starting with a strong turnaround quarter from BRP, where inventory normalization and improved margins are driving a sharp recovery. We also revisit Boyd Group, a long-term compounder facing short-term pressure from insurance trends and used vehicle dynamics. Finally, we dive into the latest Canadian ETF flows to understand where investors are allocating capital today, including the rise in Canadian equities, the decline in crypto exposure, and the continued growth of more complex ETF products. Tickers discussed: DOO.TO (BRP), BYD.TO (Boyd Group), VFV, XIC    Subscribe to Our New Youtube Channel! Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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there's going to be some great opportunities for investors this has to be one of the biggest quarters i've seen from this company in quite some time Welcome back to the Canadian investor podcast. I'm Simone Benaj. I'm back with Dan Kett. We're back for our news and earnings today. Definitely on the slower side when it comes to earnings season in between the release that we saw for Q4 earnings and then Q1 earnings coming up. Probably we'll start picking up it in the next couple weeks here.

Not too many names to talk about, but that's okay. We still have quite a bit of content to talk about. Of course, the elephant in the room we saw were recorded. this on April 8th. So yesterday I think we maybe saw Liberation Day 2.0, almost like a year to the day compared to last year with the tariffs. Liberation Day 2.0, where what I'm referring to, of course, is the announced ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. So Trump announced it yesterday on April 7th. It seems to have been agreed by both parties. So they're giving themselves a two-week ceasefire. to negotiate a longer-term peas deal.

So hopefully that comes through, but the market I've been reacting very well ever since the news came out. So what's your initial reaction? Then I'll talk a little bit about how the market is reacting. I mean, I guess my initial reaction would be by the time we've finished recording this. Seasfire could be off because I know there's a lot of, yeah, it's, I would guess we are going to see over the next two weeks big moves in both directions, I would say.

Like, we're up a bunch today. I mean, obviously it's not guaranteed, but I would, I would not be surprised at all if we seen a negative 3% day on some headline. Like, this is such a headline driven market. Like, I mean, I'm not complaining with the portfolio this morning, but I'm also not, you know, ready to, you know, call this a big win. It kind of seems like the one thing I don't understand is, like, I don't really, know what the U.S. got out of this? I don't think a lot of people understand that. And look, at the end of the

day, I just want, like I think for a lot of people would think in a similar fashion, like I don't think this conflict is good for anyone involved. Obviously, there's been a lot of human loss as well. I never like to see that. I don't think anyone likes to see that. It's really hard to know exactly what all the stakeholders are thinking. And that's the issue, right? You see all these head, but you don't really know whether the headlines are true, whether they're actually just speeding that to get a reaction from the markets. And I think it's important to remember for people listening to this who have like a portfolio, which I assume most people listening to this do,

is just being comfortable with your portfolio and not make some knee-jerk reactions to some headlines. Because as much as I'd like to see this ceasefire go through the full two weeks and then lead to something longer lasting. I mean, there's already reports that there's still some Iran attacks on infrastructure in the Middle East. And you're also seeing Israeli attacks on neighboring countries, I think in Lebanon as well, which would seem to be one of the prerequisite from Iran in terms of their demand. So who knows there's a lot in the air. And I think it's really important to just make sure you're comfortable with your portfolio in a variety of scenarios.

I know I am, I know you are as well. I haven't made some major changes ever since this started. Just kind of tweak my portfolio on the edges mostly. Yeah, I mean, it just kind of seems to me like before this all started, the straight was open. And then now that this is, I don't want to say ended, but there's a ceasefire. It just kind of seems like the straight is open again. Like what exactly?

I mean, I'm probably taking way too simplistic of a view on this. It does not seem like it's open still. Reports are that there's a. lot of confusion. That's what I'm seeing. And look, stocks are still reacting quite well. S&P 500 and the NASDAQ is up above 2% although slightly lower than it was just an hour or so ago. You're seeing US Treasury so the yield has gone down. So the price of US Treasuries has gone up. It's always inverted, of course. And the price of crude oil also went down massively on the news. So whether you're looking at Brent and WTI.

So WETI, Western Texas Intermediate, which is usually what you'll see for Canadian producer. They'll say their break-even is like WTI like $45 or something like that. That went from above $110 per barrel. I think it was flirting with $120 not that far off and is now trading at around $95 a barrel. So it's been quite sticky around that $95 ever since then used. But I think it's just a reminder to have a plan, be comfortable with your portfolio, but especially in the world we live in now, just try to map out different scenarios as to how your portfolio will perform. Because you can imagine you can have some ideas in your head that you have high confidence in,

but the reality is you really need to assign probabilities because no one really know what can happen generally in the market. let alone for the outcome of this war and the issue it will have on energy markets, but also what's going to happen on the AI front, on the IPO front, some of the big IPOs that we heard about in the last few weeks. So there's just so much to figure out. So I think that's why just having a good plan for your portfolio. So when you see these headlines that are rapidly changing or you really don't know what's true, what isn't, you're not making any rash decisions.

Yeah, and I would say more so a long-term approach as well. Like I had a lot of, I mean, you could tell just through my website traffic as well, like posts on energy companies, like through the roof over the last two weeks. Lots of questions about them too. And I mean, I would imagine there's some retail that kind of entered the energy trade probably over the last week or so here. And now you're seeing a lot of energy companies are down five, six, seven percent today. So yeah, I mean, reacting to the. this type of news and kind of shifting your portfolio around is is not really a good long-term plan for success. I mean, who knows? Maybe, you know, after two weeks, we don't get a deal again.

And oil goes back up to 110, $120 a barrel. Then, you know, my comments right now don't look that good. But yeah, I think a lot of people just try to position themselves on what the market's going to do over the next like two weeks when really you can get into a lot of trouble with trades like that, especially, you know, 16% plus dip in the price of oil in a single day is obviously going to cause a lot of volatility on energy companies. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's important just to be diversified. Look, my exposure is around 10% Canadian oil producers. I increased it a little bit in the last month just because I saw the price staying elevated for some time.

Obviously, these companies have had a run up, but I'm definitely more in the medium term in terms of these investments. I wouldn't say long term because a lot of things can actually happen. But medium term, I do think they'll be generating a whole lot of cash flow. And they'll be returning a lot of these companies, that capital to shareholders. So even if the price fluctuate, I think shareholders will be rewarded pretty well. The other move I did for my portfolio, I just increased my cash position a little bit, not a whole lot. But now it's sitting around 11%. So getting around 3% yield on that.

So just giving me a bit more of a buffer. no major changes aside from that. So all that to say probably, just to wrap this part up, because it's hard not to talk about what's happening in the middle release because it has such a big impact on market, but I think just stay the course, have a plan, and make sure you're not too short-term focus, maybe more like medium to long-term.

I'd love to say it's really important to just look at the long-term, but I feel like in these kind of times, you have to be a little bit more nimble. So that's why I tend to say a bit more medium to long term. Yep. That's, I have no more to say about the conflict. We've beaten it to death, I feel. Yeah, exactly.

No, we didn't, we weren't planning on talking about it. But then we felt like we didn't really have a choice with what happened in terms of the ceasefire. Having cash on hand is essential for any business. Traditional business accounts hit you with high fees while paying little to no interest on the cash you need for day-to-day operations. That was our experience too, until we switched to the new EQ Bank business account. Now, every dollar earns high interest with no monthly fees and no minimum balance. You also get free everyday transactions like EFTs, bill payments, mobile check deposits, and 50 outgoing and 100 incoming free interackey transfers. And to sign up,

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and I'll see you there. Let's move on. BRP, so the makers of ski do those power sports vehicles. So looking forward. I haven't checked their earnings. I'm looking forward to see what you have to. It's a very good quarter.

Yeah, it was, this was late March. So it probably would have been 10 days ago or so. They reported they're kind of one of those companies that reports outside of the normal quarter. But yeah, they're definitely not feeling the impacts of a sluggish economy. like I think a lot of their results right now is is due to some not necessarily the economy,

but just some stuff I'll talk about later. But they're kind of in full turnaround mode right now. It seems like it's kind of out of the multi-year rut it was in. So on the quarter, revenue increased by 16%. Margins expanded by 380 basis points, 3.8% and earnings more than doubled. When you look at the full year, revenue increased by 7%, earnings by 7% as well, and free cash flow more than doubled. I think they're close to a billion dollars in free cash flow after, you know, reporting losses a few years ago in terms of earnings. And year round products increase by nearly

17 percent, seasonal by 17 percent as well, and parts by 9.9 percent. So parts is only around 15 percent of the business. So it's definitely more important that you see these other two accelerating at that pace. That's definitely what's driving a lot of the price recently. I think this one's got to be a double from, you know, I think it was trading at $50 or so during like Liberation Day or even, yeah, where it would have been? Even at the start of 2020. Well, we can do, yeah, we can do like a year. It's pretty much a year since Liberation Day.

So yeah, 118%. So almost a clean double there. Well, more than a double. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the biggest overhangs for the company over the last few years was, was inventory. So what ended up happening? is, I guess you could say, like, during COVID and kind of as we were coming out of it, obviously demand was through the roof for a lot of these recreational vehicles.

Like I know a lot of people, I know plenty of people who had never actually, you know, when snowmobiling, anything like that during lockdowns. They bought one, got into it, things like that. Obviously, it was very cheap to finance these. And then BRP kind of had to bring. that demand to their dealerships. And obviously, you know, interest rates went up.

Inflation went through the roof and they had way too much inventory and they just couldn't sell it. So in that situation, you get huge markdowns, which ultimately hits margins. You're moving like old models through at probably big discounts. Production was cut recreational vehicles. Again, they were

sold at discounted prices. And overall, it was a pretty ugly situation. Their dealer network in their dealership network in North America. The inventory was down 17% year over year. And the company mentioned that there should be a 350 to 450 million dollar impact from this in terms of sales. And this is likely just due to the company being able to get shipments and, you know, pricing back to normalize levels. Market share accelerated across pretty much every area of the business. And this is a company that already has like a dominant market share across pretty much every recreational

vehicle. There's actually very few players in this space. And I mean, the fact that it's still expanding is pretty impressive. It kind of means it's, you know, taking market share away from, you know, a company like Polaris, let's say. Yeah. And leverage is now at 1.8x EBTA. This is down a lot from last year. I think they were close to three last year. But this isn't really, the company has paid down some debt, but this isn't really from the company paying down a ton of debt, but just the fact that EBITA is recovering like meaningfully. Like I'm pretty sure it might be a double, you know, compared to last year. Guidance looks pretty good.

And, and if you'll remember, we talked about this like they downgraded guidance for five straight quarters and then just outright pulled it. And now it's kind of reinstated the guidance, fairly upbeat. So midpoints are for nine billion in revenue and $6 in earnings. And this, I mean, this was a company that two years ago was losing $3 a share. I believe this guidance is pretty much. It's double digit growth, like high double digit growth from previous years. And I mean, we're nowhere close to the $12 a share of this company was earning during the COVID years.

But I think that's also a very bad. It's a bad benchmark. Yeah, that's a bad benchmark to say. Well, you have to remember for people to that are trying to round their head around these kind of businesses that produce goods, it's a classic. supply demand imbalance, right? So you get like this massive demand from COVID and then they just could not produce fast enough. So they increased production because they really want to meet that demand. But at some point, demand kind of fell off, started softing off and then fell off a cliff. And then it takes a little, there's a bit of lag until the company and the producers actually

realize, okay, we actually like produce way too much now. And there's always a lag between both of them. So that's why you see these companies and there's a lot, I've talked about it before, but mountain bikes. There's actually a graveyard of mountain bike companies that went bankrupt after the pandemic because everyone wanted to start mountain biking. I think there were some more road bike companies as well that went bankrupt, but everyone wanted to get outside, all the lockdowns, everyone wanted to buy a bike. There was six months, a year, a year and a half in terms of wait to get a new bike. So you had these companies that just overproduced. and they were selling like hot cakes, the margins were great, but then they continued overproducing.

There was a lag. The man fell off. And then they were stuck with this inventory on their hands. They had to do massive discounts and some of them just weren't strong enough to absorb it. Yeah. And I mean, that's why you need, like companies like this, I think management is more important, particularly, because you need them to navigate the environment. You also need these companies to have a good enough balance sheet to kind of weather the situation.

Because BRP was losing a lot of money a couple of years ago. I mean, I think they lost $3 a share in, I want to say, 2024. And I mean, you get to a situation. It would be similar to Aniritsia. Same situation during the pandemic. They couldn't meet the massive amount of demand. So they scaled up inventory, bought a whole bunch of inventory, and then we hit that environment. with, you know, 9% whatever inflation we had.

And then again, yeah, thankfully for Ritsia, it's easier to get rid of clothing than higher priced items. Like, even mountain bikes, they're not quite power sports, but they can run up like $5,000 to like $15,000. So you're taking like some massive hits if you're discounting. At least, I'm sure Ritsia, their discounting wasn't like across the board. It was probably more certain types of clothing that they kind of went out of style. and then they had to discount.

But yeah, there is definitely more flexibility for clothing than something like, yeah, ski dues or sea dues too. Yeah. But yeah, like back to management, I think they've done all the right things. I mean,

a few years ago, they obviously scaled back wholesale revenue or wholesale production because they knew they kind of needed to flush out the inventory. And they kind of did. If we looked to inventory, so what did I mention, it was down 17 or 17 or 18% this year,

but over the past few years, years, it's down 30%. So they're kind of now in a position where they can ramp up production, ramp up wholesale shipping, which is kind of where they mentioned that $350 to $450 million tailwind for next year. And the other thing that's looking genius right now is selling off their marine segment. I don't want to say it was a drag on the business, but it's the most cyclical of them all. It's the lowest margin. They sold it, got rid of it. Now they're kind of focusing on, you know, the products that they sell very well. And I kind of think the fallout from the pandemic probably caused them to kind of take a hard look at the business. Like over the last few years, they've,

they've trimmed a lot of operational expenses, got a lot more efficient. And I mean, I think they generated close to a billion dollars in free cash flow this year. And I think that's pretty close to the free cash flow that they were, they were generating during the pandemic. So I don't really think this is, this is definitely like K shape recovery and action. Like the people who can afford these vehicles are still going to buy them right now. But I also kind of think, you know, a lot of the results are just from kind of a normalization. Like the growth is not. Yeah, it's not necessarily the economy is bad.

A lot of people are not buying these right now. But the ones that are have the money to do so. And then, and then you just have these efficiencies kind of coming through. But yeah, this is one I own. I've owned it for a few years. There's a pretty good quarter. And yeah, I mean, often the time to buy these companies is when things are absolutely ugly. Like cyclical companies will go through cycles.

That's just kind of the way it works. Yeah, no, exactly. When things look the bleak is, that's usually the time to buy them. Just have to make sure that they're solid companies. I think BRP that was never in doubt. But yeah, I don't see, especially if like financing start drying up, obviously the go easy is probably not. massive lender, but, you know, if you see them with land care kind of reducing their exposure to these kind of, this kind of financing, you know, if a lot of companies start doing that,

it might start hurting them on the margin, on the margin, but it looks like they've learned their lesson and probably will err on the side of caution a little bit. So anything else to add? Before we move on to a report, I pulled. So Canadian ETF Association comes out with the ETF flows, monthly ETF flows. I used to do them more because National Bank had one that they would come out that was like way more complete, but they stopped doing it. I don't know exactly why. I thought it was pretty interesting, but maybe it just wasn't worth their way.

Yeah, and I don't have, I don't have access to the, to the Y charts one either. I've swapped the fiscal. So I don't have the Y charts fund flows anymore. So, yeah, they're pretty good documents. No, exactly. I don't know why National stopped. I don't know either. Like I mean, they were bringing them out pretty regularly.

Yeah. And no, they just stopped. But thankfully, CETFA, so the Canadian TFS Association does come out with the monthly one. And there were some pretty interesting findings. I'll try to do these a bit more often, just do them once a month, even if it's busy in the earning season. I don't have to do a super deep dive. But I always find it fascinating to see how the ETF flows are doing where Canadians are actually putting their money. So the first thing that stood out for me is just a number of ETFs in Canada, which now stands at a whopping 1510.

So 1,510 ETF, that's a 18% increase since March of last year. So in a bit more than essentially a bit less than a year, actually, you saw an 18% increase, which is absolutely massive. It does make you wonder sometimes, like, what are they like, like, are there too many ETFs? Like, I think that's a valid question, right? I mean, you have to think, like, a lot of people, well, a lot of companies, whatever it may be, publications kind of push retail towards ETFs over individual stocks. And now you're seeing a lot of very poor ETFs. Yeah. Like those leverage.

Yeah. Leverage ETF or covered call leverage ETF, like, or singles stock 2X leverage. I mean, I think there's a lot of really good ETFs out there. That's why one of our sponsors is BMO ETFs because they have some really solid ETFs for people for Canadians to use. They're actually the second largest provider now. They have the most ETFs, 171, and they have the second most asset under management, which is, I believe this would be in billion. So 170 billion for BMO and BlackRock's at 211 billion. So still pretty impressive.

I like a lot of BMO ETF offerings, although I don't like every single one of them. I think you would agree with that too. For any ETF provider, you really had to pick the ones that you see fit and make sure you actually know what you're investing into, be aware of the fees. But there are some other ETF providers that I think are really pushing too hard in terms of getting fees from retail. I think people are well aware of those, like charging high fees, promising high yields and just eroding the return. for retail investors. Yeah, I mean, these fund managers are going to go where the money is. And I think right now, I mean, post-pandemic, even like during the pandemic, like a lot of

people kind of got into the passive income craze, the yield craze, whether it be, I don't know, because the reality of the situation, maybe their jobs were on the line or maybe, you know, they wanted to find some other source of a way to generate income. That is where the money has been going for quite a few years now. Because if you see most of these new funds, the vast majority of new funds you see these days are like single stock leveraged, leveraged covered call, ETFs, like all that type of stuff. Like there's not too many. Well, I guess that's probably because they're all to market already.

But you don't see too many like passive index funds. No, there's not. I think. those are already kind of pretty established in the market. And I think that's a really interesting point because I think more and more what we're seeing is just, you know, the DTF being more kind of mature in terms of market. And there's, I think, a lot of investors that still have that perception that mutual funds are bad, their high fees.

There are some mutual funds that are index funds, essentially, that are low fees. but I think the perception, and I'm guilty of that myself sometimes too, is that these are a high fee mutual fund and that ETFs are good because they're lower fees. ETF just means they're exchange traded funds. Some of these ETFs are not low fees. So you have to keep that in mind. But I think a lot of people still have that perception mutual fund bad, ETF good. And the reality is mutual funds can be bad or good and ETFs can be bad or good.

and ETFs can be bad or good. You have to make sure you just understand what you're investing in. So I think that's really important. And it's interesting over the years where that's really transitioned. Maybe 10, 15 years ago, ETFs, yes, tended to be a bit more on the lower fee side compared to their mutual fund alternatives. But now I think you can make a case that there's, you know, like I just said, there's some good, some bad in both of these type of funds.

Yeah, the one good thing is if you're, looking for like a passive way to to buy an index, the fees are still dramatically lower, but if you're looking into those like active management financial engineering style ETFs, like you're probably paying as much or if not more for any, like some of these ETFs have two, two and a half percent fees, which a lot of the times in some situations, this can be good. Like I won't name any specific fund providers, but let's just say you have. have a fund that tracks, I don't know, the big six banks and they, they tack leverage onto it.

Sometimes you can say it. I'll say it for you. Hamilton is the. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like HCal fund, which I actually think is if you're looking to leverage the big banks, I actually think it's a pretty solid fund because you can get access to that leverage for

cheaper than you would pay taking it out yourself. So in some situations it's good, but in other situations where you've got these 30% yield, like single stock leverage ETFs and you're paying like two, two and a half percent a year on these to probably ultimately underperform the mutual funds you moved from. I mean, then it gets a bit, a bit tricky. Okay. Yeah, no, exactly. So now one of the biggest changes in the last year for ETF is that fixed income was 22%. while now it's gone down to 20%. So we're seeing funds like flows kind of shift over in terms of,

well, at least asset under management could be a result of the market still having a pretty good year last year as well. So just assets in general, inequities just grew. Since the data is from the end of February, I'm curious to see how it will evolve for the next report, especially with the war in Iran, exactly how that affected people or investors. So equity asset underman. management now represents 68% of ETS while it was 65% last year. So that has grown.

It could be a result, like I said, mostly because equity markets have done pretty well over the last year. So Canadian equity has gone up from 17.7% to 20% while U.S. equity has gone down from 24 to 21%. So you're seeing a little bit of rotation there, something I didn't expect to see. And emerge? When they is, is that just a UM? Yeah, that would be a UM. Yeah, it might just be because the, the TSX has done. Yeah, it did pretty well over the last while.

Yeah. Yeah, and financial. So it could definitely be that as well. It could be a little bit of a rotation. I mean, the U.S. markets did pretty well in the past year too. I know that TSX has done, TSX has done better. Emerging markets has gone up a little bit going from 2% to 2.4%. But again, it's still relatively low.

in terms of exposure here. International and global exposure has also gone up last year. Crypto ETF saw a pretty sharp decline going from 1.3 to 0.8%. So I suspect this is a combination of Bitcoin and crypto being down in price and also some flows going to their U.S. counterparts because of lower fees. And then in terms of largest ETF, so that's always just fun to look at. So the largest ETF in terms of asset under management is the Vanguard S&P 500 VFV ETF at $28 billion. And then there's a pretty big gap the next ones here.

And the next on the list are all in the $20 billion, like low $20 billion range. The largest non-equity ETF with the largest asset under management is the BMO aggregate bond index ETF. So fixed income, it's ticker ZEG with $12 billion in AEUM. and the fastest growing ETF in terms of inflows is actually XIC, so the I Share Core SNPTSX CAPETF. So it may be a little bit of a combination of rotation for the Canadian equities versus also outperforming the U.S. equities over the last year. So I just thought this was pretty interesting just to see what other probably for the most part retail investors are doing compared to just month over month, year. So if I think it'll be interesting just to keep an eye out for that, especially as we're seeing all this movement on geopolitical front.

I'm kind of intrigued to see how it will affect in terms of what Canadians are putting money in. So very intrigued to see the movement. Like are we going to see some wild swings in terms of what people investing in just based on, you know, what kind of headlines we're seeing in the past month and the overall sentiment? You're going to see flows into energy, I would bet. I don't even know what's the most popular XEG, I guess, would be the most popular energy, ETF? Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, on the commodities front, that is tiny. So these ETFs that focus only on commodities, it's at 1.4% of assets under management. Yeah. And, yeah, energy is 0.1% and metals is 1.2% for obvious reason. And broad commodities would be 0.2. So definitely underweight in terms of what people are investing. And these are specific, of course. So if you're looking at kind of larger index ETFs, they will include energy names and metals,

but these are more ETF that would be specific to that. So just I thought pretty fun to look at. Well, we'll try to do it every month. Don't need to do it for like, you know, a half hour, but just getting pulse on where Canadians are putting their money. Always very interesting. Having cash on hand is essential for any business. Traditional business accounts hit you with high fees

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would have been two weeks ago now probably. So I had this. You still own this one, right? Yeah. I've owned it for a few years. It's kind of one I bought at multi-decade lows, I guess, in terms of valuation with kind of the anticipation that the economy will improve enough and the environment for used vehicles will get a bit better. To kind of sum it up in a few sentences, the company is facing a lot of pressure right now, nothing to do like operationally. It's just seeing there's a Yeah, it's not. It's not doing well. But like if you actually pull up, if, you can pull up the chart. There, there was a time, I think it was, it would have been sometime 2024, maybe even 2025. Like, as soon as the market kind of got the impression that things

might be turning around for this company, they sent it from like, it went from, yeah, it's kind of in 2020. It would have been 2024, I think, but they sent it from, you know, 220 bucks a share to like 320 very quickly. So the company, this is a company that relies on a lot of insurance companies not writing off vehicles. So they need to repair vehicles because boy, it is, it's an auto body shop. So if you have, if you have used vehicle prices falling and you have insurance and you have insurance companies writing off more vehicles, they, they get sent to, you know, a salvage yard, something like that, where they don't get repaired. So leading up to COVID, this was actually one of the,

the best compounders in the country for for many, many years. I'd been in and out of it numerous times from 2012 to 2016, but back then I kind of like booking profits. So I'd never even held this position for very long, but it did very, very well. In terms of the earnings, they reported pretty strong results, but revenue came in a bit light. So revenue, oh, sorry, I am. Yeah. So revenue increased by 5.5.5.5.5. 5% earnings doubled and EBITA went up by 24.2%. Same store sales increased by 2.2%.

This is the second straight quarter they've increased, but they're still not really up to par with what they used to do during COVID, pre-COVID, things like that. And the company mentioned that the M&A pipeline is still very strong. So this is a company with around, I think they have around 1,400 shops right now. And the total market is expected to be in excess of 30,000. And this is actually the largest collision repair company in North America now that they made a big acquisition in the United States. So I mean, the runway is infinite.

That's kind of a business model for this company. They buy mom and pop collision shops, kind of fix them up, put the, you know, slap the Boyd or the Gerber brand on them and prove the margins. And, you know, that's what they've done for many, many years. So they made a massive acquisition of Joe Hudson, which is a collision center in the U.S. that expanded their store count by around 30%. And I think they ended up flipping that into like a NASDAQ listing as well. So they're going to list on the NASDAQ. Management is expecting similar same store sales in the upcoming quarters as it reported today.

So long term same store sales are guiding to three to five percent. And this would be pretty typical of the company over the years pre-pandemic again, four to five percent. And I mean, I don't know why the stock reacted. as bad as it did. I think it was down quite a bit. It didn't really seem like all that bad of a quarter. But I think, you know, people kind of want to turn around.

This has been like a multi-year situation where I mean, the situation they have right now is kind of economically as well. Like if we look to the consumer, they're kind of citing there's a lot of difficulties with consumers because insurance has gone. Are you like basically pushing back repairs? Like is that what's happening? Yeah. The bulk of the revenue will be through insurance. So there's not a lot of like discretionary vehicle repairs, but they kind of mention people can't afford insurance right now. So they're jacking up deductibles. And when this happens, you know, like if you take your deductible from $250 to $1,000, you know, a repair that you would have usually got done on a $250 deductible. You just don't get it done on a $1,000 deductible. So. They're doing this in order to kind of bring insurance costs down. And then obviously you have used vehicle prices kind of taking a hit as well. Or you might go and do it, but you go and do it on your own and you get the best price you can get, right?

Exactly. Not necessarily Boyd. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they kind of have this element where, you know, they have a lot of insurance-based revenue, which is very consistent for the most part. but like you the used vehicle market is I don't know why this is but it's not really following the new vehicle market like new vehicles are going up and priced by quite a bit but used vehicles are kind of staying flat and I mean ultimately this company needs prices they need vehicle prices to stay high because then if they stay high the insurance companies won't write off as many vehicles they'll repair more vehicles than they write off ultimately that's kind of what pushes the the pushes Boyd's same store sales hire. But yeah, they've, they've struggled for for quite a while.

I still hold it. I actually ended up buying it more of it at the end of the quarter. I'm just going to continue being patient here because I do think it's a matter of, you know, not when, not if, but it's kind of like my Home Depot situation. Like it's just kind of delayed, not necessarily change, but definitely delayed. Yeah. I mean, I'll listen to you because I know, I know you pay attention to that name. So if I, maybe it gets so cheap, I can't ignore it anymore. But yeah, it's just seems like a decent play in terms of, you know, being relatively sticky. Again, it's still probably a little bit cyclical too, just based on how expensive cars are and whether, again, like you mentioned, the insurance portion where people are probably not doing the repairs that they would need to,

but it still seems to be chugging along pretty decently. You'd like to see a bit more growth, but there's probably, it's, it's probably a fairly resilient business, right? Even when it doesn't do well, it still does well. Yeah. I mean, they've had so many issues over the last while that they like have absolutely no control over. Like I remember during COVID, there was so many repairs because obviously the price of vehicles skyrocketed during COVID.

So there wasn't very many writeoffs. Like insurance companies were paying. I mean, I remember that. My wife got side swiped in a parking lot. My Jetta, like quarter panel, everything, it was like $10,000 to replace this. And they still repaired it. They still did it. Yeah, they still made the repair.

So like back during COVID, there was so much of this, they couldn't get enough staff. So they, like, the results were struggling because they did not have enough technicians to make all the repairs. And then you flip the script and demand craters. It's, it's been a wild ride for this company, like post-pandemic. But I think like if you go from, you know, leading up to right where COVID kind of started, I think the company had returned like 8,500% leading up to that pandemic. Like they were, they did very, very well for a long time. But yeah, it's an interesting company, very, very simple business model.

Easy to understand if anybody wants to dig into it. But it's struggled. Yeah, no, exactly. So we'll see. It may like it's a bit in a dip right now. So maybe maybe there's worse. times to buy it so we'll have to keep an eye on it I'm sure we'll talk about it in earnings especially if it's kind of in between earnings season it's always one of those outliers yeah

like BRP and boy like they report off quarters so it's and I think dollarama too is kind of off a little bit so it's okay it gives us stuff to talk about but if the start of the year is anything in last year I mean we're going to have plenty even when we think there's not too much to talk about so no I think it was still a fun episode fingers cross that the ceasefire lasts for for a while we did say that we recorded on april 8th around noon so make sure you keep that in mind if things change rapidly as they seem to be changing every single day and week but aside from that if you want some more content from us i can go on youtube or posting some videos regularly some clips from the podcast as well for both podcasts a canadian

real estate investor as well and sometimes i'll do some fresh videos from scratch that or just for the YouTube channel. You can go on join TCI. We have our monthly update, the podcast ad free. And I also do my parents monthly update. Sometimes I will post some videos with the update as well. So some more contents there. If you have questions too, we give priority to those. But we appreciate all the love. If you haven't done so, make sure you give us a five-star review on whichever platform you're listening to us. It does help people find us and discover us and grow the show. So hopefully you enjoy this episode. We will be back on Monday with a a new episode.

The Canadian Investor podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The host and guest featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.