The Canadian Investor - GFL and 5 ETF to get exposure on growing sectors

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

In this episode of the Canadian Investor Podcast we start by talking about the Coinbase direct listing and the Air Canada bailout. We then transition over to some ETFs and Baskets of stocks to get exposure to growing sectors of the stock market. Braden finishes the episode with a deep dive into GFL. Tickers of stocks discuss: COIN, AC.TO, SHOP.TO, KWEB, PSCT, ARKG, GNOM, DLR, EQIX, AMT, SBAC, EBLU, GFL.TO Want to send us a question? Check out our Anchor.fm link in the description below and leave us a voice message! Getstockmarket.com Candian Investor Pod Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-canadian-investor/messageSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back into the show. This is the Canadian Investor Podcast, made possible by our friends and show sponsor, EQ Bank, which helps Canadians make bank with high interest and no fees on everyday banking. We also love their savings and investment products like GICs, which offer some of the best rates on the market. I personally, and I know Simone as well, is using the GICs, which offer some of the best rates on the market. I personally, and I know Simone as well, is using the GICs on a regular basis to set money aside for personal income taxes in April of every year. Their GICs are perfect because the interest rate is guaranteed, and I know I won't be able to touch that money until I need it for tax time. Whether you're looking to set some money aside for a rainy day or a big purchase is

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My name is Braden Dennis. As always, joined by my co-host, Simon Belanger. What's going on, my guy? Air Canada is getting some big loan from the feds. What's happening here? Yeah, so there was an some big loan from the feds. What's happening here? Yeah, so there was an announcement this week by the federal government that they'll provide Air Canada with up to $4 billion worth of loans. They'll also take an equity stake of $500 million

at a discount to the current share price. That should amount, from what I've read, about 6% stake in Air Canada. It's really not surprising. We had a lot of questions, if you remember, last year, people trying to invest or asking us their opinions on Air Canada and the fact that it had totally bottomed out in terms of share price. And one of the things we had mentioned is that, yeah, sure, we understand understand the government would not let them go bankrupt and there might be some opportunities there. But again, if the government is bailing them out, there's going to be strings attached to that. And that's what we're seeing right now.

So one of the other conditions, suspensions of share buybacks, and they're not allowed to do any dividends during the loan period. And they're not allowed to do any dividends during the loan period. And another condition, I think that was a big contentious point, is that they have to issue refunds to customers. I think what they were doing, if I remember correctly, is they were offering credits instead. So, I mean, it was predictable that this would happen, especially going back to the automotive sector in 2008, 2009, the type of loans that the government did and they had equity stakes as well back then. So it's just the same kind of thing. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, 6% is fairly sizable. And I mean, it kind of makes sense for both both parties so i guess we'll see how it plays out um so the coinbase ipo was yesterday right yeah today's thursday it was yesterday uh it's trading

today quite a lot down from the first trades yesterday um it's about 60 billion in market cap today and we were talking offline we're texting each other back and forth and it's just really hard to determine where this business goes right here like the growth is incredible and what was it like they did like three billion in free cash flow last year like that is legit like that is very legit um but it's hard to tell if it's sustainable and i keep asking myself like what makes coinbase the biggest like why coinbase i mean it's an exchange like not high moat like it's just confusing to me so i don't know if you have any takes on that i mean we talked about this again last week but now it's a public company right

yeah yeah i mean there's several ways to look at Coinbase. Just like you said, there's impressive growth. But again, we're looking at a year where crypto really took off and it's just continuing in the first quarter and seems to want to continue at least until the as far as I can see in the next few months. One of the issues with them is their fees are not low. So as there's more competition for other exchanges, it may affect their margins overall. One of the other risks is what if there's a crypto bear market, typically the exchange and revenues will go down when that happens. On the positive side, though, there's a lot of investors, retail, but especially institutional, that may look at Coinbase as a way to, especially for fund managers, to say, look, we do have exposure to crypto.

We have Coinbase stocks, right? And a lot of retail investors may not want to hold Bitcoin or crypto in general. It may be a way for them to just get skin in the game. Get some exposure. Exactly. So there's definitely some plus, there's some positives and negatives, there's some upside for Coinbase, but there's also some potential downside. So it'll be interesting how it goes. Personally, I'd probably give it a year just to see how it goes, especially, you know know maybe there will be a bear market this year for crypto and just to see how their revenues and profits and cash flow is impacted by that right because 60 billion in market cap i mean i don't know what the market cap is of

bitcoin i know it's over a trillion dollars but like say it's a trillion dollars six percent like it's pretty sizable um And you know, it almost touched 100 billion yesterday. So I mean, this thing's going to be crazy volatile. If you own shares, you have to just be aware that it's going to be nutty volatility for a while. I think that's just the nature of it. Today, we got news that three of the seven top executives at Shopify will be stepping down for various reasons. Um, stock is up today, but like, you know, everything's green today. So it's really hard to decipher what it is. And given some of the public statements by these executives, they just have nothing but awesome things to say about the company and awesome things to say about Toby. Toby's become one of the most well-respected entrepreneurs and executives in the technology world now.

So this is an impressive company. now. So this is an impressive company. They've taken all kinds of tactical steps and made very important partnerships with, you know, the next boom in their business, which is enabling e-commerce sales inside of the social media platforms. Like they have the big Facebook shop contract that they're helping Facebook with. And it's weird, like these big tech companies colliding to work on things. And Shopify seems to always be in the mix when it comes to e commerce. So something that they're doing is providing so much value that it's doesn't make sense for some of these big tech companies to invest in it which is which means a lot right because think of how much cash these companies have on their balance sheet to you know build some of this infrastructure themselves so that means something to me anyways

i don't know if it's the right or wrong take but um it's interesting to see that play out yeah yeah exactly i mean i didn't read too much up on it. So I'll kind of I'll agree with what you just said. But it's still a company that I, I kind of hit myself that I never invested because I thought it looked too, too expensive. But you know, you win some, you lose some, you kind of have to come to terms with that when you're an investor. you kind of have to come to terms with that when you're an investor. Oh, totally. I mean, you have that framework, right? And that's an important takeaway, because you have a framework that you've built for yourself. And sometimes, you know, you can overpay for stocks, and then that just can kill investment returns over time. And Shopify is

still very expensive. and it's been expensive this whole time i mean buying it was the right trade this whole time but um you know that's built on upon a lot of assumptions that the business executes wonderfully well and they did so shareholders were awarded appropriately yeah and they they almost have like for evaluation like that as much as i like shopify they almost have like for evaluation like that, as much as I like Shopify, they almost have to execute to perfection when you're looking at such high multiples. So I don't think they're going away anytime soon, but it's possible they get a hiccup and evaluation could take a hit. Okay, so today we are going to talk about some sectors and themes, secular trends that we're very excited about.

Simon's going to give us a couple of ETFs to play some of those secular trends and some of the holdings inside of them. And then I will cap it off with a GFL dive. I did a post on Stratosphere from members today on GFL. It's a very awesome Canadian success story. And we'll get to that later. So, Sion, what are some ETFs to play, some secular trends and some themes that you've been thinking about? And I know we've both been back and forth on a lot of these themes yeah yeah so the first one is a way for people to invest in the Chinese internet companies if you're interested in investing in those and you're looking to not necessarily own a specific company or you want

to edge your bet and own like a broadly a lot of them so first one, and I've researched that, and it's really the only one that I could find that has the most prominent internet companies in China. So it's the CraneShares CSI China Internet ETF. The management expense ratio is not low. It's 0.73%. The ticker is KWEB. and three percent um the ticker is kweb um so this is one that i own and one of the things i like about etfs because uh i trade with questrade is that you can buy as little as you want and the fees are pretty much zero i think there's like a few cents for each trade when you buy you only there's like the ecn fee of like four cents yeah Yeah, exactly. And it's a great way to slowly build something up, especially for some companies that you may be interested in. And the shares may be more expensive than what you can afford. So the ETF is a good route, especially if you have that $0 fee because you can get some really good exposure and dollar cost average.

So to get back at the crane shares ETF, so some of the holdings, so you'll recognize some of the big names. So Alibaba, Tencent, they both have over 10%. MateOne is an online shopping platform, has 7%. Baidu, JD.com. So those are all in the top 10 hold holdings trip.com is also a pretty popular one over there so that's one of them that I do own and on top of having shares of 10 cents that I own so it's a it's a good way if you like that internet play but you don't necessarily want to stay on top of all the individual companies and there's a lot of names you probably also don't know in there that you'll have exposure to the mega caps the mega mega cap chinese tech companies are all like i know very smart people

that are bullish on all of them i saw um munger took a position in in baba recently as well which i thought which i thought was interesting so that's the largest holding here 11 it's basically tied with 10 cent there um so seven what is it 73 basis points the fee yeah yeah so it's pretty high but i get you bring up a good point right like if you're investing 500 like what do, like what are you, like, what are you going to do? Buy like one share of Alibaba, one share of Tencent and like, it's, it's like one share of JD, like it's goofy, right? So you can just go ahead and buy an ETF. And at least familiarize yourself with some of these names and the nature of Chinese tech, because it's not easy to understand if you

don't live there. And I still don't fully understand if you don't live there. And I still don't fully understand. I don't live there. But like, you know, you can do some research and own the ETF in the meantime. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I own it. So the second one that I like is Invesco S&P small cap information technology ETF. It's also one of that I've owned. I've actually had it for a bit more than a year. And I kind of regularly just add a couple shares. Because again, there's no fees when I do so there's a 0.29% management expense expense ratio, which is very reasonable. And some of the whole things I'll be honest, I don't know any of them. So that's why I do invest in that ETF. They're all small caps, but I wanted exposure to specifically small cap information technology companies.

And to me, that was a great way to do it. It's performed very well for me. I have no idea if it'll continue performing well, but it's one that I do like for that because they're not necessarily companies i would dig into and it just gives me exposure to that and it follows a snp index for small caps information technology this is an interesting one right because like the biggest holdings like just under four percent but there's going to be so much outperformance from this, from just a few names. I feel like, um, you know, some of these small caps that become big cap technology companies and just have sweet margins and unreal free cashflow.

Um, so that, that makes a lot of sense. I think I know alarm.com. I'm pretty sure that's owned by Chuck acre. I follow his 13 F every year. So, Oh,

there you go. It's gotta be, that's gotta be worth something. I think it's in his 13F. I could be completely butchering that, but I'm pretty sure. Yeah. But it's just good to show people that you don't need to necessarily know the companies when you invest in an ETF because you get automatic diversification and it's a great way to have exposure to a specific sector or a theme a theme um or obviously we've talked before about broad back broad base index funds that i think are the basis for a lot of people

but for those people who own those index funds and want more exposure to specific sections of the uh the stock market this is great um i'm gonna jump in there sorry to interrupt you there's one thing you said that i don't roast you too often i haven't recently go for it i i think you should try to at least know some of these top names like i'm gonna challenge you on that if you're gonna own the etf you should you should probably know the top five names at least what they do. Yeah. I mean, it's a good point. That's a fair point, right?

Yeah. For a small cap, though, I feel like those top holdings, because they're so closely bunched, you're looking at the top 10 holdings. It goes from 2.6% to 3.8%, 3.9%. Yeah, there's probably like 50 plus names in here, at least. Yeah, 75. 75 holdings. And on a probably quarterly basis, because they're small cap, there's probably a lot of movement. So that's going to be my argument for this one specifically, is that they're so small

that they'll flip-flop. But no, that's a good good point especially for the bigger ones you'll want to definitely get to familiar like uh the the one we talked before the china etf that's right because that one's so much more concentrated like the top five names are going to be like 80 of it yeah that's not quite but yeah so that's why i mean you know it's a good rose but i i'm not concerned about it fair enough enough. All right. So the next one, the ARK. So actually, the theme for those is genomics. And that's something I'm not super well versed in because it's pretty complicated, let's be honest.

So there's two of them that I found that are interesting. There's the ARK Invest Genomics Revolution ETF. So that's Kathy Woods ARK Investment. So she has different type of ETF. She's the one that's really bullish on Tesla. I put that one there. The management expense ratio is higher at 0.75%. It is an actively managed fund. I would not personally invest in that one because Teladoc is the top holding I'd like if I remember correctly, it's I have it right here at 8% So I have enough exposure to Teladoc already I would not need that the one I'm looking to probably start a position slowly and is

The other one here is genomics and Biotech ETF by Mary Assets. I'm probably butchering the name. The ticker is G-N-O-M. The ARK one was A-R-K-G. The management expense ratio for this one is 0.50%. And I do like some of the holdings. So I do know some of these companies, Br Braden. Hey, let's go. Yeah. So CRISPR Therapeutics. I know a little bit Illumina as well. So those are two of the names.

There's some names I would have to familiarize myself a little more. But again, because it's well diversified, it's an ETF. I don't feel the need to really know these names in and out. I'll probably just, you know, do a little bit of research, just get an understanding of their business. And then if I like it, probably just start a position in those. That's the way to go, right? Like, and giving you a hard time for not owning, knowing the names in an ETF when the position is so small in it, right? Like,

that is the beauty of the ETF is you can just kind of own it and go to sleep. And for genomics, like what an absolute crapshoot that's going to be over the next 20 years, right? Like who's to say who the winners are going to be over the next 20 years in genomics? I don't even know how to pronounce it. This is why I should own an ETF, right? This is why I should own an ETF.

I know zero about gene editing. And this is a good takeaway, right? You've got to know yourself. And you can't be an expert in everything. Being an expert in five companies alone is very difficult uh and let alone various sectors as complicated as gene editing so this is a good takeaway i mean if you want to own something here just buy an etf unless you're like a biology person then i mean go for it right Like it would only it would probably take us

hundreds of hours just to understand genomics altogether, right? And then we're not even talking about the companies just understanding the concept and reading, you know, scientific journals and things like that. So I don't have that much time on my hands. So that's why I choose the ETF route. Okay, so you have one more basket here of companies and we like we didn't fill these out together and i'm looking at it and these are the four names that i would love to own in this basket as well like these four exactly so we're completely aligned um and i'm a big fan of the secular trend over over time yeah so this one I was kind of flip-flopping whether I wanted to find an ETF or a basket

and just because the four names, I know them pretty well and they're just really, to me, it's a no-brainer. You can just buy those four, you'll hold them and they should do very well in the long term. So it's a basket for data REITs and cell towers. So we've talked about data REITs before. So there's two of those names in there.

So Digital Realty Trust, DLR, Equinix as well, AMT, American Tower Corporation. So they have cell towers, and they rent basically those cell towers to various telecom companies and then same thing for sbac communications so same kind of line as amt so you're really owning this basket because you believe that you know we're just going to be consuming more and more data going forward cell phone communications will just keep you know be part of our lives even

more so in the future than it is right now. So it's kind of a bet on that. And the beauty with these is they all pay us, you know, some DLR pays a bit more of a dividend just on top of my hand. I think it's still above 3%. Equinix pays a nice little dividend AMT as well. SBAC comms is not very big. It's below 1 percent but you know it gives you a little bit extra income and there's a lot of growth in that sector i think going forward oh tons my uh my mom she's like i need i need some dividend payers for my u.s cash what should i do and she's in her 60s and i'm like I'm not going to just tell you to buy some like 5% yielder. I want to give her something with upside and with dividend growth potential. And I mentioned these four names, but I said, what you can do is Equinix

and American Tower own some of the best assets in that whole country, honestly. And American Tower especially, what a business that has become. And the margins are only going to increase and increase. Those assets just become more and more valuable over time as more equipment gets tacked onto it. So the revenue per tower is only going to go up among more usage. And it's just set up to be a great business. It already is such a great business. And it's one that is going to get stronger over time. And you can feel really, like really high conviction that that's going to be a great business for a long time to come.

Yeah, exactly. So I still don't own AMT and SBAC, but it's on my radar to start some positions. And I already own DLR and Equinix. And it's been, they had a bit of a downturn, I just kept adding, just kept adding, and it's, they've gone back up now. So it's done pretty well for me. they've gone back up now so it's it's done pretty well for me um so the next one is uh something that a lot of people don't tend to think about it's um water infrastructure so it's the ecofin global water esg fund uh the ticker is e-b-l-u um has a pretty reasonable management expense ratio at 0.40 percent yields a bit more than 1.4 percent and you have the the first name is probably the one that people would be the most familiar with it's American Water Works so obviously it's pretty obvious that we need water to live you know it's to me it's a it's a really good play, especially, you know, low, pretty should be pretty low volatility, have some growth in the future as well. So that's one that I find interesting.

I don't know too many of the other names. So that's something you'll probably want to research just to get an idea of what they are. But they're all related to to water. And yeah, that's that's about it for that one the eco fin global water fund yeah oh wait they have to have esg in there as well just to get some more attractive flows into the fund that was perfect there was a few other but uh that one was the one with the lowest fees so that's nice yeah 0.4 that's reasonable for a niche etf it's quite good actually so between uh data centers cell towers and water i mean those are

probably very safe bets in the future that's something we're gonna need yeah exactly um i'll transition to my segment of this episode, which is GFL. And we're talking about things that are probably pretty certain, which are we're going to need more data and we're going to need water. Transitions well into the post I just did for GFL, which is called Death, Taxes, and Garbage, which is implying that, you know, those are three things that are pretty certain in life. And also, I'll go into a bit of a background of the company and talk about, you know, what they've done as a public company. So they IPO in March of 2020. Like, what a time to IPO a public company, March of 2020. And it's been a dang good IPO. I mean, actually, it turned out to be a great time to IPO

because everything's gone up since then. So this company's at $14 billion in market cap now, which is kind of nuts. This thing's taken the TSX by storm. And they've had some really impressive growth, average revenue growth over the last three years, 43.77%, according to this right here. It trades at about four times sales, fairly reasonable. And yeah, so let's get into it.

Patrick Dovigi, I should learn how to say his name, Dovigi, Dovigi. He is from Su. Marie, Ontario. And this guy is the most pure form of a Canadian entrepreneur ever because he played in the OHL. This guy got drafted by the Edmonton Oilers, 41st overall in 1997. It said there are some reports that his teammates said that he was not really there

and he was clearly motivated as a businessman outside of hockey. And that kept shining through. So he started working in the waste management business after his cup of coffee in the NHL didn't work out. And he operated his own transfer station in 2004. In 2007, he basically founded GFL through a merger of his like small operation and three companies called Direct Line, National Waste Services, and EnviroWest in 2007. He's mashed these three companies together and his own little operation and GFL was born. Nowadays, it's a 14 billion

in market cap public co. They do soil remediation infrastructure, and then their main business is solid waste and liquid waste. So solid waste makes up 77.5% of revenue. The infrastructure and soil business takes up 12.5% of revenue, and then liquid waste is about 10% of revs. And before I keep going, I'm just looking at the photos of the trucks here. And if you know GFL, like those trucks, you can't miss them. Like they are so green, like it's blinding. And it's impressive what they've been able to do.

And the reason I bought the stock was I had done some research into it. So yeah, disclosure, I own the stock. I was doing more and more research into it and i was scared by the debt load which i'm going to get into later but i was on the fence i was humming and hawing and then i pulled up to an intersection downtown toronto and all four sides of the intersection had a gfl truck i got home and bought the stock i'm like okay i'm gonna start i gotta start a position let's just say it's been good since then. And that was not that long ago.

They're not very present in Ottawa, though. No? I think for us it's Waste Connection and Waste Management are the big two. Those are the big two. So they're the fourth biggest behind those two. Who would be the third? I'm blanking. Anyways, yeah, Waste Management, Waste waste management waste connections gfl big players so

their growth across north america has been oppressive across their different verticals and the waste business is a consolidation play gfl is like no different their ability to acquire businesses but then also integrate them and actually show better EBITDA margins after integration is what's actually impressive. Because a lot of these businesses, they do acquisition strategies and they're like, yeah, it's creditive. And then, you know, like integrating them is harder than you would possibly think to integrate these businesses, right? And they're really good at it. So that means something. On the poster, I have all their list of acquisitions since 2007. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. There's 16 they've done since 2012, with most of them

coming in the last 30 years. So what they have to do moving forward is prove like why GFL because they have won contracts like key contracts like Toronto like big ones in Toronto for instance they have a monopoly on like most of BC they've grown revenues in the US by 80% this year or or in 2020, sorry. And you gotta ask yourself why GFL, this is, they're entering very mature markets, like infrastructure and waste are hard to penetrate. So like, how are they doing this for a company that was just founded in 2007? So something, they're doing something well. And there's a couple things that they have to continue to prove. Is they got to prove that they can continue to drive organic growth. Because, yeah, it's great to lever up the balance sheet and run a bunch of M&A. But they need to really make sure that they can also get some organic growth.

You know, like, you know, sub 5% a year, but not decreasing organic growth over time because the M&A combined with the organic growth is what makes this really powerful. They got to expand the margins. They have to reduce their cost of debt, which they're going to get into, and they got to keep up this M&A strategy. Management expects $800 million in free cash flow by the end of 2023. So if they can get there, that would be really good. Okay, so the elephant in the room.

When GFL went public, we talked about it on this podcast. And you and I went, what is this balance sheet? What is Patrick doing? Why is there so much debt? It's actually nuts. The enterprise value just makes no sense. And most people are scared away by it. There was a short report.

I think it was like Spruce Point did some short report basically saying that GFL is the mafia and that their balance sheet's a joke. Anyways, the net leverage is a quarterly metric that they track. They know full well that they need to delever this balance sheet. Like they know fully well. They talk about it all the time.

They track net leverage. It's gone down by like 0.3X in the last quarter, and they're just trying to get it down and down. So the IPO was actually kind of brilliant because it allowed for M&A expansion in the US and then also for them to be able to de-lever the balance sheet. So they said moving forward, they need to improve credit quality, refinance debt, and just overall reduce the cost of capital. So bottom line, this is a founder-led business, which I love, like Extra Points, run by the entrepreneur who started it, still runs the show today. It's still like, it's relatively new company for, you know, a very mature market. Something is, something special about it, right? Like that's not easy to do. So they continue to do these acquisitions. They've set up a bunch of capital for acquisitions this year.

But they got to focus on their key things, which are organic growth, de-levering the balance sheet, selling some of their non-core assets that they think they can reinvest for organic growth. Reducing that cost of capital is going to be huge. And then this disciplined M&A strategy that they got to keep doing and uh that's the waste business it's a consolidation play it always has been you can they've been buying companies at like eight and a half times ebita after they integrate them that are trading for like 15 um and that's very accreditive and there's something special to the green monster that Patrick calls it.

Sorry, in the conference calls and on the shareholder letters, he calls his company the big green machine. And I think it's kind of clever. That's GFL. Any questions for me there, Simon? Have you checked the debt maturity or uh not quite nothing major due in the next five years uh but i mean let's not kid ourselves i mean the balance sheet is like super levered and and they know that but they were able to run this big merger and this big acquisition of the U S and de-lever the balance

sheet with the IPO. And, um, I think they're on the right track. I mean, yeah, the business is like 4.7 times net lever. Um, it's not, it's not something to sneeze at. Like it's a lot. And we've talked about this. It's, it's a lot. Yeah. Do you see any risks with um i remember i used to work at the city of ottawa and i was a staffing officer and we were um we had done a new contract with uh with one of the big players i don't remember at the time i think it was bfi

and um are you is it a risk for you that they may lose contracts with certain municipalities? Like, is there like what type of length is there? And, you know, is that something you'd be kind of cautious about? Because obviously, you know, a lot of debt is not too bad if your revenues are constant and they're not going to dip. But if you lose a contract like that, right, could be a big impact on it. Yeah, well, net rev growth is pretty significant over time. So I think that they're going to net expand contracts in a major way over the and take market share over the next few years. I mean, that's kind of the thesis overall, right? To even

own the business from the from the beginning. But you bring up a good point. And it's why I think in the garbage business, culture is underrated. Culture is actually and customer service is going to be very important for this business. And it's, you know, it's something that you never see, right? The landfills and the transfer station and the garbage collection. It's like this black box where the garbage just goes away. And it's just like magic right but at the end of the day they're key commercial contracts they got to be on the ball and they got to have the right culture and employees you know trained up in the right way because it's actually not that high of a moat because it's really easy to just call a competitor and be like,

get some bins in here and start picking up the garbage on Tuesday. You know, like it's, it's really not hard to do that transition. So the culture is underratedly important in what seems like a sticky infrastructure biz. Uh, they gotta be humble is the word I'd say, be humble is the word i'd say because it's been a hell of a story i mean come on what a 2007 that's not that old yeah and do you know out of curiosity do they own the landfills or is it a combination of them owning landfills and then the they own 98 landfills 98 okay okay i knew a lot of them do own them but i think there's some municipal ones too right yeah there's probably all kinds of joint ownerships and they there might be like it's owned by the municipality and they just have like the license to operate it

um but again yeah they have like hundreds of transfer stations hundreds of landfill 98 landfills that they actually own um yeah i mean mean, it's an acquisition play, really, at the end of the day. So I'm very picky about acquisition plays, because you got to have the right person managing it, right? You got to have the right person at the helm. I mean, there's only one Mark Leonard of Constellation that's brought them to the hundred bagger that they are. You got to be specific. And if it's an owner operator, incentives are aligned better. And that's a good place to start. Yeah. I mean, they have a nice little dividend. What is it? Like, probably sneeze at it. Yeah. It's like 0.13%.

probably sneeze at it yeah it's like 0.13 percent yeah it's like why even pay i don't yeah that's another thing right like if i was running the joint i'd scrap the dividend immediately it's like wsp as well like the other infrastructure services company wsp the engineering firm they've paid the exact same dividend per share for over 10 years yeah i feel like sometimes it's ownership who has a decent stake in the company and they want to give themselves a little bit of revenue. I think that it might be bad, but I mean, there's probably room to increase it.

They just don't want to slash it, right? Yeah, exactly. And there's probably room to increase it over time if they reduce that debt, right? So that's probably what's preventing them from increasing it. Yeah, I mean, i don't think anyone who owns gfl is looking at it and going i really hope they raise the dividend this year they're looking at it and going i want i hope you de-lever the balance sheet and keep doing m&a i mean that's that's the thesis for owning the business right

but canadians are dividend obsessed so i mean oh, I mean, maybe Patrick will just have to keep raising it to keep all the Canadians happy. Oh, my God. Why is that? Why are Canadians dividend obsessed? Is it because of the banks? I think we've talked about this before. Yeah, probably banks. Energy typically pays pretty good dividends.

So, I guess it's probably that. I mean, I love dividends as much as the next person, but you have to keep that in mind that it's not everything. Growth is really important. If you can mix both of them, that's great, but you're going to be passing on a lot of good businesses if you're just kind of zoomed in and you're just looking for dividends, you're going to be passing on some really good opportunities, in my opinion. Say it for the people in the back. Canadian investors are so dividend obsessed

and missing out on opportunities that might be just presenting themselves right there because you're screening for dividend growth. Like Simon said, I love when I get paid a dividend like it's it's awesome don't get me wrong um but my god i don't don't have that as a sole reason to own a business there's got to be something else yeah and there's nothing wrong with having a few companies that are that are your anchors in your portfolio that pay a nice dividend. Totally.

And then, you know, sprinkling that with some more growth-oriented business. I mean, I do that with Brookfield, right? They pay a nice dividend, but then I also have some growth stocks that do not pay anything. Or, you know, Tencent that pays pennies as well in the same bonus. Tencent's dividend is a joke as well but it speaks to how well the companies have done right like if the company had done dog shite um then the yield would be higher obviously it's just like the nature of the uh of the formula all right guys i think that does it for this episode we've talked about a few baskets we've

talking about green for life environmental aka gfl uh some other news simone i guess i should mention uh i have left my corporate job uh my last day is in three weeks i am running stratosphere full time i'd like to put some more effort into the podcast as well, even though we're already killing it. Not a big deal. So yeah, that's personal news for me. I am going to be running solo dolo as an entrepreneur, hiring a team.

Congratulations. It's a big leap. It's a big leap. I'm scared and nervous and excited all at once. Hey, those are some of the best experiences. And at some point, we'll be able to talk about some of those renewable yieldcos. Yeah, that's another thing, right? It's like now I can talk about renewable companies because I don't work for a renewable company.

All right, guys. Thanks for listening so much. Getstockmarket.com. Head there, as always. And we'll see you next week. Simon, are we doing that Twitter poll next week? Or is it going to be that and the fake? I'll do it on the weekend, most likely.

So it's possible that it will already be up. But you know what? Maybe we'll do it next week so people hear this and they can go and follow us on Twitter and go vote. So what we did was basically we tweeted a reply. We tweeted something asking people to reply to this tweet to let us know what companies they'd like us to review. We'll pick the four top choices that we get in there, create a poll, and then the one that gets the most vote uh we'll

review on an upcoming episode it may take a month or so because we have a few plans uh before then but uh we'll commit to reviewing that even if we don't know anything about the company because we get requests for like these small micro caps i I'm like, dude, I can't know every company on the planet. Sorry. Yeah, exactly, yeah. But this is your opportunity to send a request. So that's at on Twitter, at CDN underscore investing. CDN for like Canadian.

And considering the amount of interest we got, I feel like we'll probably have to do it again at some point. Oh, it's an absolute Twitter growth hack. What do we get, like 70 replies? Yeah, I think so. It's there now, yeah. All right, so then you can go on there and get your request in,

and then we'll run a poll, and we'll get the people what they want. We'll talk about the companies you guys want to hear about. See you next week. Take care. Bye-bye. The Canadian investor is not to be taken as investment advice. Braden or Simone may own securities mentioned on this podcast. Take care. Bye-bye.