100 Most Sustainable Global Companies: Canadian Edition

During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January, the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations for 2009 was announced by Corporate Knights Inc., a Canadian media company and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, a New York-based investment advisory firm.

These 100 companies from 15 countries “were evaluated according to how
effectively they manage environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities, relative to their industry peers.” Nearly half of the constituents in this list have been in business for over 100 years. Since 2005, these 100 corporations have outperformed the MSCI World Index by 480 basis points per annum through the end of 2008.

Five Canadian companies were represented in the Global 100 list. The following is a brief overview about them:

1. Encana Corp. (ECA) is an oil and natural gas producer and marketer. Encana has a yield of 3.54% and had revenue of $30B last year. Annual dividend growth was 51% over the last 5 years. ECA is one of the few dividend paying companies in the oil and gas industry.

2. The most profitable bank in Canada, Royal Bank of Canada (RY) pays a dividend of 5.44%. Average annual growth is about 6%.

3. Telus Corp. (TU) is a telecom provider with a current market cap of $3.9B and a yield of 5.4%. With annual revenue growth of just 6%, this is not a high growth company.

4. Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) is one of Canada’s Big 5 banks with a large presence in the US. TD has a dividend yield of 5.39%. TD and Royal Bank, just like other banks around the world, have fallen heavily since last year. Also, they have been especially affected due to large their exposure to US markets.

5. The energy infrastructure company TransCanada Corp. (TRP) focuses on pipeline and energy in the natural gas industry. Last year TransCanada had revenue of $7B. The current yield is 4.76%.

Disclosure: Long TD, RY