FP500 industry outlooks from banking to cannabis to telecoms

The big banks are still wildly profitable, even though they allowed people to defer mortgage payments during the pandemic and were hamstrung by increased capital requirements to cover potential loan losses and ensure their ongoing viability.

The United States Federal Reserve has already indicated it will loosen the strings at the end of June, providing banks pass a stress test, which will put pressure on Canadian regulators to do likewise.

If the pandemic put the spotlight on one industry, it’s biotechnology and health care.

Perhaps there is something more here than meets the eye.

Canada’s competitive edge, he says, is that its base is its globally recognized science and discovery expertise, much of which emerges from universities and research centres.

For example, the number of stores in Ontario grew to 444 in 2020 from 145 in 2019, but Alberta, with a much smaller population, was up to 574 dealers from 493 in the same time frame.

Helped by being deemed essential, alongside food and personal protective equipment, recreational cannabis sales more than doubled to $2.6 billion in 2020, from $1.2 billion in 2019, and Brightfield predicts the market will be worth $4.2 billion this year and almost $8.2 billion in 2026.

Aside from greater retail access, Brightfield says a larger variety of products and a focus on quality will help drive sales in 2021 and beyond.

“We believe that the U.S.

It may sound like a broken record, but there’s reason to be bullish on this sector if you believe Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s infrastructure spending plans will ever get underway in earnest.

analysts say that decision is likely the right one in the long run, but may hurt growth by acquisition in the short run, especially given the reduced dividends coming from Highway 407.

Big Tech, a term generally used to refer to a group of five American companies — Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Google LLC, Facebook Inc.

Facebook and Google, meanwhile, face increasing calls from various governments to pay for the news content they share from publishers around the world.

Food retailers have enjoyed some of their best quarters ever as the pandemic forced consumers to eat more often at home.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business in March estimated that one in six, or 181,000, small businesses were at risk of permanently closing, adding to the 58,000 businesses that closed in 2020.

The mining industry has always been a boom-or-bust proposition, with down years marked by stalled projects and cost cuts as financing dries up.

A recent McKinsey & Co.

At one point in the early days of COVID-19, oil companies were paying people to take barrels of crude off their hands on the futures market.

At some point, economies will finally and fully rebound and energy demand will rise alongside, but other pressures will likely remain for the long term, particularly when it comes to decarbonization.

Nevertheless, Canadian energy companies should try to be at the forefront of developing a clean, green economy.

Housing has been one of the few sectors to maintain its momentum during the past 16 months, but another real estate segment is also booming: industrial space.

For example, vacancy and availability rates in the Greater Toronto Area during the first quarter were at their lowest levels in a year, with more than three million square feet of net space absorbed, the highest amount since Q4 2019.

The telecom industry likes to point out that Canadians get some of the best wireless service in the world, with the big carriers investing significantly more in infrastructure than many of their counterparts elsewhere.

“All in all, Canada does not perform very well price wise even in the PwC study, and far more comprehensive studies like that one from ReWheel confirm that Canadians face consistently high prices,” said University of Ottawa law professor Tamir Israel, who is also a staff lawyer for the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in April ultimately decided Canadians do pay too much, so it will be interesting to see what the government does about Rogers Communications Inc.’s plan to take out Shaw Communications Inc.

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