Garey Aitken — Canadian Stocks at Records: Time to Get Selective

CNQ is Canada's biggest oil and gas producer, and it was Aitken's top pick in April 2025 — up 72% since. He bought it back then on a simple rule: the sector was out of favour, oil was priced below its long-run trend, and the businesses were good. He openly said there was no catalyst — that's exactly when he wants to act.

He still likes it, and it carries his largest weight in energy. His forward view is that oil can stay "high for longer" (not necessarily going higher, just not collapsing back), and in that world these stocks still have room to run. He is, in his words, more excited about energy than about the banks from here — and would happily add to CNQ at the margin.

Thomson Reuters sells legal, tax and news information software to law firms, accountants and companies. Its shares have fallen 60% because investors fear AI assistants will make its expensive research products unnecessary — the market is pricing what he calls "terminal risk," i.e. the business eventually dying.

Aitken never owned it when it was popular and expensive (roughly 30× its cash earnings — the "EV/EBITDA" measure of what you pay for the whole business relative to its operating profit). The fear has pushed that down to 12–13×, so he's buying at what he calculates is "close to 50 cents on the dollar."

That gap is his margin of safety — the cushion between what he paid and what he thinks the business is worth. If he's right, he expects "outsized returns probably for the next decade." If he's wrong and growth slows, the discount means he can still earn a decent return — unlike whoever bought it at 30× and now needs everything to go perfectly just to break even.

Boyd runs collision-repair shops across North America — the body shops insurers send you to after a crash — and grows by buying up independent shops. The stock is down 35% this year and it has been painful: he keeps buying and it keeps falling.

Crucially, he says the problem is not AI. It's that same-store sales (growth from shops it already owns, excluding acquisitions) have been weak, driven by things like fewer miles driven, used-car values, and insurance deductibles that make people put off repairs. The market has slashed the multiple it will pay for the business.

His conviction is high because he thinks the punishment far exceeds the damage: acquisitions will still add growth (just less profitably than 10 years ago), margins are fine, and the company is finally putting more effort into explaining itself to investors. He owns it in both his small-cap and flagship funds and has bought "quite a bit of stock in recent quarters" — but he warns that restoring investor confidence "won't happen in a quarter."

Stantec is a Canadian engineering and design consultancy — it plans and engineers buildings, water systems, roads and infrastructure — and for 20-plus years it grew steadily by acquiring smaller firms. The stock is now at its lowest since 2023 after a triple hit: slightly slower organic growth in its US business, a CEO handover, and the general fear that AI will replace professional-services work.

Aitken's counter is that none of the damage shows up in the actual results. The stock was expensive at its peak, which set expectations too high, so growth "a few percentage points" below hopes was enough to break the story in investors' minds. He notes rivals WSP and AtkinsRéalis are in the same boat — he picked Stantec as the cleanest way to own the setup.

He also pushes back on the idea that the fix is more acquisitions: private equity has bid up the price of deals, and "we don't want to see Stantec or anybody just do acquisitions for the sake of acquisitions." His verdict: "we will make a lot of money from here."

Intact is Canada's largest home, car and business insurer (property & casualty, or "P&C" — insurance against damage and liability rather than life insurance). The stock has been unusually choppy: it slumped early in 2026 and has since recovered much of it.

He calls it "an incredibly well-run, high-quality franchise" and hasn't changed his long-term view. He does expect insurance pricing conditions to soften a bit — meaning the last few years of exceptional profitability probably won't repeat — but that doesn't faze him.

The appeal is relative: while everyone piled into the banks, Intact lagged and still sits below its highs, so he added on the weakness ("in hindsight, probably not enough"). It remains a core financial-sector holding for investors with a long horizon.

TMX Group owns the Toronto Stock Exchange and Canada's related market infrastructure — it earns fees whenever anyone trades, lists or buys data. Stock exchanges are usually wonderful businesses, and TMX ran hot until it peaked in 2025, when AI and prediction/betting-market worries crept in.

Aitken owns it and added in the second quarter as the price pulled back. He acknowledges you can construct a bear case "if you really stretch it," but calls TMX "a pretty entrenched franchise" that "will continue to flourish." Some erosion at the edges is possible, but it isn't in his base-case numbers.

This is his core method in action: he was selling banks that everyone loves and putting the money into a quality franchise the market had turned cautious on.

CN is one of North America's big freight railways and was another of his April-2025 picks, up about 40% — but it took a long time to work, with 2025 being a brutal year for rail volumes generally.

His original reasoning is the template for this whole episode: investors were "incredibly negative" on rails, but "there's nothing structurally broken" — the pressure was cyclical, not permanent. So he bought and waited for better days.

Now the stock is hitting 52-week highs, helped by a smart piece of dealmaking: CN dropped its opposition to the Union Pacific / Norfolk Southern merger and in exchange got access to part of Union Pacific's network. He is still a holder, has "not started trimming yet," and expects all-time highs — but concedes he's in "the later innings" of the trade, meaning most of the outperformance is likely behind it.

CGI is a large Montreal-based IT consulting and outsourcing firm — it builds and runs technology systems for governments and big companies. It has been caught in what the market calls the "SaaS apocalypse": the fear that AI will let clients do this work themselves, gutting the business.

Aitken owns it and admits he's been wrong on it for four or five quarters. But he is "really not in that camp" on AI disruption — while honestly conceding nobody has a crystal ball on the next five to ten years. So far the actual numbers are "still very much intact," with only minor cyclical pressure from its US government work, even as the shares have been sharply de-rated.

His stance: a hold "for sure — in fact we'd probably be buyers, closer to being buyers than sellers." He also cautions that management's reassurance alone isn't evidence: "management teams will be the last to know when the bad news finally arrives."

Metro is a Quebec-based grocery and pharmacy chain. Aitken has owned it consistently for many years. He and his team bought grocers heavily before and during the pandemic, then trimmed aggressively after the group re-rated upward — but the trimming fell mostly on Loblaw, less on Metro, so a modest position remains.

The stock has lagged on real but temporary issues: a costly distribution-centre build-out and labour disruptions. His read is "Metro is perfectly fine — the story's not broken." Highly predictable profitability, good management, modest growth ahead.

He is candid that it isn't the cheapest thing he owns, but this is the kind of "high quality compounder" — a steady business that grinds out gains year after year — that built his track record, and he thinks it warrants a place in the portfolio "no different than 10 or 20 years ago."

Cenovus is a large Canadian oil-sands producer and refiner. When the host recapped his April-2025 energy call, she noted he had also liked Cenovus and MEG Energy — and that MEG has since been absorbed into Cenovus. He confirmed it.

The thesis is the same as for CNQ: he bought quality oil-levered businesses when the sector was unloved and oil was priced below trend, and he still sees upside because oil can stay "high for longer." He is, on his own account, more excited about energy today than about the banks.

Shopify provides the software that lets merchants run online stores. Aitken didn't own it for years, then started a position in May 2024 once the business began generating real free cash flow (cash left after running and investing in the business) — the change that made it fit his value-oriented style.

The stock is down 25% even though results have been better than expected. Part of that is the AI-disruption story, sharpened by Meta releasing an AI tool aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. But he thinks there's more to it: with "super high expectation stocks," merely meeting forecasts isn't enough — "you got to keep upping the ante" every quarter.

His verdict is a deliberate fence-sit: he won't argue Shopify is cheap here, and "if it was cheaper, we would definitely own more." He believes the moat is formidable and sees no evidence of disruption in the actual numbers — and with the stock well off its highs "you're getting compensated to own Shopify," a "bigger, better company than it's ever been." Own it, don't chase it.

BMO is one of the four Canadian banks Aitken owns (with TD, Royal and Scotiabank), and they remain top-10 holdings — but he is underweight the group and has been modestly trimming for several quarters, using the banks as his source of cash to fund purchases elsewhere.

His objection is purely valuation, not the business. After a huge swing in sentiment, the banks trade at forward price-to-earnings multiples at or near all-time highs. "It's not really a concern about what's in front of the banks fundamentally. It's just what we're paying for it."

He read David Rosenberg's argument that "the banks are our AI bubble" and thinks there was "a lot of validity" to it. Long term the franchises are fine — but because the gains came from multiple expansion rather than earnings, the next several years of returns are likely to be harder.

TD is one of the four Canadian banks he holds. He applies the same treatment to all four: high-quality franchises, held but underweight, and trimmed modestly at the margin because the price — not the business — has reached an extreme.

The cash raised from those trims is what funds the beaten-up names he actually wants to add to, like Boyd, Stantec and Thomson Reuters. That recycling from crowded winners into feared laggards is the whole point of the episode.

Royal Bank is another of his four bank holdings and a top-10 position. The view is identical to BMO's: the fundamentals are fine, but nearly all of the recent return came from investors being willing to pay a higher multiple for the same earnings.

Because that "pulls returns forward," he expects more difficult returns from here — so he is underweight and modestly trimming rather than adding, without any suggestion the business is impaired.

Scotiabank is the fourth Canadian bank in his portfolio, held on exactly the same terms: a quality franchise he expects to be fine long term, trimmed at the margin because forward valuations sit at or near record highs.

He is honest that he is "a little bit" nervous about the bank exposure overall, and gives credit to the bear case that the banks have become the Canadian market's crowded trade.

Fortis is a regulated electric and gas utility — a steady, dividend-growing business whose profits are set by regulators based on the assets it invests in ("rate base"). It was one of his April-2025 picks and has since been re-rated upward as the data-centre and electrification build-out convinced investors that long-term rate-base growth is secure.

He agrees with the recent CIBC downgrade: "I wouldn't argue that it's cheap anymore." He has been trimming utilities generally for the past year — in hindsight a little early, since several kept rising after he sold.

Fortis nevertheless remains "the anchor utility name" in the strategy and he can't say enough about its execution. His caveat is the episode's refrain: "when stocks move this much, it probably means weaker returns at some point in the future."

Loblaw is Canada's biggest grocer. Aitken bought into grocers before and around the pandemic, then trimmed the group "pretty aggressively" once the market re-rated them higher — and "a lot of that's been Loblaw." Only a modest position remains.

Nothing is broken in his view; this is valuation discipline. He also dismisses the old "food inflation is good for grocers" trade: it has become such a political football that the companies now go out of their way to show their food sales grew slower than official inflation, to avoid government intervention.