Early Birds, June 23 and 30, 2022

Early Birds, June 23 and 30, 2022

Brett Bain – “interesting” at work in the sense that there’s lots of business, but they just can’t source equipment in anything approaching a timely fashion. Schools hoping to be up and running with new tech by September are being told November instead. Most of their education business is in the Charter School sector.

Brett told the story of Vicky walking their dog through the coulee and running into a badger with 4 babies. The young dog went after them. The badgers stood their ground, and eventually went after the dog. No one was hurt. Too bad a dog’s memory is 7 seconds long.

Don Davis – circulated a photo of the last time the Stanley cup was in town in an old rotary picture from Spruce Meadows. 5 early birds including Roger Jarvis, Ed Kott, Joe Drysdale, Don, and I’m missing one.

Don had the day from hell last Tuesday. It all started with a passport application for his son.

The day his sone was coming in from Canmore to get the passport, he hit a deer, and totaled his car and had to find another way to get in town, and Don went out to get him so he could stand in line.

They were able to get to the passport office by 3, but naturally, they weren’t able to get a passport that day after everything.

They went back next day and got it at 11 a.m. which has handy since their flight left at 3.

But THEN…..

Don’s daughter-in-law who is a nurse with every shot imaginable was for some reason pulled out of line for security and COVID protocol!! In the end, it was a happy ending: the family made their flight

From the 23^rd, this story of Don & Pat buying a condo in Willow Park for daughter who’s getting unmarried. She and her oldest son will move in in August.

Jim Bladon – had news from the Ag world. Seeding is done, farmers are spraying now. Bit of a slow down as they enter this season for various reasons.

Jim’s Credit Union customers asking for interest rates to be held for 30-60 days, they can’t. Even a day and a half can result in a 35-basis points adjustment is the timing is bad.

Stampede - begins next Thursday for most people. Jim’s connections within Stampede and Rotary sense a pent-up demand. Folks are excited. As an example of changes this year, and perhaps expectations: the Cowboys tent is 40% bigger and taking up two parking lots that were left. Parking will DEFINITELY be an issue. If you’re headed down, don’t expect to park close to the grounds.

The Super pass is back: 2 days or more $49 is a good deal.

As for the Dream Home: Jim says it’s the most beautiful in years. Very contemporary after receiving feedback that the previous batch f homes had been too “western”. The home also includes a condo in university village.

As far as the lottery itself goes, tickets are down just 6% vs 25% for other lotteries across the province

Tony Fisher – shared his note that in California, right now it costs $10 a gallon for gas! There’s a critical water shortage no lawn watering, washing cars. They figure they 9 months of water left. (Ed. Note - But hey, keep growing the thirstiest non-native crop ever: almonds.)

Food costs are a growing problem there as well even though they grow a lot of their food.

Tony happened to be at a soccer game at Vista Heights, which sits under a runway. They noted a near-continuous stream of planes. This year, although not back to pre-pandemic levels, the airport is looking at 14 million people pushing through its doors rather than 6 million last year.

On Stampede, Tony fears that service will really suffer. They’re nowhere near full staff levels and the reduced staff will mean longer waits, among other things.

Other notes from Tony: Regarding Minimum wage, he’s hearing talk in some circles of a $20 minimum wage, which will further force businesses to cut back on staff, hurting service further.

Tony shared that in Ontario – there’s an active QR code pilot program that sends orders from restaurant patrons directly to the kitchen. That restaurant industry is also looking for ways to get rid of tipping.

That QR code program is one of a number of initiatives that form a real push to get away from cash. ATM companies, naturally, are pushing in the opposite direction.

Matt Dart - Morale at home is up, work down. His daughter’s got a job for the summer. Son succeeded in his quest to get one too.

At work, though, the problem Matt referred to previously – the number crunchers suddenly being in charge and bottom lining everything to the detriment of client relationships has resulted in people upset with the way Johnson Controls are treating customers.  Another concern is the way the company seems to be availing itself of the use of third parties to sell directly rather than branch offices.

One consequence is that a lot of staff leaving – one of those perceiving ”the writing on the wall” sorts of things.

Matt’s company has its eyes on the huge potash projects in Saskatchewan, and also, infrastructure work in Whitehorse, which may or may not be bitcoin related. Think data centers and data mining. The naturally cool temperatures in places like Whitehorse result in MUCH lower cooling costs for data centers. It’s one of the reasons that Iceland, with no other supporting tech industry has attracted bitcoin data centers as well.

Matt brought up one important, likely unintended consequence of the Central Bank’s Interest rate hikes: Amazon has put their large warehousing project in Calgary on hold citing interest rate increases.

Sean Baylis – announced to no one’s surprise that it’s been a really, really tough first part of the year. One of the worst starts in history for the market.

In Canada interest rate rise may be 60 rather than 75 basis points July 13th.

Energy prices are a huge factor in Canada and elsewhere.

Some good news is that China is fully open again.

Stock ideas – Again Sean preached the mantra that if you have cash on hand, these sorts of markets *can* be excellent buying opportunities. Among companies receiving a thumbs up that may appear weak right now, he included Nike. There are lots of problems there because of China, but the world isn’t giving up exercising.

Disney’s stock is currently at pre-Pandemic levels down from Pandemic peak. RBC expects that to trend up.

Pfizer is another company getting a favourable rating from RBC, partly because they just bought Biohaven, a migraine drug owner. There’s a press release detailing the acquisition here: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-acquire-biohaven-pharmaceuticals. 

Last stock note: RBC likes CAE a company into flight simulation health training, defense training. Although they acquired a lot of companies and debt during COVID, they’re still an RBC pick.

Sean also mentioned a booked entitled A Richer Future – written by Noah Booth. It’s billed as Essential Financial concepts for youth, and Sean says it’s done wonders for his own kids. RBC is actually offering to send you a copy of the book at no cost via this web page: https://ca.rbcwealthmanagement.com/lakeshoreadvisorygroup/book-offer. 

I can see this being a great gift for your kids’ kids, etc.

Mike Boyles – was late because of a deer incident…on Deerfoot. It held up Sean Baylis as well.

Mike’s company has been dealing with the Edmonton Construction Association with success.

One of Mike’s business partners is looking into a David and Goliath type acquisition a smaller company buying one many times its size.  Mike’s seeing a very active M & A market. 

An ex-client had done a lot of work for Whitecap resources so they’re looking into possibilities there as well.

Dave Hicks – continuing the story of the past few years is spending a lot of time on behalf of his company Hixie Electric time in the mountains in Banff and Jasper. One of his favourite spots is the Saskatchewan River Crossing. When he crosses there at dawn as he has one a few occasions, it’s definitely one of Dave’s happy places.

In a rare turn, Dave walked away from a sizeable gig involving about a kilometer and half stretch of cabling because they wanted the job completed by July 27th. It’s simply not possible to get the materials needed for the job. A Vancouver-based company apparently got the contract, but Dave is reasonably certain that they won’t complete on time either.

Dave extended a special shout out to Dwayne Vinck who was measuring his mom’s time in hours but still took the time to call Dave about taxes.

Dave also relayed the story about being on Swoop Airlines inaugural flight to Charlottetown and playing his pipes to help them celebrate. Dave played the pipes at Edmonton airport and then played again for passengers coming off the plane in Charlottetown.

Of his time in the mountains, one observation is the multiple labour shortages in Banff and Lake Louise. Tourists are back and staff is NOT.

Ross Mikkelsen – things proceeding as they should this time of year, slowing down as people settle into BBQ season. One item Ross brought to our attention on the 23^rd was the growing “de-gasification movement” gaining momentum in parts of the US, and (no surprise) California in particular. This is affecting the other half of the Barbecues galore business – gas fireplaces. Ross offered this insight: restaurants in particular would be hurt as this progresses – especially without a viable alternative. A commercial kitchen will NOT run anywhere as efficiently without gas ovens and cooking appliances.

Brad Pachal (from the 23^rd) – He’d missed two weeks while working on a reno for his sister in Regina. The brother of the year nominations are now officially open.  

He was grateful to have been in Regina because his father ended up in hospital after an episode of elevated blood pressure took him down briefly.

He and his sister moved his dad into an extended care facility. Dad’s in good spirits and doing well.

Ian Campbell (from the 23^rd) - business has picked up in June.

Garry Friedrichsen (from the 23^rd) – interesting, informed take on precious and rare metals. Russian and Chinese alliances weaponizing those commodities.

Garry shared another business intel nugget. A while ago one of the companies he’d spent a lot of time with was confronted with exclusivity deals at front checkouts. Competing firms would try and set up and monopolize that part of retail. It’s valuable space, so Gillette would “bid up” the cost of being there. If they were going to be shut out of the space, the competitor would pay an exorbitant price to be there.

He also once again pointed to the potent power of information gathering and asking focus questions to keep building strategic plans.

JD MacDonald - told of a pilot program that will add hydrogen to the natural gas in their system. The discussion was part of a code meeting with the City. It will result in a 7% drop in efficiency. It’ll also be interesting to see how many current appliances, etc. will be able to work with the new fuel mix.

Son-Rise Plumbing is also experiencing logistics delays in supply. November is their quoted delivery date on a LOT of the pieces they would order for clients.

Like a lot of sectors right now, JD is noticing some consolidation and M & A activity in the plumbing universe.

Andy Lockhart – (from the 23^rd) was fresh off of the Greens Keepers cup at Priddis It essentially involves the most evil course design possible. Pins on top of the knob on the hill and more green grass and sand sadism. Fun day.

Andy’s spent most of winter down the rabbit hole of various chair styles. To carve out a chair seat there’s a particular tool called a Travsiher. Right now, if you try to order one there’s an 18 month waiting list.

Andy being Andy decided to go the DIY route saying he’s “… 73. I don’t even buy green bananas!”

He’s got some qualified help. He’s taking a course in Port Townshend, Washington from Claire Minihan. You can see some amazing examples on Claire’s site and one below: http://cminihanwoodworks.blogspot.com.