Canfor Q3 2024 Earnings Report

Canfor EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -C$1.65
• Consensus EPS: -C$1.10
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -C$0.55
• One Year Ago EPS: -C$0.16

Canfor Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Canfor Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2024
• Date: 10/25/2024
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Monday, October 28, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 11:00AM ET

Canfor (TSE:CFP) Corp is a global leader in the manufacturing of high-value low-carbon forest products including dimension and specialty lumber, engineered wood products, pulp and paper, wood pellets and green energy. Proudly headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canfor Corp produces renewable products from sustainably managed forests, at more than 50 facilities across its diversified operating platform in Canada, the United States and Europe. Canfor Corp has a 77% stake in Vida AB, Sweden's largest privately owned sawmill company and also owns, approximately, a 54.8% interest in Canfor Pulp.

Canfor Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Canfor continues diversification of its footprint by closing Plateau and Fort St. John mills in British Columbia (removing ~1 billion board feet capacity), while expanding in Alberta, the U.S. South (new Access, AL sawmill; Iron Mountain acquisition; Urbana upgrade), and maintaining strong European performance.
• In Q3, the lumber segment reported an operating loss of $336 million (including a $100 million impairment and $121 million non-cash duty adjustment; $129 million loss on an adjusted basis) due to weak North American prices, rising U.S. tariffs, and fibre supply challenges; the pulp division achieved $2 million adjusted operating income, up $7 million sequentially.
• The company recorded a $311 million write-down of BC asset book values to right-size its balance sheet and ended Q3 with net debt of $68 million (pulp) and net cash of CAD $331 million (Canfor standalone), plus $85 million liquidity and an $80 million term loan against duty deposits.
• Canfor forecasts $450 million in lumber CapEx for 2024 (Alabama greenfield, U.S. South, Sweden) and a reduction to $250–$300 million in 2025, while pulp CapEx will be below $50 million, reflecting completion of major projects and focus on cost improvement.
• Short-term lumber demand is expected to remain muted, but recent price gains and anticipated interest-rate normalization should improve housing affordability into 2025, with medium-term pricing upside driven by supply reductions rather than volume growth.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning. My name is Joanna, and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to Canfor and Canfor Pulp's third-quarter analyst call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. During this call, Canfor and Canfor Pulp's Chief Financial Officer will be referring to a slide presentation that is available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Also, the companies would like to point out that this call will include forward-looking statements, so please refer to the press releases for the associated risks of such statements. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Don Kayne, Canfor Corporation's President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Mr. Kayne.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the Canfor and Canfor Pulp Q3 2024 results conference call. I'm going to make a few comments before I turn things over to Pat Elliott, our Chief Financial Officer of Canfor Corporation and Canfor Pulp, and our Senior Vice President of Sustainability. In addition, we are joined by Kevin Pankratz, our Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. As you know, Canfor has been focused on building on its globally diversified operating platform by increasing our footprint in Alberta, the U.S. South, and Europe, while maintaining a reduced presence in British Columbia. This quarter, we made some additional difficult decisions in British Columbia, announcing the closure of our Plateau and Fort St. John operations in Northern BC. Combined with previous announcements, these closures will remove up to 1 billion board feet of annual production capacity from our BC operations.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

These decisions were driven by the persistent challenge in accessing economically viable fiber in Northern BC, which is not improving. This challenge was further exacerbated by the increase in U.S. tariffs, which are expected to double again next year. Despite the challenges in the BC interior, our Kootenay operations continue to perform well, supporting our specialty product and value-added focus, excuse me, including key high-margin products such as MSR, J-grade, and home center grades. In Alberta, despite weak North American lumber pricing, our operations continue to provide positive earnings in Q3. In the U.S. South, our focus was on executing on our capital plan. Today, our sawmill operations in our new facility in Axis, Alabama, began production. When the planer mill is completed later this year, we expect the first shipment of finished lumber.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

The new sawmill will have an annual capacity of 250 million board feet on a two-shift basis. Our Mobile plant ceased operations earlier this month, with decommissioning being conducted throughout the remainder of 2024. The acquisition of the former Resolute El Dorado mill in Arkansas, now called Iron Mountain, was completed on August 1. The Urbana upgrade project is in its final phase, with start-up last month and ramping up production in Q4. This project will increase capacity to 285 million board feet. With respect to Vida, although our results were marginally better than expected, 2024 has been challenging, with log costs continuing to increase. On our Financial results, our Lumber business in North America recorded significant losses in the third quarter due to persistently weak lumber prices, increasing duties, and a lack of available economic fiber in British Columbia.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Notwithstanding increasing log costs combined with seasonal downtime, our European operations generated positive operating income in the third quarter. While global lumber demand remains tepid in the short term, lumber prices have steadily increased over the last several weeks. With interest rates beginning to normalize, we anticipate affordability to gradually improve through 2025, which should support higher pricing into next year. While we anticipate a challenging fourth quarter, we believe our Lumber business is well-positioned to capitalize on improving market conditions over the medium to long term, supported by several significant capital investments nearing completion in the U.S. South, closures of certain high-cost assets across North America, and our strong European platform. With respect to pulp, on an adjusted basis, our Pulp business generated improved financial results in the third quarter, supported by higher sales realizations.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Pulp production was modestly lower than the previous quarter, with our Northwood Mill successfully transitioning to a one-line operation in August. While Canfor Pulp continues to navigate the uncertainty associated with fiber supply in British Columbia, we have seen improved operating results over the last several quarters and remain focused on improving our cost structure going forward. I will now turn it over to Pat to provide an overview of our financial results.

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

Thanks, Don, and good morning, everyone. In my comments this morning, I'll speak to our third-quarter financial highlights, a summary of which is included in our overview slide presentation, located in the Investor Relations section of Canfor's website. As Don mentioned, this was a challenging quarter, with our Lumber business generating an operating loss of CAD 336 million. These results include an asset write-down and impairment charge of CAD 100 million, non-cash duty-related adjustments of CAD 121 million, and several other items recorded in the third quarter. Adjusting for these one-time items, our Lumber business generated an operating loss of CAD 129 million, compared to a similarly adjusted loss of CAD 115 million in the prior quarter.

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

These results continue to reflect the impact of weak North American lumber markets, particularly for Southern Yellow Pine, as well as an elevated cost structure due to significant production curtailments in North America, seasonal downtime in Europe, and losses associated with certain high-cost operations in British Columbia. We anticipate an improvement in our underlying cost structure following the orderly wind down of several BC sawmills later this year. In addition, with several major capital projects in the U.S. South nearing completion, we anticipate a gradual improvement in our unit cost structure as this low-cost capacity begins to ramp up throughout 2025 Turning to our Pulp business, Canfor Pulp generated an operating loss of CAD 209 million, including a CAD 211 million asset write-down and impairment charge.

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

On an adjusted basis, Canfor Pulp generated an operating income of CAD 2 million, an improvement of CAD 7 million from the previous quarter, largely driven by improved pulp unit sales realizations. In total, we reduced the net book value of our Lumber and Pulp assets in BC by approximately CAD 311 million, reflecting the right-sizing of our operating footprint and balance sheet as a result of recent closure announcements and the reduced availability of economic fiber supply in the province. At the end of the third quarter, Canfor Pulp had net debt of CAD 68 million and CAD 85 million of available liquidity, excluding a term loan commitment of CAD 80 million related to a potential reinvestment in Northwood.

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

Canfor, excluding Canfor Pulp and the $314 million duty deposit loan completed in late September, ended the third quarter with net cash of approximately $330 million. On a consolidated basis, capital expenditures were approximately $117 million in the quarter, including $18 million for Canfor Pulp. We anticipate capital spend of approximately $450 million in the Lumber segment in 2024, including the remaining spend on our Alabama greenfield, as well as various growth initiatives in the U.S. South and Sweden. We anticipate a significant reduction in our capital spend in 2025, following the completion of these three major projects. For Canfor Pulp, we are currently forecasting capital spend of approximately $50 million in 2024, including capitalized payments.

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

In addition, we anticipate Canfor will continue to allocate a modest amount of capital to opportunistically repurchase shares, and with that, Don, I'll turn the call back to you.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

All right, thanks. Thanks, Pat. So, Operator, we're okay now to take questions from analysts.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now take questions from financial analysts. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift your receiver and then press star one. If at any time you wish to cancel your question, please press star two. Please press star one now if you have a question. There will be a brief pause while participants register for questions. Thank you for your patience. Your first question comes from Ben Isaacson at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Apurva Kilambi, Senior Equity Research Associate at Scotiabank]

Good morning. This is Apurva on for Ben. My first question is, we've seen a bit of a general slowdown in European lumber imports. Wondering if you could comment on what Canfor's volume out of the region looks like, and how much of that slowdown is due to North American imports versus domestic demand in Europe?

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yeah, thanks very much. I'll just, maybe, Kevin, you could comment on that.

[Kevin Pankratz, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Canfor]

Sure. Yes, thanks for the question, and yes, European imports are down and, that was largely predicated in slumping pricing here in North America. That made it very, very competitive for many of the operators there. Our volume, from Vida into North America was actually relatively stable quarter-over-quarter, and a lot of that is, you know, committed to program business and a bunch of that with the home center business. So I would say because of that, our volumes are more stable, but the more, I think, transactional volume did see a shift.

[Apurva Kilambi, Senior Equity Research Associate at Scotiabank]

Thank you. And then my second question, if I can sneak it in, is, can you provide us any update on how the modernization of Urbana is going, as well as the greenfield in Axis? Roughly how much incremental capacity do you expect will come online this year? And then, given kind of where market conditions are today, are you considering delaying or deferring any ramp-ups?

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yeah. First of all, on Urbana, it'll be the, we'll be commissioning that in Q4 2024, for sure, and the spend there is about 93% completed so far, so we've got a little bit more we need to spend there. The additional capacity is gonna be about 115 million board feet.

[Apurva Kilambi, Senior Equity Research Associate at Scotiabank]

Thank you.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

And then for Axis, you mentioned Axis also. The capacity there, that's also gonna be complete. I think I mentioned in my comments that they're starting that up, but the capacity there will be 250 million board feet and we're about, you know. Basically, that's all I need to say around Axis, I think, for now.

[Operator]

Thank you. The next question comes from Ketan Mamtora at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Ketan Mamtora, Director of Building Products Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Maybe, Don, to start with, you know, in general, I thought your release and your comments this morning are, you know, striking a pretty cautious tone in terms of near-term demand in lumber. Some of the others that have reported are probably expecting a little more sort of recovery as we go through into Q4 and 2025. I'm just curious, as you look at your demand and what you are hearing from your customers, can you comment at all in terms of, you know, repair and remodeling demand, new residential demand, how that's holding up and how that has trended, you know, through the quarter and into October? Thank you.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Okay. So, Ketan, thanks for the question, Ketan. I'll maybe start real quick, and then I'll pass it over to our Sales and Marketing guru here, Kevin. But first of all, just really on demand, I think, you know, we are cautious, but we've become cautious the last couple, three years, right? And while we've been, you know, we've done a fair bit of traveling lately in the United States and even in Japan, and, you know, overall, I think demand looks fairly stable, actually. Not, it doesn't look, it's not disappointing us in any way. We're just being cautious for any major uptick, you know, at this time, and more believe a lot of the increase that we see will demand increases.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

But overall, we're certainly not negative at all. As a matter of fact, looking forward, we're actually quite positive. And I'll let Kevin talk about that in more detail.

[Kevin Pankratz, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Canfor]

Yeah, sure. Actually, I mean, the outlook actually looks a bit promising there, and we are a little bit cautious. However, with you know, we had some major interest rate drops, and a lot of our customers believe that trend is gonna continue, which is gonna help address affordability. And I guess it's just a question of timing. And once that affordability threshold gets achieved, I think the demand unlock is gonna be pretty good. And more specifically, if I talk like multifamily, that's been a big segment that's been underperforming, and we're starting to see that has actually bottomed, and that could help demand down the road. But those are longer term projects that take time to get done versus a single family.

[Kevin Pankratz, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Canfor]

So that's why we're a little bit cautious going into Q1 of 2025. But, we do share that view that demand actually looks more promising. But really, the uplift in pricing today has been largely driven by supply reductions.

[Ketan Mamtora, Director of Building Products Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Got it. That's helpful context. And then, Pat, one for you. You mentioned you expect a pretty meaningful reduction in 2025 CapEx for lumber. Order of magnitude, how should we be thinking about that sort of reduction? Just rough numbers.

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

Yeah, Ketan, we're fine-tuning still, but I'd say it's like CAD 250 million- CAD 300 million versus CAD 450 million we spent this year. That'd be the range I'd use for lumber.

[Ketan Mamtora, Director of Building Products Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

$250 million, Pat, is that what you said for lumber?

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

CAD 250 million-CAD 300 million.

[Ketan Mamtora, Director of Building Products Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

I see. Okay, got it. Perfect. That's all I had. I'll turn it over. Good luck.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from Sean Steuart at TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

[Sean Steuart, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Couple questions. Pat, I'll start with the loan against the duty receivable. Hoping you can give us some of your rationale there, given you already have a strong balance sheet, and it looks like the borrowing costs, depending on the time frame here, could be reasonably high. You know, I guess the read-through is either you're expecting this is gonna be a very drawn-out process towards any sort of resolution on the trade file, or you feel the need to bolster an already strong balance sheet, ahead of maybe a difficult market environment, or ahead of potential M&A opportunities. Can you give us some more context on the rationale, Pat or Don, on that front?

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

Yeah, sure, Sean. I mean, you're right. There's a timing call in there for sure. I think on both sides of the equation, I can't tell you when this will settle. We're not, we're on the record as sort of identifying we don't see a near-term settlement. Canfor has over $725 million on deposit, and with the rates increasing here to 16% and then probably doubling our mortgage next year, we're gonna have a lot more, unfortunately, on deposit. So for us, the opportunity to take some of the money off the table, even at a discount, seemed to make some sense. There's no specific, use of funds we have in mind, but just, just the flexibility and, and, you know, these opportunities maybe don't come along all the time.

[Pat Elliott, CFO at Canfor]

It took us a while to do it, and so while it was there, we thought it was sort of prudent to take sort of 40% of our current exposure off the table, and that's how we came to do it now, Sean.

[Sean Steuart, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Okay, understood. Second question is on European fiber costs. You mentioned the pressure you've seen on that front, and we've seen reports that Södra in Sweden is increasing log costs again, I suppose over the last week or so. Can you speak to the general fiber cost environment, your ability to recoup that in local prices for lumber with the quarterly contract system that seems to be more in place there? I suppose just general comment on fiber costs in Europe.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you've phrased that well. I mean, I think that it's safe to say across Europe, fiber costs have increased pretty dramatically from, you know, from a fairly low base, though, to start with, but still, they have definitely increased, and Northern Europe particularly has increased. I guess there is some offset there, though, in terms of quality of the fiber that we get there. And as you know, and we've spoken about it before, we have a very high percentage of high-value product opportunities there that we've been able to develop over years and long before we came along. Even Vida was focused on that before. So we're in BC, you know, we're in Canada, and even in the U.S., we're 40%-60% high value.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

There is more like 80%-90%. So significant recovery, a great recovery, improvements in Sweden compared to anywhere else really in the world, probably, but certainly at the top of the list there. The other thing there, too, Sean, is we've got a lot more flexibility on markets. We've got the ability to move around to where the markets are the highest value as well. And so, you know, even though log costs have gone up, we certainly have, we're certainly, you know, not never comfortable with increases, but we've got lots of options, and with a high value percentage of our portfolio, feel pretty good about that too.

[Sean Steuart, Managing Director at TD Cowen]

Okay, that's great detail. Thanks, Don. That's all I have for now.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yep. All right, see you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from Hamir Patel at CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Hamir Patel, Executive Director of Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets]

Hi, good morning. Don, I wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, how much of the capacity that's been removed this year is kind of gone for good versus just, you know, maybe idled for a period of time and at risk of coming back in a stronger market, and just thinking specifically in the U.S. South?

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yeah. Good, good question. It's one that we wrestle with ourselves, right? And you know, speaking of Canfor, we got a couple mills down and added, you know, kind of half of one back kind of thing. But at the end of the day, hard to know whether. And the reason it's difficult is a lot of the independents, right? They don't report, they don't speak about it, but we can only tell by the performance in the last 12-18 months of the Southern Yellow Pine operations overall, that they've got to be under significant pressure. So our belief is it's definitely down.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

If you go back, we talk about this a lot, but if you went back two, three years, when a lot of these larger mills, the 15 big mega mills that everybody's built through that, you know, build construction, there is expected to be significant increases in yellow pine production, which, of course, this year, year-to-date, is probably down 7%-8%. So it's not anywhere near what was expected even a couple of years ago. So our view is that, yeah, there is. Whether how much of that's permanently down, hard to tell, but I would say that there's a portion of that for sure is, just hard to get a complete handle on.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

But safe to say, though, I think that we're not gonna see anywhere near the increases that we thought we would have seen, based on a forecast a couple of years ago.

[Hamir Patel, Executive Director of Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets]

Fair enough. And Don, how do you think about, you know, your European exports to the U.S., just given the rationalization you've done to your BC platform, do you expect that to grow? And maybe you could speak to the relative attractiveness of selling into the U.S. from Europe versus selling domestically.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yeah, I think there's. You know, that's one of the reasons why we diversified like we did. We wanted to be able to, you know, we anticipated the BC situation for a long time because of beetle and fires and everything else that you hear, and trade issues and everything else. So that's why we invested in other markets to start with. So certainly, Vida gives us some options there, for sure. You know, we're looking at that in terms of what those are and can be going forward. So yeah, there is a part to play for, from our view, for Vida, and we, you know, that's already underway in a lot of cases already. I know Kevin's been working on a lot of programs there already to supplement what we get out of Alberta, particularly in British Columbia.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

So yeah, so I think if you had to look at our that acquisition and what we believe to be the case in terms of capitalizing on that diversification, I think that's playing as we thought it would, you know, just the way we thought it would.

[Hamir Patel, Executive Director of Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets]

Great. Thanks. And just the last question I had was, you know, depending, obviously, with the U.S. upcoming election, if we were to have another Trump administration and, you know, that he's talked about putting sort of across the board 10% tariff on imports, is there any reason lumber would not also get hit with that additional 10% if that occurs? I'm just thinking with the ongoing trade dispute and, you know, is that maybe a risk that your duties, which already are gonna go up, go up potentially even more?

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

With all due respect, Hamir, I think it's obviously a really, really difficult one to call because there's a lot of. It seems like weekly and annually, we get a little surprises on that subject, but hard to speculate.

[Hamir Patel, Executive Director of Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets]

Yeah.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

At this point on that one. I mean, obviously, you know, just like the U.S., the duties that we're dealing with today, you know, you got price responses and timing and all of that. So really difficult one to answer at this point.

[Hamir Patel, Executive Director of Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets]

Okay, fair enough. That's all I had. I'll turn it over. Thanks.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

All right. Thanks, Hamir.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from Matthew McKellar at RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Matthew McKellar, VP at RBC Capital Markets]

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Can you talk a bit about what you're seeing across the landscape for acquisitions in wood products today, both in North America and Europe, please?

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yeah, I mean, I think just, you know, from our standpoint, I mean, we, you know, certainly we've been pretty active in the last three or four or five years in terms of acquisitions and strategic geographies that we felt was important for the future. And that, combined now with some of the capital projects that we've done with the two new greenfields and the, you know, pretty extensive brownfield that we've done in Urbana, you know, overall, like, you know, clearly we're continuing to look at opportunities in Europe and there's, you know, lots of opportunity, I think, all over the place. But we, you know, right now we've just been, you know, real focused on completing the capital that we've got in place there with those plants we got, the startups that are forthcoming here.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

And we'll continue to look at opportunities as they look forward. There's nothing, you know, nothing that I can speak to at this point at all. But, you know, you've heard us talk before, and it's still the case that we really like Europe, we really like Alberta, and we really like the U.S. South.

[Matthew McKellar, VP at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay, thanks for that.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

We like the Kootenays.

[Matthew McKellar, VP at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay, thank you. I had just one more cleanup for me on CapEx. I think I heard CAD 250 million-CAD 300 million on the lumber side next year. Are you expecting on the pulp side that 2025 looks something like 2024, or any comments around that, please?

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Yeah, Matthew, I think given that we've rationalized the line at Northwood, we'll be below CAD 50 million. We're still working through that, but I would anticipate it being below CAD 50 million.

[Matthew McKellar, VP at RBC Capital Markets]

That's helpful. Thank you. I'll turn it back.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Thanks, Matthew.

[Operator]

Thank you. We have no further questions. I'll now turn it over to Don Kayne for closing comments. Go ahead, Mr. Kayne.

[Don Kayne, President and CEO at Canfor]

Thanks, operator, and thanks everyone for participating this morning. We appreciate you tuning in, and we'll look forward to talking to you at the end of Q1. Thank you.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.

Participants

Executives

• Don Kayne, President and CEO
• Kevin Pankratz, SVP of Sales and Marketing
• Pat Elliott, CFO

Analysts

• Matthew McKellar, VP at RBC Capital Markets
• Sean Steuart, Managing Director at TD Cowen
• Apurva Kilambi, Senior Equity Research Associate at Scotiabank
• Ketan Mamtora, Director of Building Products Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets
• Hamir Patel, Executive Director of Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets