On Monday, the Canadian market remained fairly stable, likely due to investors awaiting direction from the forthcoming Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday. Despite early beliefs of a possible rate cut by the Fed, such optimism dwindled after newly released data revealed a higher-than-expected increase in U.S. consumer and producer price inflation.
Approximately half an hour after noon, the S&P/TSX Composite Index had dropped by 8.81 points to 21,840.34. The Healthcare Capped Index, however, witnessed an increase of over 4% thanks to significant gains made by Tilray Inc, whose stock rose by nearly 15%. Other gains were seen by Bausch Health Companies and Sienna Senior Living, growing by 1.2% and 0.5% respectively.
Nuvei Corporation's stock, conversely, experienced an impressive surge of 31% amid rumours of a potential deal with the private equity firm, Advent International. ATCO Inc also saw a significant surge of 23%, while Franco-Nevada Corporation, Celestica Inc and Dayforce each enjoyed between 2-2.25% increase in their stocks.
Companies such as Stantec Inc, Morguard Corporation, TFI International, and Canadian National Railway also made gains of 1-1.5%. Yet, losses between 1.4-2.5% were sustained by Alimentation Couche-Tard, Kinaxis Inc, Calian Group, Cargojet, Constellation Software, and Docebo Inc.
In particular, Sierra Metals Inc reported a net loss of $13.7 million for Q4 2023, in contrast to a net loss of $26.5 million from the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, Africa Oil Corp made gains of around 2.5% after issuing a cash offer to acquire up to 8.0% of the issued shares in Impact Oil and Gas Ltd from minority shareholders.
On another note, CI Financial Corp, a diversified global asset and wealth management company, declared a 17.1% surge to $465.8 billion in preliminary total assets as at February 2024, up from $397.8 billion in February 2023.
As per the data from Statistics Canada, industrial producer prices in Canada rose by 0.7% in February, following four consecutive months of declines. In contrast, raw materials prices increased by 2.1% month-on-month in February, despite a 4.7% decrease in year-on-year rates.
