GEORGE WESTON LIMITED, BETTER VALUE?

In terms of valuations, at least historically, they are both pretty much on the same level. WN and L are trading at a ~12% discount to their 5 year average price to sales and a ~10% discount to their average forward price to earnings.

Both are excellent options. However, the thing that scares me with WN is its relative stagnancy over the last 5 years. Over the last 5 years the company has a compound annual growth rate of -2.3%, eating up the dividend and then some in losses.

Loblaws on the other hand has a CAGR of 4.37%. These aren't game changing returns by any means. But this is still a pretty significant outperformance by Loblaws.

Even if we look over a longer time period, WN since 2008 has a CAGR of around 6.12% while Loblaws is 9%.

It's important that we don't get tunnel vision when it comes to relative valuation, and more importantly yield. The better performing company over the last decade + has been Loblaws.