In terms of Metamaterial, this is a highly speculative investment. It is essentially a pre-revenue company (trailing twelve month revenues of $1.66M) and holds a bunch of patents for proprietary products. The company is burning through a significant amount of cash. In fact, net loss in its most recent quarter was over $55M. For a company to be trading at over 1000X trailing sales, I want to see some significant revenue growth. Thus far, I believe it has grown revenue 26% year over year. The company could end up making a significant amount of money from its products, but as of right now, this is purely a guess. If I was going to buy a company like this, it would be with a crazy small amount of my portfolio, likely 0.25% or 0.50%, and I would be fully prepared to lose it.
We were turned off of STC primarily because it is a VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) company, which is in our eyes a slowing industry. However, the company does seem to be moving towards cloud based systems. The company posted a pretty strong quarter and actually boosted its guidance (very minimal, it raised revenue guidance by $1M to sit at $167M). Growth looks somewhat flat over the course of the year because exchange rates have significantly impacted the company, which is a risk moving forward. Overall, I'm not a massive fan of the industry it operates in, and it is still trading at a pretty hefty premium (42 times forward earnings).
And the CNR vs CP debate has been had lots here. We do use CNR for our Foundational Stocks, just because of its longer history of proven operations (CP Rail had some issues, and has just regained dividend aristocrat status). However, at this point it is very close between the two as to which one you could choose. Keep in mind, it's not an outrageous thought to own both either.
I own Canadian National, but would have absolutely no problem with owning Canadian Pacific.