With the holidays approaching, this is the last Morning Meeting of 2025. I’ll be back in your inbox 3x per week in January for a big 2026. Thank you for reading all year, and happy holidays to you and yours! 🤝

We had a net securities inflow of $58B in October, the fourth straight - with $47B of foreign investment and $12B of Canadian divestment abroad…

… which comes after eight months of investment in a row. The outflow was concentrated to U.S. exposure, with $6B of selling in equities…

… while foreign investors added Canadian equity exposure for a second straight month ($13B), concentrated in resources and financial services names.

The demand for Canadian paper keeps humming, this time to the tune of $34B - spread across public and private issuers.

Canada’s population shrank 0.2% in Q3, shedding 76K people - the largest quarterly contraction on record.

With the exception of Alberta (up 0.2%), which continues to benefit from interprovincial migration - the impact was felt country-wide…

… and was driven by a record 176K drop in non-permanent residents, the fourth straight (mostly study permit holders). That should continue, given the current total sits ~770K above Carney’s 5% target…

… but we’re already there on immigration, which has held steady at just over 100K for the past four quarters.

Payroll employment improved 0.1% in October, with gains in health care, finance, and transportation more than offsetting lower employment in admin, manufacturing, and retail trade.

Job vacancies couldn’t keep up the momentum though, falling 4% to 467K - the lowest reading since 2017.

Naturally, to post an eight-year low the declines have to be broad-based - with only manufacturing and other vacancies up on a Y/Y basis…

… which leads to a lot less negotiating power for job seekers, who have accepted consistently weaker wage growth over the past four quarters.

WildBrain (WILD) was up 9% after announcing the $630M sale of its 41% stake in Peanuts, the franchise behind characters like Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

At $41M of recognized EBITDA, that prices the deal at nearly 15x - above the 13x WILD currently trades at…

… but the real story is the use of proceeds, with management planning to retire all ~$580M of debt - saving roughly $50M in annual interest expense…

… and freeing up the company to invest in wholly owned franchises like Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies.

Dream Unlimited (DRM) has run over 13% since announcing its $3B real estate JV with Dream Industrial (DIR-U) and CPP. The entity is acquiring 12 properties for $805M from DIR to start…

… but with $1.1B of initial equity, the JV should have the firepower (with leverage) for another >$2B in deals. It comes at a time when the asset class is in favour…

… given the trade environment is forcing us to in-house our supply chains.

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