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With a Goldilocks economy and a bull market charging into a second year, 2024 shaped up to be a good year for investors.

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Now, investors are looking for opportunities in 2025. With the new year just around the corner, 10 portfolio managers and investment strategists weighed in on stocks to watch in 2025.

Dollarama Inc. (DOL)

Stan Wong, senior wealth adviser and portfolio manager with the Stan Wong Group at Scotia Wealth Management

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Limited competition and a focus on affordability for consumers is benefiting Canada’s leading dollar store retail chain.

“They have impressive growth and expansion plans. They have over 1,500 locations across the country. Projected revenue is $6.4 billion dollars for fiscal 2025, and I think the management of the company is executing very well,” said Wong.

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A December NLogic report found 60 per cent of Canadians aged 12 and older have shopped at a dollar store in the past month, which Wong said highlights a growing preference for value-oriented retailers during times of potential financial uncertainty.

“This has basically led to increased foot traffic and higher sales volumes for Dollarama. Going forward, based on expansion, the company plans to expand its floor footprint to 2,200 locations by 2034,” said Wong. “They recently acquired some land in the Calgary area for a new logistics hub. They’re really strategically positioning themselves for continued growth over the long term.”

Meta Platforms Inc. (META)

Barry Schwartz, executive vice president and chief investment officer at Baskin Wealth Management

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It is hard to find a high-growth company in the current market trading at a reasonable valuation, Schwartz said, but, in his opinion, Meta fits the bill.

“It’s trading at around 24 times our analyst expectation of 2025 earnings, which is at a slight premium to the S&P 500, but at a deep discount to other Magnificent Seven companies, as well as other high-growth names, and we think this company deserves to trade at a premium,” he said.

The company’s Meta AI tools have already helped increase return on investment for small businesses, Schwartz said. He sees more “exciting” products and services coming, and said the company is doubling down on its growth, announcing in December that it is building a US$10-billion AI data centre in Louisiana.

“You don’t build that if you don’t think there’s going to be a huge amount of demand on its networks going forward,” he said.

Aritzia Inc. (ATZ)

Jamie Murray, portfolio manager and head of research at The Murray Wealth Group

Everybody loves a comeback story, and Aritzia’s rebound proves that some trends do come back in style. The Vancouver-based women’s clothing retailer’s stock has recovered after taking a hit in 2023 as the company cited “missed opportunities” to stock stores with new styles as it focused on expanding its retail footprint.

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“I think the market is still underappreciating the strength of their renewed fashion lineup and the huge growth opportunity the company has in the United States,” said Murray. “From some of the data we look at, it looks like they’re seeing sales accelerate in the U.S. above what analysts are expecting. They still have such a big runway of open space there that is, in our view, a pretty clean setup for the company to keep growing.”

The company is expanding its e-commerce strategy, and Murray sees room to grow in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

“Every time they open a store, they have very good economics on their new stores. It’s a low-risk expansion strategy,” Murray said.

Propel Holdings Inc. (PRL)

Todd MacKenzie, senior wealth adviser and portfolio manager at National Bank Financial

Canada’s Big Six banks and major players in financial services get a lot of press, but MacKenzie uses quantitative models to find stocks such as Propel Holdings that have strong valuation metrics but fly under many analysts’ radars, he said.

The Toronto-based financial technology company has four operating brands that provide various types of loans and lines of credit to “underserved” consumers.

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“They look beyond just the credit score, which we found pretty creative and innovative, and they’re actually able to service a number of people that might not qualify for more traditional financing,” MacKenzie said.

The company has done well organically and through acquisitions and is poised to be competitive when interest rates come down or in an economic environment where traditional banks and other lenders constrict their lending capital, he said.

“It’s an innovative name that should do fairly well, given the economic backdrop,” MacKenzie said.

Lululemon Athletica Inc. (LULU)

Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at BMO Capital Markets

Lululemon invented athleisure with its signature $98 yoga pants. Despite competing with a number of athletic and luxury sportswear brands, the company is still coming out on top, Belski said.

“The addressable marketplace that they’re in, competition-wise, they’ve seen their competition falter, whether it’s Nike (Inc.) or Under Armour (Inc.),” he said.

Belski said the athletic apparel retailer went through “massive operational changes” in 2024, including the departure of its chief product officer and updating its organizational structure.

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“We believe in the direction of the company, and we believe that it will continue to, from an operational perspective, do very well,” he said.

Belski said the consumer discretionary sector is “bullied” by behemoth stocks Amazon.com Inc. and Tesla Inc. From a portfolio management perspective, he said investors can attain higher risk-adjusted returns by focusing on other names.

“I think where you can get a little more ‘jump’ in your portfolio is by owning smaller consumer discretionary names in the United States, like Lululemon,” he said.

Savaria Corp. (SIS)

Rebecca Teltscher, portfolio manager at Newhaven Asset Management

With seniors 65 years and older projected to reach nearly 25 per cent of Canada’s population by 2040, Laval, Queb.-based Savaria is well positioned as a purveyor of a wide range of personal and commercial mobility and patient care products, Teltscher said.

In 2023, the company launched a multi-year strategic plan to optimize sales and streamline operations in a bid to improve its EBITDA margins after completing acquisitions.

“They are doing exactly what they said they were going to do, and the market is really liking it,” Teltscher said.

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Despite threats by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to impose a 25 per cent tariff on imported goods from Canada and Mexico, the company has the flexibility to move some of their operations to the U.S., increase the price of high-margin items such as home elevators, or benefit from tariff exemptions on certain medical devices, Teltscher said.

“We do think that as they continue to execute, as they continue to grow, and because they have that flexibility, the news in the past two weeks was overdone. We do think that there is the opportunity for the stock to continue to do well,” she said.

Tourmaline Oil Corp. (TOU)

Rob Lauzon, managing director and chief investment officer at Middlefield

On British Columbia’s North Coast, LNG Canada Development Inc. is close to wrapping up construction on its liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Kitimat. There are big opportunities in price and volume for Tourmaline, Canada’s largest natural gas producer, as it unlocks new buyers in Asia, Lauzon said.

“Tourmaline can also enter into agreements with infrastructure players to send its natural gas south to the Gulf of Mexico, like the LNG facilities in the United States, because they’re so big and have scale,” he said.

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LNG may also play a big part in AI 2.0, as companies build data centres for computing power, Lauzon said. “You need reliable, cheap base load power, and natural gas is a sensible solution.”

As one of the lowest-cost producers, Tourmaline also has the benefit of paying a dividend to shareholders, Lauzon said. “They’ve been paying special dividends, so they give a lot of return of capital, or they return capital back to shareholders in a friendly way.”

Novo Nordisk A/S (NVO)

Paul Harris, partner and portfolio manager at Harris Douglas Asset Management

The Danish pharmaceutical company’s stock has climbed since 2023 on the strength of Ozempic — originally created to help treat type 2 diabetes — sweeping the world as a popular weight loss drug. Novo Nordisk also makes Wegovy, which is specifically approved for weight loss.

American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. is the only other company with similar FDA-approved weight loss drugs, which Harris said gives the two companies a distinct advantage over their competitors.

“There’s a lot more regulation around the manufacturing of drugs. Obviously, there has to be. These guys are two years ahead of a lot of people in manufacturing and all these other things,” he said.

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Because the company’s majority voting shareholder is the Novo Nordisk Foundation, an enterprise foundation dedicated to medical research, the company can’t be taken over by another pharmaceutical company or dominated by a hedge fund.

“They have a very long-term approach to their business, and a long-term approach to pharma and how they develop drugs,” Harris said.

NXP Semiconductors NV (NXPI)

Rob Cavallo, senior portfolio manager at RBC Global Asset Management

With the automotive industry as its biggest market, NXP is a stock investors can get excited about in 2025-26 after two years of challenging market conditions, Cavallo said.

“Right now, it’s trading at about 17 times 2025 earnings,” he said. “The peers that people like to compare it to are Texas Instruments (Inc.), Analog Devices (Inc.), Microchip Technology (Inc.), that all trade at a mid-20s to low-30s multiple. I feel like the earnings are really flushed out for NXP here and they’re very strongly positioned in these markets.”

With a strong management team and applications for both electric and gasoline vehicles, NXP is an interesting stock against a backdrop of an expensive semiconductor space, Cavallo said.

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“They’ve just been at the mercy of the end demand and inventory issues that had to work through in the channels,” he said. “We feel like next year we’re in a position where some of that stuff could begin to right-size itself. And just given where it trades at relative to its peers, it’s attractive today.”

Whitecap Resources Inc. (WCP)

Thomas Caldwell, founder and chairman at Caldwell Securities

Whitecap Resources is a “Canadian institutional darling” and the “premier” company amongst the country’s intermediate oil and gas companies, Caldwell said.

The Alberta-based company describes its mandate as “profitable production growth with sustainable dividends,” and it has paid out $2.1 billion to shareholders to date through consistent monthly cash dividends.

“They’re extremely good operators, with very strong operating performance,” Caldwell said. “They just seem to do a lot of things right.”

Going into 2025, there is a cloud hanging over Canada’s oil and gas industry as U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatens to slap a 25 per cent tariff on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada. With more than 60 per cent of U.S. imported crude oil coming from Canada, the move would be unpopular as it would raise fuel prices for American consumers, Caldwell said.

“I can’t see them cutting off Canadian oil. It just would shoot the prices through the ceiling. I can’t see it as being part of this 25 per cent tariff.”

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