Toronto Stocks Finish Modestly Lower - Canadian Commentary

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Bay Street stocks finished modestly lower on Friday as weakness in the telecom sector outweighed gains for miners.

The S&P/TSX Composite Index lost 40.64 points or 0.35% to finish at 11,423.93. The index finished an uncertain week down 86.87 points.

Telecommunicatons stocks fell 3.7% on competition worries. Rogers Communications (RCI.B.TO) dropped 7%, Manitoba Telecom (MBT.TO) and BCE (BCE.TO) each fell 3.8% and Telus (T.TO) lost 2.3%.

The Canadian government overruled a Canadian Radio-television Commission ruling and allowed Globalive to enter the nation's cell phone market. Globalive is owned by international telecommunications company Orascom.

Mining stocks gained 1.1%. First Quantum (FM.TO) added 3.9% and Inmet (IMN.TO) rose 2.1%.

Sino-Forest Corp. (TRE.TO) added 4.4% after the company it has agreed to sell US$400 million principal amount of convertible senior notes due in 2016.

Le Château (CTU_A.TO) dropped 4.5% after the company reported net income for the third quarter of C$5.6 million or C$0.23 per share, compared to C$10.1 million or C$0.40 per share in the year-ago quarter.

Forzani Group (FGL.TO) surged 9.1% after the company reported its third quarter earnings per share rose to C$0.37 from C$0.22 a year ago.

On the economic front, the new housing price index rose 0.3% in October. An increase of 0.4% was forecast, compared to a gain of 0.5% in September.

Canadian capacity utilization for the third quarter is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. The report is expected to show a rise to 70%, up from 67.4% in the prior quarter.

(Market News Provided by RTTNews)