Here’s My Highest Conviction Canadian Stock to Buy Right Now

One under-the-radar Canadian small-cap stock is poised to deliver market-beating returns to shareholders. Let’s see why.

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Key Points
  • Zedcor posted record Q1 2026 revenue of $19.4 million, up 69% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA up 86%.
  • U.S. revenue topped Canadian revenue for the first time, as the American fleet grew 233%.
  • The small-cap growth stock is poised to more than double over the next four years.

My highest conviction Canadian stock to buy in 2026 is Zedcor (TSXV: ZDC), a Calgary-based mobile surveillance company.

Valued at a market cap of $627 million, Zedcor stock has returned a staggering 1,730% over the past five years. However, it also down almost 20% from all-time highs.

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Source: Getty Images

What Zedcor does and why its U.S. expansion matters

Zedcor builds, rents, and remotely monitors solar-powered security towers called MobileyeZ units. Think of a portable camera tower that watches over a construction site, a retail lot, or a logistics yard, and a live team that responds when an alarm is set off.

What sets Zedcor apart is that it does everything under one roof. It makes the hardware, rents the towers, and owns the monitoring process.

Zedcor keeps inventory at its branches and its Houston plant so it can deploy quickly. That “white glove” service is how it wins contracts away from competitors who keep clients waiting.

America is a much larger market than Canada, and Zedcor is quickly gaining traction south of the border.

The bull case for the small-cap Canadian stock

In the first quarter (Q1) of 2026, Zedcor reported record revenue of $19.4 million, an increase of 69% year over year. Its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) rose 86% to $7.6 million, indicating a margin of 39%, up from 36% in the year-ago period.

Zedcor is a company that is growing its top line while improving profit margins as it benefits from economies of scale.

It was the first quarter in which U.S. sales topped domestic revenue.

  • American sales almost tripled year over year to $9.7 million, accounting for more than 50% of total revenue.
  • Zedcor ended the quarter with 3,261 towers, up 108% year over year, while the U.S. fleet grew 233%.
  • Adjusted free cash flow before working-capital swings rose 80% to $6.4 million.

CEO Todd Ziniuk noted Zedcor now serves about 1,000 customers, with many small clients that could grow into much bigger ones. He pointed to accounts that went from four towers to 60, and from 10 toward 100.

Amin Ladha, the CFO at Zedcor, stated, “We also diversified our customer base and reduced the contribution from any one customary revenue. In the U.S., we added several enterprise customers this quarter across homebuilding, specialty retail, commercial construction and logistics.”

Zedcor ended Q1 with a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.25 times, which is conservative. It recently raised $30.5 million in equity and has a $75 million credit line available to fund future growth.

Is Zedcor stock a buy right now?

Analysts tracking the Canadian stock project revenue to rise from $58.9 million in 2025 to $404 million in 2030. It is forecast to report a free cash flow of $120 million in 2030, compared to an outflow of $48.5 million in 2025.

If Zedcor stock is priced at 15 times forward free cash flow, which is quite cheap, it could more than double within the next four years.

Zedcor is a small-cap growth stock that will be volatile in the near-term. Its profit margins could wobble as it hires sales staff and scales its U.S. monitoring center. And a construction slowdown would hit demand.

But here’s my take: this is a profitable, fast-growing Canadian company expanding into a massive U.S. market, with a widening manufacturing capacity and a strong balance sheet.

Analysts, too, remain bullish and forecast the Canadian stock to return 40% over the next 12 months, based on consensus price targets.

Fool contributor Aditya Raghunath has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Zedcor. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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