Canada news

With another strong quarterly performance, Walmart has lifted its outlook for the full year, including anticipating global ecommerce sales of $75bn this year. Walmart's key numbers Walmart's total revenue in Q2 increased by 2.4% to $141.0bn, representing an additional $3.3bn in sales Sales in its US stores increased by 5.3%, with Sam’s Club up 13.9% (+7.7% ex-fuel) US ecommerce sal...

We review Metro’s Q3 performance in Canada as it lapped last year’s pandemic-driven surge in demand. Third quarter key numbers Total sales fell 2.0% to $5.7bn, up 9.4% vs 2019 Food same-store sales down 3.6%, up 11.4% vs 2019 Pharmacy same-store sales up 7.6%, and up 8.6% vs 2019 Ecommerce sales increased 19% Net earnings down 4.2% to $252.4m COVID-19 related expenses of $...

Sobeys’ Quebec-based IGA business has invested a majority stake in Ricardo Media to accelerate the brand’s development. Building on existing partnership Founded in 2002, Ricardo Media is a food media company, operating a leading magazine with one million readers, a daily television programme and an online presence that generates 5.4m visits per month. In 2011, the company launched a range o...

Loblaw is partnering with dentalcorp Holdings, Canada’s largest network of dental practices. Under the agreement, dentalcorp will be the exclusive provider of oral care education and dental health services for users of the PC Health app. Personalised healthcare Loblaw launched the PC Health app last year, in partnership with League, Canada’s leading health operating system technology provid...

Having delivered a solid second quarter performance, the company’s chairman and CEO, Steven Cahillane, outlined some of the actions it is taking to mitigate the higher costs it is experiencing. Industry wide issue The Kellogg Company is not alone in aiming to mitigate the higher costs it is experiencing across a range of areas including commodities, packaging, freight and shipping. In the U...

With a new leadership team in place, Loblaw has reassessed almost 20 strategic initiatives. Against a strong second quarter performance, we look at some of the areas the business will be focusing on through the second half. Loblaw Q2 key numbers Total revenue up 4.5% to $12.5bn Operating income up 86.1% to $752m Net earnings up 660% to $56m Food retail same-store sales declined ...

As part of its plan to develop new revenue and profit pools, Walmart is to start offering several of its technologies and capabilities to other businesses. Enabling further investment in the customer value proposition Under this initiative, Walmart will aim to monetise the technologies it has developed over the last few years to support its digital transformation and moves towards creating ...

Earlier this year we published our five trends to watch in North America in 2021. We review our predictions and highlight what’s happened and why we’ve had to revise our outlook. Pandemic duration beyond our initial expectations The first half of the year has progressed broadly in line with our expectations, outlined in our report, North America strategic outlook 2021 . However, the du...

Having undertaken three major divestments in the last year and digital growth set to outpace sales through physical formats, a very different Walmart will emerge over the next five years. We highlight the five major changes to plan for. Business in transformation Walmart is the world's largest retailer, with activities spanning North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa. It has emerged a...

Leading US-based quick commerce company, Instacart, has appointed Fidji Simo as its new CEO, effective August 2. We look at her background, what she brings to the role, and some of the key challenges ahead. Facebook veteran Simo joins Instacart from Facebook where she was vice president and head of the Facebook app. She has overseen its development over the last ten years, including News Fe...