Owner of Loblaws, No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore and Shoppers Drug Mart recorded net earnings of $459-million or $1.47 per share in first quarter
Owner of Loblaws, No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore and Shoppers Drug Mart recorded net earnings of $459-million or $1.47 per share in first quarter
I’m not sure that math works? They earned $460M in profit for Q1, so that’s about $1.84B in profit over a year. Divide that by 39 million people in Canada and you have $47 per person, which is nowhere near $300 per person plus $1B.
Still obscene profit margins, but let’s do the math correctly.
If you think about it the other way around, it’s pretty fucking scary though. Loblaws is extracting the equivalent of $47 in raw profits from every man, woman, and child in the entire country.
Hmm, hard to quantify since I’m not sure how much of the population does a significant portion of grocery and other shopping at Loblaws, but in that context it doesn’t seem so bad. If we taxed those profits completely that only puts an extra $50 in everybody’s pocket each year, which doesn’t seem like it’d really have a large financial impact on many households.
I don’t know what Loblaw’s market share is. Let’s say it’s 30%. That makes it MUCH worse… Neatly $150 for every man woman and child that shops at Loblaws, JUST THIS YEAR.
Maybe $300/month, or $3600/year for groceries. Maybe another $200/year each for prescriptions, alcohol, and general housewares to cover the non-grocery items. $150 profit on $4200 of revenue would be about 4% margin. Doesn’t seem that high to me but I also don’t really know how that compares to other businesses in the same market.
FYI, almost every single item you find in a retail store is marked up 50% or more, with the only exceptions being commodities like gas and diesel, or electronics, where the manufacturers make the majority of the profits.
That $460M is net earnings available to common stockholders. Their gross profit for FY2023 was over $19bn. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/loblaw-reports-2023-fourth-quarter-results-and-fiscal-year-ended-december-30-2023-results-801324857.html