Burnaby’s biggest retailer, with multiple stores in the city, has seen a huge jump in revenues despite COVID-19 restrictions.
Canadian Tire Corp. runs a Canadian Tire store and a Mark’s in Burnaby’s Market Crossing, as well as two SportChek stores, one in Lougheed Town Centre and the other at Metropolis at Metrotown.
The company beat analysts' expectations with its latest quarterly results on Thursday.
The company posted a second quarter revenue of $3.92 billion, up more than 20% from $3.16 billion a year ago, while profit attributable to shareholders climbed to $223.6 million, or $3.64 per diluted share, compared with a loss of $20 million or 33 cents per share in 2020.
Analysts on average had expected $3.85 billion in revenue and an adjusted profit of $2.88 per share, according to financial market data firm Refinitiv.
Despite the strong results, Canadian Tire still faced headwinds in the quarter ended July 3.
Many of its retail stores faced capacity limits or were closed to in-person shopping for several weeks due to COVID-19 public health measures.
"We left sales on the table in Q2 as a result of the restrictions," CEO Greg Hicks said. "But despite the closures, restrictions and some headwinds around transportation and supply availability, we continue to move product through our supply chain at significantly elevated levels."
He added: "We leverage relationships with vendors, transportation providers, and third-party logistics facilities to get inventory to the dealers."
TJ Flood, president of the Canadian Tire retail chain, said the company's strong inventory availability has been fuelling the store's growth.
"Since the beginning of the pandemic, with a strained global supply chain, our strategy has been to be aggressive in securing inventory to fill the customer demand that exists," he told analysts. "We've continued to deploy this strategy throughout 2021."
The company has placed a renewed focused on strengthening its supply chain given that securing inventory is expected to be an ongoing issue, Flood said.
"The global supply chain continues to be strained and things could be choppy ... but we continue to work with our vendor partners every day to explore innovative ways to navigate the supply chain," he said.
For example, the company recently chartered three vessels with 2,000 containers each to transport goods — the first time ever the retailer has chartered its own boats, Flood said.
Yet rising freight costs have created some "inflationary pressure," Flood said.
- With reporting by the Canadian Press
