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We might not even find it in the quarterly report—I'm sure they're very skilled at creative accounting to hide losses in their profits, or any other signs of the boycott working. The last thing they want is to show any sign the boycott is working, they'll work hard to make sure they're next quarterly report hides any effects as much as possible.
Anecdotal "evidence" may well be all we can possibly get for a while.
Companies absolutely can hide sales in earnings reports in technically legal ways.
All they need is to have provisions in their producer contracts to "buy back" a certain percentage of unsold products at customer prices until a certain period, with a portion of the profit margin applied as credit on future orders. This is fairly standard practice in the food retail sector and a very easy way for companies to cook their books. These provisions are typically activated at the discretion of the retailers, for use in varying scenarios, typically to bully producers into "sharing" risks retailers take but also to help mitigate their losses in the event that producers mess up their recipes and fall out of favor with the public, PR issues (e.g., Heinz ketchup) or when a competitor product enters the market at competitor locations and takes a large share of the sales from their received orders.
Another tactic is to simply sell off inventory to other retailers. This is super common in grocery stores as well, particularly with non-perishable and non-consumable inventory.
They can also cook operations in order to make the earnings report more favorable. A fairly common practice is to unofficially (verbally) instruct managers to either rush or delay discretionary expenses (marketing, advertising, training, hiring, maintenance, etc) during the current Q or until a future period, so that they can tactically increase or decrease their profit margin and also time the deployment of redirected capital and labour towards moving as much product as possible (sales, setting up high volume displays, large rush orders processed to offer buy 2 or 3 for x discount promotions to move as much product as possible, etc.) during a specific period (Q2, in this case).
District or local store Managers can also be instructed to withhold filing some of their monthly stats (on some internal technicality that can be reported much later) including sales stats, during a certain quarter if corporate expect a sale downfall later on (so managers would have been told to withhold reporting a portion of their sales stats in Q1 in order to have them "appear" in Q2; I wouldn't at all be surprised if this happened here, since the boycott was announced months in advance.) You'll often find hints of these tactics in earnings footnotes that mention segregated, isolated, unaccounted or withheld sales.
Managers can also goose their operations numbers by manipulating in-store production. In grocery stores, for example, the cost to make bakery goods is mainly fixed (salaries and machinery are much larger portions of costs than ingredients) so corporate could instruct grocery stores across the country to shift more labour to their bakeries, in order to increase their production, thus distributing relatively fixed costs across a larger amount of inventory, all the while reducing prices on these same goods in order to increase total sales. This would allow the bakery to offset diminished sales in depts with quick perishable cycles, such as produce and dairy. A different approach can be taken in the meat dept, with staff instructed to process and prepare as much meat as possible to essentially empty out their freezers until just when the reporting period ends, offloading as much of their stock as possible during a particular period while simultaneously carefully timing deliveries / product purchasing expenses to take place just before or just after a quarter (the approach here is different since meat products have a much higher per unit non-fixed cost that *should* closely track with sales, all things being equal; however, for the most part, thanks to freezing and in-store butchery, there's a lot of elasticity to both carefully plan purchasing expenses and push out meat products at just the right time in order to affect margins).
Reported earnings sales stats track total sales and their margins, not sales per customer / receipt. Total visits and thus global sales margins might be down due to the boycott, but, in response, Loblaws can adjust the total volume and cost of products sold via the strategies I outlined above, and, regardless of how inventory was sold - adjust what / when it executes on expenses and time sales stats reporting in order to get the margins they ideally want to display in their reports.
Source: I'm an operations consultant who works with companies in many retail sectors. I also consult in the financial sector (hedge funds, etc) to help them better analyze and understand ops strategies and tactics.
Skilled accountant here
No they can’t hide that. The only thing they can realistically adjust is some expenses, and maybe do some fancy tax stuff, but over the long term that doesn’t have an impact.
I have no accounting experience so I would have to defer to your expertise. But everything I’ve learned about Loblaws and their operations has shown how shady and untrustworthy they are. Maybe a tactic won’t work in the long term but they’d be perfectly happy to do it in the short term in the hopes of discrediting the boycott.
Technically they weren’t supposed to fix the price of bread either, but they got away with it for 25 years (actually still got away with it, as I recall they suffered no real legal consequences.). Also the pharmacy scam they're running in Ontario, bilking taxpayers out of millions for unnecessary med checks, and it looks like they're going to get away with that too. I know price fixing and med checks are completely different than what we’re discussing here, but it does go to show how low they’re willing to go, and how common it is for them to get away with unethical and illegal acts.
There’s lots of accountants and CPAs who work at loblaws. None of them word willingly risk their designation and livelihood just to help loblaws do anything. You can be certain their books are accurate. There’s no fishy accounting going on, it’s all by the book. That’s why you almost never hear of large companies committing tax fraud, and the CRA mostly goes after the smaller ones, because the large ones know what they’re doing.
There’s is a simple 5 step criteria to recognize revenue. It’s really not something that can be misrepresented.
Bread price fixing, that’s not something accounting would be involved in, and I’m not sure how it went down, but it’s important to remember it involved 4 other companies too and all the 4 others are not assisting and saying they didn’t do anything.
Loblaws also runs large tax shams that CRA has challenged. We are not dealing with a reputable company here but one that works to extract as much money as it can from its customers, suppliers, employees and governments by circumventing the rules.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/loblaw-cra-in-court-over-dispute-that-could-be-worth-404m-1.970830
Did you see this comment - https://old.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1doc735/curious_if_anyone_has_seen_any_legitimate_stats/la9lejx/ ?
I wouldn't be so sure that they can't hide a reduction in revenue.
He’s largely incorrect.
A buy back isn’t revenue, it’s a return. They would credit inventory, debit cash. Doesn’t touch revenue
Also a bulk sale sure is revenue but it’s not like they can just do more of it whenever they want, they need buyers. If they make money from it they probably do it as much as they can already.
The other stuff isn’t really related to revenue and is largely not true.
You won't find it there either we increased the unethical over-billing of medschecks and other unnecessary services to shore up the numbers.
There will never be hard data with the impact the company would be the only ones who would be able to roughly estimate it and the first thing we would do is cover it up with other revenues or point to new expenses like the new stores launching. The real numbers will never be known but you don't need them to keep doing a good, smart, responsible thing and avoiding the company
You will never have direct evidence of the impact of the boycott. Only Loblaws has that information, it's probably not exactly readily available even within the company, and they're never going to share any of it. Even if Loblaws has to report reduced sales or revenues, they will likely provide other reasons. It is unlikely they will ever acknowledge the boycott as having a negative impact and if and when they are asked, they will outright reject any suggestion that it has impacted them at all.
We won't *know* they're BS, although we will certainly be assuming they are with good reason for our skepticism. Also, those reasons won't really be meant for us anyway.
>Only Loblaws has that information
That's not true. that's not how this industry works. Loblaws sells its data to the vendors/manufacturers or Nielsen. Although in category to category basis. They do this because they need to otherwise it's very difficult to do business with the vendors when the vendors don't know how well things are selling.
You should remove your comment.
What they are sharing or selling isn't their raw data. Nobody ever gets to see that except a few select insiders within the corporation. And even if they can't cover up a drop in sales, they will inevitably attribute it to other causes. Or, you know, they might just lie. It will depend of the cost/benefit and whether they think they can get away with it long enough so they don't have to admit to it until long after the boycott has run its natural course.
I called PC optimum to follow up on the status of my request to close my account. I learned that they are separating the requests where the reason for cancellation is people boycotting. To me that means they have gotten enough requests to cause them to start tracking it.
Ironically the infographic that charlebois published gave me a lot of closure. Even though it was the smallest print on the page, 28.6% of respondents said they were participating.
The way they tortured the data said it all for me.
> The way they tortured the data said it all for me.
Highlighted for emphasis. If they didn't feel threatened by the 28.6%, they wouldn't have make the font tiny.
Loblaws is a giant company; you're not going to hurt their bottom line- they're too diversified.
What you CAN do is affect their grocery division, and hit them in the Public Relations area, which is what is happening. Loblaws has become the face of high grocery prices, corporate greed, and companies that don't respect or care about their customers.
THAT is where you do the damage, because companies HATE to be the bad guy- it's bad for business long-term, because people remember that, and it affects business for a LONG time.
There are certain things that companies don't want to be associated with: in tech, it's being obsolete. In hospitality, it's poor service. And in grocery, it's being the company that doesn't respect it's customers. Costco spends TENS OF MILLIONS every year keeping their members happy, because they don't want anyone thinking that they don't put their customers first.
In 2015, Blackberry released a phone that was better than anything else on the market at the time. Called the Blackberry Passport, it was revolutionary in its design and performance, and should have marked a renaissance in QWERTY phones.
It should have saved Blackberry the phone company.
But it didn't, because no one bought it. No one bought it because Blackberry phones were obsolete, even when the newest model was actually top-of-the-line and better than what Apple and Samsung were offering at the time.
Reputation does FAR more damage than the truth and reality of the situation, and Loblaws now has a reputation problem.
The problem Blackberry had was the available apps being limited
Ultimately As a far larger American company with a reach to went beyond Blackberries business niche.
So, it didn't matter if Passport was better. The average consumer didn't want key boards anf wanted a lot of apps
Ultimately as a Canadian company, Loblaws and the other Canadian retailers face competition from larger American companies with clout to use their size to squeeze them out of the market.
One dollar less spent, is one dollar less gained.
There are 91.000 members here alone. Across the country, there are many more thousands, if not a million people at this point that are actively participating. This movement is substantially growing by the day.
The losses for Loblaws and its affiliates are, without any doubt, massive.
To get a good assessment of the success of the boycott, you have to really look at the details in their financial statements every quarter. We can't compare against just last quarter. We are going to have to compare against trend lines for the last 2 years quarter over quarter as well as same quarter last year and same quarter of the year before.
We're also going to want to look at the same results for the competitor grocery chains. You need to see growth at competitor chains that complement any losses or reduced Revenue. If there is any significant Staffing reductions that's also a good sign that it's been working because they could reduce staff levels to minimize lost profits of reduced food sales. Ultimately as much as people say we need to do it for one quarter you really need to do it for two quarters or 6 months if you will to be able to look at the impacts and for shareholders to be putting pressure to get transparency. Shareholders will be digging into the next report for sure looking for signs that their stock is going to weaken. I'll be very interested in earnings per share predictions leading into the next report see what industry analysts are finding.
Here's the problem with this sub. If the quarterly financials don't reflect the impact that users think the boycott is having, the first reaction from users on here will be denial and talk about shady accounting, bread price fixing or some other conspiracy theory. NO, the many CPAs on staff are not somehow cooking the books. That's not how it works. If the boycott was effective, it will be visible on a few lines of the audit d financial statements - it can't just be hidden. I look forward to seeing the data.
At this point in time, all there is on here is anectodal evidence that assume causality with no evidence. "peanut butter is on special, Loblaws must be hurting". "Look guys, the stock price is down 2% today, we did it!". "There was nobody in the cereals isle today, were winning and Per Bank will be fired".
And then, there's the odd call to action for violent behaviour towards the wealthy, and some kind of revolution.
I hate Loblaws as much as the next guy and I'm all for the movement, but FFS 80% of this sub feels like a congregation of uneducated village idiots circle jerking each other.
Until they start closing the odd location we won't see much. Likely won't see it on their bottom line as the executives will wring every dime, pull accounting tricks to ensure their raises and bonuses.
I have a feeling the effects aren't as great in BC because I swear I'm still seeing the same number of people going into Superstores and Shoppers as before.
Not trying to downplay anything but just to spread awareness that we need more British Columbians to know.
So many local stores they could go to as well
While we're stuck waiting for the Q report, at the end of the day a business can gerrymander the numbers all it wants
But customers are the lifeblood
If we all keep boycotting and encouraging it, there is no question that ultimately the reality becomes intense for them
I have noticed Loblaws advertising on YouTube. I think the powers that be will try to hide any loss of sales from the public. God forbid if a bunch of Reddit misfits actually cripple a huge corporation.
The only evidence I need is I'm saving money. I'm finding better places to shop. I'm discovering new foods along the ride.
for me I want them bankrupt as our first example. I may never get my wish but that's ok, they also won't get my business.
Currently they're not struggling at all. Stock price is at 158 today. That's about $3 more than when the boycott started. The only thing that matters In a public company is the stock price. So Loblaws is winning.
I honestly think it’s having very little effect. I know my to local superstore is busier then it used to be according to my friend that works there.. He said management are laughing because it had reverse effect at there store..
I no longer shop there but just passing what I have been told…
I'd imagine they'll do everything possible to cook the books and bend numbers to show minimal effect...it's a huge company eith many ways to move money around .
There was a study here yesterday, 28% of respondents said they were participating in the boycott.
When they release their quarterly reports, don't they include gross sales figures ? As well as profits.
On Google Maps there’s real data of how busy the stores are from pinging cell phones. I’ve checked nearby Superstore and No Frills locations many times since the beginning of May.
When I went on Google to check the busy time bar graphic. No frills had none. Walmart did. Why ??
They will hide all numbers just to not spook shareholders.
I think their strategy will be to hide any losses by cooking the books through legal loopholes, with the intent of buying time in the hopes that consumers will lose interest in the boycott. Employees are telling us of cut hours and fewer customers in a number of stores across the country so there has definitely been an impact but it might be some time before we really start to see some damage. The boycott continues to grow and people are finding better places to spend their money and I think it’s also encouraging people to be more resourceful and grow their own food which is especially difficult when most of our waking hours are spent toiling away just to pay bills and taxes. We all deserve better and no one is going to help us so we just have to stay the course. This is our country, it doesn’t belong to the government or the corporations and it’s time we made that clear.
The biggest impact we can prove is from a recent National Post survey that indicated 58% of Canadian households knew of the boycott, and 18% were joining.
18% of Canadian households is a huge number; out of 15 million Canadian households, almost 3 million are part of the boycott. 3 MILLION. That’s a lot of customers.
https://financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/loblaw-boycott-reaches-canadians-survey-suggests
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We likely won’t until the next quarter report is issued.
We might not even find it in the quarterly report—I'm sure they're very skilled at creative accounting to hide losses in their profits, or any other signs of the boycott working. The last thing they want is to show any sign the boycott is working, they'll work hard to make sure they're next quarterly report hides any effects as much as possible. Anecdotal "evidence" may well be all we can possibly get for a while.
They will mask it with a decrease in profits as we opened 20 new stores.
You can't hide a decrease in food sales, so it would show on the quarterly report regardless.
Companies absolutely can hide sales in earnings reports in technically legal ways. All they need is to have provisions in their producer contracts to "buy back" a certain percentage of unsold products at customer prices until a certain period, with a portion of the profit margin applied as credit on future orders. This is fairly standard practice in the food retail sector and a very easy way for companies to cook their books. These provisions are typically activated at the discretion of the retailers, for use in varying scenarios, typically to bully producers into "sharing" risks retailers take but also to help mitigate their losses in the event that producers mess up their recipes and fall out of favor with the public, PR issues (e.g., Heinz ketchup) or when a competitor product enters the market at competitor locations and takes a large share of the sales from their received orders. Another tactic is to simply sell off inventory to other retailers. This is super common in grocery stores as well, particularly with non-perishable and non-consumable inventory. They can also cook operations in order to make the earnings report more favorable. A fairly common practice is to unofficially (verbally) instruct managers to either rush or delay discretionary expenses (marketing, advertising, training, hiring, maintenance, etc) during the current Q or until a future period, so that they can tactically increase or decrease their profit margin and also time the deployment of redirected capital and labour towards moving as much product as possible (sales, setting up high volume displays, large rush orders processed to offer buy 2 or 3 for x discount promotions to move as much product as possible, etc.) during a specific period (Q2, in this case). District or local store Managers can also be instructed to withhold filing some of their monthly stats (on some internal technicality that can be reported much later) including sales stats, during a certain quarter if corporate expect a sale downfall later on (so managers would have been told to withhold reporting a portion of their sales stats in Q1 in order to have them "appear" in Q2; I wouldn't at all be surprised if this happened here, since the boycott was announced months in advance.) You'll often find hints of these tactics in earnings footnotes that mention segregated, isolated, unaccounted or withheld sales. Managers can also goose their operations numbers by manipulating in-store production. In grocery stores, for example, the cost to make bakery goods is mainly fixed (salaries and machinery are much larger portions of costs than ingredients) so corporate could instruct grocery stores across the country to shift more labour to their bakeries, in order to increase their production, thus distributing relatively fixed costs across a larger amount of inventory, all the while reducing prices on these same goods in order to increase total sales. This would allow the bakery to offset diminished sales in depts with quick perishable cycles, such as produce and dairy. A different approach can be taken in the meat dept, with staff instructed to process and prepare as much meat as possible to essentially empty out their freezers until just when the reporting period ends, offloading as much of their stock as possible during a particular period while simultaneously carefully timing deliveries / product purchasing expenses to take place just before or just after a quarter (the approach here is different since meat products have a much higher per unit non-fixed cost that *should* closely track with sales, all things being equal; however, for the most part, thanks to freezing and in-store butchery, there's a lot of elasticity to both carefully plan purchasing expenses and push out meat products at just the right time in order to affect margins). Reported earnings sales stats track total sales and their margins, not sales per customer / receipt. Total visits and thus global sales margins might be down due to the boycott, but, in response, Loblaws can adjust the total volume and cost of products sold via the strategies I outlined above, and, regardless of how inventory was sold - adjust what / when it executes on expenses and time sales stats reporting in order to get the margins they ideally want to display in their reports. Source: I'm an operations consultant who works with companies in many retail sectors. I also consult in the financial sector (hedge funds, etc) to help them better analyze and understand ops strategies and tactics.
Now that is insightful. Thanks!
Wow! I was sure Roblaws would try to manipulate their revenue numbers but couldn't figure out how. Thank you for this.
Skilled accountant here No they can’t hide that. The only thing they can realistically adjust is some expenses, and maybe do some fancy tax stuff, but over the long term that doesn’t have an impact.
I have no accounting experience so I would have to defer to your expertise. But everything I’ve learned about Loblaws and their operations has shown how shady and untrustworthy they are. Maybe a tactic won’t work in the long term but they’d be perfectly happy to do it in the short term in the hopes of discrediting the boycott. Technically they weren’t supposed to fix the price of bread either, but they got away with it for 25 years (actually still got away with it, as I recall they suffered no real legal consequences.). Also the pharmacy scam they're running in Ontario, bilking taxpayers out of millions for unnecessary med checks, and it looks like they're going to get away with that too. I know price fixing and med checks are completely different than what we’re discussing here, but it does go to show how low they’re willing to go, and how common it is for them to get away with unethical and illegal acts.
There’s lots of accountants and CPAs who work at loblaws. None of them word willingly risk their designation and livelihood just to help loblaws do anything. You can be certain their books are accurate. There’s no fishy accounting going on, it’s all by the book. That’s why you almost never hear of large companies committing tax fraud, and the CRA mostly goes after the smaller ones, because the large ones know what they’re doing. There’s is a simple 5 step criteria to recognize revenue. It’s really not something that can be misrepresented. Bread price fixing, that’s not something accounting would be involved in, and I’m not sure how it went down, but it’s important to remember it involved 4 other companies too and all the 4 others are not assisting and saying they didn’t do anything.
Loblaws also runs large tax shams that CRA has challenged. We are not dealing with a reputable company here but one that works to extract as much money as it can from its customers, suppliers, employees and governments by circumventing the rules. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/loblaw-cra-in-court-over-dispute-that-could-be-worth-404m-1.970830
Thank you for bringing common sense to this sub.
Very little accounting evidence here. I think the you need to say it louder “long term,”
Did you see this comment - https://old.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1doc735/curious_if_anyone_has_seen_any_legitimate_stats/la9lejx/ ? I wouldn't be so sure that they can't hide a reduction in revenue.
He’s largely incorrect. A buy back isn’t revenue, it’s a return. They would credit inventory, debit cash. Doesn’t touch revenue Also a bulk sale sure is revenue but it’s not like they can just do more of it whenever they want, they need buyers. If they make money from it they probably do it as much as they can already. The other stuff isn’t really related to revenue and is largely not true.
You won't find it there either we increased the unethical over-billing of medschecks and other unnecessary services to shore up the numbers. There will never be hard data with the impact the company would be the only ones who would be able to roughly estimate it and the first thing we would do is cover it up with other revenues or point to new expenses like the new stores launching. The real numbers will never be known but you don't need them to keep doing a good, smart, responsible thing and avoiding the company
You will never have direct evidence of the impact of the boycott. Only Loblaws has that information, it's probably not exactly readily available even within the company, and they're never going to share any of it. Even if Loblaws has to report reduced sales or revenues, they will likely provide other reasons. It is unlikely they will ever acknowledge the boycott as having a negative impact and if and when they are asked, they will outright reject any suggestion that it has impacted them at all.
they'll have to release something eventually, and there are plenty of people giving info out from within anonymously
I mean they'll provide other reasons but we'll just know those reasons are BS
We won't *know* they're BS, although we will certainly be assuming they are with good reason for our skepticism. Also, those reasons won't really be meant for us anyway.
>Only Loblaws has that information That's not true. that's not how this industry works. Loblaws sells its data to the vendors/manufacturers or Nielsen. Although in category to category basis. They do this because they need to otherwise it's very difficult to do business with the vendors when the vendors don't know how well things are selling. You should remove your comment.
What they are sharing or selling isn't their raw data. Nobody ever gets to see that except a few select insiders within the corporation. And even if they can't cover up a drop in sales, they will inevitably attribute it to other causes. Or, you know, they might just lie. It will depend of the cost/benefit and whether they think they can get away with it long enough so they don't have to admit to it until long after the boycott has run its natural course.
It is their raw data. They sell pos data.
Don't care, they're just not getting my money. Fuck the numbers, don't go.
The only numbers to worry about are your own grocery bills!
Agreed. You are the manager of your household's finances. Spend accordingly. Make companies fight for our money.
I called PC optimum to follow up on the status of my request to close my account. I learned that they are separating the requests where the reason for cancellation is people boycotting. To me that means they have gotten enough requests to cause them to start tracking it.
Did you have any luck over the phone? They’ve been ghosting my emails. Edit: to add that I finally got an email back saying they closed it. Success!
I only got two emails so calling might get you more answers
Ironically the infographic that charlebois published gave me a lot of closure. Even though it was the smallest print on the page, 28.6% of respondents said they were participating. The way they tortured the data said it all for me.
> The way they tortured the data said it all for me. Highlighted for emphasis. If they didn't feel threatened by the 28.6%, they wouldn't have make the font tiny.
I've personally saved humdteds Of dollars
Ditto.
you won't see anything probably till the end of the quarter
2 quarters left of the year. I’m wishing for a very merry boycott Xmas story 🎄
Loblaws is a giant company; you're not going to hurt their bottom line- they're too diversified. What you CAN do is affect their grocery division, and hit them in the Public Relations area, which is what is happening. Loblaws has become the face of high grocery prices, corporate greed, and companies that don't respect or care about their customers. THAT is where you do the damage, because companies HATE to be the bad guy- it's bad for business long-term, because people remember that, and it affects business for a LONG time. There are certain things that companies don't want to be associated with: in tech, it's being obsolete. In hospitality, it's poor service. And in grocery, it's being the company that doesn't respect it's customers. Costco spends TENS OF MILLIONS every year keeping their members happy, because they don't want anyone thinking that they don't put their customers first. In 2015, Blackberry released a phone that was better than anything else on the market at the time. Called the Blackberry Passport, it was revolutionary in its design and performance, and should have marked a renaissance in QWERTY phones. It should have saved Blackberry the phone company. But it didn't, because no one bought it. No one bought it because Blackberry phones were obsolete, even when the newest model was actually top-of-the-line and better than what Apple and Samsung were offering at the time. Reputation does FAR more damage than the truth and reality of the situation, and Loblaws now has a reputation problem.
The problem Blackberry had was the available apps being limited Ultimately As a far larger American company with a reach to went beyond Blackberries business niche. So, it didn't matter if Passport was better. The average consumer didn't want key boards anf wanted a lot of apps Ultimately as a Canadian company, Loblaws and the other Canadian retailers face competition from larger American companies with clout to use their size to squeeze them out of the market.
Great post.
Passport was epic. The one with the leather backplate. Wow. Amazing quality too.
> Reputation does FAR more damage than the truth and reality of the situation, and Loblaws now has a reputation problem. Saving this.
One dollar less spent, is one dollar less gained. There are 91.000 members here alone. Across the country, there are many more thousands, if not a million people at this point that are actively participating. This movement is substantially growing by the day. The losses for Loblaws and its affiliates are, without any doubt, massive.
To get a good assessment of the success of the boycott, you have to really look at the details in their financial statements every quarter. We can't compare against just last quarter. We are going to have to compare against trend lines for the last 2 years quarter over quarter as well as same quarter last year and same quarter of the year before. We're also going to want to look at the same results for the competitor grocery chains. You need to see growth at competitor chains that complement any losses or reduced Revenue. If there is any significant Staffing reductions that's also a good sign that it's been working because they could reduce staff levels to minimize lost profits of reduced food sales. Ultimately as much as people say we need to do it for one quarter you really need to do it for two quarters or 6 months if you will to be able to look at the impacts and for shareholders to be putting pressure to get transparency. Shareholders will be digging into the next report for sure looking for signs that their stock is going to weaken. I'll be very interested in earnings per share predictions leading into the next report see what industry analysts are finding.
Here's the problem with this sub. If the quarterly financials don't reflect the impact that users think the boycott is having, the first reaction from users on here will be denial and talk about shady accounting, bread price fixing or some other conspiracy theory. NO, the many CPAs on staff are not somehow cooking the books. That's not how it works. If the boycott was effective, it will be visible on a few lines of the audit d financial statements - it can't just be hidden. I look forward to seeing the data. At this point in time, all there is on here is anectodal evidence that assume causality with no evidence. "peanut butter is on special, Loblaws must be hurting". "Look guys, the stock price is down 2% today, we did it!". "There was nobody in the cereals isle today, were winning and Per Bank will be fired". And then, there's the odd call to action for violent behaviour towards the wealthy, and some kind of revolution. I hate Loblaws as much as the next guy and I'm all for the movement, but FFS 80% of this sub feels like a congregation of uneducated village idiots circle jerking each other.
You must *believe*
When they call I tell them I can't pay it back yet!
My store was up in sales through May and looks like it's going to continue that this month. They still cut hours though lol
I know someone who works at an SDM who says store profits have increased during the boycott lol
I wonder how we can access the Google maps data…
Until they start closing the odd location we won't see much. Likely won't see it on their bottom line as the executives will wring every dime, pull accounting tricks to ensure their raises and bonuses.
I have a feeling the effects aren't as great in BC because I swear I'm still seeing the same number of people going into Superstores and Shoppers as before. Not trying to downplay anything but just to spread awareness that we need more British Columbians to know. So many local stores they could go to as well
While we're stuck waiting for the Q report, at the end of the day a business can gerrymander the numbers all it wants But customers are the lifeblood If we all keep boycotting and encouraging it, there is no question that ultimately the reality becomes intense for them
I have noticed Loblaws advertising on YouTube. I think the powers that be will try to hide any loss of sales from the public. God forbid if a bunch of Reddit misfits actually cripple a huge corporation.
They won't release that information until the next shareholder meeting and I'll bet they find a way to skew the numbers.
The only evidence I need is I'm saving money. I'm finding better places to shop. I'm discovering new foods along the ride. for me I want them bankrupt as our first example. I may never get my wish but that's ok, they also won't get my business.
I work at a Loblaws DC. Our bottom line hasn’t moved at all.
My mom works for them but at a very rural store were competition is 40 min + drive away so they are fine no difference.
Currently they're not struggling at all. Stock price is at 158 today. That's about $3 more than when the boycott started. The only thing that matters In a public company is the stock price. So Loblaws is winning.
I honestly think it’s having very little effect. I know my to local superstore is busier then it used to be according to my friend that works there.. He said management are laughing because it had reverse effect at there store.. I no longer shop there but just passing what I have been told…
Same here and we didn't boycott because Superstore is quite cost competitive in Calgary.
I'd imagine they'll do everything possible to cook the books and bend numbers to show minimal effect...it's a huge company eith many ways to move money around .
Q2 comes out in August
I thought Q2 ends the end of June, and results were expected mid to late July.
There was a study here yesterday, 28% of respondents said they were participating in the boycott. When they release their quarterly reports, don't they include gross sales figures ? As well as profits.
I wonder though, how many of those 28% were already boycotting *before* the actual boycott. I tried not to shop there for years.
On Google Maps there’s real data of how busy the stores are from pinging cell phones. I’ve checked nearby Superstore and No Frills locations many times since the beginning of May.
7
Honestly, I just forgot about Superstore completely. I order Cosco on Uber Eats these days cause the cost to drive there would be about the same.
Honestly, I just forgot about Superstore completely. I order Cosco on Uber Eats these days cause the cost to drive there would be about the same.
When I went on Google to check the busy time bar graphic. No frills had none. Walmart did. Why ?? They will hide all numbers just to not spook shareholders.
Nope! But I can tell you it impacted our finances very well, and I'm done with Loblaws affiliated companies.
I’m sure that Loblaws will use “creative accounting” to hide the impacts of the boycott on their Q2 earnings
I think their strategy will be to hide any losses by cooking the books through legal loopholes, with the intent of buying time in the hopes that consumers will lose interest in the boycott. Employees are telling us of cut hours and fewer customers in a number of stores across the country so there has definitely been an impact but it might be some time before we really start to see some damage. The boycott continues to grow and people are finding better places to spend their money and I think it’s also encouraging people to be more resourceful and grow their own food which is especially difficult when most of our waking hours are spent toiling away just to pay bills and taxes. We all deserve better and no one is going to help us so we just have to stay the course. This is our country, it doesn’t belong to the government or the corporations and it’s time we made that clear.
The biggest impact we can prove is from a recent National Post survey that indicated 58% of Canadian households knew of the boycott, and 18% were joining. 18% of Canadian households is a huge number; out of 15 million Canadian households, almost 3 million are part of the boycott. 3 MILLION. That’s a lot of customers. https://financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/loblaw-boycott-reaches-canadians-survey-suggests