Top grocer ready to compete

Article Excerpt

LOBLAW COMPANIES LTD. $35 (Toronto symbol L; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 281.4 million; Market cap: $9.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.3; Dividend yield: 2.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.loblaw.ca) is Canada’s largest food retailer. George Weston Ltd. (Toronto symbol WN) owns 64% of the company’s shares. Loblaw continues to make progress with its multi-year plan to streamline its supply chain and avoid product shortages. These actions mainly included closing 11 distribution centres and opening eight new ones, and installing new computer systems. The company claims that about 99% of its products are now in stock at its 1,000 supermarkets across Canada. Big restructuring starting to pay off In all, Loblaw has spent $1.4 billion on this restructuring since 2007. Partly because of these changes, sales crept up by 6.4%, from $29.4 billion in 2007 to $31.3 billion in 2011. Earnings rose 128.9%, from $336 million in 2007 to $769 million in 2011. Earnings per share rose at a slower pace of 122.0%,…