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Comment by incomingpain | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with the presumption that Canadians are angry with grocery stores, and virtually no one has boycotted Loblaws.

Checking out Loblaws' six-month stock market performance, we see a rise from $122 per share to $161 per share, 30% increase since the botcott started.

The highly unpopular government has significantly raised taxes on truckers and farmers, leading to food inflation. Rather than accepting responsibility, this 4th place political party, which is going to lose in the next election, is scapegoating grocery stores. However, this blame game isn't convincing anyone.

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Loblaws' stock price going up implies that their profits are better, which implies that their margins are better, which implies that consumers are paying more for the same goods because goods haven't become cheaper due to inflation across the board, which suggests that your claim that Canadians are NOT angry with them is probably not true. I think the fact that Canadians are upset with Loblaws is pretty well documented at this point.

It does not imply that. In fact, given that restaurant patronage has declined significantly in Canada, if they are more profitable it is likely that they are more profitable on volume.

Unless, perhaps, you think Canadians have traded going to restaurants with fasting?

No, profits are growing faster than sales: https://www.thestar.com/business/loblaw-forecasts-profits-wi...

Fair, although that shows the gross margin has declined. So why would gross margin fall, but net margin rise? I posit that it is likely that they can operate more efficiently when the customers buy more groceries.

But if people had an issue with Loblaw, why would they buy more groceries from them?

> Loblaws' stock price going up implies that their profits are better, which implies that their margins are better,

This is not correct. Government policy of continuously purchasing power of currency dictates nominal profits and stock price should go up even if profit margins do not.

>Loblaws' stock price going up implies that their profits are better,

Loblaw's PE ratio is 24, a bit high I'd say. Implying not good enough profits.

Looking at gross profit across the last 4 quarters. No significant change.

So you make some assumptions and guesses here which aren't correct, then went on with analysis anyway.

>I think the fact that Canadians are upset with Loblaws is pretty well documented at this point.

This is perhaps/maybe true amongst the NDP and virtually nobody else. Liberals have voted against the NDP on this matter several times now.

This "pretty well documented" probably needs a better source when public data denies this.

> This is perhaps/maybe true amongst the NDP and virtually nobody else.

I have no idea where you're getting your information, but you seem out of touch. The widespread mockery they received for their "generous price freeze" on no name items was virtually unanimous.

>I have no idea where you're getting your information, but you seem out of touch.

You cede your position on the stock details and only respond to a small mostly unrelated sentence.

I collected my information from the Toronto stock exchange.

>The widespread mockery they received for their "generous price freeze" on no name items was virtually unanimous.

This is another thing which I never saw. Not very widespread obviously. Especially given investor sentiment toward loblaws.

So the Liberals taking a ton of heat over causing high inflation, amended the competition act, in september, to temporarily force grocery stores to freeze pricing. https://openparliament.ca/bills/44-1/C-56/

There was no specific against loblaws factor here, but it wasn't loblaws doing this out of the kindness of their heart.

It's interesting how out of touch you seem to be. I've provided sourcing along the way here.

And again... are you getting all your info from the subreddit by chance?

They are quite obviously living in a NDP echo chamber somewhere.

It's very interesting how much damage these echo chambers are doing to democracy. How has the governments not essentially banned all this censorship?

Something very interesting: I live in southern Ontario and when I randomly opened up reddit.com in a private Firefox window the night before last (testing a low ram VM, needed some heavy js site) the top of the homepage was a sticky post from that subreddit. For hours. It didn’t even have that many votes or comments but it was stuck at post #1 somehow

Some people on reddit are upset with Loblaws

Everyone else is just checking the weekly specials and shopping where the deals are, Loblaws stores included, if they give a shit about grocery prices at all.

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