CALGARY —
Susannah Pierce’s children aren’t interested in following in her footsteps.
The president of Shell Canada Ltd., one of Canada’s largest integrated oil companies, heads up a workforce of 3,500 Canadian employees, earned public recognition as the face of the $40 billion LNG Canada project, and has lived and worked around the world.
But Pierce’s 15-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter don’t see a future for themselves in the industry where their mother has thrived.
The oil and gas sector is simply “not as attractive as it once was” to today’s young people, Pierce says bluntly, an uncomfortable fact she and other energy executives are being forced to face up to – even within their own households.
“If the conversation isn’t, ‘I want to work in the same business as you, Mom and Dad,’ then we have to ask ourselves why,” Pierce said in an interview.
The dinnertime conversations between Pierce and her children are a scaled-down version of a wider discussion taking place in Alberta right now as an entire province tries to decide on its path forward.
While Alberta’s historic oil and gas sector still makes an outsized contribution to the Canadian economy, it has been battered and bruised by seven years of low prices, pipeline protests and cancellations, layoffs, and consolidation. The province’s unemployment rate is 8.5 per cent, and close to 30 per cent of downtown Calgary’s office market sits vacant.
Alberta’s long-term unemployment rate – the portion of the population that has been without work for more than a year – is 2.4 per cent, significantly higher than the national average of 1.4 per cent.
Even now, with crude prices higher than they’ve been in years, there is widespread acknowledgment that the energy landscape has permanently shifted.
Climate change and the transition away from fossil fuels have moved to the forefront of the national and international conversation. Investment dollars are increasingly flowing to industries with favourable environmental performance, and companies – Shell included – are investing in green technology and decarbonization as part of their own net-zero commitments.
In the past several years, there have been various government attempts to address Alberta’s challenges, from tax credits aimed at boosting the province’s rapidly growing tech sector to incentives for petrochemical development and investments in hydrogen technology.
Recently, a group of prominent Alberta CEOs – including Pierce – came together to form their own task force with the aim of coming up with long-term solutions for the Alberta economy.
“It’s a service in support of what governments might be able to do, without asking governments to do it for us,” Pierce said. “The world is changing, in terms of the energy product it needs. And as a result, we must change too.”
The task force aims to come up with a series of economic strategies, policies and incentives that will attract investment and jobs to the province. It will also look at ways to keep young people in a province that is viewed by some as stuck in the past.
Also involved in the project, dubbed “Define the Decade,” are other heavyweights like Enbridge’s Al Monaco and Cenovus Energy’s Alex Pourbaix. And the task force includes executives of some of the province’s rapidly growing tech firms, such as artificial intelligence company AltaML and life sciences company DynaLIFE.
Diversification has been a buzzword in Alberta during previous commodity price downturns. It has always fallen by the wayside, though, when oil prices start to climb again, said Adam Legge, president of the Business Council of Alberta.
This time, however, it’s different, he said, and there’s no time to waste.
“Alberta’s history of riding these boom and bust cycles … is frankly, gone,” Legge said. “But we believe our best days are ahead of us. So many of the things that are happening In the world, the trends, the evolutions that are happening – Alberta really has a shot to be a global leader.”
David Taras, a political analyst based at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, said the idea of a group of Alberta’s top CEOs joining together to lobby for diversification, green energy, and the startup economy would have been unfathomable 10 or even 5 years ago.
The public relations message has clearly shifted away from defending traditional oil and gas, he said, to establishing Alberta’s role in the public eye as a future-forward investment destination.
“The global tide has shifted, and shifted dramatically,” Taras said. “And the industry has not only caught up, but realized they have to move on, they have to be in a different place.”
The Calgary and Edmonton Chambers of Commerce are not involved in the “Define the Decade” initiative but recently released a joint wish list for the federal election that calls for commitments from all the parties with respect to diversifying Alberta’s economy.
Deborah Yedlin, president and chief executive of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, said the organization is asking for everything from federal investments in grants and equity deals to foster the growth of the startup tech sector, to the creation of national Centres of Excellence within Alberta for sectors ranging from clean technology, artificial intelligence, and sports.
“We (Alberta) have the willingness to lead, but we can’t do it on our own,” Yedlin said. “We need federal support.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published August 29, 2021.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
