Many employers have been refining hybrid work arrangements and experimenting with rotating staff through the office to adhere to physical distancing guidelines.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Concerns about the rapid spread of the Omicron variant are throwing a wrench into company plans for a broader return to the office in January and putting added pressure on local businesses that had benefited from higher foot traffic in commercial districts.
On Tuesday, Sun Life Financial Inc. said it was pausing a pilot return-to-office project until the end of January and would not add more employees to the program, which was launched last summer, citing concerns about Omicron. The company was also considering additional safety measures in its office, even though the vast majority of its staff are still working remotely.
A day earlier, Bank of Nova Scotia said a previously announced plan to start most employees on a phased return to the office on Jan. 17 had been put on hold. Spokesperson Clancy Zeifman said the bank was “pausing its plans” in response to the latest guidance from the Ontario government “and will reassess timing in the new year.”
The province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Kieran Moore, recently urged employers to keep employees working remotely where possible, and Ontario and Toronto have delayed plans to bring more public servants back to the office.
Though most of Canada’s largest employers had yet to issue company-wide orders to bring employees back to the workplace regularly, increasing numbers of people had been turning up at offices either voluntarily or with gentle encouragement from their superiors. The emergence of Omicron, on the cusp of the Christmas holidays, now threatens to reverse that trend, at least in the short term.
In Toronto’s financial district, “foot traffic was absolutely picking up,” said Lara Zink, the chief executive officer of Women in Capital Markets. “I think all of that is on hold.” As COVID-19 case numbers tick higher, bank employees are likely going to be told to stay home, she said.
For small businesses such as restaurants, cafés and barbers in downtown cores, a return to the office also meant the return of customers. A delay means those businesses have to hold on longer with diminished foot traffic.
Christine Leadman, the executive director of the Bank Street BIA in downtown Ottawa, said the pandemic has been devastating for businesses in her city’s core, which includes a number of office buildings owned by the federal government.
“Our main streets are really suffering,” she said.
She said there seemed to be an increase in the number of workers returning to the office this fall, which generated some optimism among her members. But she said a number of the businesses in her district are raising concerns about the variant.
“It’s a grave concern to businesses,” she said. “People who maybe took their lunch hour to go and get their hair done, or go and get that extra Christmas gift that they missed … that’s all disappeared.”
Many employers have been refining hybrid work arrangements and experimenting with rotating staff through the office to adhere to physical distancing guidelines. But with the new variant creating renewed uncertainty about government reopening plans, “many businesses have now delayed their return-to-work strategies,” Rocco Rossi, the CEO of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, said in an e-mail.
Telecommunications giant Telus Corp. is aiming for a “voluntary and limited” return to the office starting Jan. 31 but is monitoring developments around Omicron and will make a final decision in the middle of January. Even when Telus offices do reopen, the company expects about 90 per cent of employees will still work remotely.
“We are closely monitoring the situation and will promptly apply the required changes to our return to office plans,” Erin Dermer, a Telus spokesperson, said in an e-mail.
Manulife Financial Corp. , the country’s largest insurer, announced last month that it plans to reopen buildings on Jan. 24, implementing hybrid work arrangements that will require staff to come in three days a week. A company spokesperson declined to comment on the status of that plan Tuesday.
Other large banks and insurers, which have critical staff working on site but a majority of employees working remotely, have repeatedly pushed back timelines for a broader return to the office and more recently avoided setting firm target dates. On Tuesday, spokespeople for several large financial institutions declined to provide updates on their expected timelines.
Even workers in jobs that were at the vanguard of the march back to offices could be compelled to retreat. At banks, many traders have spent months working rotating schedules that keep trading floors busy but below full capacity. But even they may be forced back to home offices set up in the early months of the pandemic.
“I suspect the trading floors will go into temporary shutdown until the data confirms what we’re dealing with,” Ms. Zink said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone was told to stay home until the end of January, until the whole effect of the holiday passes us.”
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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.
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