TORONTO —
Some pharmacies and grocery stores reopened Tuesday, as St. John’s, N.L., residents worried about accessing medication and replenishing food supplies after a massive blizzard.
The city urged people to stock enough food for 48 hours. By the time doors opened at 10 a.m. at one Sobeys, the lineup stretched around the parking lot and onto the road. Inside, some residents were co-ordinating to ensure neighbours who couldn’t get out to the store would have essentials too.
“We’re just combining forces to help out people on our street,” Margaret Connors told The Canadian Press. “I think everybody was surprised at all of this, but I think people are pulling together,” she said.
NTV spoke to several shoppers outside a Coleman’s grocery store, many of whom were focused on picking up the essential groceries after spending days with limited fresh food.
“When you run out of milk and you run out of bread and you run out of eggs, things like that, you need to get those things in order to feed your kids,” said one shopper.
The store limited customers to just two loaves of bread each, as fears of a food shortage grow in the region.
Greg Gill, the vice president of marketing at Colemans, told NTV that staff are doing the best they can to get the food onto store shelves, but considering Newfoundland is an island and ferry shipments have been halted for the time being, there’s only so much they can do.
“High-demand items and those with a shorter shelf life are a bit of a concern,” he said.
On CTV’s Your Morning, St. John’s Mayor Danny Breen said the city is encouraging people to walk, but some taxi services are offering free rides to help seniors and people with disabilities in particular. Taxi services are scheduled to resume operation at midnight, while schools in metro St. John’s will also be closed for the rest of the week.
The Friday blizzard dumped 76 centimetres of snow in the area. Tuesday marked the fifth day of the state of emergency.
“We want everyone to slow down, take it easy, be very mindful of what’s happening,” he said.
Travel continued to be an issue across eastern Newfoundland Tuesday as the St. John’s International Airport said it would resume commercial flights on Wednesday morning.
At street level, snow removal has proven difficult for residents. On Monday, Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Navy members were deployed to help. Ottawa said more than 400 troops would be in Newfoundland on Tuesday.
“I know that my group is committed and we’re here until our leadership and the province sees no need for us here,” Master Cpl. Andrew Cox told NTV.
Breen is urging residents to get their cars off the road in order to speed up the snow clearing process, but does not have a timeline for when it will be finished.
“The parking bans are in place to have unfettered access to the roads so we can get this cleaned up as quickly as possible,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
The Friday storm was compounded by earlier snowfalls, he added. The city had seen 170 centimetres of snow already, some of which hadn’t even cleared before Friday’s blizzard.
“We never really caught up on our removals,” he said. “We’re only a month into our winter season here. We’ve got a long ways to go.”
Breen added that city staff has “learned a lot in the last couple of days” when it comes to how states of emergency are handled in the city.
“We have some work to do,” he said. “When we get this cleaned up and we sit back and look at what happened, I think we need to do a very thorough review.”
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.
