Green plan to cut Loblaw’s costs

Article Excerpt

LOBLAW COMPANIES LTD. $70 (Toronto symbol L; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 403.5 million; Market cap: $28.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.6; Dividend yield: 1.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.loblaw.ca) operates over 1,090 supermarkets across Canada. It also owns the Shoppers Drug Mart chain of 1,325 drugstores. The company now plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020, and 30% by 2030. Those targets are in line with recent federal and provincial government goals. To reach its targets, Loblaw will install new refrigeration equipment that uses carbon dioxide as a refrigerant instead of harmful hydrofluorocarbons. In addition, it will improve the efficiency of its distribution warehouses and networks, partly by switching to trucks that run on cleaner burning natural gas. The company has not yet said how much it will spend on these initiatives. However, they should lower its operating costs. Loblaw is a buy. buy…