New facilities cut Metro’s costs

Article Excerpt

METRO INC. $71 is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol MRU; High-Growth Dividend Payer Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding 240.0 million; Market cap: $17.0 billion; Dividend yield: 1.5%; Dividend Sustainability Rating: Highest; www.metro.ca) operates 960 grocery stores and 650 drugstores, in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. With the March 2022 payment, Metro raised your quarterly dividend by 10.0%, to $0.275 a share instead of $0.25. The new annual rate of $1.10 yields 1.5%. The company has also now opened its new $400 million distribution centre in Toronto that uses automated equipment to handle fresh and frozen foods. That will help cut its future labour costs. The company is also spending $420 million to build an automated distribution centre for fresh and frozen products in Terrebonne, Quebec, just north of Montreal. This facility should open in 2023. Metro is a buy. buy. …