Metro tests new ways to lower costs

Article Excerpt

METRO INC. $40 (Toronto symbol MRU; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 227.1 million; Market cap: $9.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.7; Dividend yield: 1.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.metro.ca) operates 590 grocery stores and 250 drugstores, in Quebec and Ontario. Rising minimum wages will probably add $35 million to $45 million to Metro’s costs for the current fiscal year; it earned $153.4 million, or $0.67 a share, in the quarter ended December 23, 2017. In response, Metro is now testing a new automated checkout system that let shoppers scan items as they put them in their shopping cart and pay as they leave the store. The company already has traditional selfscanning checkouts in over 30 of its stores in Ontario. It’s also looking at installing more automation inside its warehouses and cutting the number of stores that open 24 hours a day. Metro is a buy. buy…