My perspective on business We live in a nominal world and the marginal Canadian has been spending more money on Non Discretionary like food. Lower Middle Class incomes are still rising.
Gross profit / margins tell you what consumers think of the brands. Year to date Gross Profit of $316.1M with 55% margins tells you Reitmans is not dead especially during these inflationary times where food prices have increased dramatically. Management is doing a decent job here.
By my channel checks it seems like the physical store network with 401 stores is profitable. Rent was $30M while store sales were $426M. From my experience stores are not over staffed. There is scale as retail store network is not labour intensive and rent is paid once.
E-commerce shipping is paid every time, transaction size is important and returns are a loss. Reitmans scaling e-commerce will scale loses unless management changes return policy. Seems like companies need to keep advertizing to reaquire customers.