Metro Inc. Expresses Intent to Repurchase up to One Million Shares

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

Metro Inc. has expressed its intention to buy back and cancel more than one million of its common shares in private agreements, while it refrains from declaring the prices as it claims they are yet to be negotiated with the undisclosed seller. Given the current market prices, this buyback is expected to cost the company more than $60 million, as on Tuesday, Metro shares closed at almost $66. Metro has, however, asserted that it is going to pay a discounted price.

This move of buying back shares was widely anticipated by analysts, since the national grocery retailer sold almost 10 million shares of Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., which operates convenience stores in North America and northern Europe. Metro made the announcement of its intentions of repurchasing shares along with it’s the declaration of second-quarter financial results, which showed earnings of $1.02 per share, i.e. an increment of 8.5 per cent from last year though a penny less than the prediction of analysts.

The president and chief executive officer of Metro, Eric La Fleche, mentioned in an official statement that the company is satisfied with its healthy net earnings in the quarter ended that ended March 16, despite a shift in timing for Christmas. Apart from the Christmas shift, same-store sales were flat compared with a year before. La Flenche stated that “the competitive environment will remain challenging in the coming quarters and we will continue to execute our customer-focused strategies and exercise good cost control to continue on our growth path.”