A Year of Survival

Our survey this year canvassed about 350 companies to give you an indication of economic performance.
While things appeared reasonably good for a number of companies up to the end of 2008, we know that 2009 will be a bruising year for many.

Great-West Lifeco tops the listing, as always, with $33 billion in gross sales. Last on the list at No. 75 is MIG Insurance Group at $3.5 million.

For the first time in 26 years of doing the annual survey, we fell short of achieving the goal of 100 companies. We are not surprised as the survey is about performance and that has been a challenge in the face of a worldwide severe recession.

For me, reality hit when the shares of Great-West Lifeco’s (GWL) – head office, Winnipeg – along with many others on the Financial Post’s Top 100 Canadian companies – dropped. GWL’s shares plunged to $11, an absolutely unthinkable reduction in value.

GWL shares bounced back to $24 per share in early August, but still well off a 52-week high of $38 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. How long it will take for its share price to come back will be a measure of the entire market. GWL saw its administered assets of $386 billion in 2007 drop by $48 billion to $338 billion in 2008, although gross revenues were up by $8 billion last year.

On another point, we have included the performance of several Crown agencies – Canadian Wheat Board, Manitoba Public Insurance, Manitoba Liquor Control Commission and the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. They are monopolies; however, they too have numbers to file and provide us with a picture of the economy from another perspective.

Overall, the combined gross income of all the companies that filed totaled about $67.6 billion, up from $52.6 billion in 2007. Commodity companies like James Richardson & Sons (JR) and Paterson Global
Foods (PGF) showed significant increases, based on good commodity prices. JR was up $1.8 billion over 2007 and PGF was up about $300 million. Most companies in our ratings saw their gross sales make moderate to solid gains.

There were companies such as Florists Supply that were more affected by the downturn. It was a flat year as a soft economy eroded its flower business but understandable when impulse money shrank significantly. And Manitoba automobilebased Megill-Stephenson saw a $13 million loss, as did hardware retailer, Truserv Canada Inc., with a gross sales loss of $15 million.

As a small publisher of business news and information, our own revenues have also suffered, and yet, our advertisers have kept our doors open still advertising but often buying smaller ads or less frequently. But they have stayed the marketing course, recognizing advertising is the key to increased sales.

As the this year progresses into the third quarter, we will all tiptoe through the tulips, working hard to make our businesses go, hoping for the best in the national and international markets. As always, we will continue to bring you the real stories to keep you well-informed as a business publication should do, free of slanted editorial copy. And we always welcome your views at on any issue.

This month’s edition is chock full of performance information and is one of the best reads of the year. We wish you all the best as we head into the next quarter.

July / August 2009