Weekly "Focus" and Bay Days

Please join us next Tuesday afternoon at 4 pm for our webinar on Alternative Investments. The invite is attached.

 

Walking through The Bay’s downtown Toronto location is pretty depressing as they are now at the stage of selling off the store fixtures. As the business winds down, the leases to 28 of the stores in Alberta, BC and Ontario have been acquired by BC-based entrepreneur Ruby Weihong Liu who is planning to launch a new department store concept. Canadian Tire has acquired for $30 million the rights to products with the iconic stripes and other intellectual property including the terms “Bay Days” and “The Official Store of Christmas”. Traditional department stores have really struggled over the years due to the appeal of big box retailers such as Costco and Walmart, the convenience of ecommerce juggernauts like Amazon and the growth of specialty stores. Just this week, Macy’s, who operates over 600 retail locations in the US, reported their latest results highlighting their ongoing competitive challenges.

 

	Price Return 2025	Dividend Yield
Amazon* (AMZN)	-7.7%	0.0%
Canadian Tire* (CTC.A)	+16.9%	4.1%
Costco* (COST)	+14.2%	0.5%
Macy’s (M)	-27.9%	6.1%
Walmart* (WMT)	+8.3%	1.0%

Source: FactSet, Values as of May 30, 2025

 

This week’s "Focus" from our economics team is attached.

 

Have a great weekend,

 

Brad

Senior Portfolio Manager and Senior Investment Advisor