BMTC names new exec team and reports 2Q slide in sales

MONTREAL – BMTC Group, Quebec’s largest full-line home goods retailer, announced last week both sales and earnings were down on a year-over-year basis for the second quarter of its current fiscal year. The publicly held company also reorganized its senior executive team.

BMTC’s current fiscal year ends January 31, 2023.

For the three months ending July 31, 2022, company revenues were $218.9 million, down 5.5% from the comparable period’s $231.6 million.

Net earnings for the fiscal second quarter were $14.2 million or 43 cents per share, down from $28.7 million or 85 cents per share – a 49.4% drop on a per share basis.

For the six months also ending July 31, 2022, company revenues totaled $394.6 million, a 3.5% dip from the $408.8 million rung up for the same period a year earlier.

Net earnings for the first half of the current fiscal year were $15.1 million or 45 cents share, down from $39.2 million or $1.16 per share – a 61.2% fall on a per share basis.

In her report to shareholders, BMTC president and chief executive officer Marie-Berthe Des Groseillers said the company is rolling out a common IT system to serve all three of its banners – Ameublements Tanguay, Brault & Martineau and EconoMax – including their e-commerce platforms. It is expected to be operational by the end of the year.

“This IT standardization will allow the company to create significant operational synergies that will allow us to merge our administrative and operational services in order to create broad and diversified teams that will be better able to cope with the realities of business today,” she said.

BMTC is also continuing to “focus on online sales, which experienced a record increase since the start of the pandemic in 2020, by actively pursuing the improvement of its digital platforms, its live chat initiative with online customers as well as the improvement of our telephone sales department for all of the BMTC Group Inc. banners,” Des Groseillers continued, adding management believes these digital platforms remain essential to the retailer’s efforts to increase market share.

However, unlike Leon’s Furniture Limited (LFL) and Sleep Country Canada Holdings (SCC), BMTC Group doesn’t provide any insight into how much of its revenue is generated by its digital activities. E-commerce contributed 12% of LFL’s second quarter 2022 revenue. For SCC, it was 18.1%.

“In order to orchestrate this important change, the company has chosen to surround itself with people of experience and trust to bridge the gap between our past and focus on the future,” Des Groseillers said.

To that end, she announced Jacques Tanguay, currently president of the Quebec City-centred Ameublements Tanguay, will become the chief operating officer (COO) of BMTC Group while Charles Tanguay, the banner’s vice president will become president of all three of banners.

“This restructuring allows the company to keep a single management for its three banners and thus unifying a multitude of departments that previously existed under each of the banners,” Des Groseillers said. “This decision comes at an opportune time for the company. The difficulty of obtaining skilled labour, the retail trade that is constantly changing and evolving, the competition that is now spread across Canada and the United States of America and the shift of consumer spending towards e-commerce means that this change will allow the company to be much more agile in its business decisions.

“We believe that the IT standardization, the organizational and structural changes will enable the company to maintain its leadership in its market, as well as significantly improve its profitability and financial structure and continue its objectives of increasing its market share in Quebec,” she added.

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