Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the METRO 2021 third quarter results. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question- and- answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Call is being recorded on Wednesday, August 11th, 2021. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Sharon Kadoche. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Anes. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our comments will focus on the financial results of our third quarter, which ended on July 3rd. With me today is Mr. Eric La Flèche, President and Chief Executive Officer, and François Thibault, Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will present our third quarter results and comment on its highlights. We will be happy to take your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that we will use, in today's discussion, different statements that could be construed as forward-looking information. In general, any statement which does not constitute a historical fact may be deemed as a forward-looking statement. Expressions such as expect, intend, or confident that, will, and other similar expressions are generally indicative of forward-looking statements.
The forward-looking statements are based upon certain assumptions regarding the Canadian food and pharmaceutical industries, the general economy, and our annual budget, as well as our 2020-2021 action plan. These forward-looking statements do not provide any guarantees as to the future performance of the company and are subject to potential risks, known and unknown, as well as uncertainties that could cause the outcome to differ materially. A description of these risks, which could have an impact on these statements, could be found under the risk management section of our 2020 annual report. As with the preceding risk, the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a risk that could have an impact on the business operations, projects, synergies, and performance of the company. We believe these statements to be reasonable and pertinent at this time and represent our expectations.
The company does not intend to update any forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. I will now turn the call over to François.
Thank you, Sharon, and good morning, everyone. This quarter, we cycled very strong sales and earnings last year at the height of the pandemic, and in order to provide a better indication of performance, we're also highlighting sales and earnings growth over the third quarter of 2019. For the quarter, total sales were at CAD 5.7 billion versus CAD 5.8 billion last year, a decrease of 2%, but up 9.4% when compared to the third quarter of 2019. Food same-store sales declined by 3.6% for the quarter but grew 11.4% on a two-year basis for an annual compound growth rate of 5.6%. Pharma same-store sales were up 7.6% versus last year. Our gross margin stood at 19.8% of sales versus 20% for the same quarter last year.
Operating expenses represented 10.5% of sales versus 10.7% last year. COVID-19 related expenses amounted to CAD 38 million for the quarter, and that includes an CAD 8 million of amount in gift cards that were given to frontline employees versus CAD 107 million of COVID expenses in the last quarter last year. In third quarter last year, sorry. The decrease of CAD 69 million in COVID costs was partly offset by an increase in other operating expenses, mainly related to activities and services that have been reinstated after initially being paused at the start of the pandemic, such as HMR, hot foods, advertising and marketing, et cetera. Operating expenses also include non-recurring costs of approximately CAD 8 million incurred in the transition to our new fresh DC in Toronto due to early inefficiencies and the duplication of certain tasks as both DCs were operating at the same time for a few weeks.
EBITDA for the quarter totaled CAD 533.6 million, a decrease of 1.7% versus last year and represented 9.3% of sales. That's the same margin as last year. On a two-year basis, EBITDA was up 26.1%, which represents a solid annual compound growth rate of 12.3%. Adjusted net earnings were CAD 261.2 million compared to CAD 272.3 million last year, a decrease of 4.1%. Our adjusted net earnings per share were CAD 1.06, down to 1.9% versus last year's adjusted EPS of CAD 1.08. Again, when we compare this to fiscal 2019, adjusted EPS grew by 17.8% for an annual growth rate of 8.5%. Our capital expenditures for the third quarter totaled CAD 174.2 million, up CAD 38.4 million versus last year. As expected, higher CapEx is mainly the result of our ongoing investments in the modernization of our supply chain, as well as in-store technology.
At the retail level, since the beginning of the fiscal year, we opened two Metro Plus stores, one Adonis in province of Quebec, one Food Basics in Ontario. We also relocated another Food Basics and carried out major renovations in eight stores, representing a net increase of 236,800 sq ft or 1.1% of our food retail network. As I mentioned earlier, investments in technology at store level are also ongoing. At the end of the third quarter, we had about 300 stores equipped with self-checkouts and 140 stores with electronic shelf labels. Under our current normal course issuer bid program, we have repurchased between November 25 of last year and July 30th of this year, 5.875 million shares for a total consideration of CAD 333.6 million, representing an average share price of CAD 56.78. That's it for me. I'll now turn it over to Eric.
Thank you, François, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased with our solid third quarter results as we cycled an exceptionally strong performance last year at the height of the pandemic. Sales and earnings declined slightly versus Q3 2020, but on a two-year basis, we delivered sales growth of 9.4%, EBITDA growth of 26.1%, and adjusted earnings per share growth of 17.8%, which we believe is more indicative of our underlying performance. For the quarter, as François said, food same-store sales were down 3.6%, but up 11.4% when compared to Fiscal 2019. Our internal food basket inflation was 1%, half of what we experienced in Q2. With the rollout of the vaccine and the gradual lifting of restrictions, we saw traffic improve year-over-year for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. Basket size, however, was down as customers increased their store visits.
Promotional penetration continues to increase quarter-over-quarter, and we are getting close to pre-pandemic levels. Online grocery sales increased by 19% versus last year and more than five times over 2019 as we added capacity by expanding the service to new regions, deploying Click & Collect, and with our partnership with Cornershop. In June, we opened our first dedicated online store to serve customers in Montreal, replacing three of our hub stores. This centralized facility will offer more delivery windows to customers and improved operating efficiencies while delivering the same quality, assortment, and freshness that customers expect when shopping in-store. We are on track with our deployment plan for the Click & Collect service, with 119 METRO stores now offering the service out of the 170 planned by the end of this fiscal year.
This, along with the recent expansion of home delivery and Click & Collect in the Ottawa region, will expand our reach to more than 75% of Quebec and half of the Ontario population. We remain confident in our strategy, which allows us to add capacity with reasonable investment to meet the pace of demand growth. Turning to pharmacy, comparable sales were up 7.6% in the quarter and 8.6% versus 2019, with prescription drugs up a strong 9.3%, driven by higher prescription counts as medical consultations resume. Commercial sales were up 3.8%, with most pharmacies gradually returning to regular opening hours. Our pharma performance was also positively impacted by the administration of vaccines and the new medical services now offered by pharmacy. We proudly contributed to the vaccination effort through our network of pharmacies and four central vaccination sites we sponsored with other corporate partners, which altogether administered over 500,000 doses.
The month of June marked the completion of two other important milestones with the integration of our pharmacy distribution activities and the deployment of Jean Coutu retail systems to our Brunet pharmacies. As mentioned on our last call in April, we anticipate annual recurring savings of about CAD 10 million starting next year in distribution and warehousing costs as we will service our pharma network as well as the METRO and Super C stores in Quebec for health and beauty products from 1 facility. Turning to the modernization of our supply chain, our new semi-automated produce DC in Toronto is now fully operational as we completed the transfer of all of our stores from the old produce warehouse.
The transition and ramp-up of the new facility generated additional costs in the quarter, which we expect will partially remain in Q4 and hopefully be behind us by the end of the fiscal year. The new fully automated frozen DC is almost complete, and we will soon start the commissioning of the new automation systems in time for a January 2022 opening. Looking ahead, while we can't predict exactly how the pandemic will evolve, we expect our food sales to decline in Q4 versus last year's high levels, but to compare favorably to fiscal 2019. In our pharmacy division, we expect continued growth from prescriptions, and the easing of restrictions should have a positive impact on certain categories that were negatively affected by the pandemic, such as beauty, cosmetics, and cold and flu products. We'll now take your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question- and- answer session. Should you have any questions, please press star, followed by one on your touch-tone phone. You'll hear three-tone prompt to acknowledge your request and your request will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift your hands up before pressing any keys. One moment for your first question. One moment for your first question. Your first question comes from Irene Nattel with RBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks, good morning, everyone. If we could just start very quickly with sort of the last thing you said, Eric, on pharmacy. We're hearing from others that acute Rx is still down about 10%-15%. Is that the case at PJC, or are we starting to see better recovery there?
Acute Rx? I'm sorry.
Well, just so the prescription count for as opposed to the chronic conditions, but basically, overall Rx volumes per pharmacy are still below pre-pandemic levels, but recovering. Is that what you guys are seeing? In other words, should we see an acceleration performance of PJC as we move through the next couple of quarters?
Well, we're very happy with the performance of PJC and Brunet in the quarter. They're a nice comeback, especially in prescription drugs versus last year. You have to remember, last year, pharmacy, doctor's offices, there was a lot of closures and restricted opening hours, restricted access. Prescription counts, except for the loading upfront in the quarter, prescription counts were softer. I think we're back to much more normal levels. I don't have a split between acute and chronic, to be honest, Irene, but we're very pleased with the 9.3% Rx growth, and we expect to have good growth going forward.
That's great. Thank you. Then just moving on to the bigger business. Inflation, you noted, was basically half of prior quarter's levels. What kind of discussions are you having at this point with the supplier community? Recognizing that it's challenging to anticipate, what's your general expectation around inflation as you move through Q4 and into 2022?
The inflation number is down this quarter, mostly driven by produce deflation. It's aggressive out there in produce, and there are market conditions that support that aggressiveness in the general market. That's the main driver. Discussions with our suppliers, we're hearing demands for increases in packaged goods. There were some cost increases in the meat department this past quarter. It's a tight market. It's volatile. Some weeks, supply can be tight, and there are some cost increases that we have to live with and try to pass on. I would say, generally, the expectation is that given all the cost increases on labor and other aspects of supplies and transportation, I think we can expect generally this fall that there should be some more inflation at retail. Again, we will have to wait and see. We fully intend to remain competitive. It's a competitive market out there.
I don't expect inflation in our fourth quarter to be that much different from our third quarter. Bookings are in place, and merchandising plans are in place. I would expect some inflation to be reflected at retail in a more pronounced way this fall.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Mark Petrie with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Obviously, there's been significant shift in consumer behavior and sort of pre-pandemic. You touched on traffic and basket, but I'm wondering about stuff like promo penetration, private label, as well as category mix.
Yes, we are seeing a gradual shift to more normal pre-pandemic behavior. I think the discount channel, in general, is benefiting from that versus conventional, whereas conventional had a big uplift during the pandemic, as you all know. Promotional levels are back to almost pre-pandemic levels. We're very close to that, as I said in my opening remarks. I think you can, going forward, expect that to be back to normal levels. Our private label penetrations are up. I think private label penetration increased throughout the pandemic and is continuing to stay at a higher level, which is a good thing. We're pleased with that. I would say, yeah, the consumers are shopping around a little more with the easing of restrictions. We're seeing that in the number of visits. We're seeing that in the lower basket year-over-year.
Traffic is not back to where it was two years ago, and the basket is higher than it was two years ago, but we're seeing a shift, for sure.
Discount is still below what it would have been pre-pandemic but is growing faster than conventional today. Is that fair to say?
In general terms, yes.
Okay. Just with regards to gross margin, it's up modestly from two years ago. Can you just share some commentary on the moving parts behind that? I know you don't segment between food and pharmacy. Obviously, there's a lot of variables between the segment mix as well as category mix. Any commentary would be helpful just with regards to the drivers and then the sustainability or outlook for gross margin.
Well, the gross margin is down slightly, 20 basis points versus last year in the quarter. Food gross margin was down. We said clearly last year that the large basket with lower promotional ratios was favorable to gross margin. As we cycle that with a smaller basket and more promotions, you can do the math. It has an impact on gross margin. The good news is that pharmacy was strong in the quarter and helped on the gross margin. Net-net, we're pleased with our performance, and the diversification of our business model is a benefit, and we're pleased with that. Going forward, I'm not going to give you guidance on gross margin. We will be competitive, and we will balance the top line and the bottom line as best we can.
Sorry, just to follow up, just to clarify, with regards to the food gross margin, I understand sort of down versus the elevated levels of last year. Is it fair to say it's still elevated from sort of pre-pandemic levels and the main driver of that would be the higher sales level, or is there something else to consider?
It's getting comparable to pre-pandemic levels. Yeah, the basket is higher than pre-pandemic levels, but the margin is in the same ballpark. Again, I don't want to give you too much precise details like that. I think the comment I made is the answer I have.
Understood. Appreciate all the comments and all the best.
Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Vishal Shreedhar with National Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to get your comments on the acquisition opportunity that you see in the market, if any. I know some firms and competitors are seeing opportunity in consolidating independents in more rural areas. I am wondering if that's something that would appeal to METRO or if you have other sights on other types of deals.
I'm sorry, Vishal. I could not hear your question.
Oh, can you hear me better now?
Yeah, that's a little better. You said acquisitions and then what? Sorry.
Yeah. Sorry about that. I was just referring to the acquisition market and what METRO sees. I know there's promising peers that are consolidating rural markets. I'm wondering if that's of appeal to METRO or if there's other types of deals that are appealing to METRO.
We're always on the lookout for acquisition opportunities in food and pharma in Canada, so there's no change there. No announcements to make. We're aware of a new, quote-unquote, player consolidating small rural pharmacies in Ontario. We are interested in making acquisitions that make sense for us. We continue to be on the lookout, but there's no change and nothing imminent.
Okay. Thank you for that color. With respect to Adonis, I know during the height of the pandemic, it had a little bit of challenge with respect to the prepared food categories and perhaps labor availability. Wondering how that banner is performing now and if it's back to pre-pandemic levels or above?
Yeah. Adonis, with the mix of stores, which is largely in urban areas, Montreal and Toronto, mostly Montreal, it's been a challenge throughout the pandemic and remains a bit of a challenge today because of some of our urban stores are seeing lower traffic these days with the summer and the restaurants opening up and vacations and whatnot. Banner's still doing well, but we're not quite back to pre-pandemic levels. We're confident that we're gonna get there soon as COVID restrictions ease more and more and people are getting their shots. I will leave it there.
Okay. Thanks for that color.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Sklar with BMO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I noticed that you mentioned that your online sales were up 19% year-over-year. As we emerge from COVID-19, do you expect that sales growth is going to slow and we're gonna see some negative growth rates in online, because you're up against some big quarters, and I'm just wondering if you're seeing any evidence of that kind of trend.
Yes, we are, Peter. Thank you for the question. Yes, you can expect online sales growth to slow down. Again, the growth this quarter came from additional capacity. As we cycle that capacity quarter-over-quarter, we expect sales to decline, so versus the peaks of the pandemic. Still, sales remain elevated versus pre-pandemic, so we clearly skipped a few years of e-com growth. You can expect that the e-com sales should come down a bit. That said, I think we're very confident in our model, hub stores for the large urban areas. Excuse me, the dark store for the larger urban areas, the hub stores for the medium density areas where we can have delivery and Click & Collect in the rest of our stores.
I think we're well-positioned, with our model to capture the demand that's out there, and we expect that demand to level off a bit from the peak of the pandemic.
Lastly, Eric, on the dark store that I believe you said you started ramping it in June. Is it too early to make any comments, or are there any learnings, or is there anything you can tell us about how that model is performing versus the hub stores?
It opened in June in Montreal. It's a ramp-up there, too, but we're pleased with the progress. We're using the same technology as we did in our hub stores. It's a more efficient picking environment. It's a more efficient delivery environment. We're confident that we're going to gain the efficiencies that we are planning for. We're not there yet after a few weeks, but we are very confident that we will get there. There are always learnings, so every week something changes, and we try to improve. The test and learn is the norm in e-com, as you know, and we're continuing to test and learn and fine-tune to improve the economics and improve the customer experience. The customer satisfaction scores that we're getting are pretty encouraging, the in-stock position, the orders with missing items.
All those metrics are improving in the dark store versus the hub stores as we expected and as we hoped for. We're looking for more of that going forward.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Kenric Tyghe with ATB Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you and good morning. Eric, I wonder if you could help us just understand perhaps on the cosmetic and beauty journey, where are those businesses today versus where they were pre-pandemic? In other words, how much room do you have to go to get back to prior levels? How material, even just directionally from a margin perspective, could a recovery, or let's call it normalized cosmetics sales potentially be as we look through 2022.
Cosmetics in our pharmacies grew nicely in the quarter versus the same quarter last year. We expect that to continue going forward as more people, I guess, return to work and return to the office. I won't give you a number, but I think it's upside for sure in the front-end sales of our pharmacies going forward. We expect that category to do better as it did this past quarter. You have to remember that in our front end at this time last year in pharmacies, we were selling a lot of COVID-19 items like masks and gels at full prices. Selling less of that. That's a bit of a headwind for our front end in pharmacy right now. Cosmetics and confectionary and other departments, we're confident are going to see some benefits. That's my answer.
Thank you, Eric. Just one other quick follow-up on consumer behavior. Can you provide any insight on across markets, how different the responses may or may not have been in Ontario versus Quebec for consumers and the shift between full service and discount? Have you seen a more marked shift between channels in either market, or how has the consumer response varied across your two markets and the channel shift varied across your two markets?
I wouldn't call it a huge channel shift and a huge shift between the two. I said earlier we're seeing the general uptick in traffic in the discount stores or sales at the discount stores versus conventional stores in general as we see in the whole market. You can expect that discount should be advantage going forward, whereas it was disadvantage last year. I would just leave it at that.
Yeah. Thanks, Eric. I'll leave it there.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Van Aelst with TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Firstly, on the Varennes DC, I know it's been open for a little bit now. What has to be done between now and, I guess, the start of next year to get the CAD 10 million in annualized savings?
Well, it's operations and the big decisions and the big savings are made. We are operating from one DC as opposed to two. Actually, McMahon had another little DC in Quebec City. We will have that savings also. It's occupancy and it's fixed costs associated with running a DC. The labor is variable, so there's a transfer of labor from one to the other. Overall, we expect to save about CAD 10 million a year in distribution. Everything is in place to achieve that in our plan next year.
Can some of it trickle into Q4?
Well, there could be some, yeah.
Yes.
There could be some benefit in Q4. Yeah.
Okay. COVID costs definitely down year-over-year, but they've been, I think, relatively stable lately. Excluding the gift card bonuses, how much COVID costs do you expect to stick around long term due to the permanent changes in operating practices?
Yeah, Michael. Hi, I'll take that one. Listen, I don't know about long term. It's hard to predict long term. I think looking in the short term at least, moving into the fourth quarter, the way we see things, we expect COVID-19 expenses will probably be max of CAD 5 million a month, going forward in the short- term, excluding gift cards, of course.
Okay, those gift card bonuses, are they pretty much done?
For now, they're done, and we'll have to see again. It depends if we ever get back into a situation like we had this year. For now, they're behind us.
Okay. You mean your two-year EPS, normalized EPS growth is comfortably within your 8%-10% EPS growth target, you must be happy with that. Can we expect the pharmacy DC consolidation savings and the new food DCs to push that to your CAGR a little bit above your normal targeted range over the next year or so? Or is it just not meaningful enough from these savings?
Well, that's the plan, obviously, to be able to maintain our targets that we give to The Street in terms of profit growth, whether it's sales, EBITDA, EBIT, and net earnings. Yes, that's the plan that we want to be, make sure that we make the investments to be able to deliver at that 8%-10% EPS growth a year. We'll have to see how the productivity levels are improving, how fast, but that's the plan. I will reserve comment until we can actually demonstrate it.
Okay. The savings though, on these programs, are to help you achieve the 8%-10% rather than.
Yes
coming from it.
Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. It's a way, yes, in terms of reduction in operating expenses and better in-store service, these are all the investments that we make to make sure that we remain competitive and that we continue to grow our earnings as we had in the past and meet our financial targets, yes.
Okay. Just finally, your cash flows have been good and your NCIB has been pretty active. It looks like if you continue the pace you've done so far, you'd hit that CAD 7 million share limit before November. Are you expecting to stop it and renew it to get more room, or should we just expect it to continue to go to the CAD 7 million and then renew it in November?
Well, we'll see. You're right, we're ahead of pace. Almost CAD 6 million done out of a CAD 7 million program with a few months ahead of us. We'll see. There's options available to us. We haven't made that decision yet, but that could be a possibility. For now, as I said before, we will finish the program, and we'll see about additional capacity, but we haven't made that decision yet.
Right. Thanks very much.
Yep.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Patricia Baker with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. I just have one small question left. You referenced the fact that relative to last year, reopened some of the services in the store, the hot meals, and HMR. What was the experience when you reopened those from a customer perspective? How quickly did the customer pick up on those categories?
Patricia, the HMR, the hot foods counters are back up, but it's not at levels of 2019. They have reopened. The offer is adapted to a COVID environment. Sales are starting to increase, and we're happy about that. I'll color that by saying a lot of our HMR sales are in urban stores, Downtown Toronto, Downtown Montreal, and those stores' traffic is down, especially this summer, with restaurants opening up and people leaving for vacation. Those stores are quiet. HMR, which is a big part of their sales, is affected by that. Net-net, we see HMR trending up, continuing to trend up, and we expect this fall to be at a higher level. Will we be back to 2019? Not sure. We certainly expect more sales from our HMR departments as people come back to the city, students, office workers, and everything like that.
Okay. Thank you very much, Eric.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Chris Li with Desjardins. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just a few quick questions. First one is, now that the fresh DC in Ontario has been integrated, just wondering, what is the timeline in terms of starting to achieve some of the efficiency and cost benefits?
We're working very hard. The teams are working extremely hard to ramp up our productivity. We're in that phase of learning to work with a new system. It's semi-automated. It's not a fully automated facility, but it's semi-automated, which is new for produce for us. It's new, period, but it makes it a little tougher in produce. We operated it with two warehouses for a while, transferring the store, so there have been some costs, as we said in our remarks, of CAD 8 million in the quarter. We expect some additional costs again in Q4, not at that level, but some costs. We hope to be back to our expected productivity for the new fiscal year. Again, it's execution and it's making all the adjustments to get there.
We're working really hard, like I said, to be at the expected levels for the new fiscal year and improving from there. We'll see how we do, and we'll keep you posted, but that's the plan.
Okay. That's helpful. Maybe just to follow- up on that, just to help us frame the opportunity from a cost perspective, would you say the opportunity is similar to the benefits that you're going to get from the Jean Coutu DC integration of CAD 10 million, just sort of ballpark?
Well, the CAD 10 million Jean Coutu was part of an overall synergy target. It was not just warehousing, it was everything as G&A procurement, warehousing, which was part of the acquisition business case.
We take the same approach when we value these big investments, is that we're looking for the same cash-on-cash return on our investments, whether it's the acquisition or whether it's a new warehouse. Same approach, you expect on the long-term of that project to be earning that rate of return. Yes, at the end of the day, it's part of trying to achieve that same rate of return and the same achievement on our profit growth.
Okay, that's helpful. Just, typically these type of benefits from the DCs, you will see them at the gross margin line. Is that correct?
Both. The in-store benefits will be in the gross margin, but the reduction in labor at the warehouse will be in the operating expenses. It's across the two levers. A lot of it will be SG&A.
Okay, got it. With respect to the frozen DC that's sort of coming online in January of 2022, do you expect to incur similar one-time costs as you had with the fresh DC?
Yeah, well, there's always, as I say, a ramp-up period. I think it will be a simpler operation, the frozen DC. We're preparing and doing everything we can to have a successful transfer. Like I said, I don't expect the same level of cost in the frozen DC next January, but we'll see. We're planning and working to minimize the ramp-up costs. There will be some, but I don't think it's gonna be in the same level as what we're seeing in the fresh DC.
Okay, great. Maybe a quick question on pharmacy. Eric, you mentioned in your opening remarks that I think the vaccination revenues did have an impact during the quarter. Did that benefit show up in the prescription drug same-store sales number?
Yes.
Would you be able to just quantify for us, because I'm guessing that it's probably not gonna be recurring, at least to the same magnitude next quarter as vaccination slows?
Well, we would have to get back to you on that, Chris. The contribution of vaccinations to the Rx number is there, but I don't have its precise number. It's not that significant.
No. It's not material.
Okay. My last question, more of a longer-term question. I think Eric or François, you mentioned last call that you're exploring maybe launching an advertising platform to monetize your online business longer term. I was wondering if there's any update you can provide us on that initiative or plan.
No, I said on the last call that we're aware of some large retailers doing that or planning to monetize their platforms for advertising. It's something our marketing and digital teams are working on. No announcements to make. It's on our radar screen, but we'll keep you posted.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Kadoche, you may proceed.
Thank you all for your interest in METRO, and we will speak again soon to discuss our fourth quarter results on November 17th. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.