Record year for Canadian Tire Record year for Canadian Tire

Canadian Tire, Canada's biggest hardware dealer, reports retail sales of CDN $ 6.524 bn (€ 4.041 bn) for the 2004 business year. This amounts to growth of 4.4 per cent over the previous year, or 1.8 per cent like-for-like. Even though the 2004 business year was one week shorter than 2003, comparable sales growth came to 6 per cent, or 3.4 per cent like-for-like. Profit was up 34.1 per cent to CDN $ 271.9 mio (€ 168.39 mio). The year 2004 saw the opening of 19 stores in the new "Concept 20/20" format, and six were retrofitted to the new model. There are 20 new openings scheduled for this year, the majority of them in the new format.