How to research information on Safeway and other corporations, part 3

Step 2: FIND THE BASIC INFORMATION ON THE CORPORATION.

1.  Get the ticker symbol.  The ticker symbol is a combination of three to four letters that a corporation uses as its “name” on the stock market (where shares are bought and sold).  It’s a helpful thing to have when looking for info.  The ticker symbol tells us whether or not we’re looking at the right corporation and its information.  I use google.com/finance when I’m looking for information on corporations.  Here’s the google finance page on: Safeway.  At the top of the page you’ll see something that says “Safeway Inc., (Public, NYSE: SWY)”.  The “SWY” is the ticker symbol.

Of course part of getting the task in getting the ticker symbol is making sure you have the *correct* ticker symbol.  Go half way down the page to where it says “Description” to make sure you’re looking at the correct corporation.

The “Description” section has basic but useful information.  This section tells us the company has about 1,739 stores total.  It also tells us the different states it has stores in.  This is useful in case UFCW Local 7 members want to reach out to other UFCW members in different states/locals for solidarity and support during negotiations (or any time really).

2.  Get the corporation’s headquarters, phone, and fax (it’s on the google Safeway page 3/4 of the way down on the right):

5918 Stoneridge Mall Road
Pleasanton, CA 94588
United States -
+1-925-4673000 (Phone)
+1-925-4673323 (Fax)

Note: private companies have a lot more privacy.  For the sake of simplicity: these are the companies that don’t sell stock.

3.  Check out the Fat Cats.  Below the “Description” section you’ll see a section called “officers and directors”.  These are the Corporate Executive Officers (CEOs).  These are the fat cats everyone complains about and loves to hate (with excellent, excellent reason).  Here is a tiny, tiny slice of the country’s economic “geniuses”.  You can click on their names and get basic information on them.

Stephen A. Burd is 59 years old, he’s Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of the Board.  I’m sure he’s an all-around all star.  Where it says “Total Annual Compensation”, that’s how much money Safeway pays this cat to steer the ship.  If you clicked on “bio and compensation” under Burd’s name you probably arrived at this page.  So, Stephen is raking in  $1,867,390 bucks and then there’s like $8,983,110 more in “All Other, USD”. I dunno what that is but…I’d ask Stephen.

Not bad though……………………..where do I get me one of those jobs?

Feel free to check out salaries of the other CEO’s: Mr. Edwards, Renda, Dietz, etc.

4.  Check out Safeway’s financial information.  : )

Back to the Safeway page.

On the left side of the page you’ll see a column that says “company”, “summary”, “news”, etc.  i’m very impatient so I typically just go straight for the link that says financials.  yeah, FINANCIALS!!!

AS IN: SAFEWAY’S MONEY!!!

SAFEWAY’S

(((BLING)))

…IF YOU WILL.

…all brought to you by: SAFEWAY!

This isn’t someone else reporting, this is Safeway’s numbers about Safeway.

USE THIS INFORMATION!!!  SHARE IT WITH YOUR CO-WORKERS DURING NEGOTIATIONS!!!   Safeway can’t say you’ve gotten your information from a random, unreliable source.

When you click on financials you end up at the corporation’s “Income Statement”.  The Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow are three documents that corporations put together to give people a summary of their financial situation.  This stuff is very handy.  ; )

On the Income Statement sheet, scroll down until you see: Net Income.  ALRIGHT!  These are them!  These are the BIG NUMBERS!!!  THESE ARE THE CORPORATION’S PROFITS.

Net Income = Profits, remember that.

Profit is the money the corporation makes after it writes your paycheck, pays for the products on the shelves, pays for electricity, water, etc.  However I also think of profits as unpaid (really: stolen) wages but that will surely be the topic of a future blog entry.

Oh yeah…quick note about parentheses: whenever you see parentheses surrounding a number (like this), that means there’s a LOSS in that financial area.

Now let’s break down the Net Income (profits) section:

In the 12 weeks ending 2009-09-12, Safeway profited $128.8 million dollars.

In the 12 weeks ending 2009-06-20, Safeway profited $238.6 million dollars.

In the 12 weeks ending 2009-03-28, Safeway profited $144.20 million dollars.

In the 12 weeks ending 2009-01-03, Safeway profited $338 million dollars.

$849.6 million for those 48 weeks!  NOT.  BAD.  Not so freakin’ bad at all, huh?

HOWEVER…Profit doesn’t tell us everything!

To only check the profit of a corporation is like only checking the heart rate of a person during a physical.  It only tells us a part of the corporation’s story.  Profits means something different if the corporation is, for example, not paying off its debt, or if profits keep going down over the months/years.

Let’s therefore look at other factors affecting a corporation’s financial health.

Click on the link that says “Balance Sheet” (towards the top).  Again, go about halfway down the page and you’ll see a section that says Total Debt.  There you have much of Safeway’s debt.

At this point I’ll leave it to you, http://www.investorwords.com, and any books you purchase to figure out the more detailed meanings of “debt” and other financial words.

Let’s move on to more sources of information on the company…

The company itself isn’t shy, they’re just not telling YOU, the workers, where to find information on their finances.  But here’s some more of it.  Right off their own website!  : )  NOTE: Most corporate websites contain this “investors relations” type of information.  Again, it’s intended mostly for the people who invest, or buy shares in the corporation.  You usually want to look for a link on their website that says “investor information” or or something like that.  I’ll post this for UAW members.

Two very, very, very enticing documents are always the corporation’s annual reports and the 10-K forms (which it files with the Security and Exchange Commission).  You can find Safeway’s annual report on the left-hand column of this page (almost half way down).  Here is the direct link (takes a few seconds).

Once you’re in there you can click on annual reports for different years.  In the 2008 (and maybe the others) annual report you should 1) Go to where it says “Table of Contents”.  2)  Click on where it says “[+] Click to Select” 2) put your mouse over “2008 Annual Report” 3) Select from: Corporate Profile, Financial Highlights, Unique Customer Experience, Social Responsibility, Directors and Principle Officers, whatever you’d like.

That’s Safeway’s annual reports…ALL TYPES of wonderful information in there about how wonderful Safeway is.  : )

I also mentioned the corporation’s 10-K form.  The 10-K form is a kind of “annual report” the corporation files with the government, in this case: the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  Safeway was generous enough to include their 10-K form within the pages of their 2008 annual report.  Had they not done this, we would have had to look for it on the SEC’s website.   Some times it’s easier to search for your corporation by first getting the corporation’s ticker number.

10-K forms have a TON of information you can use.  Below is just fifteen minutes of stuff I picked out:

Profits (again: Net Income) of: $965.3 million, $888.4 million, and $870.6 million for 52 weeks in the years 2008, 2007 and 2006 respectively. You can find this in the “Financial Highlights” section of Safeway’s 2008 Annual Report.

Unions “At the end of 2008, Safeway had more than 197,000 full- and part-time employees.  Approximately 80% of Safeway’s employees in the United States and Canada are covered by collective bargaining agreements [union contracts] negotiated with union locals affiliated with one of nine different international unions.  There are 430 such agreements [union contracts], typically having three- to five- year terms.  Accordingly, Safeway typically negotiates a significant number of these agreements every year.”

So in 15 minutes of “just going through the stuff that looks interesting” I managed to find that Safeway is making KILLER profits (again) AND that 80% of its 197,000 workers belong to a union and are covered by collective bargaining agreements (contracts).  Hmmm…..  : )  I wonder what would happen to those profits if the workers in these unions got together and organized themselves.

Let’s read Safeway’s annual report a little more…

QUOTE: “A significant majority of our employees are unionized, and our relationships with unions, including labor disputes or work stoppages, could have an adverse impact on our financial results.”  /UNQUOTE

Translated: if those unionized Safeway workers started acting like a union and organized themselves worker by worker, department by department, store by store, those profits wouldn’t be so big and the workers would have more money for their rent, food, phone bills, gas, bus passes, credit card payments, debt, diapers, health care, etc, etc, etc.

-Ric Urrutia

Advertisement