FCL announces 2019 revenues of $9.2 billion

December 20, 2019

Despite a decrease in sales and profitability in 2019, Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) will still be returning $649 million to local co-ops and their Western Canadian communities.

For the year ended Oct. 31, 2019, we recorded revenues of $9.2 billion, down four per cent from $9.6 billion the previous year. Last year’s revenues were restated – previously reported as $10.7 billion – based on changes to accounting standards. From our revenues, we realized earnings of $959 million, down 10 per cent from $1.1 billion in 2018. 

“We’ve been fortunate to take advantage of favourable market conditions in the energy sector for the last few years,” said FCL CEO Scott Banda. “We’ve started seeing a return to more traditional market conditions in energy, and that negatively impacted our margins in the fourth quarter.”

Beyond the energy sector, our food and home and building solutions sales continued to decline with the soft Western Canadian economy. We experienced some growth in the agriculture sector despite a dry spring and a challenging harvest in many parts of the Prairies.

FCL returns $2.6 billion to communities

Most of our profits are returned to our owners – 170 independent local co-operatives across Western Canada. In the last five years, we’ve shared $2.6 billion with these co-ops, who invest in their own facilities and operations, return cash and equity to their members and give back to their local communities.

In 2019, FCL also invested $237 million of capital at the Co-op Refinery Complex, which is in addition to regular operating expenses. This helps ensure we’re able to maintain the safe operations of our facility and begin to prepare for our transition to a low-carbon economy.