TORONTO – Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. executives are working to morph the business into more of a gifting destination, even as shoppers continue to face economic challenges.
The retailer, which is also behind SportChek, Mark’s and Party City, has dropped the prices on more than 5,000 goods, including gift wrap and ornaments, and expanded its toy department and offerings using the Hudson’s Bay stripes.
The goal is to capture a holiday market that chief executive Greg Hicks estimates is worth more than $5 billion and then build on it throughout the year.
“That means not just leaning into having the right products to gift but also (looking at) how we get consumers to have us more front of mind when they’re looking for gifts for other occasions, like birthdays or Mother’s Day,” Hicks said Thursday on a call with analysts to discuss the company’s latest results.
Canadian Tire’s push to provide more gifting inspiration comes as consumers are heading into the holiday season facing an economic avalanche.
Tariff tensions and the war in Iran have driven up household expenses like gas, causing a big drop in consumer confidence and creating “a negative shock that’s shrinking the economy’s potential,” Hicks said.
While shoppers are proving to be more resilient than some expected, he’s noticed many Canadians are taking a more cautious approach to spending but will still spend when the value proposition feels right to them.
“The bar is higher,” Hicks explained. “They want value, they want relevance, they want convenience, they want price and they want to shop at a place that they trust.”
Canadian Tire is forecasting that those demands will last for anywhere from another year to 18 months.
Already, the conditions are colliding with a warm autumn, weighing on sales, which tend to grow as the temperature drops.
“We’re off to a slower start in October. Clearly, winter has not showed up,” chief financial officer Darren Myers said on the same call as Hicks, comparing the recent weather to last year, when parts of the country were stormy. “There’s a lot of the quarter left to play but we do need the weather to turn.”
The insights came after Canadian Tire increased its dividend and reported its third-quarter profit rose compared with a year ago.
The Toronto-based retailer will now pay a quarterly dividend of $1.825 per share, up from $1.80 per share.
The increased payment to shareholders dovetailed with Canadian Tire revealing it earned net income attributable to shareholders of $219.6 million or $4.27 per diluted share for its latest quarter, up from $169.1 million or $3.13 per diluted share a year earlier.
On a normalized basis, it earned $4.27 per diluted share during the quarter ended Oct. 3, up from a normalized profit of $3.78 per diluted share a year ago.
Revenue totalled $4.32 billion, up from $4.11 billion in the third quarter of 2025.
Overall comparable sales rose 3.2 per cent across the company’s banners. Canadian Tire comparable sales increased 3.2 per cent, while SportChek also saw a gain of 3.2 per cent. Mark’s reported 3.3 per cent in comparable sales growth.
The results pushed Canadian Tire’s share price up by almost seven per cent or $14 to about $218 in mid-morning trading.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX:CTC)
