Thursday, June 25, 2020

How much are businesses spending and what are they spending it on to fight Covid-19 and stay in business?

How Much Covid-19 Cost Those Businesses That Stayed Open: From $198,000 to $1 billion, public companies start to disclose the amount spent on paying workers and protecting them and customers by Inti Pacheco of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"A food distributor has paid $20 million for testing and plexiglass. T-Mobile US Inc. has spent $50 million on extra cleaning and safety gear. Walmart Inc. WMT -0.49% and three other big retail chains have put more than $3 billion into higher salaries, benefits and other Covid-19 measures.
Staying open during the pandemic wasn’t cheap. Big companies say they spent anywhere from hundreds of thousands to almost a billion dollars in Covid-19-related costs. Some say they expect the costs to keep rising in coming quarters, even as they face uncertain demand from consumers.

The figures include increased pay for front-line workers, expanded cleaning and sanitization protocols, and the purchasing of coronavirus testing or personal protective equipment, according to a Wall Street Journal review of recent quarterly reports and earnings-call transcripts. These are extra expenses and don’t reflect extra revenue or lost business. Some essential retailers that were open as well as makers of safety gear had a surge in revenue during the lockdown."

"$1 billion

Target Corp. said last week it would keep its starting wage at $15 an hour, after temporarily raising it in March. The company said it expects to spend $1 billion more this year than last on worker-related expenses, including wages, paid leave and safety equipment such as masks.

$900 million
 
Walmart spent around $900 million in its quarter ended April 30. The company said this included masks, gloves and bonuses for employees, additional cleaning and expanded sick-leave pay. Walmart has about 1.5 million employees in the U.S., and more than 270,000 have taken a coronavirus-related leave. In May, executives said they expected similar costs in the second quarter."

Some things other firms are doing:

-personal protective equipment
-Covid-19 testing
-cleaning enhancements
-partitions for workers
-decals in facilities to maintain social distancing. 

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