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Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.

This week: Earning season continued. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board reported that it earned 3.4 per cent in its latest quarter. It ended 2023 with nearly $591-billion in assets, up from $576-billion at the end of the previous quarter. Meanwhile, Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International (RBI) reported on Tuesday that its net income more than doubled in the fourth quarter, to US$726-million compared with US$336-million in the same period the prior year. And Canadian Tire Corp. reported a 67.6-per-cent decline in net income in its fourth quarter.

Also: An audit drew some sharp words, Amazon’s founder drew some raised eyebrows and Lyft drew some (brief) excitement.


1“This audit shows a glaring disregard for basic management and contracting practices.” Who said that this week?
a. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre
b. Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie
c. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
d. Auditor General of Canada Karen Hogan

d. Auditor General of Canada Karen Hogan. Ms. Hogan lambasted Canada Border Services for its slipshod development of the ArriveCan app during the pandemic. The agency spend just $80,000 to create the initial version of the smartphone app, but allowed the subsequent cost to swell to an estimated $59.5-million as a result of poorly documented contracts with private developers and consultants.

2Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce company, announced earnings this week that blew away analysts’ expectations. What did its stock do?
a. It rose
b. It barely budged
c. It fell a little
d. It plunged

d. It plunged. Shopify stock tumbled 13 per cent despite double-digit revenue growth and impressive profitability. Investors were not impressed by its outlook for the months ahead.

3What is Sun Day Red?
a. Tiger Woods’ new clothing line
b. An album of pop songs from Travis Kelce, the football player who is dating Taylor Swift
c. A new TV series in which China uses a space-mounted mirror to threaten the world with solar annihilation
d. Meta Platforms’ code name for virtual reality software

a. Tiger Woods’ new clothing line. Mr. Woods ended his 27-year partnership with Nike earlier this year. The golfer is teaming up with TaylorMade Golf to develop his new line.

4Why did shares of ride-sharing service Lyft briefly jump more than 60 per cent this week?
a. Rumours of a merger with Uber
b. A typo in an earnings announcement
c. Reports that Warren Buffett is buying shares
d. A temporary deal with its drivers

b. A typo in an earnings announcement. Oops. The typo indicated Lyft’s profit margin is set to jump by 500 basis points during the coming year. (A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point.) The actual forecast is for an increase of 50 basis points.

5The price of bitcoin hit US$50,000 this week. That is:
a. Its highest point in more than two years
b. Its lowest point in more than a year
c. Its all-time high
d. Half of where it was trading a year ago

a. Its highest point in more than two years. Bitcoin’s price has surged as a result of U.S. regulators giving the go-ahead to bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

6How much did an average Tim Hortons restaurant make this year in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA)?
a. $110,000
b. $230,000
c. $280,000
d. $340,000

c. $280,000. Tim Hortons franchisees saw their EBITDA jump 27 per cent in 2023 to an average $280,000 per restaurant. However, that is still below the $320,000 in EBITDA that a typical store produced in 2018.

7What has Amazon founder Jeff Bezos done to raise eyebrows in recent days?
a. Remarried
b. Bought New York Times stock
c. Sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon stock
d. Flown into space

c. Sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon stock. Mr. Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s chief executive in 2021 to spend more time on his other projects, has indicated he intends to sell shares with an estimated market value of US$8.4-billion.

8Jake Lawrence, Bank of Nova Scotia’s head of global banking and markets, is leaving after more than two decades to join:
a. Power Corp. of Canada
b. Royal Bank of Canada
c. Manulife
d. Citibank

a. Power Corp. of Canada. Mr. Lawrence had once been considered a candidate for the top job at Scotiabank. He is now thought to be in the running for the chief executive slot at Power.

9Which two countries slipped into recession this week? (For our purposes here, a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking output.)
a. Canada and France
b. Britain and Japan
c. Spain and Italy
d. The United States and Mexico

b. Britain and Japan. Japan and Britain are now both in recession.

10A recent report from credit union hub Alberta Central crunched the numbers on housing affordability in Canada. Assuming that interest rates stay where they are, the report calculated that home prices across the country would have to fall by how much on average to become affordable again?
a. 10 per cent
b. 20 per cent
c. 30 per cent
d. 40 per cent

d. 40 per cent. If an immediate 40-per-cent fall doesn’t sound appealing, the alternatives aren’t much better. The market could also come back into balance if home prices stagnated for more than 10 years, the report estimated.

11What is the approximate average annual return generated by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board over the past decade?
a. Less than 2 per cent
b. Around 5 per cent
c. Around 9 per cent
d. Around 11 per cent

c. Around 9 per cent. The CPPIB, which helps fund Canadians’ pensions, reported this week that its returns have averaged 9.3 per cent a year over the past decade.

12Which red-hot business overtook Google-parent Alphabet this week to become the third most valuable U.S. company in terms of stock market value?
a. AI pioneer OpenAI
b. Chip maker Nvidia
c. Social media giant Meta Platforms
d. Weight-loss-drug maker Novo Nordisk

b. Chip maker Nvidia. Nvidia has soared as technology companies race to build AI into their products and services. Nvidia controls about 80 per cent of the high-end AI chip market.

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