Woolworths New Zealand released its full-year financial results for F24, with EBIT declining by a normalised 57.2 percent to NZ$108 million. This decline reflects the competitive trading environment and significant wage costs. F24 sales increased by 1.3 percent on a normalised basis.
Woolworths New Zealand Managing Director Spencer Sonn commented that the overall financial performance mirrored the very competitive trading environment, where customers remained challenged due to elevated cost-of-living pressures. Lower sales, combined with investments in lower prices for customers and material wage costs to support the team, impacted earnings in F24. However, improved trading was observed in Q4, with items returning to growth.
"While it was a challenging year, I'm proud of the progress we made on our multi-year transformation agenda, with customer metrics showing improvements in key areas, including value, fresh fruit and vegetables, and better shelf availability due to early progress on our transformation initiatives," Sonn noted.
"Delivering value for our customers continues to be our priority, and we know they need us to do more to help them find value across their whole shop. I'm delighted that we launched Everyday Rewards during the year, now with over 1.6 million active members, providing more benefits to our members. We also reset our key price mechanics, with more to do in F25," Sonn added.
Key initiatives undertaken during the year to support customers and the team include:
- Investing in local communities through the Woolworths Future Ferns netball programme, Growing for Good grants given to ten schools, and opening two Mini Woolies to support disabled students.
- Introducing new safety measures, including the rollout of team safety cameras to all Woolworths stores
- Renewing and renovating 16 older stores to give customers vastly better shopping experiences and we have more in the pipeline this year.
- Continuing to grow the eCommerce network with Direct to Boot, now available in 43 Woolworths stores.
- Launching MILKRUN during the year and it is now available in 57 stores across 12 regions in New Zealand.
- In 2019, there was a change to accounting standards.
Sonn also expressed pride in the progress made through investment in new security measures to keep the team and customers safe.
"We are seeing signs of inflation moderating, which will be a relief to our customers, with many fresh products cheaper now than they were this time last year.
"We'll continue to monitor our costs while delivering meaningful value to Kiwi shoppers," said Sonn.
