Coles has reported strong digital growth in the 2024 first half-year, with ecommerce sales up 29.2 percent in the period, reaching 9.1 percent of supermarket sales.
Overall ecommerce sales came in at $1.8 billion, compared to gross retail sales of $20.5 billion.
Coles CEO Leah Weckert said enhancements to its app such as shoppable recipes and self-serve refunds had improved the experience for shoppers.
Weckert said FlyBuys engagement grew, with card swipe rates rising 7.8 percent, and unique customers more than doubling over the corresponding prior half-year.
“We really stepped up in the half what we do with FlyBuys,” she said. “We have rolled out instant redemption of points in a large number of stores.”
A key saving in the ecommerce business was automation through AI, Weckert said, generating savings in call centres and delivering an improvement in pick efficiency in customer fulfillment centres (CFCs).
Coles said it had now spent 70 percent of its planned investment in CFCs, as part of $292 million in first-half capex devoted to “efficiency initiatives”.
CFO Charlie Elias declined to detail how much of that investment is technology.
Weckert told the call Coles’ key loss-reduction technologies – Smart Gate and the Skip Scan checkout cameras – had delivered significant savings for the company as well.
Smart Gates have now been rolled out to 267 stores, she said, and Skip Scan cameras are in 305 stores.
She told the earnings call that loss – predominantly because of theft – represented a “headwind” of 50 basis points in Coles’ results.
That is an improvement over the corresponding first half of 2023, where loss was a 70-80 basis point headwind, which Weckert said was worth around $150 million.
Coles recorded sales revenue of $22.2 billion for the half year, up 6.8 percent over the corresponding previous half, with net profit after tax of $594 million, down 3.6 percent.