Coles has posted an annual net profit of $1.1 billion and says online supermarket sales made up 9.4 per cent of all sales in the 2023/24 year.
Coles has reported a 30 per cent jump in e-commerce sales as the supermarket giant worked to improve customer experiences and has achieved a significant drop in store thefts.
Coles announced on Tuesday it had $3.7 billion in e-commerce supermarket sales in the 53 weeks to June 30, up from $2.8 billion in 2022/23.
Online sales made up 9.4 per cent of all sales, up from 7.5 per cent the year before.
The company said it worked to significantly reduce Click and Collect wait times and added several other new digital features such as shared grocery lists.
Overall, Coles had $39 billion in annual sales, up 6.2 per cent from the slightly shorter previous financial year, or a rise of 4.3 per cent on a normalised 52-week basis.
Coles' profit rose 2.1 per cent to $1.1 billion on a normalised basis.
Out of 856 Coles supermarkets across the country, 101 are in Western Australia.
In its FY24 presentation, Coles regarded its improvements to product availability and supply chain as a highlight, particularly the transition to 100 per cent WA sourcing for its own brand of fresh beef, pork, poultry and lamb in WA stores.
Chief executive Leah Weckert emphasised in a call with reporters that Coles made less than three cents in profit for every dollar spent in its stores.
Ms Weckert said a continued investment in technology was helping to reduce stock loss from opportunistic theft and organised crime.
Coles added "skip scan" cameras to another 241 supermarkets during the half-year, with 546 of its 856 supermarkets as of June 30 using the technology to cut down on accidental or intentional wrongly scanned items at its self-serve checkouts.
Another 59 supermarkets added smart gates that open only after a customer has paid, for a total of 326, with 455 stores using "bottom of trolley" tech that detects when customers fail to scan large items.
"There's continuing work to do," Ms Weckert told analysts.
"There are a number of challenges in terms of the environment, with the degree of organised crime that we're seeing."
E&P retail analyst Phillip Kimber said that Coles 2023/24 results were in line with expectations, but sales momentum early in the current financial year had moderated more than expected.
Moody’s Ratings analyst Sean Williams said Coles’ full-year results were credit positive.
“Group earnings continued to benefit from the strong performance of its supermarket segment, which reported solid comparable store sales growth, price inflation and EBIT margin expansion,” he said.
“This served to more than offset a marginal decline in its liquor segment earnings, which were impacted by lower customer discretionary spend as well as increasing labour costs in the period.”
The company declared a 32 cents per share fully franked final dividend, up from 30 cents a year ago. It will pay 68 cents per share in total dividends for 2023/24, up from 66c the previous year.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Coles shares were up 1.9 per cent to a two-year high of $18.815.
