Ahold Delhaize reports fruitful end of year sales with online boost
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Supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize has reported better than expected fourth quarter sales, driven by a surge of online orders due to Covid-19.
Ahold said its sales rose 18 per cent to €19.6bn, topping the €18.5bn seen in a company-compiled consensus.
Underlying operating income in the period was €811m, also beating a consensus forecast of €771m. Net consumer online sales jumped 84 per cent to €2.6bn, with increases of 129 per cent in the United States and 73 per cent in Europe.
“When you talk about what we are doing, on food and non-food platforms, it’s big growth on all fronts,” chief financial officer Natalie Knight said.
Knight expects online sales growth to continue to outpace traditional sales growth this year.
“We definitely believe we are going to continue to see very strong online growth in sales going forward. We are projecting a further growth of 30 per cent in 2021, that includes 60 per cent in the US,” she said.
Investments last year in distribution networks and pick up points for online orders, as well as other areas, would help boost capacity and increase sales, Knight said.
“It’s because we know that last year a lot of growth was still hampered by capacity … we are continuing to build out capacity, so we are very confident the trend is going to continue,” Knight continued.
At its online non-food retailer Bol.com, which operates in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, sales were projected to hit €5bn for the first time in 2021, Knight said.
“Last year our goal was €3.5bn. We hit €4.3bn. Now for 2021 we are going to call out the €5bn mark,” she said.
In its group outlook for 2021, Ahold said the pandemic continued to create significant uncertainty and that a reduced number of reporting weeks in 2021 “will impact 2021 results.”
In 2021, the underlying operating margin is expected to be at least 4 per cent and underlying per share earnings will grow by “mid- to high-single digits relative to 2019,” it said in a statement.
Ahold Delhaize, which operates chains in the US and Europe, today announced it had agreed to buy 39 stores from the Deen chain in the Netherlands as part of a larger deal to buy and dissolve Deen.
Financial details were not disclosed. In a joint statement, Ahold said Deen was selling all its 80 stores. Ahold will convert 39 of them to its Albert Heijn brand, while competitors Vomar will buy and convert 22 and DekaMarkt will buy and convert 19.