Woolworths has announced full year sales of $49.6 billion, on a 52-week normalised basis sales increased by $3.4 billion, or 7.5 per cent on the previous year.
CEO Michael Luscom said that despite the global economic turmoil, 2009 has been a successful year with solid results across the whole business.
“Woolworths continues to reinvest in all its businesses to improve stores, create jobs, add services, deliver value, and create an even better experience for our customers.
“Continued solid sales growth in food retailing and especially in discretionary areas like apparel, consumer electronics and homewares, highlights the underlying strength of the Australian economy in these times,” he said.
Australian food and liquor sales for the year were $32.8 billion, an increase of 9.6 per cent over last year with comparable sales for the year increasing by 7.4 per cent compared to 6.3 per cent last year.
“This is another solid performance demonstrating the degree to which customers in this current economic climate have embraced our key strategic initiatives such as price reinvestment, the 2010c store format, and our Everyday Rewards program,” said Greg Foran, director of food, liquor and petrol.
Big W also had a strong performance with sales for the full year at $4.3 billion, an increase of 10.5 per cent over the previous year. Comparable sales for the full year were 7.1 per cent.
“This is a great result for Big W and a clear endorsement of the success of the Big W value proposition,” said Julie Coates, general manager Big W.
“Our continued focus on providing great value and choice to our customers means that Big W has been well placed to support Australian consumers during the current economic climate. Home and family categories in particular benefited from the impact of the government stimulus packages.”
Five new Big W stores opened during the year taking total stores to 156.