Bunningssizzles
RETAIL cash cow Bunnings continues to enjoy surging sales as customers keep doing projects around the home, continuing a clear Australia-wide trend throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ahead of W es farmers’ annual general meeting yesterday, the conglomerate issued a trading update showing Bunnings had a 31 per cent surge in comparable sales growth for the financial year to date, which excludes stores closed in Melbourne and Auckland during second-wavelockdowns.
Including the stores meant total sales growth was a still strong 25.2 per cent.
The group said both consumer and commercial customers spent big.
“Consumer sales remained particularly strong as customers spent more time undertaking projects around the home ,” W es farmers said.
“Good progress has been made on Bunnings’ digital agenda, with online sales penetration — excluding metropolitan Melbourne — of 1.5 percent during the year to date and digital engagement with both consumer and trade customers continuing to increase .”
The group’s retail busi
nesses achieved total online sales growth of 166 per cent, excluding online-only department store and marketplace Catch, which Wesfarmers bought in June lastyearfor$230m.
Catch had 2.7 million active customers at the end of October, up from 2.3 million at the end of June, and total sales soared 114.4 per cent duringtheperiod.
Trading at department stores Target and Km art also remains buoyant, with comparable sales growth of 9.9 per cent and 9.4 per cent recorded, respectively.
“While stock availability in some home products impacted Kmart’s sales growth
in July and August 2020, progress has been made to improve availability in recent months despite long order lead times and recent industrial action at port terminals creating some challenges,” Wesfarmerssaid.
“The business has significantly increased stock weights in preparation for the upcoming Christmas tradingperiod.”
As part of a previously announced plan to address under performing Target stores, nine large-format stores have been converted to Kmart stores and six Target Country stores have transformed into K Hub stores in recentmonths.