Asda grows profit as loyalty Rewards scheme drives sales
Asda increased its underlying earnings by a quarter last year
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Asda grew its underlying earnings by a quarter last year, with an increase in food and clothing sales.
The supermarket chain said underlying earnings, before extra costs such as tax and interest, increased by 24 per cent to £1.078billion in 2023, compared to the year before.
The supermarket's like-for-like sales, not including fuel, grew by 5.4 per cent.
Total sales, excluding fuel, increased by 7.1 per cent to £21.9billion last year.
The retailer said it had benefited from around six million customers now using its loyalty app, Asda Rewards.
Roughly half of all its sales are linked to the reward programme, which the firm says is a "key revenue driver".
There are now 479 Asda Express stores, compared to just three in September 2023
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Some 18 million customers shop at Asda every week, Mohsin Issa, Asda's co-founder said.
The group, which runs fashion brand George, said clothing sales increased by 3.4 per cent, to total £1.5billion.
Issa added: "We are committed to doing the right thing for customers, colleagues and local communities – and are putting in place the strategic building blocks to set up Asda for long-term success.
“As well as investing in price to maintain our position as the cheapest traditional supermarket, we continued to invest in further enhancing the quality of our products, building on the earlier successful launch of the budget-friendly Just Essentials brand with a significant own-label transformation programme.
"This saw us launch thousands of new and improved food lines to drive quality perception among consumers, including a refresh of our entire ready meals range.
“This investment includes non-food and saw George maintain its market leadership position in back-to-school wear and deliver total clothing sales growth of 3.4 per cent last year helped by our ongoing focus on price, quality and style.
“We continue to strengthen the business by expanding in the growing convenience and food-to-go sectors, leveraging our loyalty app and driving innovation in online grocery where we are the UK’s second-largest supermarket."
Michael Gleeson, Asda's Chief Financial Officer, said the Asda Rewards app was a "vital tool" for customers to "manage household budgets", as well as being a "key revenue driver for the business".
Asda saw its share of the grocery market slip to around 13.6 per cent at the start of the year, trailing behind rivals Sainsbury's and Tesco, as well as discounters Aldi and Lidl, data from Kantar shows.
Gleeson acknowledged the supermarket had lost market share over the past 15 years to the German discounters.
He added: "Tesco and Sainsbury’s managed to insulate themselves a little bit by growing out into the convenience business.
“I think that was clearly a gap that we needed to address and that’s what we’ve been doing over the last 18 months, and we now have just short of 500 convenience stores.”
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Asda bought petrol forecourts from EG Group and Co-op in recent years, providing the opportunity to expand its convenience store business.
There are now 479 Asda Express stores, compared to just three in September 2023.
There are now more than 1,000 Asda sites.
The retailer expects to operate 500 Express stores by the end of the year.