Half Year 2026 Woolworths Holdings Ltd Earnings Call Transcript
Key Points
- Woolworths Holdings Ltd (WLWHY) reported a 6% increase in group sales in constant currency, outperforming inflation and respective markets.
- The company's Food business achieved strong results, gaining profitable market share month-on-month and delivering leading returns on capital.
- The Fashion, Beauty, and Home (FBH) segment showed significant improvement, with market share gains and strong sales growth, particularly in the denim offering.
- Woolworths Financial Services (WFS) delivered a strong underlying result with the healthiest impairment ratio in the industry.
- The company has made significant investments in foundational infrastructure, which are now translating into improved operational performance and cash flow.
- Gross profit margins faced pressure due to significant capital investments, excess inventory clearance, and pricing investments in key categories.
- The company experienced a more moderate EBIT growth of just over 4% in constant currency, partly due to ForEx impacts.
- The retail sector in Australia remains challenging and highly promotionally driven, impacting the Country Road Group's performance.
- Expense growth in the Woolworths South Africa businesses was ahead of sales growth, driven by strategic investments and higher depreciation charges.
- The company faced challenges from foot and mouth disease impacting meat pricing and volumes, affecting overall inflation numbers.
Good morning and welcome to our 2026 interim results presentation. I'll start with a high-level overview of our performance for the period, after which our Group Financial Director, Zaid Manjra, will take you through the detailed financial results for the half. I will then provide an update on how we're tracking against our various strategic priorities and offer some thoughts on the outlook before we open the floor to questions.
To put our results into context, I would like to remind you of our starting point, our recent focus areas and how, as promised, our initiatives are now driving results. Going back just a few years, we were operating with businesses that had historically underinvested in their back-end capabilities while still navigating the legacy impacts of the David Jones era.
As a result, strengthening our foundational infrastructure was our foremost priority. So in recent years, we've undertaken a series of deliberate initiatives to rebuild and modernize the operating backbone of our group
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