I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Leah Weckert, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our Half Year Results call this morning. Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We acknowledge their strength and resilience and pay our respects to their elders past and present. Several members of our executive team are with me in the room this morning: Charlie Elias, our CFO, Matt Swindells, our Chief Operations and Supply Chain Officer, Anna Croft, our Chief Commercial and Sustainability Officer, and Michael Courtney, our Chief Executive Liquor. Many of you may know that Ben Hassing, our Chief Digital Officer, has made the decision to move back to the U.S. to be with his family and is not on the call with us this morning.
There is no doubt that Ben was instrumental in transforming the digital experience for our customers, leading to significant growth in our e-commerce business. While we search for a replacement, Matt Swindells will caretake the digital portfolio, and I would like to thank Ben for his significant contribution to the business over the past five years. Moving now on to slide two. If I look back over the last six months, our focus on execution delivered a solid set of financial results, and we have made really good progress against our strategic priorities. I spoke about execution at Investor Day. We know there is a lot of value to be generated by focusing on our core business, and the results we are reporting today demonstrate that. This performance was underpinned by our value campaigns and strong trade across key events such as Christmas, Halloween, and Black Friday.
A real highlight for the half was seeing how the business as a whole, from our team members in stores to our distribution centres and CFCs, all responded at pace to the industry supply chain disruption in late November and early December. I will go into this in more detail shortly, but as a result, we were able to generate approximately AUD 120 million in incremental supermarket sales and AUD 20 million in EBIT. We continue to see strong e-commerce sales growth across the business, with 22.6% growth in Supermarkets and 9.2% growth in Liquor. Our continued laser focus on costs saw Simplify and Save to Invest benefits of AUD 157 million. Finally, on our automation projects, we progressed the ramp-up at our Kemps Creek ADC, and both of our ADCs demonstrated their ability to successfully support periods of peak demand across the Christmas period.
Melbourne and Sydney home delivery were also fully transitioned into our CFCs, with positive customer metrics being delivered. Moving now to slide three. In terms of the financial results, on a reported basis, Group EBITDA and EBIT from continuing operations, excluding significant items, increased by 10.3% and 5% respectively. On an adjusted, sorry, on an underlying basis, which adjusts for major project implementation costs, dual running and transition costs in relation to the Kemps Creek ADC and the two CFCs, we saw even stronger performance, with Group EBITDA and EBIT from continuing operations, excluding significant items, increasing by 12.5% and 8.9% respectively. On an underlying basis, excluding significant items, NPAT also increased by 6.4% to AUD 666 million. Moving now to slide four. As I said in my introductory comments, we made significant progress against our strategic priorities in the first half, with a strong focus on execution in our core business.
I won't spend too much time on this slide, but as you can see, across all three pillars, we delivered against our strategy, whether that be in the value we provided to our customers, our e-commerce and digital offering, or renewals across our store network. We have achieved a lot in the half. So let's get into a bit more detail, starting on slide five, with the investments we made in the customer offer under our destination for the food and drink pillar. While it was pleasing to see the first interest rate cut announced last week, during the half, we know our customers continued to be impacted by cost-of-living pressures. Our value offering is guided by the insights we receive from our customers, and we know our value campaigns, where we drop the prices on hundreds of products, resonate with them.
During the half, we continued to invest in value through our Great Value, Hands Down campaigns, including our spring and Christmas offers, and we have more than 4,200 products now on everyday low prices. In addition, campaigns such as our Christmas Instant Win and Winter of Sports giveaways, which gave customers a chance to win instant money off their shop, and our Smeg Knives campaign were also well received. In Liquor, our Summer of Flybuys campaign offered customers additional Flybuys points for selected products across November and December, increasing swipe rates across all banners. Our customer insights also tell us that customers are using their loyalty points and offers to save and to balance the household budget, which is why our Flybuys loyalty program is so important.
During the half, we saw an increase in active members by 4.1% to 9.7 million, and we continue to enhance the Flybuys experience, including through the integration of Flybuys into the Coles app, enabling customers to easily activate offers prior to shopping and providing more personalized offers to customers. Flybuys also launched a fresh look and feel to their app experience, making it easier for customers to collect and redeem points, allowing overall increased member engagement. Finally, we know that to become a destination for food and drink, we need to deliver a high-quality fresh food offer, and this is something we remain focused on. Pleasingly, we saw improvements in fresh quality customer metrics in produce and meat and increased fresh produce basket penetration during the half.
We continue to innovate in our exclusive brands portfolio, driving differentiation with more than 530 Exclusive to Coles products and 139 exclusive Liquor brand products launched in the half, and we know our customers are busier than ever, so having a compelling convenience offering is important. We are innovating in this space with new lines and family-size ranges added to our ready meal offer, and the convenience category is outgrowing the overall Supermarkets business. Moving now to slide six. We are also using data and insights to optimize our range and space in store, delivering multiple benefits to Coles and to its customers. We are aiming to make shopping easier and provide more of the products that customers are looking for, giving them choice in the areas that matter most.
For example, in our pork category, we have reduced the number of cuts on offer, providing more space and increasing sales volume of the products that customers want to buy. This has also improved days of supply and product freshness on shelf. Removing duplication is also an important objective of this work. It is not only about the type of product, for example, simplifying the 13 table salts we previously had in the range, but it's also about pack sizes as well. This is not a reduction in choice for our customers. We are simplifying the offer so we have more space to put innovation on shelf and make it easy for our customers to shop and find value. And it is these types of actions that reduce complexity while improving overall availability and driving increased sales. During the half, we landed store-specific ranging in an additional 14 categories.
Store-specific ranging is a technology-enabled program which tailors our ranges by store to meet individual demographics and customer preferences. We are already seeing improvements in waste and markdown and operational efficiencies from these initiatives. Moving now on to slide seven and the next pillar of accelerated by digital. We reported another strong half in e-commerce with 22.6% growth in Supermarkets and 9.2% growth in Liquor. We saw growth across all shopping missions and double-digit revenue growth across all e-commerce propositions, whether that be home delivery and click and collect, or same day, next day, or our Rapid offer. We improved personalization in the Coles app, introduced a Coles Plus annual subscription offer, and launched nationally a windowless Rapid Delivery offer. This allows customers to select an as-soon-as-possible option, and they then receive an estimated time of arrival calculated and personalized for that customer.
A real highlight, though, has been the improvements that we have seen in customer experience. We achieved our highest quarter in online NPS with gains across most metrics, including delivery time, ease of checkout, and quality. And all of this was achieved as we moved volumes into our CFCs, which I will discuss now on the next slide. By the end of November, volumes were fully transitioned into our Customer Fulfilment Centre s, and we are already seeing a significant uplift in fulfillment and perfect order rates. One of the most pleasing aspects for me was how our Victorian CFC was able to ramp volumes quickly in November and December to cater for the incremental demand we experienced. Stores also benefited from having less congestion from home delivery order picks during the period, and I'll discuss this more on the next slide.
While our CFC customers are seeing benefits in their shopping experience, we are also seeing additional network benefits, including growth in same-day, immediacy, and click and collect orders fulfilled from stores as capacity in stores opens up with the shift in volumes to the CFCs. Now, while overall online NPS has increased, we also saw improving store-level NPS in the CFC catchment areas, particularly around the store look-and-feel metric, with less congestion now in store with picking removed. Moving on to slide nine and our delivered consistently for the future pillar. Our Simplify and Save to Invest program played a really important role in the half in helping to offset wage and other inflationary cost impacts we're seeing in the business. We delivered benefits of AUD 157 million, and as you can see on the slide, this takes us to approximately AUD 400 million since the program commenced.
Many initiatives helped achieve this result, including front-end service transformation, such as the rollout of trolley-assisted and hybrid checkouts, process improvements in store, including rostering, and e-commerce initiatives, including call center automation. I'm also pleased with the progress we have made on loss, driven by loss technology and process initiatives, coupled with further improvements in waste and markdown. We said at the full year and again at the Q1 sales result that we expected to see improvements across the half, and our aim was to exit FY 2025 at a rate better than what we exited at FY 2024. We're on the right path to achieve this with 39 basis points of loss recovered in the first half compared to the prior corresponding period. I do want to note that we need to be realistic, that incremental improvements in loss are getting harder, and we are not alone in this.
The retail environment remains really tough in this respect, but we are continuing to make progress. Moving now to slide 10. As I've already mentioned, a highlight for me in the half was how we were able to respond at pace to the industry supply chain disruption in late November and early December. This period really demonstrated the resilience and flexibility of our supply chain and store operations. These sudden disruptions are challenging for the entire industry, but our team across the network responded at pace to mobilize our supply chain down the Eastern Seaboard to support our Victorian ADC and some New South Wales stores. We were really pleased with how our ADCs in New South Wales and Queensland and our Victorian CFC were able to ramp up during this period, providing a level of supply chain flexibility and resilience that would not have been possible historically.
The automation within these facilities allowed us to increase the flow of goods much more quickly than we ever could have done with manual processes that rely heavily on having team members available to work extra and longer shifts at short notice. As we called out at Investor Day, the investments we have made, not only in our ADCs and CFCs, but also in our technology and systems that you can see on the left-hand side of the slide here, such as our transport management system, fresh easy ordering, and future store inventory, allowed us to rapidly respond to the disruption to ensure we had availability in store and also online for our customers. We also significantly increased team member resources within stores to support the additional customers through our doors and to enable products to remain on shelf.
Overall, this allowed us to get an additional 1.5 million cartons through the network, an additional 8,500 pallets transported, and our team members also worked an additional 180,000 hours in stores over the period. All in all, it was a pretty remarkable effort, and as a result, we were able to deliver incremental sales of approximately AUD 120 million in Supermarkets and AUD 20 million in EBIT. Moving now to slide 11. Before I hand over to Charlie, I would like to quickly cover off some of the achievements we've seen around our team members, suppliers, and community partners, as well as progress on sustainability. I'll start with our team members. We delivered an improvement in our team member engagement score in our mySay Coles survey conducted in November. This was a two percentage point improvement compared to the May 2024 engagement survey, retaining our position as a top quartile employer.
In terms of our suppliers, we recognized many of our suppliers during the half at our annual supplier awards. One such supplier was MAP WA, having collaborated with them to upgrade and increase the capacity of their Perth facility as part of our WA for WA meat strategy. We also renewed our long-term partnership with Sundrop Farms, recognizing their production of high-quality vine vegetables through global best practice sustainable farming methods. We also continue to invest in the communities in which we operate. Coles is the number one corporate giver in Australia as a percentage of profit for the fifth consecutive year, a great achievement that both myself and the team are very proud of. We also raised more than AUD 3.1 million for the SecondBite Winte r and Christmas Appeals and more than AUD 1.6 million through the November campaign to support men's health.
We continue to progress our sustainability initiatives. During the half, we submitted a Forest, Land, and Agriculture emissions reduction target and a no deforestation commitment to SBTi for validation. Finally, it would be remiss of me not to comment on the regulatory environment. Over the last 12 months, we have faced several regulatory reviews. The one that is outstanding at the moment is the ACCC Supermarkets Inquiry final report, which is due out shortly. We expected to focus on many of the areas covered in the public hearings, including fresh produce supplier arrangements, pricing, shrinkflation, competition levels, and general industry margins.
This year, we will also see the updated tobacco legislation coming into full effect on the 1st of July 2025, including regulations on pack sizes and bans on flavored products. We will be monitoring the impact of this on our business closely. We expect to commence the transition to that in March. And with that, I'll now hand over to Charlie, who will take you through the financial results in more detail. Thank you, Charlie.
Thank you, Leah, and good morning, everyone. I'm now on slide 13, which details the group results. I will talk to these on a continuing operations basis, excluding significant items. We are really pleased with these results as during the half, we saw group sales revenue increase by 3.7% to over AUD 23 billion, and group underlying EBITDA and EBIT increased by 12.5% and 8.9%, respectively. As Leah mentioned earlier, earnings on an underlying basis adjust for major project implementation, dual running, and transition costs in relation to the Kemps Creek ADC and the two CFCs.
This period, we incurred AUD 92 million in implementation costs, and our previous guidance of approximately AUD 130 million for the full year remains unchanged. These costs, as you know, will fall away in FY 2026. Group underlying EBITDA and EBIT were underpinned by strong growth in supermarket earnings, which included Simplify and Save to Invest benefits of AUD 157 million, helping offset the inflation in our cost base. Underlying NPAT increased by 6.4%. Off the back of these strong results, the board has declared a fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.37 per share, which is a 2.8% increase compared to the prior corresponding period. Before I move on to the divisional performance, I think it's worth noting two additional points. Firstly, we recognize AUD 35 million in future closure and site reconfiguration costs this period, or AUD 25 million after tax, as a significant item.
These costs relate to the announcements we made in October to develop a third ADC in Victoria in partnership with Witron. This will be our largest of the three ADCs, and together with Redbank and Kemps Creek, we'll deliver full automation of our ambient distribution center network across the Eastern Seaboard. This is an exciting next step for us and is a reflection of the strong performance we have seen of our first two ADCs. Secondly, we did see a step up in financing costs for the half of AUD 58 million, or AUD 43 million if you look at it at consecutive periods. Of this increase, more than half relates to our major capital projects being AASB 16 lease interest on Kemps Creek and the two CFCs, as well as interest on debt that is no longer capitalized.
The balance relates to having a full period of high debt and interest following the issuance of our AUD 600 million note in November 2023, coupled with higher interest rates on existing lease resets. While we acknowledge this is an increase, it's important to put into the context as it largely reflects capital investments we have been making. And as you can see from the growth in our underlying earnings and EBITDA, EBIT, and NPAT, the benefits from these investments are more than compensating for the additional financing costs. So moving to Supermarkets and Liquor segment financials on slide 14. Starting with Supermarkets, sales revenue increased by 4.3%, supported by continued investments in value and successful delivery of trade and seasonal events, including Christmas, Halloween, and Black Friday. Excluding tobacco, sales revenue increased by 5.6%.
E-commerce continued to perform strongly, with sales growth of 22.6%, while our Exclusive to Coles range delivered strong volume growth and Coles Finest sales growth of 10.2%. Underlying EBIT increased by 11%, with underlying EBIT margin increasing 34 basis points. Underlying gross margin increased by 88 basis points, supported by lower tobacco sales, which contributed 22 basis points, benefits from Simplify and Save to Invest, our Redbank ADC, and growth in Coles 360, and as Leah mentioned, the first half also benefited from a 39 basis point improvement in total loss compared to the prior corresponding period. Underlying CODB as a percentage of sales increased by 53 basis points, primarily reflecting a step up in depreciation attributable to our capital investment program, the commencement of operations at Kemps Creek ADC and two CFCs.
Pleasingly, we managed to offset wage and inflationary cost impacts through a very strong delivery of our Simplify and Save to Invest program and increased operating leverage. Excluding D&A and the one-off project implementation and transition costs, the CODB increase was in line with our Supermarkets' growth. In Liquor, sales revenue increased by 0.8% as economic pressures impacted discretionary spending. However, performance improved in the second quarter, with sales up 1.5% compared to a flat Q1. E-commerce sales increased by 9.2%, with penetration at 6.9%, underpinned by continued growth in the on-demand channel. Gross margin increased by 22 basis points, benefiting from promotional optimization and the transition away from the less profitable bulk and affiliate sales. EBIT declined by 20%, with sales growth unable to fully offset the impact of cost inflation and the investment in core IT systems.
However, as sales start to strengthen, we expect to get back to a positive trajectory through operating leverage. Turning to operating cash flow on slide 15, and before I get into detail, I'd like to highlight the half year ending on the 5th of January 2025. An additional payment run occurred in the final week of the period compared to the first half last year, resulting in an additional cash outflow of approximately AUD 520 million. This has impacted several cash flow and balance sheet metrics, including cash realization, working capital, and net debt. These metrics, importantly, will normalize in the second half as they are purely timing related. Now to operating cash flow, which was AUD 1.4 billion, excluding interest and tax. In terms of working capital, the negative movement reflects the additional payment run that I just mentioned, combined with an investment in inventories to support availability.
This increase in working capital reduced our cash realization ratio to 69%. However, excluding the additional payment run, cash realization was in excess of 95%. And in terms of the full year, we are forecasting cash realization of 100%, with the timing impact of the payment reversing in the second half. Now turning to capital expenditure on slide 16. Gross operating capital expenditure on an accrued basis was AUD 542 million, a decrease of AUD 211 million compared to the prior corresponding period, largely due to a reduction in capital investment relating to the ADC, CFCs, and the loss technology during the period. Capital expenditure, as you know, falls into four key areas: store renewals, growth initiatives, efficiency initiatives, and maintenance, with the greatest weight in this period to store renewals. Within store renewals, we completed 92 renewals across our network, consisting of 25 Supermarkets and 67 Liquor stores.
The Liquor store renewals included 16 Tasmanian Black and White Liquorland renewals following our acquisition of the Tasmanian Liquor stores last year, together with 12 renewals as part of our Liquor banner simplification pilot. Within growth, we opened three new Supermarkets and six new Liquor stores. Growth CapEx also included our remaining CFC CapEx and a range of other digital and e-commerce initiatives. Efficiency initiatives included our final CapEx payment in relation to the Kemps Creek ADC and an initial payment in respect of our new Victorian ADC, as well as additional stock-loss technology, store front-end initiatives, and Liquor Easy Ordering technology. Maintenance CapEx included our refrigeration and electrical replacement programs and life cycle replacement of store and technology assets. We continue to optimize our portfolio with a property portfolio with net property capital expenditure increasing by AUD 40 million compared to the prior corresponding period.
For the full year, we are expecting capital expenditure of around AUD 1.3 billion, as previously guided. These capital investments and the ones we have made over the last few years, particularly our ADCs and CFCs, have also been driving a step up in depreciation and amortization, which increased by AUD 138 million compared to the prior corresponding period. Around half of this step up related to general depreciation, with the remainder relating to AASB 16 depreciation. While there is a step up, it is important to look at depreciation in the context of our overall earnings growth, with underlying EBITDA having increased by 12.5%. Now, if we turn to the balance sheet on slide 7. As of the 5th of January, we reported negative working capital of AUD 751 million, capital employed of AUD 13.2 billion, and net assets of AUD 3.8 billion.
As I already noted, each of these have been impacted by the additional payment run due to the timing of year-end, which will normalize in the second half. Turning to funding and dividends on slide 18. Our debt maturity profile remains unchanged since August 2024, and we continue to maintain access to a diversified range of funding sources. At half year end, our weighted average debt maturity was 4.3 years, with undrawn facilities of AUD 1.8 billion. As I said earlier, the Coles Board declared a fully franked dividend of AUD 0.37 per share with a payment date of the 27th of March.
Finally, before I hand it back to Leah, we have retained headroom within our rating agency credit metrics and a strong balance sheet to support growth initiatives with our current published credit ratings of BBB + with S&P Global and Baa1 with Moody's. Now I'll hand it back to Leah to take us through the outlook and concluding comments.
Thanks, Charlie. If I can get you all to turn to slide 26, I'm going to make some comments around outlook. In Supermarkets in the first seven weeks of the third quarter, sales revenue grew by 3.4% as we cycled a very strong third quarter in FY 2024. On a two-year stack, the growth rate over the first seven weeks was 8.3%. Customers remain very value conscious, and our exclusive brand portfolio is continuing to see solid volume growth. Our value campaigns, together with Flybuys' offers, are also seeing strong participation rates. Customers are also telling us that they're cutting back on eating out, and we are focused on ensuring we're providing inspiration to help them create delicious, easy, and affordable meals.
Whether that's at home and the inspiration comes from our Coles Magazine, which recently maintained its number one spot as Australia's most read magazine in 2024, or whether that inspiration comes from our digital platforms, our convenience offering, or our Coles Finest range. Finally, in Liquor, while discretionary spending remains subdued, we have continued to see positive momentum in the third quarter, with sales revenue growth in the first seven weeks of 3.8%. With that, I'm now going to hand back to the operator for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Tom Kierath, Barrenjoey. P lease go ahead.
Morning, guys. Leah, I was just interested in those comments you made on stock loss, kind of saying you're potentially getting toward the end of it. On my kind of numbers, you're about 30 basis points lower. The gross margin impact is 30 basis points lower than where you were kind of pre-crisis. And I think before you'd said that you'd get to above kind of where you were on that measure. So I'd just be interested if you could clarify kind of where you're at and where you expect it to be on stock loss.
Yeah, thanks, Tom. I might get Matt to talk a little bit on some of the initiatives we're doing too. But first of all, I'd say we're really pleased with the progress we've made on stock loss. Obviously, achieved a 44 basis improvement in H2 FY 2024 and then 39 basis points this half. If you kind of think back to when we had the issues in the second half of FY 2023, we sort of said at the time it was somewhere between 70 and 80 basis points, so we've made a really strong movement to bring that back, and that's been done through a combination of tech and operational controls.
I would say we are expecting to see another improvement in H2 of this year, but the quantums that we're going to start to see are not going to be as significant as the ones that you've seen for the last two halves. We are very conscious that in this current external environment, it's pretty much a key issue for every retailer we speak to, and I think we'd probably be one of the few that is actually continuing to bring the number down at this point instead of it creeping up.
We are going to continue to roll out tech where it makes sense. We've got over half the fleet now, which is back or better than its pre-COVID level. And so it's really that sort of rump of the very challenging stores that we're now leaning into, many of which have already had quite substantial improvements. But we definitely aren't allowing this to get the better of us. We have a very strong plan in place and continue to push forward. Maybe, Matt, you can talk about some of the things that we continue to work on.
Thanks, Leah. And Tom, there's never an end in retail. There's just a reset and a go again. And we've definitely got the momentum with the teams in the focus on loss in the three areas that I've outlined previously, which is technology, process, and data. We are really driving hard on completing that tech rollout, but also, as you would have seen, our recent Investor Day , new areas of innovation, so we continue to pilot things like anti-sweep shelves. We've rolled out one-way gates into another 150 stores, so there is still a pipeline of initiatives that we're deploying through that process, and we'll continue to do so where we get a return.
The end-to-end process is definitely a dial-up and a real focus around our range distribution, also how we can improve not just loss through theft, but that waste and markdown component that Leah talked to in the introduction through data, and there's still opportunity for improvement there, and also, we have dedicated resources in store now focused upon store process and execution. I have also transitioned that portfolio back across into the store operations team for even closer management and leadership.
And then finally, on data, we continue to see benefit where data acts as a really wide radar and net across multiple processes in our business and can show us gaps where we can then go and close out further and find improvements. So there is a big challenge that's not going away. We've got great momentum and the right team on it, and we'll continue to work through those three areas with absolute focus.
But just to reiterate, we will see an improvement in H2, and our expectation is that we're going to exit FY 2025 in a better position than we exited FY 202 4, and we're going to keep working on it.
Great. Great. If I can ask a second one, I mean, I think everyone's looking forward to the Witron and Ocado implementation costs dropping out in 2026. It'd just be interesting to hear some commentary around the benefits of those investments in '26 and where we kind of are likely to see that, whether it's through kind of sales, GM, CODB. So totally get the implementation costs, but just the actual benefit of the investment coming through.
Yeah, great, Tom. Great question. Thank you. And look, firstly, let me just reiterate. The implementation costs this year will be around AUD 130 million as we guide. And then you are absolutely right. Those fall away, obviously, in FY 202 6. I think when we look at some of the ADCs, it's probably worth just stepping through a little bit of the timeline of where the ADCs have sort of come online. And clearly, we've started seeing some of the benefits from our Redbank acquisition in this half or Redbank implementation in this half.
We expect as Kemps Creek dials up, and we've only really transitioned the final stores in January, for example, or this year, and closing the remainder of those legacy ADCs in January. So we would then expect the Kemps Creek element to sort of start kicking in in FY 202 6. And most of the benefits that you'll see from the ADCs will actually find its way through really the gross margin line, right? So that's where our logistics and supply chain costs will come through. I think in relation to the CFCs, again, our focus in the CFCs this half has been, as Leah indicated, transitioning the stores, which completed ahead of our busy Christmas trade period. And we're really pleased in terms of how they transitioned really well and performing.
I think with the CFCs, again, while we won't be calling out specific benefits with the CFCs going forward, what you will expect is the sales through the CFCs will come through as part of our normal own channel offering through our sales line. You will see costs not only through our gross margin line, but also in the CODB line sort of going forward. Just to remind you of the guidance that we gave in relation to the CFCs, there was AUD 70 million of implementation costs this year, which again will fall away in FY 202 6. Now, the majority of those implementation transition and our running costs were in this first half. There's a small tail in the second half.
And we did guide, if you recall. We did indicate that there would be AUD 40 million of negative earnings or negative EBITDA as we work through the CFCs. Because as you know, these things love volume. And the majority of that will be predominantly in sort of the second half as the CFCs kick in. But we do expect those earnings to improve as volumes improve. And we're really positive about where the volumes are going at the moment. They're actually well ahead of the rest of the nation from a home delivery perspectiv e.
Right. That's really clear. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from Shaun Cousins with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, Leah and team. Maybe just a question on gross margins, up some 77 basis points. You called out the stock loss, which Tom asked about, and then tobacco, and then the retail media and Witron benefits from the ADCs. But can you just talk a bit about how Coles funded the increased mix and promotions as the consumer's more value focused? That seems to have tripped up Woolworths. Is Coles leveraging benefits from improved alignment with suppliers, range rationalization? Is it fewer, better promotions, or other issues? It just seems like you seem to be meeting the market on value, but it's not damaging your gross margin. So curious to understand how that's happening, please.
Yeah, thanks, Shaun . So maybe if I just run through some of the gross margin moving parts, and then I might get Anna to just talk a little bit about sort of promotional intensity, which for us, it was pretty consistent, actually, quarter on quarter. So sort of not a lot of new news there. But you're absolutely right. In the gross margin lines, there's 39 basis points from loss 22 from tobacco. You've got some benefits coming through from the Redbank ADC. You've got the gross margin components of the Simplify and Save to Invest.
There's some benefits from Coles 360 coming through there from that growth. And then I would say we have a number of other initiatives that we have been driving in the merchandise space. And you heard me talk about some of them in my introductory comments around the use of data and store-specific ranging, store-specific space. Those technologies are helping us to really optimize the range in store, and that is helping us to get some improvement in margin. And then I would say that we're just constantly working with suppliers on optimizing the customer offer overall.
From our perspective, we just view that as that's BAU. That's just what retailers do, and those conversations will be ongoing and will continue. Now, obviously, all of that then is somewhat offset by the investments we make into value. We have made investments in price in the half, but promotion specifically, I might get Anna to maybe just touch o n.
Yeah. Morning, Shaun . I think I'd say promotional participation remained pretty static quarter on quarter. But actually, as we've talked about consistently over the last couple of quarters, we are seeing the customer behavior continue towards more value seeking. We've actually been working strategically now for some time on how we manage this and how we deliver for customers through execution and simplification of the promo offer. So that actually makes it easier for customers, and we've been really focused on that.
We are continuing to focus on promotional optimization, but really to ensure that promotions are where it matters most for customers. Fewer, bigger, executed with excellence for customers. It actually seems to be really resonating. Actually, we've coupled this with a broader category strategy to ensure that we've got the right entry price points in all categories, coupled with strong range tiering across good, better, and best to make sure we've got value at every price point across the right ranges for customers. It's been pretty consistent, and we're very focused on the long-term strategy we've been working to for some time now.
I would probably just reiterate what I said at the Q1, Shaun , which is our promotional participation, so promotional intensity this quarter was about the same as it was in Q2, which was about the same as what it was Q3 last year and just a touch-up on what it was in Q4 last year. So really, we aren't seeing that number move around a whole heap, which I think goes to the point of we're really optimizing the offer that we've got out there for customers and focusing on putting the promotions and the price investments on the lines that actually matter.
Fantastic. My second question is just around the AUD 120 million sales and AUD 20 million EBIT uplift you got from the industrial action issues at Woolworths. Is the plan to retain these sales and hence that high incremental margin, or has Coles already started to see those sales go back to Woolworths in the last two months? So I'm just curious around, should we expect that this 120 to 20 million EBIT uplift reverse in the first half of 2026, or is the ambition for Coles to actually retain that, and have you retained it to date?
Well, it's a great question, Shaun . I mean, we would love to retain it all. We certainly were very active when the disruption first started in terms of getting some dedicated team members out to store to make sure that we were signing customers up to Flybuys and making sure they were very aware of the benefits that that brought. And we did some personalized offers to target new customers that were coming into store.
So I do think we have, well, we have seen continued benefit of that as we have gone into Q3. But I think the reality is that we won't be able to retain all of it because 50% of a customer's choice is made on convenience. And for those customers that have to drive a lot further to get to our stores, they were willing to do it when there wasn't any stock on the shelf at their preferred store. But that's probably not going to continue on into the future. It's really the customers where they're choosing right or left in a shopping center to pick us or a competitor. And then I think definitely online where we've definitely seen some retention.
Fantastic. Thanks, Leah. Thanks, Anna.
Your next question comes from David Errington with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Morning, Leah. Morning, Charlie. Maybe this is probably Charlie and Matt's domain, Leah, but I want to delve into following on from Shaun' s question about the AUD 120 million and the AUD 20 million of EBIT uplift. It's really impressive, based upon Charlie's comments, that your ADCs weren't really fully operational. I'm trying to get an understanding during that period that you had this big surge in demand, how you're actually able to achieve that really strong positive performance. Was it from the ADCs, or was it from the old DCs? Can you give us, and it's probably Matt, give us bring to life what actually you did? Because what I'm trying to get an understanding of is clearly with a AUD 120 million increase in sales and a AUD 20 million increase in EBIT, that's a very strong operating performance in a period where you're under duress or stress.
How you actually were able to deliver it, and I'm trying to get an understanding of, is this obviously gives us a lot more confidence that the returns from these ADCs are going to be meaningful when they do kick in 100%. But if Matt could give us an idea as to what actually happened, what capacity utilization were the ADCs at? Did you have to draw upon the other DCs? How much are you running dual duplicates? If you could just give us a bit of idea as to what happened during that period, that'd be really, really good.
Sure. Thanks, David. So you're right in framing this with December is a very busy and a very difficult time of year, not just for the supply chain, but also for the store teams. We're all prepared months in advance to execute a certain plan, and that plan changed. I think the first point is the agility of our network and what we shared with the Investor Day around the interconnected components that we've now got between the systems we've implemented in transport, replenishment, automated DCs, and CFCs really are integrated and can move very, very quickly. Before I talk about the automation itself, it's important to note you do need a brilliant team of people who are well-established, not just in terms of the ADCs, but also transport and our third-party partners.
It's a credit to the strength of the operations, the capability, and the experience that those teams have got, because you do need to then have a plan that can absorb that volume really quickly. The automation itself has been rolled out in a very steady, considered manner and has been very successfully deployed as we've transitioned both Redbank and move-through Kemps Creek.
This is really the first time we've had a spike to digest in a very short period of time. And the Witron system, both in Redbank and Kemps Creek, was utilized to supplement volume required for Victoria, and it did not miss a beat. The ability to absorb a significant increase in volume and the way in which that automation can scale was absolutely magnificent. And the team's ability to then run that beyond where we had planned at very short notice shows you the capacity, and it also shows you the flexibility of that system. So we were super, super pleased with it. I think the other point to note here is that the CFC in Vic probably had a larger increase in a shorter window and was also able to digest that volume and still execute an incredible customer proposition at the right pace with the team.
And that was going through a period from the back end of November where we'd only just completed the transitions of both those CFCs. So it's very, very early days operationally. And it shows you the resilience of the processes and the resilience of that automation too. Kemps, in particular, in New South Wales hadn't even finished the ramp up to the stores when it was utilized to put through that volume. So look, on the whole, I would say very difficult time of year to absorb that volume. Credit to the teams that we've got in place and the thoroughness that we upskilled and trained our teams in utilizing the assets. But the assets themselves were outstanding through that period, and we're absolutely the difference in the outcome.
Beat your expectations, Matt?
It did, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So Charlie, when are you going to upgrade the market in 2026 and 2027 from the benefit of these things?
Tongue in cheek.
We'll take that on notice, David. Thank you.
Thanks, David. Thanks.
Second question. Can you bring to life - and I don't know whether this is Matt again - but I was really positively surprised by the Simplify savings of 157. I know it's 250 annual. Was that ahead of schedule, the 157, or is it just timing? And can you bring to life where that 157 came in? Because I thought that was a real highlight. Other than the performance of the ADCs and the CFCs, other than the performance of that, because that was a real concern of Coles, but clearly big tick there. The next one is the Simplify and Save benefits. That was positive to me. Can you bring to life? Are you ahead there, or is it just timing? And can you bring to life what you actually did to get that?
Thanks. David, I might start, but I'll get Matt to actually give a fair bit of color in terms of some of the specific things that we actually did deliver from an SSI perspective. And David, as you know, this is an always-on program, right? At the first four years coming out of the merger, we had a billion-dollar program, which we delivered over AUD 1 billion over that four years. And in August 2023, we announced another billion-dollar program. And we generally target year on year, every year, about a AUD 250 million plus or minus amount in savings. And look, pleasingly, on two fronts. One is to date in the last 18 months, we have delivered over AUD 400 million of benefit, which is a real positive.
But we do expect, as I said earlier, plus or minus around AUD 250 million in a year. That being said, we did have an excellent first half. So it was a very strong first half. And a lot of that comes down to just the timing and nature of some of the programs. Look, while we do expect the second half to be good, I would say that we would expect benefits in the second half to be slightly lower and moving more to that sort of average over the four-year program that we've previously guided. And with that, I'll probably hand it to Matt just to take us through some of the color of some of the projects that we undertook that delivered.
Yeah. Thanks, Charlie. And this is in year, there's a lot of activity that we've executed in the first half. And it's in similar areas that I shared again previously. So, probably four worth commenting on. That smarter rostering capability that we talked about previously, utilizing data through Palantir, our partner there, on tasks and also team members' desired hours, that continues to drive incremental improvements. Our inventory management processes, where we are using data to reduce the amount of activity that doesn't really provide a return in store and use a way of guiding team members to that value add, particularly around maintaining stock on hand, that combined with the improvements we've seen coming out of the ADCs as well as reduce the volume of work there, that's continued to drive benefits.
And then the third one is our supply chain store optimization, not only delivery frequency, but being able to consolidate some of our slow and fast networks together and think about what's the right optimization for availability and transport costs within the warehouse. And then finally, and this one's interesting because it ticks a number of boxes.
We finished rolling out in our fresh business what we call the ultra-fast channel. And that essentially brings the really short shelf life products in more frequently, doesn't really take into account minimum order quantities, so it isn't constrained by order sizes. And that means it moves faster, more efficiently, but it also provides better availability, freshness, and reduced waste and markdown. So we're really getting in now in SSI to some of those ongoing operational improvements that are ticking the customer box as well as the cost box. We'll continue to work through those different streams in the future quarters and years as well.
Thank you, Matt. Thanks, Charlie. Good job. Good job, Leah. Thank you.
Thanks, David.
Your next question comes from Michael Simotas with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. First question from me is on e-commerce. Growing at a pretty rapid clip in percentage terms, but when you look at the absolute dollar growth of your e-commerce business, it's actually much slower than your major competitors. It does suggest that even with Ocado starting to ramp up and the benefits from fulfillment in store on the non-Ocado orders, that you are still losing share in e-commerce. Just interested in when you think you can pull the lever on driving sales through those facilities and whether you do, in fact, want to gain share online. I'd like to relate that back to the AUD 40 million EBITDA drag that you're expecting from this year. What needs to happen for that drag to diminish and eventually turn positive to get a return on the investments.
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. I'll start. Matt might have some bits as well. Look, I think we were pleased with the performance. You've got to remember the half that we've just completed. The big focus was transferring that volume into the CFCs, and that was really completed at the end of November. We didn't have a huge focus here in marketing the CFCs, marketing the proposition. What we were really focused on was, let's get the volume in, and then let's get it operationally performing the way that we wanted it to perform.
We needed to make sure that all of the assumptions that we had around what we thought was going to be delivered and the way it played out actually worked. And we've obviously had to lean in on a number of things already to nuance and flex a little bit to make sure that we're happy with that. And we see quite a few opportunities still to continue to refine that as we go forward. And you should expect that as we start to go into the latter part of the second half, that we will start to do some more marketing around the CFC offer. Now we have some confidence around it and look to grow. We also want to do that in a sustainable way, though.
So what we want to do is actually build that volume in a way that we can actually maintain the customer experience, maintain the perfect order rates that we're seeing, keep the freshness at the really high levels that it's at. And so for us, this is about a sustainable growth over time. It's not necessarily pulling a lever to say all guns blazing going forward now on CFCs. We will want to grow so that we can digest it as we do to maintain the customer experience. I think to the point around the AUD 40 million, so the big thing is we need to grow that volume over time. This is a significant piece of infrastructure.
And just like when you build a new store, it takes time for that new store to mature, which is why when we do evaluations on stores, we're looking at the three-year number because that's generally the time it takes us to mature it. The CFCs are really no different. It's going to take time for us to grow into that. And actually, we wouldn't want to be sitting here on day one with all the capacity completely full because we'd have nothing to actually grow into. And so as we continue to build that volume in the CFCs, that will improve the economics and get us to the point of profitability as we move forward from there. Did you have anything you wanted to build on that?
Oh, I think my build layer would be we are two months post-peak that had all the disruption that the CFC absorbed. So we're very, very early days. But the customer metrics from the CFCs are very, very strong. And our overall NPS in e-com continues to improve and is very strong. Our expansion of new propositions with the window that's wrapped shows that we are covering the bases that customers want across all their different shopping missions and doing a great job of it so far. So there is a lot going on in e-commerce and digital on top of the CFCs, and we're really confident we've got the right plan to continue to grow through that part of our business. But it is still an omnichannel customer with an omnichannel operation at the end of the day.
Yeah. And Michael, we are growing strong double-digit growth across all the channels of our e-commerce offering, right? So we are seeing very, very good growth across not only the CFCs, but across all the shopping missions that we offer across our e-commerce offering.
Yep. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And then just on Liquor, appreciated it's a fairly short period and the base comps get pretty easy, but that's a fairly dramatic turnaround in the sales trajectory early in the half. How much of that do you think is maybe the market getting a little bit better versus better execution, or have you had any kind of strategic change in the way you're going to market with pricing and value in Liquor?
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Michael. So just on the number in terms of the trading update, so if you're on page 13 of the release, there is the 3.8% number. But I think the more relevant number for the underlying is the number that's actually in the footnote on that page, which is the 2.9%, just because that normalizes for the timing of New Year's Day, which is obviously a very significant event in our business. But having said that, the 2.9% is still an improvement on trend. I think the market was a little bit stronger, particularly in January, where we saw some strength continue on, but really we saw a pickup in the market in second quarter on first quarter. So there is a little bit of help from the market.
Whether that continues, that remains to be seen. But our focus is on, regardless of whatever market we're in, making sure that we're winning share. If we're going to be winning share in the market, we need to make sure that we're trading the business day to day, week to week with the most compelling customer offer possible. I think that's our main focus over the short term, medium term, long term. I think you see some evidence of that in the second quarter sales release because from the perspective of the second quarter, we talked about really strong performance in loyalty, where that Summer of Flybuys campaign was the centerpiece of our trade plan through Christmas. We talked about winning events where we did a really good job at stepping up our performance in key events, particularly Cyber Week year on year. Then to your question around value, we have made some changes to our value proposition across the business.
And what that has meant is that we've changed our promotional program to have fewer but more impactful promotions at the same time as delivering a better shelf price for customers. And so all that has led to some improvements in our price perception, which is a really good step on. So they're all things that were occurring during the second quarter, and we expect those things to build momentum as we continue to move forward. I think then across the medium term, you see some examples in the release of what we're doing on retail media. So throughout the quarter, across the entire network, we rolled out an in-store audio proposition that not just provides a better in-store environment for customers, but it's also an asset that we're able to commercialize with suppliers. We kicked off the rollout of digital screens.
So from a retail media perspective, we're putting more assets in place that will allow us to grow income over the short, medium, and long term. And then from the perspective of working across what can be a big benefit for the business for the long term is what we've done with the launch of the Banner Consolidation pilot in South Australia, which if we roll that forward, that'll be the largest single customer change that we've ever made in Coles Liquor. And to date, the pilot's going well, and we'll talk to you later in the year about next steps. So I think it's a combination of all those things that have led to the better performance.
Thanks, Michael.
Your next question comes from Ben Gilbert with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Morning, team. J ust first question for me, maybe to you, Charlie, just how do we think—thanks for calling out D&A and Net interest—but just how do we think about the run rate in terms of the step-up for full year for D&A and Net interest? For D&A, should we be thinking that at a group level is going to be around two billion because there's a bit of a annualization plus step-up? And then similarly, presumably Net interest steps up sequentially again, half on half?
Yeah. So thanks for the question, Ben. But let me first address interest. So if we look at interest, clearly there's a couple of things. It's made up of two elements, obviously, which is the debt element, the external debt, and the AASB 16 lease interest. We've actually provided a breakdown in the release, so you can actually see the detail in the release of the two items there. As you did know, we did have a step-up between first half 2025 and first half 2024.
When we look at that, what really drove that, the majority of the increase was really the ADCs and the CFCs coming online. Obviously, that drove up lease interest from an AASB 16 perspective, but also a fall away in what was able to be capitalized as well. Then on the debt side of things, if we're just doing a PCP perspective, we had the AUD 600 million note, which we issued in November 2023. You had pretty much the full half of that in this first half.
I think the best way to look at interest at the moment would be looking at on consecutive periods. So my view is if you look at the best way to look at it, the second half would be we had the major step-up in the first half that is not going to be repeated in the second half because we don't have any other projects like the ADCs or CFCs of that size and scale coming in from an interest perspective. So again, first half had the step-up, don't expect that into the second half. I think, as I said in my opening, I mean, we need to look at these financing costs, really, and depreciation as well in the totality of what we actually have invested and what those investments are driving.
They're driving very good earnings and very strong earnings on both an EBIT, EBITDA, and NPAT basis. From a depreciation perspective, look, the best way to look at depreciation is, again, very similar. We had the step-up in depreciation really from these CFCs and the ADCs as we actually flagged back in August. Now, when you look at depreciation, it's typically 50/50, first half, second half. So I would look at, had the step-up in the first half, you won't see that same step-up in the second half. And again, perhaps look at it from a consecutive period perspective as well.
That's helpful. Just second one for me. You guys have obviously done a great job around gross margins through a number of initiatives. Just interested, there was obviously a lot of chatter a while ago around terms and when you guys were collecting your fair share from suppliers. It sounds like, Anna, you've been out having a bunch of meetings and some big asks on margins from terms from suppliers given the great momentum you guys got in the business. Just interested in how that is progressing, how material an opportunity do you see some of those terms negotiations? Because it sounds like hundreds of basis points being discussed. Just interested in how they're going, how that runway looks, and then similarly with this range consolidation, what the opportunity there is to further expand gross margin.
Yeah. Thanks for the question, this is Leah . Look, I think as we talk through, or I talk through when we sort of ran through the GP build, we would view it as just BAU to continue to have conversations with our supply base on optimizing range, optimizing the customer offer, and we are going to continue to do that. We're not really going to give a lot of detail in terms of the specificity around those conversations, and I hope you can appreciate that from a sort of commercial sensitivity perspective.
I might just add on that. I think, Ben, where we are is we are looking to work really collaboratively with our key partners and really think longer term and drive really significant step change in our customer offer that works on both sides. So that's the conversations we've been having with suppliers around how do we continue to get further ahead in terms of what we're looking at in the future and how we really continue to accelerate our customer proposition together.
Fantastic. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Caleb Wheatley with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Leah, Charlie, and team. Just to follow up on the e-commerce front, noting again there's some pretty strong growth from a penetration perspective, but still able to increase margins. I know there's a few moving parts, obviously, with ADCs and the CFCs coming online, etc., but it seems like at the moment, yeah, growing e-com sales and growing margins in the supermarket business. Can you provide perhaps an updated view on your thoughts on the e-com outlook and implications for margin from here?
Well, I mean, during the half, the e-com business was a positive contributor to EBIT, although it's not as strong a contributor as the stores are, but it is positive. And what we really think about is that all of those customers who shop with us online, the vast majority of them also shop with us in store. So we really do treat it as an omnichannel offer of the whole of the supermarket end to end. And as such, we look at our plans that we have around gross margin from an end-to-end supermarket perspective as well.
So when we're doing work on loss, when we're doing work through ADCs and Simplify and Save to Invest, all of that is with a view to what are our expectations around the continued contribution of e-com in there. And so the plan is over time that e-com margins do improve and we get to a point ultimately where we're ambivalent about which channel the customer chooses to shop with us in. And the CFCs are actually a core plank within that plan longer term.
Great. That's clear. Thank you. And just on the retail media front and Coles 360, obviously big focus on Investor Day last year. I know it was mentioned in the gross margin tailwind. It seems like it's pretty limited compared to some of those other items, at least at this stage. How are you thinking about the benefits to come from Coles 360 from here? Should we expect that to be a bigger portion of tailwind, at least in isolation, as we look forward now?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think we obviously did talk about it a lot at Investor Day. We think it's a huge opportunity. We looked to some of the case studies overseas, like the Loblaws and the Walmarts, the Krogers, and what they've been able to achieve in that space. And we feel that that is an opportunity that we definitely can capture, as Amanda spoke to on the day.
I think I did say at the full year result, we do expect that in sort of the early years of developing this, that the growth rate probably will move around a bit depending on what our trade plan is within the period. And definitely this half, it's sort of lower than where we've been previously, but it was still double-digit growth. I think the important thing from my perspective is that we're investing in the underlying proposition in terms of the assets that we've got available to offer to suppliers, but also the measurement tools. And so if I have a look at what we've done in the half, we've added in Liquor, and Michael spoke to a couple of the assets that are getting rolled out in that space that are monetizable in that space.
If I think about from an onsite perspective, we did add new digital assets into the onsite suite. That included things like shoppable banners and shoppable video, which the shoppable video in particular is proving quite popular with suppliers. And then we have started our expansion into moving into the offsite channel. So there's really good progress in terms of building out that asset base that we need for the future. And then I would say on the measurement front, we've put some good tools in place. We're continuing to take feedback from suppliers on how they're working. And I think we're going to be very proactive in continuing to evolve that to meet the needs of the advertisers that are working with us. But we're excited. We think it's a big opportunity, but it's early days for us, and there's a lot to do.
Great. We'll watch this space. Thanks, Leah. Appreciate it.
Your next question comes from Adrian Lemme with Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Leah, Charlie, and team, and congrats on the result. I just wanted to explore the non-food categories where you've seen Supermarkets have seen increasing competition from non-food market players. Can you talk to how the sales growth has been in those categories and whether you've had to give up some gross margin to respond to that competition, please?
Hi, Adrian. It's Anna here. I might take that one. I think it's fair to say there's no doubt that it is a very competitive market, and we are seeing much more competition from non-food retailers, whether that be Amazon, the pharmacy channels, or Bunnings. But it also probably isn't a surprise to you that now for some time we've been looking at a broader set of competitors, both from an indices and a range perspective. And we have also looked at some of our range architecture and pricing, and we have been making changes where we think we need to compete in that space. We've also made changes to some of the pack sizes.
I think it's fair to say we're keeping a very, very close eye on this and working out how do we navigate and what are we going to do to continue to accelerate that area. We're also very focused on looking at value beyond price and thinking about how our proposition can really offer more value, whether that be CFCs, whether that be our e-com channel more broadly, or the value through loyalty. We're taking a kind of a really holistic view of it, but very fair to say it's competitive, and we are looking at a much broader range of competitors than we have before and are responding with where we think is appropriate, and we'll continue to keep a very close eye on it.
Thanks, Anna. And are you finding then that it's not a material drag to your revenue growth? It's kind of performing more or less in line with other categories?
It's performing where we expected it to perform. I think it's fair to say, and I think it's certainly an area we would like to double down and focus on into the future.
Understood. And can I just ask one more question, please, related to the increased ranging in the CFCs? I think it was mentioned as a 25% range increase. Where do y ou guys see that getting to over the next 12 months or so, and which categories do you expect to see the biggest uplift in range, please?
Yeah, so the increase that you've seen, that's on that page, that's that 25% versus what a typical in-store range would be. The way we've achieved that, Adrian, is basically we've just lifted the full state range and put every product into the CFC, which means on average you get a much higher number than what you see in a typical store. It also means that you get a lot of your international foods ranges in kosher, Chinese, Indian, which aren't in every single one of our stores in the network. We do have a smallish range that we started with, which is truly CFC exclusive and you won't find in any of our stores across the network.
I think what we're doing in the early days here is taking a lot of learning from how do we actually expose that to customers. I think one of the biggest challenges with online stores that have very broad ranges is how do you enable the customer to discover it? We've got a bit of a learning process to go through there, but then also thinking about what are the most sort of powerful places to play. Actually in the non-food space, that is likely to be one of the areas where we can put a lot more range than what we've got in store to better compete with some of those other non-supermarket competitors that Anna was just talking about.
That's very helpful. Thank you, Leah.
Your next question comes from Lisa Deng with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. I've got two questions. The first one is a little bit more of a big picture question. If we look at the two supermarket leaders in Australia, it looks like the strategies are converging. We've definitely stepped up on digital and omnichannel and loyalty, where I think they are now a bit more focused on value and home brand or own brand. On top of all the external competition, including I think what Anna just talked about, like the pharmacies and Amazon, if we just look over the next couple of years, are we really just running hard to kind of keep market share steady, or what are one or two key pillars of our latest strategy that we think will really drive share?
Thanks. Well, thanks for the question, Lisa. Obviously, I won't comment on our competitor or comparisons to them. I'll let you make assessments on that. We continue to see, as we've talked about a lot, that there's a lot of benefits that we can derive and growth that we can derive by focusing in on the core. We are very value-focused. It's the number one thing that we think about in the customer proposition at the moment. And I think we're pleased that we're sort of going back-to-back years here where we're making market share gains, which is pleasing.
We also think there's a lot more work to be done in the fresh space, and that's areas that we can grow into there. And actually, non-food that Anna's just covered is an area where we think there's potential to drive sales growth as well. So at this stage, we have a lot on the go. We've got big transformation projects to land, and what we're really focused on is how do we execute brilliantly to continue to take share in the core business.
Got it. And the second one is more a follow-up on the D&A and the interest step-up due to the ADC and CFC. As we look beyond 2025 and especially the CFC volumes ramp, do we think of the D&A and interest costs as a fixed cost so that there is significant leverage, or is there a mechanism in there that actually is more variable to the volume or sales of the CFC or both?
Yeah. Thanks, Lisa. Appreciate the question. Look, firstly, we're not obviously going to give a forecast in terms of FY 202 6 and beyond. That would be appropriate. I think the best way I answered the question earlier on both interest and in depreciation, look at them as consecutive halves. So there was a step-up, which we called out back in August would happen in the first half for this year.
That step-up predominantly all occurred essentially in the first half. We don't expect that step-up going forward into the second half. That has already occurred. We obviously put on the balance sheet, the automated facilities, and explained in terms of the interest step-up. So in that regard, my view would be look at depreciation as 50/50, first half, second half, and the financing cost. We've had that step-up, and that would be a guide for what the second half could look like.
And 2026? Fi xed versus variable?
Lisa, I'm not going to give a forecast in terms of FY 202 6 and beyond.
Thank you.
Thanks, Lisa.
Your next question comes from Craig Woolford with MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Leah. Just a first question, if I could, about the earnings growth that the supermarket division achieved in that first half. Bear with me. I might throw a few numbers at you, but obviously a good result on an underlying basis where the ex-transformation EBIT was up 11%. If I try to apportion that, it looks like a decent portion, like close to 8 percentage points of the growth was from theft, the strike benefits, and then I assume there was the Ocado operating cost as a headwind.
So I'm getting a figure of about a 5.6% growth in earnings, excluding the reduction in stock loss and strikes and Ocado, which is a decent result. But just like to understand what are the puts and takes in delivering that sort of result. You've got the ADCs that should be starting to benefit, particularly Redbank, and then the Simplify to Save program .
Thanks, Craig. I'm not going to try and do math with you on the call, but I'm happy to talk about some high-level things in there. I mean, I think that first of all, it sort of feels from your comments that you're kind of trying to reverse the total loss, the stock loss component sort of out as a non-underlying component. I mean, we reserve the adjustments that we make to go from reported to underlying for very much transformational one-off initiatives. We would view anything to do with stock loss as retailer core knitting that needs to be done and definitely BAU.
And as I said earlier, I think we're starting to get to a point where versus others in the market, we're actually in a very favorable position in terms of what we're able to achieve at the moment because of the investments that we've made. I think we've sort of already run through the GP key drivers in there, but in terms of how I really think about the other component of the earnings line, which is sort of the CODB, when you look at the step-up that we achieved from the D&A, that largely explains all of the expansion that we had in the CODB.
Actually, what we've managed to achieve in there is that the cost offsets we've got from the Simplify and Save to Invest program have largely offset the inflation that we've seen on our other cost lines, which we look at that and think that that's an excellent result in the current market. Our view would be that it's a healthy makeup of earnings growth in there, which is driven by great cost control.
It's driven by a number of levers in the GP line that we've been working on very hard to shift. Going forward, some of those are going to shift and move around a bit. Loss will probably get smaller, but ADCs will get bigger. Actually, part of our job as management is to make sure that we're creating a pathway through where we're continuing to be able to deliver earnings growth by pulling the right levers at the right time.
Yeah, understood. Yeah. It's trying to get a sense of the underlying given the theft benefits. I know it'll be a pursuit, but it might be harder to continue or repeat in FY 202 6.
Craig, I think we've given you a view of what underlying is in terms of how we've presented the results. It's the reason why we actually do present the results, both from an underlying and excluding also significant items and the like. What we've tried to do is be transparent. Here are all the moving parts and form a view of what we believe underlying looks like.
And actually, what we're really trying to help with is as you go through to FY 202 6 and those implementation costs sort of drop away, what would you kind of be expecting to see as some of the underlying drivers in there? So hopefully that's helpful.
Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. And then the guidance for CapEx infers that the 2H 2025 CapEx will be about AUD 750 million compared with first half of AUD 550 million. Yeah, I'm intrigued as to why the step-up, given there's no or there should be a lot less associated with things like Ocado or ADC. So where's the step-up in CapEx sort of going to?
Yeah. So look, again, if you recall, we guided the market in October post the announcement of our Victorian ADC coming online that we would expect it to move from AUD 1.2 billion to AUD 1.3 billion. So there is some spend this year in relation to the Victorian ADC, which we mentioned back in October would be part of that second half number. But let me step you through. If you recall, there are four real components to CapEx. Excluding historically in the last few years, the ADCs and the CFCs, we've been running at about AUD 1 billion, plus about AUD 300 million for the ADCs and the CFCs. And when you look at the makeup of what that has been, store renewals have been around that sort of AUD 300-AUD 320 million range.
We have had maintenance CapEx of around AUD 300 million a year, plus or minus. And certainly investments in things like growth, which has really been our Supermarkets' growth, and together with sort of digital and technology sort of investments have been to oscillate between that sort of mid-2s to etc. And then the efficiency projects are the things that we focus on, some of the SSI type initiatives that Matt spoke about earlier, but also that's where you would see things like the ADC sort of spend through. So our profile really hasn't changed, but there is an amount for the Victorian ADCs that will come through this half.
Thanks for that, Charlie.
Your next question comes from Bryan Raymond with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Firstly, just on the CFCs, I just wanted to get a feel for how that's impacted behavior in Sydney and Melbourne since they've opened. I noticed overall online penetration moderated slightly. Sorry, can you hear me?
We can hear you, Bryan. Yeah.
Yeah. Great. Sorry. I noticed online penetration moderated a bit sequentially, but that's seasonally sort of the case in prior years. I just wanted to understand, given Sydney and Melbourne are obviously key markets and the CFCs opening prior to Christmas, did you notice a big step-up in online penetration, or is this going to be a bit of a slower burn? And I just wanted to get a feel for how many stores are actually delivering still next-day deliveries in Sydney and Melbourne versus what was the case prior to the CFCs opening as well? Thank you.
All of the next-day delivery has been moved into the CFCs in Sydney and Melbourne. The stores now are focused on click and collect, the Rapid program, and same-day. That's very much the focus of what stores are fulfilling at the moment. In terms of your question, what did we sort of see in the latter part of the year? I think it broadly sort of took the shape that we would typically see around Christmas. So as you mentioned, the seasonal nature of it, you do tend to see online come off slightly, sort of that last week of Christmas and then the few weeks after.
People tend to like to do their big Christmas shop and get a lot of those sort of fresh items in store. And then you tend to see a lot of travel in the early part of January. And so when people are away from home, typically they're not putting in the online orders that they regularly would with us week to week. So that's how kind of the seasonal piece works. As I said before, we did no marketing as the CFCs. We literally transitioned them in.
And then if you were clever as a customer, you could work out that it might be coming from CFC. But I had to, in a lot of cases, be explaining to people how to do it. So we weren't consciously going out and trying to build that volume as we will do now going forward. But despite that, we actually saw really great growth coming out of the CFCs. And we are putting that down to the fact that customers found that the offer was very strong. They got high fulfillment rates. It was usually on time. The fresh was really good quality.
So that experience, particularly in Victoria, where there were customers that hadn't shopped with us for some time and came to us during the disruption, that stickiness was probably stronger than we were expecting in the online phase because they were well, the feedback, I think, has been they were pleasantly surprised by how their proposition had stepped up. Trying to be there. Now I can't hear you if you're speaking.
Your next question comes from Richard Barwick of CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, Leah. Just a couple of quick ones from me. Just to clarify these supply chain implementation costs. So Charlie, you used the word or the term a couple of times, fall away in FY 202 6. Can I just confirm exactly what you mean by that? Are they going to zero in 2026, or will there be some sort of residual costs evident in 2026?
Really simply, Richard, this year we guided to around 130, at 70 for the CFCs and 60 for the ADCs. That 130 goes away to zero in FY 202 6.
Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. And then, Leah, one for you. With shoppers obviously focused on value, have you seen an increase in your shoppers' cross-shopping into other retailers?
Yeah, we have. We've talked about this quite a bit, actually, with media. So if we went back a couple of years, Richard, typically an average consumer in our stores would have been shopping at between three and four retailers to fulfill their grocery needs across the course of a month. Today, that stands at seven to eight retailers. So it's pretty much doubled in terms of the number of retailers that they're using. And that includes fresh independents that sit out the front of our stores.
It includes the likes of Chemist Warehouse, Bunnings for pet and home care. It includes Amazon, as well as the other supermarket players, so we're certainly even seeing more cross-shop between Supermarkets and the use of the weekly catalog to work out where you go to get which item, so it is very competitive out there, and that's the reason that we're so focused on making sure the value proposition is strong week to week.
Your next question comes from Phil Kimber with E&P Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I just wanted to ask a question. I had a look. I was going through the balance sheet, and I know there's a lot of things that move around in there, but it looks like the provisions have dropped quite a bit on the six months ago. I'm just wondering if there's anything in there, like sometimes you get workers' comp insurance movements and rebalancing. Is there anything in there for that? I just wanted to check because the other line was a little bit of a lower cost than I assumed.
In terms of the balance sheet, there was really nothing unusual that sort of gone through. Clearly, the final element of the provisions that we had taken up for the ADCs, if you recall, back when we announced them earlier, would have cycled through the balance sheet because they have now gone away. But apart from that, there should be no other real movements in any unusual movements in the provisions in the balance sheet.
So Phil, we did close the last of the two DCs and would have paid out the final amounts that sat in those provisions that were taken back in 2018.
Your next question comes from Nicole Penny with Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you very much. From the previous results, you had a fair increase in Flybuys customers cashing in on points citing cost of living pressures. Could you determine if those customers were return customers during the period and maintained the absolute level of basket cost, please?
So thanks for the question, Nicole. I mean, the rollout of the AUD 10 off at POS, which is, I think, what you're referring to, has been very popular with customers. We have seen a very substantial step-up year on year in terms of the number of customers and the quantum that they're redeeming from those Flybuys points is one of the things we think is really helping with value perception at the moment, is rolling that out. And it does have good flow-on effects then in terms of what it delivers in terms of return customer visits and basket, yes.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Ms. Weckert for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us this morning. I think in summary, we're pleased with the solid financial results and the strategic achievements that we've delivered over the last six months. And also that a real focus on cost and execution is delivering results. If we look ahead, our focus in the second half will remain on providing a compelling customer value proposition, making further progress on improving our fresh offer and continuing to tailor our ranges to make sure we have the right products in the right stores to cater for local customer preferences.
We also remain focused on delivering the benefits from our major transformation investments, including optimizing the Kemps Creek ADC and providing a best-in-class experience for our CFC customers. Continuing to grow and improve the Coles 360 offer is also a priority, and it goes without saying that strong cost control and execution will continue to be front of mind. Just before finishing up, I would like to acknowledge our team members and customers who are still dealing with the impacts of floods in Far North Queensland and WA.
I know our teams are working hard to support the local communities, and we continue to work closely with our suppliers, transport partners, and local authorities to reinstate full supply of product. Thank you, and I look forward to speaking to you all not too far away at our third-quarter results at the end of April. Thanks a lot.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.