Good morning and thank you for joining our Full-Year Results Call this morning. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri peoples 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 leadership team are with me in the room today: Charlie Elias, our CFO; Matt Swindells, our Chief Operations and Supply Chain Officer; Anna Croft, our Chief Commercial and Sustainability Officer; and Michael Courtney in his new role of Chief Customer and Digital Officer. We also have Claire Lauber in the room with us today. Claire commenced in her role as Chief Executive Liquor at the end of June. Moving now to slide two.
We are now two years into our refresh strategy, and I am really pleased with the positive momentum that we're seeing in the business. This has been achieved through a consistent focus on executing against our strategic priorities. As we entered 2025, we were clear that value, quality, availability, and the overall customer experience were going to be key areas of focus for us, and we have made good progress on each of them during the year. Importantly, not only has this been reflected in our financial performance, but we have seen it through the increase in our customer satisfaction scores, particularly in terms of store, look and feel, range, and online. We are also seeing the benefits from both our ADCs and CSCs now being fully operational, with ADCs delivering improvements in availability and cost efficiency, and our CSCs supporting strong growth in e-commerce sales.
We have delivered record cost savings of $327 million through our Simplify and Save to Invest program. Strategically, it has been a significant year for our liquor business, with the commencement of our Liquorland banner simplification program. At year-end, we had converted 52 stores, and I'm pleased to say the results have been encouraging so far. Finally, we could not have achieved any of these highlights without the support of our more than 115,000 team members. Through our MyStay team member engagement survey, we ask our team members to share specific feedback on their experiences and challenges, and we've been working hard to respond to these. This has delivered our highest ever team member engagement score, placing us in the top quartile of Australian companies. Moving now to slide three and the financial results. As you will no doubt recall, FY 2024 was a 53-week year.
When we talk about growth rates through this presentation, we will be focusing on normalised growth, which removes the impact of the 53rd week from last year. The dark grey bars on this chart are the normalised figures. On a normalised basis and excluding significant items, growth EBITDA and EBIT from continuing operations increased by 11% and 7.5% respectively, and underlying EBITDA and EBIT increased by 10.7% and 6.8%. Underlying NPAT from continuing operations and excluding significant items increased by 3.1% to $1.2 billion, and reported NPAT inclusive of significant items increased by 2.4%. Charlie will talk more to the financials in his presentation, but for now, let's move on to slide four. As I said at the start, we maintained a consistent focus on executing against our strategic priorities throughout the year.
I won't spend too much time on this slide, but as you can see, once again this year across all three pillars, we have made meaningful progress. Whether that's in the value we provided to our customers through our Great Value Hands Down campaigns in Supermarkets, the investments we made in our E-commerce and digital offering, or the new stores and renewals across our store network. What makes these achievements even more pleasing is that we were able to achieve all of this while successfully navigating a period of increased public focus. Let's get into a bit more detail starting on slide five with our first pillar, the destination for food and drink. From our customer surveys and insights, and with interest rates easing, we saw a modest uptick in customer sentiment towards the end of the year.
However, there is no doubt that value has remained front of mind for our customers, and we have continued to work hard on providing a compelling offer with quality products across all price points. During the year in Supermarkets, we expanded the number of products on everyday low prices to more than 4,700, up from around 4,000 products last year. We reduced the number of promotional tickets we have on shelf, but made the remaining promotions deeper and more relevant for customers. At the same time, we've maintained our Great Value Hands Down seasonal campaigns that customers love, where we reduce hundreds of prices on products that we know matter most across different price points in the year.
Whether this is our best-selling single smoked beetroot half a leg ham at $8 a kilo over Christmas, or our cold beef sizzle steak, which was part of our spring value campaign, just in time for families and friends entertaining for footy finals. In Liquor, we have also strengthened our value proposition with consistent and competitive pricing under one brand and one website, all underpinned by our new price match promise. We have also continued to grow our exclusive brand portfolio during the year, and we know this is a real point of differentiation for us. In Supermarkets, we added new products across multiple categories, including in our UltraLife, Coles Finest, and Wellness Road ranges.
In Liquor, you can see on the slide three international lagers, which we have introduced: Sopreso Mexican, Allen Ostra Italian, and Nomikai Japanese lager, which was actually our top new product launch in the beer category in terms of sales in FY 2025. We have received more than 600 awards across our exclusive brands, including 12 Product of the Year awards for products such as our Carb Biodegradable Water Wipes. Finally, when I think about being a destination for food and drink, I think about key events through the year, such as Christmas and Easter, when so many people entertain at home. We have continued to focus on innovation and execution so that we are front of mind during those times. Since we launched our Smith Street Flowers brand last year, we have also sold thousands of floral arrangements, particularly around Mother's Day and Valentine's Day.
Smith Street is a great example of how we are innovative through our exclusive brands. We have a Head Florist who curates a fabulous range of flowers for our stores, and we have seen significant growth in this area over the last 12 months. Moving now to slide six. We are also well progressed on our journey of resetting our range and spacing stores. Space in our stores is a scarce resource. As we mentioned at our Investor Day in November, we are using advanced analytics to ensure we have the right range and the right space for the demographic of every store, which is a good outcome for our customers and a good outcome for Coles. During the year, store-specific ranging was rolled out to more than 40 categories, including in the non-food space, as well as other categories such as flour, canned vegetables, and milk.
We have focused on innovation and expanded space in certain areas, such as our Authentic Indian range. On the slide, you can see our new range that we introduced in partnership with Sanjeev Kapoor, India's most celebrated celebrity chef. This range was crafted with Chef Kapoor's signature spice blends and deep culinary expertise. We have also continued to optimize our range to reduce unnecessary duplication, allow space for new products, and improve availability and efficiency. An example is in the soaps and body wash category, where through range optimization activity, we removed duplication, simplified our own brand offering, and updated the layout, which made it easier for customers to shop. Pleasingly, we are seeing the positive impacts of this work showing through in both our sales and also in our range MPS metrics.
We've still got work to do, and this isn't a set and forget strategy, but we have made good progress this year. Moving now to slide seven and the next pillar of accelerated by digital. The performance of our e-commerce business was a highlight for FY 2025, and we reported another strong year of growth with 24.4% revenue growth in Supermarkets and 7.2% growth in Liquor. We invested in our app and website to improve the customer experience, delivered greater personalization, and increased loyalty. Through our Coles Plus and Coles Plus Savers subscriptions, memberships more than doubled, and we saw a 6% increase in fly-by-swipe rates and a 13% increase in customers redeeming fly-by-swipe points to a Coles Supermarket. In terms of network expansion, we introduced a windowless rapid offer in home delivery and click and collect and extended our home delivery catchment areas in Melbourne and Sydney.
Overall, online MPS saw a meaningful uplift driven by improved availability, fulfillment, and the overall digital customer experience, with our CSC customers in Melbourne and Sydney recording the most significant gains, which brings me to our CSCs on slide eight. We delivered a major milestone during the year with the opening and successful transition of our next-day home delivery volumes in our Melbourne and Sydney CSC catchment. Our CSCs are already delivering a strong set of outcomes, as you can see on the slide. We are really pleased with how these facilities are performing and how they're transforming the experience for our customers. During the year, CSC fulfilled sales growth exceeded the already strong growth in our overall e-commerce channel. Perfect order rates were more than double the national home delivery rate.
The range in our CSCs is already 33% larger than our average in-store range and includes new SKUs in non-food, global cuisines, and big-pack value categories. We also have over 2,500 SKUs where we offer a minimum life so that customers can be confident to forward purchase for the week. All of this has led to a significant uplift in customer satisfaction. In addition, relative to Ocado's International -artner benchmarks, our facilities have seen the fastest growth in volumes in the first six months of operations, and we are operating in the upper quartile across a number of key efficiency and last mile metrics. Finally, we are seeing broader network benefits. By opening up capacity in-store, we have seen strong growth in same-day immediacy and click and collect orders. We have seen improvements in store-level MPS in CSC catchment areas as a result of less congestion in-store.
As we've said at the half year, the CSCs allowed us to ramp volumes quickly to respond to peaks in demand, such as during the competitor supply chain disruption in November and December. Overall, we're pleased with the progress to date. Moving now to slide nine and our delivered consistently for the future pillar. As I said earlier, we delivered record cost savings of $327 million through our Simplify and Save to Invest program this year, which helped to offset inflation and allowed us to reinvest in the business. Consistent with previous years, there were many initiatives across different parts of the business that contributed to the $327 million, but I would say that a common theme which supported a lot of them was the use of AI and other technology automation to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of processes.
Our focus on continuous improvement and cost control has been a muscle that we have built now over many years, and I would say it is firmly embedded in the way in which we operate. Moving on to slide 10. We successfully completed the ramp-up of our New South Wales ADC in January in line with schedule. Both our ADCs are now fully operational and delivering strong results with cost per carton benefits in line with business case and improvements in in-store availability. During the year, our supply chain was tested on a number of occasions with severe weather events in Queensland and New South Wales and the market disruption in Victoria in November and December.
We were able to see how valuable these facilities are in the way they allowed us to respond at pace to these peaks in demand in a way that would not have been possible with our manual DCs. You will also recall that in October, we announced the development of a third ADC in Victoria, and we are now well underway with construction, seen by the photos on the slide. Moving now to slide 11. Before handing over to Charlie, I would like to cover off some of our achievements from a team member, supplier, and community perspective, the progress we've made on sustainability, as well as some comments around the regulatory environment. I'll start with our team members. Our team member engagement score was a real highlight for me this year.
With our team members being a reflection of the communities in which we operate, it was also great to see how we have progressed in our diversity and inclusion strategy, including women in leadership and the representation of our Indigenous workforce. We have also been working closely with our suppliers this year on a range of initiatives. One of the highlights was the $3.5 million that we awarded to 11 small and medium-sized businesses to drive innovation and sustainability as part of the latest round of the Coles Nurture Fund, bringing total financial support to more than $40 million since 2015. Alongside the support we gave to local communities as part of disaster recovery efforts in Queensland and New South Wales this year, we were once again the number one corporate giver in Australia as a percentage of profit for the fifth consecutive year.
We donated the equivalent of $39.1 million to SecondBite and Foodbank. We've also continued to progress our sustainability initiative. In FY 2025, we reduced combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 71.4% from FY24, sourced 100% renewable energy, and set an SBTI-validated FLAG target to deliver a 30.3% reduction in Scope 3 FLAG sector emissions by the end of FY 2030. You can read more about these highlights and achievements in our sustainability report, which was also released today. Finally, on the regulatory environment, the ACCC released their Supermarkets Inquiry Final Report in February 2025, citing no evidence of price gouging or land banking. We are continuing to work constructively with government and industry stakeholders in relation to the recommendations in the report. There's also been a lot of commentary in the market recently on tobacco.
The new packaging laws came into effect on 1st of July , and this, along with the growth in the illicit market, is continuing to result in a decline in tobacco sales for us. With that, I'll now hand over to Charlie, who will take you through the financial results in more detail. Thanks, Charlie.
Great. Thanks, Leah, and good morning, everyone. I'm now on slide 13, which details the group results. As Leah mentioned, FY 2024 was a 53rd- week year, so the normalised growth rates that I'll refer to in my presentation are adjusted for that 53rd- week. I'll also talk to these results on a continuing operations basis, which excludes the significant items. Let's get to the results. During the year, we saw group sales revenue increase by 3.6% to $44.4 billion, and group underlying EBITDA and EBIT increased by 10.7% and 6.8% respectively. Earnings on an underlying basis adjust for major project implementation costs, dual running, and transition costs in relation to our ADCs and CFCs, as well as non-recurring expenses, such as those in the liquor division of $8 million. This year, we incurred $103 million in project implementation costs and dual running and transition costs.
These will fall away in FY 2026. Underlying NPAT increased by 3.1%. Off the back of these results, the board has declared a fully franked final dividend of $0.32 per share, bringing total dividends declared for FY 2025 to $0.69 per share, fully franked, an increase of 1.5% compared to the prior year. Moving on to our segment overview on slide 14. Starting with Supermarkets, sales revenue increased by 4.3%, supported by solid volume growth, with growth across both transactions and basket size, all underpinned by our focus on value, quality, availability, and the overall customer experience, as Leah talked to earlier. Excluding tobacco, sales revenue increased by 5.7%. Underlying EBIT margin increased by 21 basis points, with gross margin, efficiency initiatives, and operating leverage more than offsetting cost inflation and the investments that we made in value. In Liquor, sales revenue increased by 1.1%.
While the liquor market remains subdued, sales growth was supported by new stores, including our Tasmanian acquisition, as well as strong trading across key events such as Christmas and Easter. Our Simply Liquorland banner simplification also commenced with positive early metrics around sales, transaction growth, and customer NPS. Pleasingly, operating leverage improved in the second half, with underlying EBIT increasing by 6.8% as a result of stronger sales revenue growth supported by new stores, coupled with the simplification in the above store operating model. In Other, EBIT result was impacted by an increase in insurance-related costs and an increase in property-related expenses. Now, turning to cash flow on slide 15. Operating cash flow, excluding interest and tax, was $4 billion, with a cash realisation ratio pleasingly at 102%.
The working capital movement was driven by higher payables, largely due to the timing of year-end payments, partially offset by an increase in inventories to support availability. These movements also impacted inventory and trade payable days, which you can see on the slide here as well. The movement in provisions and other was largely driven by the utilisation of the provisions relating to the New South Wales manual DC closures following the opening of Kemps Creek ADC. Now I'll take you through CapEx on slide 16. Gross operating capital expenditure on an accrued basis was $1.3 billion, a decrease of $134 million compared to the prior year. This was largely as a result of the reduction in capital investment relating to the Kemps Creek ADC, lost technology, and service transformation, partially offset by the milestone payments relating to the construction of the Victorian ADC.
Capital expenditure falls really into four key areas: store renewals, growth initiatives, efficiency initiatives, and maintenance. Within store renewals, we completed 178 store renewals across our network, consisting of 60 supermarkets and 118 liquor stores, which included the 52 Simply Liquorland conversions. Pleasingly, our optimised renewal program, which we discussed at the Investor Day last year, enabled us to renew more stores compared to last year at a lower capital cost. Within growth, we opened eight new supermarkets and 16 new liquor stores. We also continued to invest in e-commerce, including our digital platforms and completion of the CFC program, and invested in the integration and growth of MilkCo and our Tasmanian liquor store acquisitions. Efficiency initiatives included our capital payment in relation to the Kemps Creek ADC, milestone payments for Victorian ADC, as well as additional stock loss technology and front-end service transformation.
Our maintenance capital, which is the fourth bucket, includes our ongoing refrigeration, electrical replacement programs, and lifecycle replacement of store and IT assets, including our master data management system and group cyber control investments. We continue to optimise our property portfolio, with net property capital expenditure increasing by $36 million, primarily due to the lower proceeds from property divestments compared to the prior year. In FY 2026, we expect capital expenditure of $1.2 billion as we continue to invest in store renewals, digital and technology, and growth initiatives, and enter the second year of our Victorian ADC development. Now, finally, turning to funding and dividends on slide 17. Our funding position remains strong. We have extended our debt maturity profile and continue to maintain access to diversified funding sources.
Note that the $150 million repayment that is occurring in August was pre-funded as part of the most recent $300 million issuance in April 2025. At year-end, our weighted average drawn debt maturity was five years, with undrawn facilities of $2.6 billion. As I said earlier, the Coles Board declared a fully franked dividend of $0.32 per share in terms of a final dividend and a payment date of the 22nd of September 2025. This takes total dividends for FY 2025 to $0.69 per share, fully franked, and is within our annual dividend payout ratio target of 80%- 90%. Finally, we have retained catering with our 80 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. I'll now hand it back to Leah to take us through the outlook and concluding comments.
Thank you, Charlie. I'm now going to turn to the outlook on slide 25. In the first eight weeks of FY 2026, supermarket sales revenue increased by 4.9%, or 7% excluding tobacco. This was supported by continued strength in volumes as we continue to invest in customer value and experience. Our e-commerce sales have also continued to benefit from the investments we are making in our digital offer. Strong growth in sales has been partially offset by further decline in tobacco as a result of the impact of the new tobacco legislation and growth in the illicit market. In FY 2026, our ADC program will deliver its first full year of annualized benefits. We will also continue our disciplined approach to cost control as part of our Simplify and Save to Invest program.
With our CSC volumes continuing to increase, we are also on track to deliver improved earnings from these facilities across the course of the year. In addition, in FY 2026, no implementation, dual running, or transition costs in relation to our ADC and CSC programs will be incurred. In Liquor, in the first eight weeks, sales revenue growth was flat. While the market remains subdued, the convenience of our offer and the investments we are making in Simply Liquorland and in streamlining our operations will enable us to benefit from improved operating leverage as cost of living pressures ease. Simply Liquorland is expected to be completed by the third quarter of FY 2026 and incur one-off costs of approximately $20 million. You can also see on the slide further details on our store openings, closures, and renewals, as well as capital expenditure.
Overall, we're pleased with the results we've delivered in FY 2025 and have had a good start to FY 2026. With that, I'll now hand back to the operator for Q&A.
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 then two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We ask that questions be limited to one per person. Please rejoin the question queue for any follow-up questions. The first question today comes from Tom Kierath from Barrenjoey . Please go ahead.
Morning guys. Just a question on the trading performance in the fourth quarter and then into the first quarter. It looks like it's improved quite a lot. Is that trade up or consumers putting more in their basket, or is it more to do with traffic that you're seeing in the stores? Thanks.
Thanks for that question, Tom. Yeah, very pleasing growth in the fourth quarter, and that has continued into the first eight weeks. I think there's probably a couple of things at play. First of all, we are continuing to see strong execution. We've had a real focus on availability. Our availability metrics are probably now at the best we've seen them since pre-COVID, which is very pleasing. The ADCs are definitely driving improvements in New South Wales and Queensland, particularly on promotional stock, which is fantastic. We're continuing to invest in value, and that's really resonating with the customer. We have got the strong online growth, which is really supported by the CFC. On the things we can control, we're executing well.
The other side of the story is that from our customer surveys and some of the data we're seeing now, we're definitely seeing some green shoots in terms of customer sentiment. That really has come from the interest rate cut and people starting to feel a bit more optimistic about household budgets going forward. If you look at the ABS data for June, total food spend was up at 6.3%. I think that's indicative of a customer that is just slightly starting to feel like they can spend a bit more, particularly on things like entertaining. They're still very cautious, and a lot of the behaviors that we've seen them revert to over the last couple of years. Entertaining at home, eating at home instead of eating out, shopping multiple retailers, that's all still quite prevalent.
Actually, you put those two things together, and that's a combination that's working quite well for us as a supermarket. I guess the question is going to be longer term, as that confidence grows, will we start to see some of those behaviors reverse, and will we see a bit more eating out? We've definitely got that sort of front of mind as we head into the remainder of the year and into Christmas, and are definitely very focused on the fact that we need to focus on what we can control, and that's our customer offer.
Great. That's great a color . Thanks, Leah.
Thank you. The next question comes from Shaun Cousins from UBS . Please go ahead.
Great, thanks. Another question on Supermarkets. Could you talk a little bit about the impact of the lower shelf price campaign from Woolworths dropping their, I think, now 700 SKUs? Just curious if Coles has had to match all these prices, or is this a degree some of those price reductions are playing out? I think Woolworths come down to you. I guess our concern has been around Woolworths potentially deflating the category, but given the trading update you delivered, that doesn't appear to be the case. It might be an issue for them. Just how has that change in the competitive approach from Woolworths impacted your business, please?
The first thing I'd say, Shaun, is we've been saying for some time that we are going to make sure that we're competitive. We actually look at a fairly broad range of retailers now when we think about that competitiveness, including discounters, non-food specialists, and food specialists. We're taking into account a significant amount of different information on price, and we will always take note when a competitor launches a new value campaign. Having said that, I think my observation would be we've seen a cycle over the last couple of years of a number of retailers making investments on a seasonal basis into relevant SKUs. We would look at over the last sort of six months and say that really isn't that different from what we have seen over the last couple of years. We also don't expect that to change going forward.
You would have seen this morning that we've actually launched price drops on another 240 lines, which are relevant for spring, which is actually cycling the campaign on this that we had last year.
Great, thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from David Errington from Bank of America . Please go ahead.
Morning, Leah. Morning, Charlie. Really encouraging set of numbers, very pleasing to see. If I could delve into your gross margin in supers, which was another very strong second half performance after a pretty strong first half. You call out the buckets there. I note that your wastage or your losses dropped, 10 basis point improvement in the second half, but you're also gaining some good benefits in Coles 360. You've also got your Simplify and Save to Invest in there, and you've got this strategic sourcing. Where I'm going with this, I want to try to work out how much more you've got there in 2026 and 2027 in terms of opportunities to keep improving that gross margin, because that's the thing that's really pleasing me the most.
Offsetting your cost of doing business growth, you're getting really good supportive gross margin improvement on a good sales growth basis, which is even more pleasing. Can you go into those buckets, please, of gross margin and give us an idea as to the ability to continue to grow that gross margin in those particular buckets? If you know where I'm going with that question, if you could give us that, that'd be great.
Yeah, no problem. Thanks, David. Let's start with FY 2025. The big building blocks for gross margin in there, we had 28 basis points of improvement in the decline in tobacco sales. There were 25 basis points across the course of the year for total loss, although I will note that was split 39 basis points in H1 and 10 basis points in H2. We also had benefits flowing through from Simplify and Save to Invest. Historically, we've had about a third of Simplify and Save to Invest that has gone into the gross margin line. In FY 2025, I should say, that was slightly more weighted to CADB than the one-third. You then had the benefits coming through from the ADCs, and from a phasing perspective on the ADCs, we've had some benefits come through from Red Bank in FY 2024.
We had benefits in FY 2025 from Red Bank and the start of Kemps Creek starting to transition, and into FY 2026, you're going to see the cycling of that, that you'll see benefits coming through from Kemps Creek. I think the other two big ones which you mentioned are the Coles 360 and the strategic sourcing. You put all that together in the gross margin bucket. The thing that is offsetting that is the investments that we're making in value. That was kind of the shape of FY 2025. If I then go to your question on the FY 2026 margins outlook, probably start by saying we are very focused on competitiveness and ensuring the offer is sharp, and we are going to continue to invest to keep that top momentum going that we've got.
You have seen us doing that now for some time, so that's not really a change, but you can expect us to keep that up. In terms of what the margin will benefit from, I think firstly, you've got both ADCs fully operational. As I mentioned on the phasing, I'd almost think about it as in terms of the benefits flowing through a third, a third, a third, FY 2024, FY 2025, FY 2026. The second big one is tobacco. Tobacco we expect will continue to decline, which will benefit the margin rate. However, it is going to be diluted from a dollar's impact on gross margin and on EBIT, sorry, on gross margin dollars and EBIT dollars.
We have an aspiration to keep growing loss, but as you've seen from that impact that we got in H2 of 10 basis points, I think it would be safe to expect that that's a less material component of this equation going forward. We'll see improvements, but they're likely to be much smaller. I think the couple of exciting things we've still got coming ahead are Coles 360. We are looking to bring on more assets and improve some of our measurement and reporting capabilities this year, which we think is going to continue to support really good growth in that space. We'll also have the third year of the SSI program, of which we will get probably around a third that will flow into the gross margin line. We continue to do the work with our suppliers on strategic sourcing.
A lot of positive drivers will help to benefit that gross margin line and give us that flexibility to continue to invest in the offer and keep that momentum going in the top line.
It seems like there's still a lot there, a lot of tailwinds still. We can expect to see that gross continue to rise without wanting to nail you because you can't give forward-looking statements, I understand. There's a lot of optimism there that that margin will continue to rise at a fairly high clip. That's the way I'm reading it.
We're very focused on making sure we've got the right building blocks to give us that flexibility going forward.
Yeah, thanks, Leah. Awesome.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. The next question comes from Ben Gilbert from Jarden . Please go ahead.
Morning, Leah and Ted. Just on the trading update and just how we think about that looking forward, just in maybe some of the consumer behaviors you're seeing, I know you've talked to sort of cooking at home a bit more, but in terms of the essentials category, things like cleaning, pet, etc., where there's been sort of well-documented leakage, are you seeing starting to get that back? I've also seen some data suggesting that people are now doing one and two shops and they're not shopping across three and four stores. I suppose as we look forward and hopefully we move into a period of normality, whatever that is, do you think we see shopping behaviors move more back to where they were pre-COVID?
We're seeing some of those trends in the U.K. and in theory, it's pretty supportive of a business like yours and your friends up north in Sydney as well.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Ben. I think we might take this in two parts. I'll cover off the customer behavior piece, and then I might get Anna to talk about the non-food aspect of your question. As I said on the question about the trading outlook, we are definitely seeing the early signs, but I'm going to call them early on green shoots around customer sentiment. As you said, we do look to other markets that are maybe six to 12 months ahead of us in terms of the interest rate cut. The U.K. would be one of those where they have definitely seen benefits of customers reverting back to behaviors of consolidating shops because that's just a more convenient way for them to operate. Time will tell as to how quickly that starts to play out.
What we're really focused on is making sure that as they start to do that, our value proposition really resonates. Anna, did you want to cover non-food and where we're at with that?
Happy to. Hi, Ben. As you know, non-food has definitely been an area of focus for us and we are continuing to look at how do we best structure our offer. We did actually think we are the very most convenient place for customers to buy non-food. For us, it's going to be critical that we give customers no reason to go anywhere else. It really isn't a one-size-fits-all in each of these categories. We're taking it category by category on an approach to work through what's the right range, what's the right customer proposition, and doing that really collaboratively with our suppliers. I would say we've landed some fairly big change on range and pricing in certain categories, whether that's bigger pack, better value, more everyday low prices, more innovation where it matters most to customers.
Obviously, I won't go into too much detail because of the competitive nature of it, but it's fair to say we are seeing some of the metrics moving in the right direction. There is a lot more to do and we remain incredibly focused on that and making sure that customers do a one-stop shop with us.
Would your pit and cleaning, I would appreciate you not want to break out in category, but would they be materially off or weaker than your total number now? Would they be closing? Because obviously, I think you'd reported a period ago they're in decline and they moved back closer to flat.
I'm not going to go into specific category details. Ben what I'd say is we are the green shoot, I suppose, to talk about in terms of some of the activity is playing out and some of what we call the real core areas that we must win for customers, of which both of those categories you talked about. There's a lot of work going on in each of those spaces and we are seeing some of the metrics moving. It's very early days and we've got an awful lot more to do.
Right, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Adrian Lemme from Citi . Please go ahead.
Good morning, Leah and Charlie. I just wanted to focus on the balance sheet and how the Board's thinking about it. You've noticed some improving signs from the customer. Leverage ratio came down to 2.6x . This result, I think the five-year average is about 2.8x. In 2026, we should see further decline in that number given the earnings picking up from the non-recurrence of one-off costs. CapEx is coming down. Is this something we should expect to think about in 2026 as the earnings curve comes through, please?
Yeah, look, Adrian, in terms of the balance sheet, you're right. One of the things that we're really being focused on is ensuring that we continue to maintain a really solid balance sheet. That's important and well within our credit metrics. We are, yeah, we are BBB+ as I mentioned with S&P Global and Baa1 with Moody's. From our perspective, it's our strategy to continue to maintain that, continue to actually ensure that that is solid. We're also very disciplined in terms of how we allocate capital as part of that program. Not only that, also our promise to shareholders, if you like, with a target payout ratio of 80- 90%. That's as much as I'd sort of go into the balance sheet at this point. One of the things that, again, we're all focused on as well is to get that cash realization ratio to 100%.
Pleasingly, in FY 2025, we delivered another 102% in terms of realization ratio. That's sort of the broad parameters of how we look at the balance sheet, Adrian, and what our return to shareholders are.
Thanks, Charlie.
Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Simotas from Jefferies . Please go ahead.
Morning and well done on the result. My question is just around the cost bridge and how we think about the various parts into FY 2026. Firstly, on the implementation costs, they came in a little bit lower than what you'd guided to for FY 2025. I just want to confirm that they do completely fall away. Related to that, you've made the comment that you expect improving profitability on CFCs. I presume that's separate to the $40 million implementation OpEx that you took in the FY 2025 year.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Michael. Can I go first to the implementation costs? Absolutely, they fall away in FY 2026. That's very clear. I think both Leah and I mentioned those several times in our presentation. They will fall away. They were $103 million for the year. Pleasingly, just to give you a bit of a split, just so you're aware of where that's coming from, 60% of the implementation costs were in relation to the CFCs. They're all about the transition costs, nothing to do with ongoing operations. They were purely the transitioning of our e-commerce next-day home delivery into those CFCs and your running and the like. 40% related to the ADCs. The actual implementation costs, we did a little bit better with them because the team did an amazing job.
They really did, treating every dollar as their own, looking at how they can actually reduce those costs. We used the learnings from our Red Bank transition there. Ready, please, but they go away, which is great for FY 2026. In relation to the CFCs, the CFCs, if you like, financial performance that we'd outlined for 2025, pleasingly, I mean, Leah talked through all the sort of benefits that we're receiving from a customer, from an operational perspective. We're really pleased with how they're performing. More importantly, they perform from a financial perspective in line with our expectations in FY 2025. What we can expect in FY 2026 is as these CFCs increase in volume, and we are seeing strong volume growth from the CFCs. I think we noted that the e-commerce growth rate in the CFCs is actually ahead of what our e-commerce growth rate of 24% was for last year.
We see that continuing. We would expect a better financial performance in the first half of 2026 compared to the second half of 2025, but also again a further improvement in the second half of 2026 as well. We would expect, if you like, that $40 million drag that we pulled out from an EBITDA perspective to progressively improve throughout FY 2026.
Michael, can I just build on that? When you asked the question, you described the negative $40 million as implementation OpEx. We don't think about it that way. There was the implementation OpEx, which was in the $103 million, of which the CFCs were about 60%. That was what it took to transfer all of the volume in and to run dual operations in the store and the CFC alongside each other while we were making the transition. Once the transition occurred, we had guided to an EBITDA drag into the P&L of -$40 million for the remainder of the year. What we're saying is that as we go into FY 2026, we're expecting that earnings of the actual running of the CFC, so not the implementation costs, but the running of them, to improve over the course of the year as we continue to grow volume. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that does make sense. Just the last bit I've got on that is most of the DNA on both the assets and the leases was in the P&L in 2025, right? There might be a tiny bit of step up, but the big step change has already happened.
Let me take you through the DNA. That's probably it. Obviously, there. In 2025, we actually saw a step up in DNA of around $230 million. $100 million of that, Michael, related to the ADCs and the CFCs, right? The balance related to our broader CapEx program. As you know, with our CapEx program, as I mentioned, we have mentioned previously, we're spending about $1.1 billion, excluding our investments in these automated facilities. Finally, you get depreciation from things like a lot of use assets as we renew stores, as we bring new stores on board and the like. The good news is for FY 2026, we won't see the same step up that we saw in FY 2025. In fact, I'll guide you to where FY 2026 might land. You'd expect a step up around half the step up that we saw in FY 2025. Just to repeat that, about 50% of the step up that we saw in FY 2025.
Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Richard Barwick from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team. You just sort of touched on it a second ago, Charlie. I just want to talk about the impact that the CFCs are having in terms of driving the online growth. Obviously, there's very, very strong online growth overall, but to what extent is that growth being skewed to New South Wales and Victoria? There's a bit of a flow through for that. To what extent are CFCs really underpinning the overall top line? I'd be curious to get a sense of how that was looking for the fourth quarter and if you'd be willing to talk to the impact for these first eight weeks because obviously the sales growth is looking very good. To what extent are the CFCs actually driving that?
Right. I'll touch on it at sort of a high level and then pass it on to Matt, so he'll give us a bit more color. As I said, we're really pleased with the volume growth of CFCs. We have actually seen strong growth. As you saw across all our e-com channels, growth in FY 2025 was about 24.4%. We are calling out that obviously the CFCs grew at a bigger rate than that. Part of it is, you know, we're seeing that through the improved customer experience across things like availability, the perfect order rates, the freshness, and the extended range, which is all resonating with our customers. We're seeing that through our customer NPS scores through the CFCs, which are actually higher than our online CFC scores there as well.
Also, from a performance perspective, an operational performance perspective, I think Leah mentioned as part of the presentation that the operating performance and the transition compares favorably with some of the overseas CFC implementations, which we're really pleased about. We are seeing not only that, the growth though, what the CFCs have done, and we've pulled this out, I think, you know, not only our strategy day, but since, what we've seen is less congestion in our stores as we transition to home-based delivery. That's resonating in a better store look and feel and customer experience, which has been positive. We've also been able to open up more slots in stores for things like immediacy and same-day type home delivery, which we've actually seen some very good growth. Matt, with that, is there anything you'd like to add to that?
I think, Charlie, you've covered the key points, which is the performance of the CFCs has been really pleasing for us. Yes, they have significant capacity. In New South Wales and in Victoria, they are delivering growth that's ahead of the other states. That is because we are seeing them play a role, more of a network play in those catchments. It enables the stores to have capacity for better click and collect, for better immediacy offers, and also better in-store execution for customers that still shop the store. Our availability is improved and the congestion is removed. The capacity in the CFC themselves to do that home delivery with the customer proposition that's best in market is also then driving a lot of that growth.
I think we're very pleased with the CFC performance and the growth, but we're also really encouraged by the impact it's having on the wider network in those catchments. It's supporting capacity and giving us the ability to grow even further.
Just to clarify or follow on, a sense of the momentum there. Are you seeing that idea that New South Wales and Victoria is growing ahead, is that accelerating as the CFCs ramp up, or have you reached a level where it's a bit more normalized?
I'm not sure we've reached a normalized level yet. You've got to bear in mind we're still in the early days post the ramp-up of driving growth, and there's a lot more work to do on the extended range, on really thinking about how we get better efficiency and better service delivery. There's more to come. We have also got further automation in the next year. For those of you that were at the investor tour of the Victorian CFC with the robot arm, there are 20 robot arms currently in that big CFC ready for implementation through the year. We expect to see some further performance improvement in that operation.
Where it will end overall, I think we're just pleased we've got capacity and we've got the right operating metrics and the right customer outcomes, and we can meet the customer where the customer wants to shop across all those modalities: in-store, click and collect, immediacy, and home delivery with the best offer in the market. The growth opportunities are there; where it will then cap out, I guess over time we will see.
Okay, that's good. Thanks very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Craig Woolford from MST Marquee . Please go ahead.
Morning, Leah and Charlie. Just wanted to follow up with another question on the cost outlook. It was a great result in FY 2025 on that Simplify and Save to Invest program of $327 million. What do you see as the implications for FY 2026? You sort of have less than a quarter type run rate left over the next two years. We're just interested in that. Also, just dealing with the still fairly high retail award wage increase that's at FY 2026.
Yeah, great. Thanks. Thanks for the question, Craig. Look, the SSI program, just a bit of a reminder, we announced that back in August 2023. It was a four-year program where we were targeting $1 billion over the four years. We generally target about $250 million a year. Some years we do a little bit better, and FY 2025 was a great case in point where we delivered $327 million, but other years a little lower. One of the things that we will see in the two years, we have delivered about $560 million of benefits. We'll obviously look to do more where we can. We see $1 billion as a bit of a floor, not a cap. I would also just caution that $327 million was a fantastic result, and it would be ambitious to think we can deliver that again in 2026.
That doesn't mean we aren't going to try, but I would be generally working towards a target of more than $250 million or thereabouts. In terms of what we see in CODB, pleasingly, our CODB just generally went up by about 59 basis points. Pretty much most of that was a DNA step up, right? From a cash CODB perspective, we're actually seeing that to be relatively in line with sales, which is pleasing. That being said, we do see pressure in costs in two key areas: wages, as you've called out there, where the Fair Work wage increase that was announced, but also energy costs. Energy costs continue to be something that we navigate, but we see that as part of our SSI program as well.
I think Leah mentioned it earlier, historically with SSI, a third of the SSI tends to work its way into gross margin and about two-thirds into cost of doing business, although in FY 2025, it was a little higher in the cost of doing business in terms of what we realized.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Bryan Raymond from JPMorgan . Please go ahead.
Thanks. My question is just back on the CFCs. I just wanted to get maybe just step back a bit. We talk a lot about the underutilisation and the $40 million cost base there in 2025. I'm interested to just understand the sort of the economics of those transactions going through those two sheds. Is the $40 million loss reflective of them being those transactions being actually loss-making at the moment until you reach a certain scale, or is that relative to theoretical earnings you should be making on those transactions? I just want to understand if you're better off at the moment putting those, from an earnings perspective, putting those online sales through the CFCs versus through store based on the EBIT margin, EBITDA margin, however you like to look at it. Yeah.
So Bryan, look, thanks for the question. You need to look at the CFCs as when we implemented the CFCs, clearly, it was implemented for growth. We actually put those CFCs that provided capacity for us to grow not only our next-day home delivery service in Sydney and in Melbourne, but also, as I said earlier, allowed us to grow in stores. To put it really simply, the $40 million, yeah, when you invest in facilities like these, there are a certain amount of fixed costs that relate to those facilities. What we said was operationally post-transition, to repeat Leah's words earlier, post the transition element last year in FY 2025. This is effectively from end of November through to June. The drag on earnings, if you like, was about in terms of EBITDA, was about $40 million.
What I've said is, as we see those facilities increase in volume, and Matt took you through a little bit of what we see in terms of the outlook there, we would see a progressive improvement in those earnings through FY 2026. We're really pleased with how they are actually improving from an earnings perspective through that. We would see a better second half of 2026, and we'll see even the first half of 2026. The first half of 2026 is an improvement on where we found ourselves in FY 2025 as well. We're really pleased with the financial performance, but you need to think about those. They're not theoretical. It is a $40 million, if you like, drag that we are improving through FY2026.
Okay, that's helpful. Just to clarify then, just on the $40 million, I assume that was quite skewed to the second half, given the timing, as you mentioned, late November when you started, they started kicking in those under utilisation costs. Should we, for example, whether you want to clarify or not, but if it was, say, $10 million first half, $30 million second half, should we be expecting that $30 million to annualize up to $60 million and then start reducing? Into FY 2026, it could in theory be more than $40 million, given that second half would have been higher than half of the $40 million, if that makes sense, Charlie.
Yeah, look, Bryan, I don't, look, I'm not going to intend to go into source splits between halves, et cetera. I think your early comment about where because it's more skewed to the second half, there are more trading with those post-transition in the second half than the first half. That would be safe to assume that that was larger in the second half than the first half impact. In terms of all I was talking about in terms of FY 2026, we would, as volumes grow, we'll see a significant improvement in the first half of 2026, and that will further improve in the second half.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from Phil Kimber from E&P Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Great result in Supermarkets. I was going to move over because there's been lots of questions on sort of the link there. Business, you're obviously going through a lot of change there, and you've assumed another $20 million costs sort of run-off in FY 2026. Should, given the sales momentum in that business, is it going to be difficult just mathematically to generate X that $20 million, you know, underlying profit growth? Or should we be assuming that, given the tough trading conditions, probably the underlying profit slider goes backwards a bit, and then you add the $20 million run-off cost to that number? Thanks.
Thanks for the question, Phil. We're really confident that what we're investing in Simply Liquorland, that we're going to get very strong returns on that capital. Everything that we're seeing from the stores we've converted to date suggests that. I think that in terms of us transitioning into the first half of FY 2026, the key messages that you should take from the second half of 2025 is that, you know, really, there's one factor that is out of our control at the moment, which is how much will the market recover and by when.
There are three really important factors that are in our control, which have been our focus, which has been to make sure we're improving the customer value proposition, which we've certainly done a lot of work on that through the second half, whether it was moving to one profile and promotional plan earlier in the half or now kicking off the rollout of Simply Liquorland. We think that everything we're seeing, that that has been a good thing for us in terms of sales. We think in terms of cost, we had a very strong result in the second half, which is pleasing. That's a result of some measures that we implemented in the first half that we got a full run rate of benefits for in the second half.
As we roll into Simply Liquorland, there's some more cost benefits that started to come through in the second half also. When you look at those things and when you look at what we think was a very pleasing result in terms of gross profit to still be slightly up year on year in the second half at a time when we heavily invested in value through moving to one profile and promotional plan, as well as bringing in other mechanics that have had a real impact with customers in terms of our value perception. We think that even in a softer market than we would have liked to have, underlying earnings growth in the second half of 6.8% is a very pleasing result. That has the team feeling optimistic around our opportunity to continue to improve moving into FY 2026.
We'll just watch to see what the changes in consumer behavior are and when these cyclical headwinds start to abate. We think we're very well positioned for that.
Great, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Ajay Mariswamy from Macquarie . Please go ahead.
Hi, morning team. My question's around the Coles Finest brand and continues to be a strong growth contributor there. Can you just talk to some of the key drivers for this and how are you seeing equivalent branded products performing in that upper tier? Is it due to a bifurcation of consumer behaviour between different income brackets or particular areas? Can this be an offset to customers going back out to eat when things turn?
Hi Ajay, I'm okay with that. Look, we are very pleased with the own brand performance. Actually, across all the tiers, what we're seeing is volume outstripping proprietary brands. As you say, Finest was a standout at 13.6% for the year. The key drivers of that have really been the focus on innovation and quality, and we'll continue to do that. Actually, it's not in every single category. We've got a significant amount of headroom going forward to grow the brand. What we're really focused on is what is right in every category and what's the right tiering from Simply, Red Tap, and Finest. What we're seeing and how we're bringing that brand together are collective and certainly through seasonal moments, a real opportunity to provide kind of restaurant quality meals for customers at home.
I think you're seeing categories that are emerging, freezer categories where we've had big entertaining ranges or some of whether it's the Coles Finest risotto really coming through in terms of driving new occasion and actually driving customers to the fixture where they haven't previously been shopping. We're really energised around what that brand can do in the future, but we're really focused around all of the tiers on our own brand and how we make sure that we get it right in every category. We look to continue to strive for both volume and value and make sure we're delivering the right proposition to customers.
Great color, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Nicole Penny from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Just further on own brands, as that scales further, do you see the engagement with branded suppliers change materially? Just to confirm that you've seen the demand for those labels continue to increase in quarter one. Secondly, if compared to two years ago when you took positions, what changes in the operating environment across customers, competitors, and suppliers have been most material in changing your thinking? What do you need to do differently in response to ensure continued success over the medium term? Thank you.
Thanks, Nicole. I might pass it to Anna to answer your third question on the own brand, and then I'll come back and answer the one around the changes over the last couple of years.
I'd say, look, as we just mentioned, own brand we think has significant opportunity to fill white spaces in categories. This is about getting the right offer in every category, and our brands play a very important role for that. Customers are seeking brands, but they're also seeking private l abel opportunities and where we can innovate. We believe that actually together between branded and private label, we can grow categories, and that's how we're working. We actually don't see them competing in that way. What we want to do is grow the category. We're thinking about it, and we're thinking at a category-by-category level. It's also worth noting that many of our own brand suppliers are also branded suppliers as well. Significant opportunity, we think, by really focusing. We are seeing good growth, and we have got big plans in this space, but we're working very collaboratively with our suppliers, and we think we've got the right offer. We'll get the right offer in every category, whatever the tiering and whatever the brand. We'll be driven by the customer need.
Nicole, on your question on what has changed, I think it's actually been quite a turbulent period, with the earlier part of that, with the inflation that we were seeing coming through. Many customers have radically changed their behavior in how they shop, and whether that's trading down to more affordable options, shopping across multiple retailers, actually cutting back on a lot of lines like liquor or treats, even things like bottled water. We've had to work hard to respond to that changing customer needs, and we've really refined our customer proposition to line up with that. We've also very significantly changed the business in the last couple of years with the introduction of two Automated DCs and two Customer Fulfillment Centers, and that has given us lots of flexibility to feed into that customer proposition that I was talking about, but also build for the future. As we look ahead, we think there's further opportunities to go after in areas like the Coles 360 and retail media.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Shaun Cousins from UBS. Please go ahead.
Great, thanks. Just a question for Charlie, just on net interest. Should we apply the similar approach to fiscal 2026 that you suggested for DNA in that we look at half of the increase in fiscal 2025 should be coming through at fiscal 2026? I'm just conscious that I can see that I see consensus estimates at around $5.98 for fiscal 2026, and your net interest in fiscal 2025 is $5.41. I may have my numbers off there, but just any clarity that you can put on the record around net interest guidance would be helpful, please.
Not a problem, Shaun. Thanks for the question. Look, in terms of interest, you will recall after I tried, we did see a step up in interest, and that was more related to AASB 16 as we brought the large transformation programs onto the balance sheet. Really, look at interest into two buckets. If you like, the debt-related interest, and if I sort of break out the $125 million amount, $117 million of the interest related to, or about 20% related to the debt facilities, and the balance of about $424 million related to the leases. If I look at both those components, with respect to the leases, apart from the normal lease churns through store renewals and new stores coming on board, we don't actually expect a significant change in the interest related or the financing cost related to the leases. I guess that's bucket one.
The other side of it, it really is the interest on our debt facilities, and you need to look at it from two ways. One, we will see some benefit from lower interest rates. About 50% of our debt is actually floating, so we'll see some benefit there. You also have to factor in effectively the annualization of the new note that we issued back on April 25 for $300 million. Net-net, I actually expect interest to be broadly in line with FY 2025.
Perfect. Fantastic. Thanks for the clarity.
Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Ben Gilbert from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the questions. What's strategic sourcing mean within Supermarkets and how big or material an opportunity is strategic sourcing?
Yeah. When we think about that, Ben, it's how do we partner with our suppliers? We're looking, as you know, to do longer, deeper partnerships that really drive long-term value for the customers, for our partners, and for the business. We are really moving in that direction to partner deeper to unlock end-to-end efficiencies all round and actually set change to the customer proposition. That's the direction we are taking, and we've had some good success with this this year, and we'll continue to do that over the long term to set change to the customer proposition.
How progressed are you there? Did you start that back at the beginning, sort of late March quarter? Is that right? I suppose in terms of probably takes a bit of time for that to come through and then annualize. Is it relatively early days on that front?
I guess it's kind of an always-on program, and we're making progress over the last 18 months on that. We really want to continue as BAU to really think about how do we use partnerships to unlock greater customer opportunity and differentiation. It's always on, and we're probably 12, 18 months into this way of working.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Tom Kierath from Barrenjoey . Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. I'm just thinking about the half-to-half profit growth. I mean, 2026, I guess based on the ADCs taking a bit longer to kind of contribute, and then in the first half, you're lapping the Woolworths supply chain kind of stuff. Is it fair to assume that you kind of get growth in the first half, but then faster growth in the back half?
You're talking from an earnings perspective, Tom?
Sorry. Yeah, sorry. Yeah.
Yeah. We probably won't be spending a whole heap of time breaking it down by half, but I think a few things to probably think about. One is exactly right on the ADCs, which is from a phasing perspective. At the back end of FY 2025, we did have Kemps Creek starting to deliver, and you're probably going to see a bigger contribution of that in the first half and early part of the second half before we cycle that. From a CFC perspective, as Charlie described before, we expect as we continue to grow volumes throughout the year, the earning trajectory on that improves. You would expect to see a bigger drag in the first half than the second half in that. The other factor, which was in last year that we will cycle over the top of, is the competitor disruption that was in November, December last year.
Equally, there were some significant weather events in January, February, and March in FY 2025 in New South Wales and Queensland.
Yeah, okay. That's helpful. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Bryan Raymond from JPMorgan . Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the follow-up. Just another clarification question. Just on corporate costs into 2026, there was a reasonable step up there in 2025, particularly in the second half. How should we think about two-way generalized, or should we be taking kind of FY 2025 as a good baseline for 2026? Thanks.
Yeah. For our corporate costs, they did step up a little in FY 2025. They're actually higher because of higher insurance costs for the year. They stepped up to about $107 million. In terms of corporate costs as part of the other division, I think you should think about that as pretty much flat year-to-year from 2025 into 2026.
Right. For the overall other line, other earnings should be sort of, I think it was a $109 million loss this in 2025. It should be sort of broadly similar to that $109 million into 2026.
Yeah. Brian, I think that's a good way of looking at it. Look, let me just break it up into the four components because I think there's four elements to it. One is the supply contract that we have with Aviva, the product supply agreement. As you know, that's the revenue line in the other, and that's obviously been impacted by tobacco sales. You should expect that, from a sales revenue perspective, to decline because of the tobacco sales. The actual earnings from that, about $9 million, that doesn't change really from year- to- year because it's sort of a flat fee if you're as a way to look at that. That should be the same. Corporate costs, which is the other element I spoke about, that would be flat. Flybuys. Flybuys in FY 2025, pleasingly, the net loss was about -$5 million, which is better than the FY 2024 number.
That's some great work that the team had been doing with Flybuys and Flybuys itself in relation to improvements in simplifying the operating model, which was positive. The swing factor really is property, right? In 2024, we had a gain in property. In 2025, there was a $6 million net loss. As I look forward, I wouldn't expect too much difference from a property perspective in FY 2026 at this point.
Sorry, too much difference to 2025 or just a flat outcome or like zero?
Yeah, a flat outcome to 2025 from a property perspective.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it, Charlie.
Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Phil Kimber from E&P Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. My follow-up was really just around, you talked about the green shoots, and you've done an amazing job really simplifying your range and leaning into the consumer preferences that we've seen in the last few years. Just trying to get a sense of how quickly, if those green shoots pick up, can you pivot back the other way? I don't know whether it's adding more range and things like that. Maybe you can just talk conceptually about that, I think.
Yes, thanks, Phil. I think from a, you know, range optimization perspective, we've had a big push on this in the last 12 months in terms of building our capability, but we would now consider it to be sort of always on. As I said in my initial comments, it's not something you can just set and forget. You've got to constantly be working at it to optimize it for every store and every sort of customer community that shops at that store. We see that as an ongoing effort that we'll be doing year in, year out, from now on. That really is about removing duplication to give space to bring new innovation in and simplifying the offer so that we have it simpler for customers to shop. As I said in the presentation, we've seen some really good early results from this.
We're very pleased with how it's going. We're about 40 categories in at this stage that we've done in the last 12 months, and we'll be looking to roll out some more as we move forward into this year.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Craig Woolford from MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the follow-up. Just a quick one on that. Trading update was the strength of sale of the 7% ex-tobacco was a good number. Is there any other color you can provide on, say, fresh versus packaged performance trends, and any inflation impacts in the sort of momentum that you're seeing?
Probably limited color on a breakdown from a category perspective. Happy to talk a little bit about inflation, though. I think we obviously have quite stable inflation in Q4 at 1.5% or 1.2% if you take the tobacco out. As we're starting to look ahead now on what the expectations of what might be coming through in FY 2026, we are seeing lamb starting to experience some supply constraints, and that's putting a bit of pressure on prices. Probably the big one, though, that we're watching very closely is beef, because export demand out of Asia is putting pressure into production and process capacity here in Australia.
I think on the other side of the ledger, we're starting to see some deflation in chicken and pork, which is pleasing from a customer perspective, but potentially looking into a bit of a remix of what customers are buying as those prices settle into the system this year.
Okay. The nature of the question was the, you know, 7% sales versus 1% to 1.2% ex-tobacco inflation. That's a very healthy volume figure. Probably feels better than green shoots. Leah, in terms of.
Look, it's been a pleasing start to the year. It was a pleasing Q4. It really is continuing that momentum that we had from Q4 into Q1. I think it's our job to be cautious about that and be thinking ahead of what the customer is going to want, particularly as we head into the really important trading period for Christmas. We're really focused on what is that customer proposition that we need and how do we need to make investments to keep that momentum going in the top line. We are pleased with it, Craig.
Excellent. Thanks, Leah.
Thank you. At this stage, we're showing no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to Leah for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much. I think in summary, we're pleased with the strong financial results and the strategic achievements that we've delivered over the course of the last year. As we look to the year ahead, we're pretty clear on what our priorities are. We will remain focused on ensuring our value proposition and offer resonates with the customer. That includes delivering consistent quality and availability and continuously improving the customer experience in store. We also will continue our laser focus that we have on costs and really focus in on unlocking the full benefits from our ADCs and CFC investments, both for the benefits of customers but also shareholders. Excitedly, we'll look to continue to grow the Coles 360 retail media business, which we think is a big opportunity for us in the year ahead.
Thank you, and I look forward to speaking to you again, not so far away, at our first quarter results in October.