I would now like to hand the conference over to Leah Weckert, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, thank you for joining us for our half-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. I'm joined in the room today by Charlie Elias, our CFO, Matt Swindells, our Chief Operations and Supply Chain Officer, Anna Croft, our Chief Commercial and Sustainability Officer, Michael Courtney, our Chief Customer Experience Officer, and Claire Lauber, our Chief Executive of Liquor. Moving now to Slide 3. I'm pleased that we've been able to deliver another very strong set of results in what is a competitive operating environment. We delivered strong supermarkets earnings growth with continued sales momentum. E-commerce was a key contributor again, with sales growing by 27%.
Our automation programs are delivering tangible benefits. We delivered cost savings of AUD 133 million through our Simplify and Save to Invest program. Of course, what matters most to us is our customers, which is why the improvements in our customer satisfaction scores across the business during the half was a key highlight for me. We completed our LiquorLand banner simplification program, and while there are challenges in the overall liquor market, we are seeing positive growth across our convenience portfolio, which is really pleasing. Moving on to Slide 4 and the financial results. We reported group sales revenue of AUD 23.6 billion, an increase of 2.5%. Excluding significant items, group EBIT increased by 10.2% and NPAT increased by 2.5%.
In supermarkets, adjusted for the competitive industrial action in the PCP and excluding tobacco, sales revenue increased by 6.1%, and supermarkets EBIT increased by a very strong 14.6%, underpinned by top-line growth and EBIT margin expansion of 55 basis points. Charlie will talk more to the financials in his presentation. Moving on to Slide 5. During the half, we maintained a consistent focus on executing against our strategic priorities, which once again underpinned our performance for the period. Let's get into this in some more detail, starting on Slide 6 with our first pillar, Destination for Food and Drink. We know value remains front of mind for consumers, and delivering on our value commitment to customers remains a priority for us. During the half, we strengthened our value proposition, expanding our range of everyday value products.
We ran a winter and spring value campaign. Our Shop, Scan, Win European glassware continuity programs each delivered strong engagement with our customers. Our exclusive to Coles portfolio continues to perform well, with sales growth of 5.7%. We launched more than 500 new products. The range was recognized with 17 Product of the Year awards. We know our own brand portfolio is a unique differentiator for Coles. These new products and awards underscore the momentum we are building in quality and innovation across the portfolio. We also entered into some really exciting exclusive partnerships during the half. One of these was with Marks & Spencer, where we brought a number of their iconic favorites to Australian homes. This included their well-known Percy Pig and Colin the Caterpillar lollies, which turned out to be our most successful lolly launch ever.
A partnership with Grill'd also proved popular, particularly with the rising bakeaway trend to those who want to recreate their restaurant or takeaway dinner in their own home. These collaborations broaden our appeal and help ensure we remain a destination for inspiration and everyday meals. We were also pleased with how we executed over the Christmas period, starting with our Christmas range, which showcased more than 340 own brand Christmas products and exclusive specialty drinks. We worked hard in the lead up to Christmas to ensure value was felt where customers needed it most. Our AUD 1 seasonal produce lines in the week before Christmas were a simple but powerful example of that commitment. Operationally, we delivered our highest monthly default results since December 2020, an important sign of the progress we are continuing to make in availability and overall execution.
This leads me to our customer satisfaction scores on Slide 7. As I said at the start, the improvements in customer satisfaction scores were a real highlight, with strong improvement across our key metrics of quality, availability, store look and feel, and price. The big takeaway here is that customers are noticing the changes we are making. Improved availability, sharper value, and better execution in stores are translating directly into stronger satisfaction scores, and that gives us real confidence as we look ahead. There is always more to do, but we are very pleased with the progress we are making. Moving now on to Slide 8 and the next pillar of Accelerated by Digital.
We reported another strong half in our e-commerce business, with 27% revenue growth in supermarkets, penetration now over 13%, and double-digit growth across all shopping missions, whether that be same day, next day, click and collect, or our immediacy offering. We are focused on making sure we have a great offer across all online channels. We've made a lot of progress in e-commerce over the last few years, and customers are responding to this. We know customers have different shopping missions throughout the week, and the investments we have made allow us to provide them with exceptional service that matches their shopping mission. For example, our CFCs allow us to provide the biggest range, better availability, and improved freshness for those customers who are looking to do their weekly shop.
Our expanded partnership with Uber and our windowless click and collect rapid offer provides us with a leading immediacy proposition. During the period, we made investments in our digital assets and are seeing particularly strong growth in our app metrics, with monthly active nine visitors to the app growing by 32% and the app share of e-commerce revenue now at 54%. Our CFC volumes increased in the half, with sales growth again outpacing total supermarkets e-commerce sales growth. Same-day deliveries commenced in Melbourne in the first quarter and Sydney in the second quarter, and we also had a major catchment extension to Geelong and the Surf Coast in Victoria. In terms of our immediacy offering, as I mentioned, we expanded our partnership with Uber Eats.
We've now up to 17,000 products available to purchase through the Uber Eats app, and the windowless click and collect rapid was also expanded to 255 stores nationally. Overall, our online NPS saw a meaningful uplift, driven by improved availability, fulfillment, and the overall digital customer experience. One of the most important points to make here is that we were able to make all of these investments, grow our business, expand catchments and our immediacy offering, while driving efficiencies through technology, scale, and a strong operational focus. We made further improvements to our picking processes in stores, increased orders per van, and installed 2 key automation technology features in the CFCs, with on-grid robotic pick arms and auto frame loading. It's been a very pleasing half in terms of e-commerce. Moving now to slide 9 and loyalty.
Flybuys remains an important driver of customer engagement across Coles, as well as a key element of our overall value proposition. During the half, Flybuys exceeded 10 million active members, growing by 6.2%. This highlights the continued relevance of personalized value for our customers. We were also pleased to see strong growth in our Coles Plus subscriptions, with customers recognizing the additional benefits they receive by becoming part of Coles Plus family, including free deliveries, free rapid click and collect, and double Flybuys points. Moving now to slide 10 and our delivered consistently for the future pillar. Our SSI program remains a core part of our DNA. We know the importance of operational efficiency.
Delivering consistent and sustainable cost savings through our SSI program enables us to help offset inflation and reinvest in the customer offer, and we see the benefits of that both in our top line as well as our bottom line. This half, we delivered cost savings of AUD 133 million. This brings us to around AUD 700 million since the beginning of FY 2024, and we remain firmly on track to achieve more than AUD 1 billion in benefits over the four-year program. Consistent with previous years, there were many initiatives across different parts of the business that contributed. Again, a common theme with the use of AI and other technology automation to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our processes. This leads me to slide 11. We've been building and deploying AI for over a decade.
What has changed recently is the pace of capability and the breadth of where we can apply it. For our customers, we are already scaling AI to drive more relevant offers and engagement through personalization across the shopping journey. AI is helping us deliver more personalized and relevant experiences, with... tailoring engines, with improving relevance, conversion, and overall customer satisfaction. In parallel, we're also now moving into the next wave: agentic commerce, conversational AI, and real-time personalization, capabilities that will transform how customers engage with us over time. We are improving the relevance, timing, and effectiveness of awards for customers and helping them to find value while improve our promotional effectiveness. In our operations, AI is embedded across operational decision-making, with a clear focus on outcomes to improve availability, reduce waste, and lift productivity. We're using AI in forecasting, demand planning, and ranging to improve accuracy and availability.
In stores and in our e-commerce business, AI is helping optimize rostering, improve workflows, pick efficiencies, and dynamic work. Across our supply chain, AI supports optimization in transport and improved workflows. We're also using AI in stores for computer vision, for object recognition, and loss technology. Looking ahead, we're building an end-to-end optimization capability across the supply chain, from automated DC pallet flows to transport to replenishment. Decisions are all made as one system and not in silos. A digital twin also lets us simulate scenarios before we change operations. We can apply this to execute the best plan in the real network. The result is improved availability, lower waste, lower cost to serve, and faster response time to any disruptions.
We're also looking to optimize online fulfillment capacity across our stores, CFCs and DCs, helping us to decide where orders should flow, how much capacity to allocate, and when to flex resources. Finally, for our team members, we're embedding AI tools that make work easier and more productive. Our knowledge assistant is helping teams quickly access policies and procedures, and we've rolled out AI productivity tools, including ChatGPT Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot, and we're partnering with OpenAI on team training. It's fair to say that AI is well and truly entrenched within our business, is delivering strong results, and has been for some time. The pace of change is accelerating, and we are really excited by the opportunities that are emerging, particularly in customer-facing agentic AI, and we will be talking about this more in the future as these start to scale.
Moving to the next slide. Alongside our financial performance, we remain committed to the role we play in supporting our team members to buy amenities and the environment. Before handing over to Charlie, I would like to cover off some of our achievements in this area. I will start with our team members. Through our November team engagement pulse survey, we maintained our highest-ever team member engagement score, remaining in the top quartile. This is a strong reflection of the culture and leadership across the business. Almost 70,000 team members provided their feedback, and it was pleasing to see that delivering for our customers remained one of our strongest areas, with 90% of team members recognizing our commitment to meeting our customer needs.
We also continued to support the wellbeing of our team members, including through initiatives such as R U OK? Day, where our stores and distribution centers came together to reinforce our care and courage values. We recently launched round 14 of the Coles Nurture Fund, continuing our long-standing commitment to supporting innovation, sustainability, and growth within the Australian supplier community. We celebrated excellence across our supplier base in the 2025 Supplier Partner Awards, recognizing achievements across each of our key trading categories. Our community partnerships remain a defining part of who we are. This half, we raised more than AUD 1.6 million for Movember and more than AUD 1.8 million for the SecondBite Christmas Appeal, helping to provide over 9 million meals for Australians experiencing food insecurity. Finally, we continued to make progress on our sustainability commitments.
87.7% of eligible packaging is now recyclable or reusable. We maintained 100% renewable electricity usage across our operations. We continued to divert more than 85% of solid waste from landfill. With that, I'm now going to hand over to Charlie, who will take you through the financial results in some detail.
Great. Thank you, Leah Weckert, and good morning, everyone. I'm now on slide 14, which details our group results. Excluding significant items, we reported group sales revenue of AUD 23.6 billion, an increase of 2.5%. Group EBITDA of AUD 2.2 billion, an increase of 7.8%, and group EBIT of AUD 1.2 billion, an increase of 10.2%. NPAT, excluding significant items, increased by 12.5%. Off the back of these results, the Board declared a fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.41 per share, an increase of 10.8% compared to the prior corresponding period. This is a consistent progression of shareholder returns over time. Moving on to the segment overview on slide 15. Let's start with supermarkets.
Sales revenue increased by 3.6%, with our value proposition continuing to resonate with customers. We adjust for competitive industrial action, and excluding tobacco, sales revenue increased by 6.1%. EBIT increased by 14.6%, reflecting the strong top-line growth, coupled with EBIT margin expansion of 55 basis points to 5.8%, which was underpinned by a 65 basis point increase in gross profit margin. The strong gross profit result was achieved notwithstanding the significant investments we made in value during the annualized benefits of our EC program, strategic sourcing, SSI initiatives, and the growth of Coles 360. Lower tobacco sales also contributed 37 basis points to GP margin. In liquor, sales revenue declined by 3.2%. The liquor market remains subdued, and competitive intensity increased through the period, particularly at the big box end of the market.
During the half, we completed our simple LiquorLand store conversion program, our convenience portfolio, representing around 90% of our store network, delivered positive sales growth. We are seeing a shift in customer behaviors towards convenience-led purchases, pleasingly, our stores are well positioned in this convenience space. There is some work to be done to optimize our LiquorLand Warehouse now that the conversions are complete. Overall, liquor EBIT was impacted by a softer top line and AUD 13 million in one-off costs relating to the Simply LiquorLand conversions. In other, revenue relates solely to the product site supply agreement we have with Viva Energy.
As outlined in the results release, the PSA, which is due to expire in April, has been extended and is now due to expire at the end of November to allow Viva Energy to complete the transition to New South Wales, W.A., and Queensland. The increase in other EBIT was predominantly due to the higher net property gains in the prior corresponding period. Turning to operating cash flow on slide 16. Before discussing the numbers, I want to highlight a timing impact. The half year ended on the 4th of January, similar to last year, this resulted in an additional payment run in the final week, creating an additional cash outflow of approximately AUD 560 million. The timing effect impacted several metrics, including cash realization, working capital, and net debt. These metrics will normalize in the second half.
Operating cash flow, excluding interest and tax, was AUD 1.5 billion, with a cash realization ratio of 69%. Adjusting for this additional payment run, the cash realization ratio was 94%. For the full year, we continue to expect cash realization of 100%, with the first half timing impact reversing in the second half. The working capital movement primarily reflects increased inventory to support availability over the Christmas period and lower trade and other payables following the additional payment run. The movement in provisions and other largely reflects the flow of provision, which is non-cash, but recognized in EBITDA. I'll now move to capital expenditure on slide 17. Gross operating capital expenditure on an accrued basis was AUD 476 million, a decrease of AUD 66 million compared to the prior corresponding period.
We had a higher weighting towards store renewals and new stores across supermarkets and liquor this half, as well as a lower spend in relation to our Victorian ADC. This was as a result of a milestone payment having been recorded in the prior corresponding period. Pleasingly, our Victorian ADC remains both on time and on budget. We also incurred lower capital expenditure in relation to our investments in loss technology. As you know, CapEx falls into four key areas: store renewals, growth initiatives, efficiency initiatives, and maintenance. Within renewals, we completed 160 store renewals across our network, consisting of 35 supermarkets and 127 liquor stores. These included 122 Simply LiquorLand conversions. Within growth, we opened 6 new supermarkets and 11 new liquor stores. We also continue to invest in our e-commerce business.
Efficiency initiatives included investments in the Victorian ADC, store front-end service transformation, and Liquor Easy ordering. Maintenance capital included our ongoing refrigeration and electrical replacement programs and lifecycle replacement of store and technology assets. We continue to optimize our property portfolio, with net property capital expenditure increasing by AUD 157 million, primarily due to an increase in property acquisitions and developments and lower proceeds from divestments. To reiterate the guidance we provided on our, at our FY 2025 results, we continue to expect capital expenditure of approximately AUD 1.2 billion for the full year as we continue to invest in store renewals, digital and technology, and growth initiatives. Turning to funding and dividends on slide 18. Our funding position remains strong.
At the end of the half, our weighted average drawn debt maturity was 4.4 years, with undrawn facilities of AUD 1.9 billion. As I said earlier, the Coles board declared a fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.41 per share, which is a 10.8% uplift versus first half 2025 and shows a consistent progression of shareholder returns over time. We will also have a franking credit balance of approximately AUD 600 million after the payment of our interim dividend. Finally, we retained our 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. With that, I'll hand it back to Leah to take us through the outlook and concluding comments.
Thanks, Charlie. Turning to the outlook on slide 26. In the first seven weeks of the third quarter, supermarket revenue increased by 3.7% or 5.3%, excluding tobacco. We're pleased with this strong sales result, as we can see through the market share data, that it represents above-market growth, continuing the sales momentum we have had for some time. It indicates that in Victoria, we have retained a portion of the customers that we gained as a result of our [inaudible] -3.5%. Continuing to deliver positive sales growth. As I said at the start, the focus of Liquor this period is on leveraging our unified brand, simplifying our processes, and improving the performance of our LiquorLand Warehouse stores.
Overall, I'd say we have had a strong first half and a good start to the third quarter. 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 two, and if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. In the interest of time, we do ask that participants limit themselves to asking one question. To ask further questions, you are welcome to rejoin the queue. Your first question comes from Ben Gilbert from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team. Thanks for taking the question. Just Leah, I was supposed to ask a few questions on the trading update, but just on your comments around market growth, just can you simply give us some color, potentially ex-Victoria, and how within that trading update you're seeing some of the key categories in terms of sort of your health, beauty, versus fresh, versus sort of the food category? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Ben. As I said, we're quite pleased with the first 7 weeks for 2 reasons, really. One is that based on the market share data, we can see that it's above market growth, that means we have retained a portion of those customers, which means our Victorian sales numbers actually aren't that far off where we are from a national basis. Then we have grown some share on top of that. The data point we received on Wednesday is entirely consistent with the market share data that we have, which is that our major competitor has also performed ahead of market, that share is not coming from us, we can see that it's coming from others....
I think the second reason that we're pleased with that first 7 weeks is that it just really shows consistency. For those 7 weeks, this year, we've got 5.3% ex tobacco. Last year, it was 4.5%. The year before that, it was 6.4%. That represents really strong sales growth year in, year out. We are really focused on continuing to drive the flywheel that we talk about, which is strengthen the top line, unlock your operating leverage, and then reinvest that back into the customer offer. That's what we're intending to do. In terms of strength of categories, you know, food continues to be very strong for us.
We've seen good strength across the fresh areas, and you'll see on the customer satisfaction scores that quality is really stepping up. That is actually directly related to our fresh categories. I would call out meat as one area where we are seeing outperformance in the market in that space. In the non-food area, that's been a real focus for us. We would say we're quite encouraged by the emerging trends that we're seeing in that area. We have reconfigured categories in the half to respond to some of the pricing dynamics that we are seeing in the broader market, which means that we have introduced a lot more lines onto EDLP. I mean, we know that we're a convenient destination to pick up many of these non-food products.
You know, you think, your cleaning products, your paper products, your baby products. It actually makes sense to grab those when you come into the grocery shop. We're taking very much a category by category approach. To maybe just give you a bit of color on that, we've invested, for example, into our Coles Ultra wipes and our Coles Ultra range in cleaning, so baby and cleaning private label, and that has driven really strong volume growth for us in that space. We've also taken action on some of the proprietary lines in pet, for example, to be more competitive with some of the players in the market that have recently moved into that space. On the back of that, we've seen double-digit growth on those lines. Really encouraging, in terms of where we're headed there and more to come.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Errington, from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Morning, Leah. Yeah, look, I'd like to pick up on that, particularly slide seven. It's a fantastic looking slide. It's brilliant in terms of customer resonance, and you highlight it as one of your key highlights. Can you bring it to life a little bit? What does it actually mean? Like 330 basis points. Can you put it in context as how big a jump that is, and availability? I mean, they look really impressive, but I don't know what to make of it. What does shine for me a little bit is price, you know, up only 180 basis points. I don't know if that's good or not, but your gross margin was very powerful. Could you have gone a bit harder on price? Can you basically bring slide seven to life?
Because that looks an incredibly powerful chart, great execution, great improvement in margin. Can you bring to life what drove that? Maybe, given that you are higher margin than your competitor, how much firepower that you've got going forward to maintain that sales momentum that you've got? A bit in that question, but if you could have a go at it, that'd be really appreciated.
Thanks, David. We'll try and unpack it. I mean, it was a highlight, I think, for all of us as a team because we do have a fundamental belief that if we're increasing customer satisfaction, it's one of the things that helps us to drive transaction and engagement in store. I think it is a real combination of the execution focus we've had, but also, it's the benefits starting to flow through some of the transformational investments that we've made over a long period of time now.
I think, you know, the benefits we're getting from the ADCs, the CFCs, but also the step up that we've made in terms of the renewal investment. Maybe I might ask Anna and Matt to give us a little bit of color, and we'll maybe just work through the slides in order of what the headings are. We start with quality. Do you want to cover that one?
Hi, David, it's Anna. When it comes to quality, obviously, it's important across the store, but very, very important and fresh. We've been running a really big fresh transformation program. That really has seen us take an end-to-end review of quality. Taking every touchpoint on where we might aggregate that and how we would look to solve it. Actually, just to give you a bit of a sense of what we've been doing, we've been working through our supplier base to make sure that we have the right suppliers that are fit for the future, and we've gone into deep end-to-end partnership with that. We've also coupled that with an upweight in our technical resource to really work with those suppliers to really unlock quality and cost.
We've really then also focused, particularly in meat, around our manufacturing network to make sure it's actually closer to stores. Think WA to WA. Queensland, we've got a port facility there now, which means that we're faster, and we get fresher product to stores and then therefore give life to customers in store, we know that's how they measure quality when they see life at home. The other bit we've done is we've invested quite significantly in store team training, and also central team training to really focus on quality, coupled with the work that Matt and the team have been doing in supply chain around faster, fresher flows. That mean we are flowing product from our supplier base to the stores in a very nuanced way that means we get better life.
On the back of that, is probably to hand over to Matt to give a bit of flavor on that, 'cause reducing lead times has been a key priority. I might hand to you before we then talk about availability as well.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Anna. Morning, David. Look, it makes it easier when Anna and the team are super focused upon right supply r ight range by store and the right price and promo plans, and that does then set us up to leverage the changes that we've made around our supply chain operations and our store operations. The game we're playing here is speed. The faster we can move product, the fresher it will be, and importantly, the less waste and markdown we also get. Our faster fresh flows is essentially a shift away from bringing product in and racking and stacking to then wait to come and pick it later.
We really are moving things through the supply chain as fast as possible and measuring in hours as opposed to days, and then similarly tying that in with the store execution, where we've got the right display space and the right resourcing to really make sure that the product gets in front of the customer in the least possible time. I would also add, we've now got 2 years under our belt of our replenishment forecasting system. This was a RELEX implementation we did, and the final part of our integrated replenishment plans. By the team, and so they get better at forecast, too. It's a number of parts that drive the difference in quality. Answer your question around is 330 basis points a shift.
It is a really big shift. If I think about the 390 basis points, we've then seen improvement in availability, that is at levels that previously we've not really seen. They are extremely good results. On availability itself, you probably think about this in 3 areas. The first, and I've talked about this again in the past, we've got to focus on foundations. This is where we've made the op model changes, and we've got the commercial teams really focused upon range, supply, collaboration, the supply chain team focused upon forecast and the logistics of moving product and the store teams super focused on. It's the consistency with which the teams now work together that's driving the difference. We've got a really solid base that we can build on.
Importantly, our supplier inbound fulfillment, our IFOP, is at a six-year high, and through the Christmas period, where it traditionally falls away, we saw it maintain a level, so we've got stability, not just consistency there. The second part, that enables us to really drive investments as making the difference. That's the ADCs that we had talked to and the CFCs, and we are putting more cartons and more products through those ADCs to drive the benefit of not just efficiency, but service. We've also now rolled out our transport management system, which has enabled us to have better control and visibility of our fleet, and that means we are better at picking up from suppliers through Coles Collect, and we're better at delivering to stores as well. Those investments drive a difference.
The final part, which I think is probably where we're going to see the next level, is really a shift from being reactive to being proactive, and this is where we're starting to use data and AI to look for gaps before they occur. Where can we see the problem before it becomes an issue in the store? We're able to identify at a store SKU level, potential out of stocks and target team members to go and manage the inventory closely so that we can then be proactive around availability and prevent any issues before they even occur. I think that's then the next level, foundations first, technology driving the difference, and then the AI and data really becoming proactive rather than reactive. That's setting us up for even further improving availability. Anna, I might throw to you for the store look and feel, the third part.
Yeah, there's a number of key areas that go into the store look and feel metric. Couple of things I would say, driving this certainly is our renewal program. If I take you back to 2022, we would have done 40 renewals. This year, we will complete 70, actually, what we have done is maintained the blueprint now for some years to get consistency. What that does is gives customer consistency in every store they go into, it's also enabled us to take the cost per renewal down to do more of those. Certainly a key focus, and we've really started to address what I would call some of the long-term underinvested stores as part of this program, and we're seeing really good progress and customer response there.
The other bit that's in this metric is ease of shop. We focus on the shelf edge through our range program and macro space. We've really stepped on both navigation of space and aisle. The one big thing here, we've really thought about the integration of our omnichannel model to actually remove the friction we see from customers in store through that. Good progress there. The big year, we fixed up our checkout space through the service transformation program, so that has been a real meaningful step on from a customer satisfaction. I'd say there's lots of initiatives driving this. We are certainly focused on how do we continue to elevate this and how do we take it to the next level. Much more to do, but we're pretty pleased with where we are.
If I come to the final one on price, funnily enough, actually, it is always the hardest metric to move and moves the slowest from a customer perspective. We are really pleased with 180 basis points, and that's come from all the work that we've talked about before around fewer, deeper, more targeted promotions, removing the noise and making it easier for customers to shop. We're seeing the increase in EDLP in the right categories, really driving that price satisfaction. Again, the work we have done, not only on simplifying the range but also tailoring the range to the store, has made it easier for customers to find value and find the products they want on shelf. A number of key things.
There's an awful lot more to do in here, and we're really focused around that, but it's pleasing to see that the work we've done over the last 18 months really starting to come to fruition here. They would be the big drivers, David, across those four.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Shaun Cousins from UBS. Please go ahead.
Sorry. Thank you. Good morning, Leah and Charlie and team. Maybe just a question on the first seven weeks. Sorry, you dropped out, Leah, when you were talking in your outlook. Do you think you were hurt by the cycling the Jan 2025 period in that Woolworths is now indicating that they were hurt in Jan 2025, so did Coles benefit there, and hence your cycling against a period there, which actually means that three to seven could be a bit stronger in that you're getting some big industrial action tailwind? My question is really more around liquor, just in terms of like-for-like sales are down 2.5% to start the year. Sorry. Yes, please, Leah. Sorry, your line's quite. We're losing you a little bit. Sorry, pardon me, the team, for a second here or there. Apologies for that.
Shaun, can you?
You're in and out.
Hear me. I'm going to go ahead and answer the question. Oh, Shaun, was that, are you hearing us okay?
Yep, we can hear you now. Yep.
Wonderful. Okay. I might reiterate the points I made when Ben asked the question. We are definitely still cycling over some disruption from the industrial action last year in the January period. We are pleased, though, with our first seven weeks of sales performance, and there's really two reasons driving that. Based on the market share data, what we have reported today is above-market growth, and that means that we have retained a portion of the customers that came to shop with us last year, and we have grown some share on top of that. That we received on Wednesday is entirely consistent with that market share growth, with that market share data, I should say.
Our major competitor has also performed ahead of market, but that share is not coming from us, and we can see in the market share data where that is coming from. We feel that we have the right pitch in terms of customer at the moment because we are retaining customers and we are stepping it up. The second thing we're really pleased about on the result is just the consistency, which is something we really prioritize. If you look back in prior years, those first seven weeks, we've reported 5.3% ex tobacco today. That was 4.5% last year, and it was 6.4% the year before.
That represents really strong sales growth year in, year out, that we are delivering, and we believe that is part of what we're managing to get to work through the strategy of the flywheel, of strengthening the top line, unlocking the into the customer offer. Did you get all that, Shaun?
Okay, we lost you. We got most of that, and I think across the two answers, I think we've got it. My question is around liquor. Just in terms of your like- to- like to start the year is down 2.5%. Your earnings were down 37% in the first half. You've called out the aggression from Dan Murphy's. Dan Murphy's remains aggressive on price and really tries to reestablish its sort of price leadership, which is quite existential for them, how does Coles liquor actually perform? In terms of does your big box just continue to sort of suffer? Just curious around the outlook for earnings. Should we be anticipating earnings to be down another 30% again? You've got a fixed cost base there and a competitor that's quite aggressive. Just curious around the outlook there, please.
We won't be giving any guidance on where the EBIT will go, but let me make a few comments. First of all, we're pleased that we've completed the 222 LiquorLand conversions as part of the Simply LiquorLand project. Along with that, we have reset range, and we have reset value mechanics in our stores. Ultimately, that entire program of work has really been about how do we attract customers into our offer. What we're really encouraged by, and I have to say, it's early days. We only finished this process in the middle of December, but, you know, early days, we're very encouraged by the NPS uplift that we are seeing.
It is a very significant and material uplift that we are seeing in customer satisfaction, and that tells us that those changes are really resonating, which is, you know, the first thing you have to achieve with your customers. There is no doubt that the backdrop to all of that is the market is very challenging, and we have a subdued market, which is a combination of a structural shift, which is generational around consumption of liquor, but you've also got the impacts in there of cost of living. Certainly in Q2, we saw a you know, elevation in the competitive intensity in the market, and that disproportionately impacted our large box, so the LiquorLand Warehouse stores, which is only about 10% of our network.
What we were really pleased about is, even though those stores were impacted, the 90% of the network, which makes up the convenience formats of LiquorLand and LiquorLand Cellars, that component of our network was in positive growth. You team that up with strong customer scores and positive growth in the heart of our network, we think that that is actually really positive in terms of setting ourselves up longer term to lean into what we are seeing as quite a few convenience trends coming through in liquor purchasing. Now, that being said, we've got work to do on the warehouses, and that's going to be a big focus for us over the next 6 to 12 months.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Adrian Lemme from Citi. Please go ahead. Pardon me, Adrian, your line is now live.
Apologies. Hi, Leah and Charlie. Just want to follow on in terms of the liquor commentary. One of the things you talked to there is lower consumption of liquor, a structural shift. I'm just wondering, in supermarkets, oral GLP-1s seem to be coming down the pipe and may be cheaper, which could drive increased uptake in your customer base. How are you thinking about the impacts on demand across the supermarket store, particularly in impulse categories, please?
Yeah, it's a great question, and one we've been discussing quite a bit as a team. I mean, if I come up a level, we're actually seeing a huge trend from customers generally, around healthful living. We're seeing that play out in our offer that we have in stores today. You know, things like the fact that coconut water is up over 30% on sales, the fact that we're getting good growth out of health powders and supplements. Even things like, we've seen a shift, even just in the last six months, in the penetration of fresh produce that is hitting customers' baskets. You've got items, snacking fresh produce items like baby cucumbers, snacking carrots, celery sticks. They're all in double-digit growth.
We are looking at that customer and seeing this behavioral change as there is a shift, again, a bit of a generational shift into healthful eating. We're excited by that. We think that's a really big opportunity and actually plays to many of the strengths that we have in the fresh area of the business, but also the way in which we're leaning into our convenience business. If you think about our ready meals, fresh meat ready meals that we have in the dairy section and frozen meals, our Perform meals, in particular, are growing really, really strongly in that space, and they're dietician-designed meals that actually, you know, tailor the nutritional content to nutrient-rich and high protein.
With that as a backdrop, we're already starting to make a shift with a lot of the product development that we're doing and also the ranging work that we do with suppliers to bring in more healthful options in every category. We look at GLP-1, and we're observing closely what's happening overseas. What we are seeing from these customers is actually what they're really looking for is solutions. They want to find nutrient-rich food in the supermarket, and the supermarket that helps them to navigate that as easily as possible. One of the pieces of feedback we hear is it's really hard to navigate your supermarket shopping as a GLP-1 user. You know, they have the real potential to be a winner here, and that's what we want to lean into.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Kierath from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just got a question on the gross margin. It's up 65 basis points. I understand you've made some restatements there. I guess I'm just trying to square away the comment that you're investing in price. Could you maybe just step us through the moving parts on the gross margin? 'Cause it's obviously a pretty big move there, and I guess quite different to what Woolworths reported a couple of days ago.
Great, thanks. Thanks, Tom. Firstly, I just want to kind of lead off with the restate was a prior period, restatement, so we didn't actually restate anything for this half. Look, we're really pleased with the progression in gross profit margin, as you'll note, 65 basis points. If we look at the drivers, what are the drivers that are actually sort of leading to that sort of growth? Firstly, we're actually seeing the annualized benefits of the investments that we're making in the ADCs, and specifically this half, Kemps Creek. If you recall, Kemps Creek was in ramp- up last year in the FY 2025.
What we're seeing at the moment is both the ADCs are, you know, at business case in the FY 26 year, and we're definitely seeing benefits in the first half, and we'll continue to see that in the second half. Strategic sourcing and SSI benefits, again, are two really important drivers in terms of how we look at gross profit margin. SSI, you would have seen that we delivered AUD 133 million this half. And, you know, a good portion of that goes into GP, and in fact, I think, yeah, we're really pleased with that particular program. Coles 360. Coles 360 was actually in double-digit growth for the half. That is on the back of a number of halves in our double-digit growth.
We're pleased with how that's sort of tracking. We've also called out previously the mix benefits from tobacco. As you know, tobacco sales are lower. That contributes in terms of a gross profit margin benefit, not gross margin dollars, but gross profit margin. We're actually really pleased with how they're sort of tracking. The ADCs, obviously, the implementation costs. We successfully removed and unwound those implementation and dual running costs, and that created a benefit for the half. Look, we're, you know, at this time, and as we did, we continue to sort of make these targeted investments in value, and therefore, we've been investing in value that's allowed us to do that, which is also driving that top-line growth that you're seeing in our results.
Thanks. Can I just clarify the SSI benefit? Like, how much came through gross margin versus CODB, like, of the AUD 133?
Yeah, well, look, typically, it's been, yeah, as we know, over a longer period of time, it's been a third, two-thirds, a third in GP and two-thirds in CODB. This half was a little bit more weighted to CODB, for example, so it's a little bit more weighted to CODB and, yeah, more like a quarter in GP and three-quarters in CODB.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. Could I just follow on from Tom's question on gross margin? I think the message here is that gross margin would have declined if not for mix, Coles 360, SSI, the ADC benefit, et cetera. Can I just confirm that that is the case? You're investing in value for customers, which is great. Do you think you're getting enough support from the supplier base to continue to do that and justify what has been or reward what has been a period of very strong execution from Coles?
Maybe I'll start that question. Anna can talk to the supplier piece. I mean, we haven't done the add up specifically on the gross margin. I mean, I think one of the biggest drivers in the gross margin expansion is the tobacco impact, which is the 37 basis points. You know, that obviously is a very significant mix impact in there. Then you've got the initiatives that we've been doing that Charlie outlined, like the ADCs with Coles 360, strategic sourcing, et cetera. We have made investments into value, and so that is definitely an offset in that, in that line, and a big one during the half has been in the red meat space, as we've seen costs increase in terms of cost of good on that.
We know that's really important for customers, so we haven't passed all of that through, into retail. You know, what I would say is it's a core job of ours as management to make sure that we're just managing that GP, period to period. We put in place a plan that works to have a look at what do we think the impact will be, and therefore, what initiatives do we need to hit with the right degree of timing to get those benefits coming through. You know, we're pleased with the overall result that we've been able to get there. Anna, did you want to talk about the relationship with suppliers?
Yeah, happy to. What I would say, Michael, is that engaging with our supplier base more broadly to optimize the range and strengthen the customer offer is business as usual for us, and we're incredibly focused on that, and that won't change. I won't go into any specifics on the commercials because that wouldn't be appropriate, but what I would say is we are incredibly focused on working collaboratively, taking a much longer-term view to drive a real meaningful step change in our offer and our commercials collectively. It's about getting further ahead together, taking a real end-to-end view of our businesses, in a way that accelerates our true differentiation, and that's really where we've been focused and working with our supplier bases on.
That has taken a fully collaborative, cross-functional approach, not just a trading approach. We're taking it from a supply chain, from an in-store perspective, and we're really looking cradle to grave as to how we think about that going forward. Yeah, more work to do, but we're absolutely working with the supplier base on that.
Michael, what you're actually seeing is actually our 3D strategy actually in action. That flywheel effect, right? Where we're making very deliberate, targeted, investments in programs in GP, cost discipline in our CODB, allowing us to reinvest that back into the customer offer, driving top-line sales and getting that operational leverage and efficiency. All through that, what you actually saw was also, an expansion in our EBIT margin bottom line. It's really our 3D strategy, in action.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Craig Woolford, from MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Leah and team. I'm interested in the comments about the market share performance. It is a great result and interesting how it's played out for both Coles and Woolworths. I assume you're referring to supermarket market share. I'd be interested in, you know, how much work you're now doing on other definitions of the market. If we look at results from Chemist Warehouse or Bunnings, or the strength in dining out more generally. Maybe the bigger question is, how do supermarkets ensure they don't lose share from other retailers as well?
Yeah, thanks, Craig. It did cut out in the middle, but I think we've probably got the gist of it. Yes, we were talking about supermarket share when we were making those comments around the outlook growth. Obviously, it's a much more competitive and broader competition market than it was 10 years ago. The likes of Chemist Warehouse, Bunnings, and, you know, I think we could probably, based on the comments that you've just made, also talk about things like QSR in that mix. For us, what the approach that we've been taking is to really break that down category by category. Even within the non-food space, being very particular about how we think about the different categories in there, and I'll let Anna maybe talk to that one.
Certainly on the food front, we, you know, we continue to expand our convenience options for customers. We actually introduced a number of new products into both the meat range, but also into frozen and convenience dairy over the half, which are really leaning into that. I mentioned the Grill'd burgers. They're a great example of where we can actually bring share back into the supermarket's channel by giving a product to customers that they feel like it's something that they might eat when they're out, but actually they can prepare it in their own home. We've seen fantastic growth in our convenience-based meals out of the freezer section, for example. That's an area that we've expanded significantly. It is a focus area for us.
Those categories that we're talking about, they are in double-digit growth for us. They're outperforming the rest of the supermarket. Do you want to talk a bit about non-food and how we think about the different competitors there, Anna?
Yeah, of course. Craig, I think we've spoken about this quite a lot. It has, is a clear area of focus for us. What I am pleased is we're starting to see some real green shoots coming through in both sales, performance, and market share. When we look at that, we look at supermarkets market share, but more broadly, we look at kind of health and beauty and our pet business at a total market read, because as you said, our competition is far broader than the supermarket space. I think what we're pleased about, the progress has really been driven by a couple of things. I think sharpening our value and moving to a trusted pricing position through EDLP has made a marked difference.
In the quarter, we moved 400 lines in that space, and we made 1,900 value bays in store to really emphasize the value we have, and we're starting to see that come through. We've really focused on range where it matters, so in pet and baby and in beauty incubation, that's really come through. We're using the CFCs very strategically to go deeper on range that really matters, as well as a belt strategy, which really means that we are competing with others outside of the supermarket arena in terms of both neutralizing the value, but making sure that we keep the volume within our business. I think in baby, we've talked about the importance of that.
Leah mentioned we've been really doubling down on CUB, our own brand, and actually we've invested in both value and quality, and we're seeing that now being the number one both volume and value line in those categories. On pet, as we've said, we've done a lot of work on both value and bulk, and that is playing through. We ultimately know, as Leah said, we are the right convenience spot for customers to buy these categories. We actually will take a category-by-category approach and make sure that we are being really tailored where we need to put innovation in, where we need to deal with value, and where we need to deal with range. Certainly not a one-size-fit approach, and we're taking a very much a total market view in these categories, rather than the supermarket lens.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Caleb Wheatley from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Morning, Leah and team. Wanted to follow up. I know this has been a bit of a discussion so far, but particularly around sort of the forward-looking thoughts on the capacity to reinvest. I mean, as you've spoken about, GP margins are up fairly materially. EBIT margins are up fairly materially. I know there's sort of one-offs and things dropping out that are helping that, but on a sort of go-forward basis, how are you thinking about now the sort of capacity to reinvest from an operational point of view? I know prices has been a bit of a focus, but just sort of more broadly, in the suite of options you have to reinvest from an operational point of view, whether it's kind of service or store ops or loyalty.
Yeah, how are you thinking about sort of your flexibility now? Do you have that margin expansion to reinvest and sort of where the more meaningful opportunities are from here, please?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think the expansion that we have got in the margin does give us flexibility as we move forward. I think we've been fairly clear in all of our results presentations that we intend to maintain competitiveness. We do continue to monitor very closely price and not just from one competitor, but from a full suite of competitors, depending on the category that we are talking about. We will continue to do that.
However, we have, even, you know, just in the last seven weeks, been what I would say is nuancing our operating model. That's something that's just BAU for us, which is we look at performance, we look at where we see some opportunities. We will put money in to help us to capture opportunities. A good example of that would be. We've actually seen some real strength in our Sunday trade. As a result of that, we have made the move to invest more into store remuneration to help us to support that. From a category perspective in the store, investing into the online space, ’cause we can see that there's latent capacity there that we can access. We're not afraid to put some investment in to really capture that.
Particularly through flybuys, and we will flex on that to get the right outcome that we want. I'm told that you might have missed part of that, 'cause we're struggling with the authority today. I'll just reiterate that one of the things that we've noticed coming into the first seven weeks of the calendar year has been real strength on Sunday trade in our stores. We have as a result of that, made additional investments into store remuneration to help us to capture the upside of that, and in particular, in the online space.
Thank you, Leah.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Bryan Raymond from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning, Leah, and Charlie, and team. Mine's a bit of a follow-on actually around cost growth. My numbers, excluding implementation costs, you had 6.6% cash CODB growth in the half. I know there's a lot of moving parts in there, but I just wanted to walk through it because it was a bit of a surprise on the upside to me, that cash cost growth. I acknowledge you've had a pretty big online channel shift. That would be a higher-cost channel.
You just talked Sunday trading, and there's obviously loading there, labor hours in store. Given you had AUD 100 million of SSI benefits, which is the three-quarters of the 133 in the period in CODB, I'm just surprised that cost growth is running that high. If you could help us understand sort of why that is and if that is the path that should continue, or if there's some one-offs in there that we need to adjust for. Thanks.
Great. Brian, thanks for the question, as you know, when we look at CODB and look at costs generally, we look at it as a % of sales, I actually think we are completely tight band over a number of years now, in terms of as a % of sales, particularly if you exclude the sort of the D&A element of that. Cost discipline, you know, in our business is very much part of our D&A, right? You've seen that through our SSI program. You know, Leah mentioned earlier, you know, to date, in the over the last, since FY 2024, we've actually delivered over AUD 700 million for that. That's gonna continue.
We're gonna continue delivering on that, and we're gonna continue delivering around that sort of AUD 250 million a year in SSI benefits going forward. Look, we did successfully unwind the implementation costs, as you did call out, and that was a clear positive. We have been making very deliberate in strategic investments in our customer offer. Including, you know, our CFCs, which are now fully embedded in our cost base. Our CFCs are fully embedded in our cost base. They're delivering results and in line with the expectations. You've seen that result fall to the bottom line.
We're actually making very deliberate investments in data and technology, which is all about improving that customer experience and online growth and omnichannel growth really across the board. With these investments, they are driving our top line, and one of the things that I do sort of look at is I look at the PNL, you know, including GP and including our CODB. What we're seeing is these investments are driving not only EVA growth, but margin growth in our business.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Richard Barwick from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Leah and team. I've got a question around the CFCs. You do mention that the CFC sales growth was ahead or outpacing your total online or e-commerce growth. Can you put some metrics around that, just to give us a sense of how much better your New South Wales and Victoria would be doing online versus the rest of the country? Part of that answer just makes me wonder if you are outpacing online within Victoria, so it sounds like it wasn't quite enough to get your Victorian sales growth ahead of cycling the industrial action, because you, I think you did call out that Victoria was a little softer than the national rate of growth. Just to put those two pieces together for us.
Richard, it's Michael here. I did get the first part of the question, which was about CFC growth. I missed the second part of the question. Maybe I'll answer the first part first, and then maybe you can follow up and just clarify.
Okay.
what the second part of the question was. We're not giving specific growth rates for the CFCs, but if I take a step back and talk about proposition types, where we've got click and collect, where we've got same-day delivery, where we've got next-day delivery, and where we've got immediacy, I think the really pleasing part was that all of those offer types were in double-digit growth throughout the first half. Next day delivery, which obviously the CFCs form part of, is still by far and away our largest offer type. To be still getting really strong growth through that, with the CFCs being a driving factor, is really pleasing for us. The proposition continues to ramp up and continues to get really strong customer feedback.
I think that when you look across the positive feedback that we're getting from customers across range, availability, and freshness, it's great to see that the customers are seeing the differentiation that is in that offer. We're getting really good growth. The operating metrics are in a really good spot in terms of Ocado partners globally, where they're a top-performing partner on key operational measures. As Charlie mentioned at the start, we're continuing to invest in that proposition. When you look at things like on-grid robotic pick, there's other efficiency measures. We're getting really strong growth. It's becoming a really important part of our proposition.
The NPS is growing, but an important part also in that, as part of being an omnichannel retailer, is that we've seen as those volumes have come out of stores and gone into the CFCs, the NPS in-store has also improved, which speaks to the benefit of the CFCs, not just as a sales driver, but as a really key part of an omnichannel fulfillment network.
My side, would you mind just clarifying the second part of your question?
The second part was just reconciling that commentary with the comment that Victoria was not growing as quickly as the rest of the country. I realized that it was in part because of the industrial action, but just trying to square those two pieces together. Just as a little adjunct to that, at what point are you completely clear of the any lingering sort of headwinds from last year's industrial action for Woolworths? When are you in sort of clear, you know, clear air there, so we're no longer having to make adjustments for that issue?
Thanks, Richard. I think that is the million-dollar question. As we shared, if we go back to when all this was unfolding last year, you know, our big expectation was that there was gonna be a cohort of customers that experienced the industrial action, where they only came to us because it wasn't convenient to shop somewhere where there was really poor availability, and it's likely that all those customers have just returned back. There was a cohort of customers making an active decision between us and our major competitor, where the stores are quite closely located.
There were our online customers that came to us, and it's really the two second buckets that we have been working over the course of the last 12 months to put together a plan to say: How do we make sure that now that we've had those customers come and shop with us, that we can retain them? What we're seeing in these first seven weeks of data is that we have been successful in retaining a proportion of them. We are definitely still going over the top of some of the disruption for last year. I think, I'm hopeful that we're sort of past it. We aren't spending a lot of time trying to pull it out of the numbers, if I'm honest now.
We're just cracking on with continuing to drive sales and do what we need to do. You know, my expectation would be that Q4, in particular, should be very clean.
Okay, that's the important one because obviously there's a lot of comparisons with your rate of growth versus Woolworths, you know, quarter by quarter, and it seems like it's made a difference, obviously, for the first seven weeks. That's gonna impact the third quarter. I mean, effectively, your answer is all clear in the fourth quarter, that's what's important.
That's my expectation, and, you know, we're definitely obviously, we didn't actually receive all the sales that were disrupted as part of the industrial action last year, and I think you're seeing some very interesting reversions going on in the market share data because of that.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Marks from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Leah and team. My question is just on liquor again. Just wanted to touch on the gross margins. I guess surprised to see them up in the half. I think you had a 21 basis point headwind from range optimization costs there as well. I think underlying, they're probably up 40 basis points or so, if that's right. I think you would have been lapping like a strong period last year as well. I guess, how have you managed to drive that improvement in the liquor gross margins in the half? Just wondering on your trading update, the sales down 2.5%, are you able to give any indication of whether you're losing share there? Like, what's your, what's your liquor market data showing in the first seven weeks? Thanks.
Thanks, Peter. The line was a bit garbled, so let me play back what I think we're answering here. The second question you had was around what's our viewpoint on market share. The first part was around the expansion of the gross margin, which I might get Claire to answer. Maybe I'll just market share issue, though. The data that we have available these days for market share in the liquor market, post the changes that were made to the ABS data that's available to us, is quite poor these days.
It's actually difficult for us to have a view on that until we see our major competitor come out with their results. At this stage, we probably couldn't give you a clear view on that one. On the gross margin, Claire, I might ask you maybe to cover that one off and how we've achieved the expansion.
Thanks, Leah. Q2 was obviously a heightened intense competition quarter. We were managing price and promotion intensely through the quarter with a focus to offer compelling offers for our customers. Despite the competitive intensity, we were really pleased that we thought we struck the right balance between driving sales and managing margin, you know, with delivering the growth margin result of the 17 basis points improvement.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Phillip Kimber from E&P Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. My question was just on the online business. Woolworths called out that there'd been a step up in competition, you know, from all the various players in there. Is that sort of what you're seeing? I mean, your growth rates are very strong. Are you seeing sort of, reactions now from a competitive point of view that are maybe higher than they were in the last three to six months? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Phillip Kimber. Firstly, in terms of our own offer, when we look at whether it's customer acquisition or investment in the customer offer, we haven't increased the investment relative to the prior year. We've obviously had very strong sales growth. The level of dollars that we're investing with customers has gone up. That's a good thing based on the sales growth. Our investment in the customer offer as a percentage of our sales hasn't gone up, so I wouldn't say that we are investing more.
In terms of competition, where I would say that there's been an increase in competition is probably on the immediacy platforms, because depending on the platform, you've seen more competitors in the grocery space enter, which, you know, more competitors leads to more competition. That's why we've taken a really proactive step of expanding our partnership with Uber. That's something that will allow us to partner more closely with Uber, giving a better offer in terms of range, being able to partner more closely on things like loyalty, and reach. That's something that's a world first for Uber in terms of the way that we're partnering.
We think it's something that's going to allow us to have differentiation in this market as it relates to immediacy and ensure that we have a leading customer offer with strong economics. While there might be increased competition in certain parts of the market, I think we've taken some really proactive steps to ensure that we've got a winning offer.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Gilbert from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks for the follow-up. Just another one on Liquor. It sounds like obviously you're probably doing pretty well, given the pricing competition is more so just across 10% of the portfolio. Just interesting in how you're seeing the pricing deck across the residual 90%, a smaller format, where you think you're doing better, 'cause just anecdotally, your pricing probably seems much sharper than the market there. I'm wondering if that's where the risk is if your competitors go after the smaller formats, which has probably been left alone a little bit at the moment.
Yeah, it's a great question, Ben. We're definitely seeing a good uptick in our customer satisfaction around value and price in the small format stores. We have been very sharp on KBIs there. As we've said, you know, we think that with the shift to convenience, building brand loyalty to LiquorLand in that convenient format will be really key going forward, and the value proposition that we have in there is a really important part of that.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Adrian Lemme from Citi. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. Just, one quick one, please. Just on tobacco, I think we've seen a bit of a crackdown in recent months on illegal tobacco shops. Are you seeing any slight improvement yet coming through in your tobacco performance? It's obviously still a big drag on sales.
Sales week to week are pretty consistent now for us. They have been for the last 6 months. We have seen some slight improvements week to week, when we've seen a couple of the crackdowns, particularly in Queensland and WA. I'd probably describe it as quite marginal, and it doesn't tend to have longevity around it. It can go for a matter of days or a couple of weeks, and then we tend to see it revert back. That's why sort of overall, we're still in a sort of a similar position to what we reported at Q1.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking another one. Charlie, I just wanted to pick up on a comment that you made about the CFCs being embedded in the cost base. Just want to understand exactly what that means. Last year, you called out AUD 40 million of effectively start-up costs for the CFC model. How do we think about that going forward? Look, I'm not asking for specific numbers on that, but are there still some costs in the P&L that will come down over time, or has that flipped to a positive contribution? Then just generally, what's the profitability of your online business look like right now, noting that your competitors disclose margins and they're effectively double year-on-year?
Yeah. Michael, let me take that. A great question. A couple of things. Firstly, let me go to the CFC side of that equation. We're really pleased with the financial performance of the CFCs. They're absolutely in line with our expectations. You know, as we said, the CFC is like volume. We're seeing great volume growth, as Michael articulated a little earlier. What we have seen now in financial performance is the second half of 25 is better than the first half, and certainly, unit improvement half on half and year on year on the CFCs. All the one-off implementation, any of those costs, they absolutely fell away. There is no lingering cost from that perspective.
All we're really saying, or all I've really mentioned when I said about CFCs, is that they're now in the cost cut. It's actually part of our business going forward. They're fully in embed there. I would just encourage, again, as I said earlier, there are elements that go into GP, there are elements that go into CODB, and that changes. From our e-commerce business, generally, again, really pleased with the growth, a positive contributor to earnings. You know, from that perspective, we're seeing the op bridge actually drop to the line. You would have seen our e-commerce business now has grown at 27% this half. Last half, it was a similar sort of very strong growth rate.
In that time, we've not only grown earnings, we're actually, you know, we've absolutely grown our EBIT margin through that perspective. That's the lens which I would look at in terms of the profitability of our business.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Craig Woolford from MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Hi, Leah and Charlie. Just a follow-up on the inflation path. Without getting bogged down on the technicalities of how Woolworths and Coles measure it was surprising to see Coles measure accelerated in 2Q versus Q1, whereas Woolworths measure decelerated in 2Q versus Q1. Perhaps there's some elements in your basket you can talk to that may have added to inflation, and, yeah, what's your perspective on that inflation outlook over the next 12 months or so?
Thanks, Craig. I mean, we did see it accelerate 30 basis points, as you just highlighted, quarter-on-quarter. I probably would say that over time, ours has tracked quite closely to what we too see in the CPI data, which gives us some confidence around how the reporting that we do actually aligns to that. The most significant areas of pressure for us from an inflationary perspective have been in the red meat space, so beef and lamb livestock prices coming in. We haven't passed all of that through to consumers, but it is definitely some of it has moved through, particularly in the lamb space. We've also seen a bit of inflation in the dairy for chilled desserts and milk. Some of that related to capacity constraints in the market around yogurt.
You know, equally, there's been others on the other side of the ledger. Eggs have come off now that we're past the avian flu impacts. We've still got deflation in quite a few of the non-food categories, where there continues to be very intense price investment across the markets.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Kierath from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. Just a quick one on depreciation and amortization. I think before you had said it would rise by AUD 115 mil this year, and only went up by AUD 46 mil in the first half. How should we kind of think about that for the second half or the full year?
Well, look, thanks, Tom, for that sort of question. We'd expect the second half to, you know, be around that sort of $50 million, increase. We're probably expecting, if you think about the full year, you know, these things are not always a precise science in terms of because they do vary on when capital investments and things land. But depreciation is probably more like $100 million or thereabout for the full year of 2026.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Bryan Raymond, from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the follow-up. Might be one for Anna. There's obviously an ACCC case going at the moment. I don't expect you to comment on that specifically, but just wanting to get your thoughts around value perception impacts that might come through from all the press coverage, particularly how you're thinking about red versus yellow tickets longer term. This might be increasing a bit of distrust in some of those red tickets and whether you need to pivot a bit more to high-low. I'm just interested in how you're thinking about the composition of your promotional program going forward. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you, Brian. I won't comment on the case. I don't think that would be appropriate. I think that we remained really focused on how do we give our customers great value across the entire basket and making sure we've got the right mechanics in every category. As we said, some categories we've had to move more onto EDLP. The program we've been running around actually doing fewer, bigger, bolder promotions and that interactivity with EDLP seems to be really working for us, and we can see that through some of those areas. I think, look, we're just really focused on actually using data and AI to work out how do we get the right promotions to meet the right customer cohorts and how do we think about that longer term.
Actually what we are seeing is the work that's done in range is making it simpler for customers to find value. Obviously, our own brand growth in the quarter around really driving quality and value is another lever we have to really simplify that on an ongoing level. Look, we're really focused. The outcomes will be the outcomes of where we are on the ACCC, and we'll work through that, whatever that may be. Again, it comes back to making sure that we're doing the right thing across the basket, not in any particular category, but lowering the cost of shopping and giving customers the right value in the right way and in the right categories. I don't know whether you want to add anything, Leah?
I think that's a good answer.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Leah Weckert for closing remarks.
Great. Thank you for joining us this morning. In summary, we'd say we're very pleased with the financial results and the strategic achievements that we've delivered over the half, last half, including strong supermarket sales and EBIT growth, and strength in online. The fact that our automation and operational efficiency programs are now delivering really tangible benefits, the improved customer satisfaction scores, and the completion of the LiquorLand banner simplification. We're seeking to be laser-focused going forward on what really matters to customers, both in the short term and the long term, and we know that if we do that, we will continue to move the dial in each period.
We know that's what is gonna drive our top line, translate to sustainable earnings, and create long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you for your time this morning, and I look forward to speaking to you again at our third-quarter results.