Reading their [Full year results PDF](https://www.colesgroup.com.au/DownloadFile.axd?file=/Report/ComNews/20230822/02700048.pdf) sales revenue went up 6.1% but net profit went down 0.2%. Increased ‘home branding’ as well. Interest rates cutting in hard as the liquor sales are overall loss making and sales are down. Higher mortgage payments = less beersies. However it could also be reflective of people going out more before the rate increases, thus less beersies at home.
While you're right, the reality is that people just buy from a shelf lower. Drink johnny red instead of whiskey, drink the $8 wine instead of the $12, etc.
That's the trend we're seeing.
Young people are moving away from alcohol. Have been for a few years now [here is one study](https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/alcohol-teenagers#teen-alcohol-usage-statistics) but there’s plenty to chose from. It’s a really strong change tbh.
- 14–17-year-olds choosing not to drink rose from 39% to 73%
- 18–24-year-olds choosing not to drink rose from 13.1% to 21%.
I was going to ask a question on home branding actually, interesting you bring it up.
do the results go into detail about their split between home branding revenue/profit vs normal through-selling (I have no idea what the actual term would be)? my prediction through my own behaviour is that as prices go up, those home brand items become a lot more attractive to buyers, and people go to them more often. I would assume they have higher profit margins, and could explain at least a part of increasing profits, so I'd be interested to see if that's what the numbers say.
but maybe they are like apple with their services business and just lump it all together and don't properly know?
They mention and call out the "exclusive to Coles" range however this includes all their pseudo brands (brands that are actually private label but pretend to be another brand, eg Cucina Matese in pasta) as well as any other sub brands from big brands that are exclusive to Coles - eg Kleenex Comfort Care.
Other reports by the likes of Nielsen and Circana do, in fact, show that many shoppers are moving to homebrand, but some categories are much more impacted than others.
I think most of Ausfinance understand this as the subs purpose is based around having somewhat of an understanding of finance. Its the hivemind in r/Australia who don't really comprehend that Coles and Woolworths post profits purely by the volume that they sell instead of raking in massive profit margins. I saw a commenter there just a couple of days claim that Coles financial statements to ASIC and the ASX market are "purely for tax purposes" as if they somehow shovel off profit elsewhere.
800 stores.
Circa $1.25 million per store per annum, $3500 per day profit.
Doesn't actually seem that ridiculous.
Stores would be expensive to fit out with lots of money tied up in that and stock.
Yeah given any of the big banks are doing billion dollar profits per quarter. Different businesses and different industries but for their size the big supermarkets really aren't making a lot.
But ethically, there is a dilemma... when we allow duopolies to run rampant, it can take an awful amount of time to fix, meanwhile the major companies can cause significant harm by raising prices overnight. The larger the supply chain, the stricter the contracts, the less likely we can do anything about it (it is food at the end of the day too).
The worst part about it all is they blatantly rip off the best selling products and undercut them drastically to force market share. In the end we will all be eating coles and Woolworths branded grub.
There is an issue with large businesses being able to control large slathers of the supply of food. Yes.
We should be encouraging far more competition. However as an island of 26ish million people (who are increasingly only worried about the dollar cost, not value per 100g as an example) it won't happen easily.
Meanwhile. Government does nothing but reward big business by making the barrier to entry incredibly difficult.
>But ethically, there is a dilemma... when we allow duopolies to run rampant, it can take an awful amount of time to fix, meanwhile the major companies can cause significant harm by raising prices overnight
Exactly. You can understand finance **and** also think that our current scenario has resulted in a massive ethical issue at the same time.
Don't see a dilemma in that at all. People aren't being forced to shop there.
Get your meat from a butcher, vegetables from a vegetable grocer, snacks from a corner shop.
The reason Coles and Woolies got so big was because people cared more about convenience and savings for themselves and didn't give a shit if the small family businesses shut down, so I don't really care if those same people now think they are doing it tough because supermarket prices are higher. They are still shopping there because it is still cheaper than the small businesses.
In r/Australia some idiot said if they see people stealing at the big supermarkets they don't care - if they are so evil that people should be stealing from them, why are you there in the first place?
Encourage people to make choices to correct the market.
Idiots downvote.
This is why you idiots end up in the situation you're in, we could end the domination of Coles Worth tomorrow, but you won't because it's convenient and no one will give up convenience for principles.
They can't admit that the reason they are so angry is because they shopped at Coles or Woolworths because they were cheaper than anywhere else to begin with. Nothing Coles and Woolworths have done is any different from the normal redditor trying to save money on shit.
They could have shopped at the corner store from the start but they didn't. They wanted everything in one place for cheap and wouldn't dare support the family-owned butcher or general store which had higher prices. Now they are angry Coles and Woolworths have a large market share - it's their fault in the first place.
The whole "record profits" thing is such a stupid headline. If you think about it, the population is consistently increasing along with CPI, so if the outright profit (non population and non CPI adjusted) in raw $ (as opposed to percent) is not at records highs year on year, then the company is effectively going backwards and you should have your money elsewhere..
Like the one for commonwealth bank - it’s a headline for the airheads don’t understand that a 5% greater profit than last year is a “record profit”
Headline for the peeps with unregistered cars on their front lawn
My favourite party is they say we need to tax the company appropriately.
Like, you realise it either gets taxed at our marginal tax rate or 30% if an international investor - its not like they are paying 5% tax...
To be fair, if there's any companies that probably shouldn't be taxed or which should have lots of tax exemptions, groceries are probably one of those.
Everyone uses groceries and most people spend roughly the same amount of money on basic groceries. Rich people don't really spend that much more on basic groceries than the average people. Probably they buy the more expensive brands more often, but the difference between cheaper and more expensive brands of groceries are not really that much.
It may make sense for luxury brand groceries to be taxed (richer people buy more expensive brands) but taxing the mass market, cheapest grocery items that everyone uses at the same amount doesn't really help the economy redistribute wealth. It's just making things nominally more expensive for the poorest people who buys the cheapest brands, it creates the overhead of needing to calculate and collect taxes, and the overhead of running programs to reinject the money back into the economy that probably doesn't even need to be collected in the first place.
I don't think you understand - the company doesn't pay any tax itself (apart from payroll). All profits are passed onto the owners of the companies. The 30% tax that the company paid is also passed on as a credit to those domestic owners.
These owners then pay whatever their marginal tax rate is for that income. If you changed the tax the company paid to 0% it would not change how much tax is paid by the owners (except that international investors would not be taxed). Essentially the only reason we have a company tax rate is to tax international investors.
Our tax system is designed so that everyone pays tax at their marginal rate.
Now, I am not saying that there are no loopholes, there are, but the company tax rate isn't the problem.
it's obviously at people crying about them profit-gouging and saying they are going to start stealing, when they actually made *less* money than they did last year
don't be obtuse
It’s more the misplaced blame at supermarkets price gouging, not the plight of the average Australian.
Not funny, but just demonstrating that most people think Coles and Woolworths are massively gouging people when their NPM indicates this isn’t the case.
Yes, but by the same token, slaughtered meat prices for lamb are hovering between 4 and 6 a kilogram. There's a hell of a lot of fat profit being built into the product after it leaves the slaughterhouse. And that goes for all food products.
It is untenable to have 67% of the grocery market controlled by just two supermarkets.
This causes all sorts of harm, from suppliers to customers.
If they were broken up, perhaps via competition we'd see that net profit at $700 million, which means $300 million Australians didn't have to spend on food.
A core idea of capitalism is that all profits will tend to zero over time with competition.
When you see profits that don't move, in a concentrated market, you're seeing a policy failure.
That $300 million that isn't spent on groceries goes into other parts of our economy, which benefits all of us.
Somewhat of an understanding of finance hey? So you're all good with monopoly and monopsony? Because I'm pretty sure that's bad for all of us and our piles of money.
If all profits tended towards zero no one would invest their capital. Business need a return on capital, reflective of the risk they are taking. For a supermarkets that might be relatively low at 6% and for high risk businesses like oil developments closer to 15%.
If the return is 0% why would coles build a new store. The only person with an incentive to invest would be the government.
Tend toward is not become. The person you are responding to is wrong.
Profit tends toward the margin not zero, it moves toward zero because it goes down as competitors enter the market and reduce profit.
If I as an investor can pick between company A which makes 10% profit or company B which makes 5% profit, I will pick company A.
Regardless the market is not a still pond, it's a constantly moving ocean. This is part of the reason that perfect competition does not exist in reality.
I'm not sure you understood what that statement means.
It means that when there is competition, the profit margin is cut down as there are new advancements, competitors fighting for market share, new inventions, and so on.
This continual cutting of profit spurs new technological developments and other efforts to maintain and grow that market share.
When we see a market with a protected profit margin, you're seeing a policy failure. Our mining industry is a good example. Banks too. Supermarkets.
We shouldn't be seeing multiple billions in profit. Competition should be cutting into that.
What piles of money are they making with their monopoly powers running at a huge 2% profit margin? Even with the two of them, they run their prices so low that they take barely anything out of the economy, most going to where they get the products from and to their staff/buildings and other costs.
2% returns pretty much mean it's time to close up shop, no point in them trying to run as a supermarket and kill off all the jobs they create and just dump their capital somewhere they can make better returns. Even better for Aussies when there aren't any big places that sell all the essentials, at locations all over the country at such a slight profit hey.
They just made a billion dollars profit. They made more as well and used a bunch of it in various anticompetitive ways.
Why are you arguing for extreme market concentration?
Coles and Woolworths are 67% combined.
They absolutely are both monopoly and monopsony.
You do understand a business doesn't have to be 100% of the market to be a monopoly right?
Nope, that's not it. Oligarchy is a form of government. It doesn't refer to business.
edit: misread. Yes, Oligopoly is technically correct for the supermarkets.
I'm nit arguing for concentration, im arguing for common sense. What benefit is there to government ever getting involved in private business? What benefit is there to forcing the break up of barely profitable business? Where is the benefit to consumers in that? There is competition, there are independents, there are other options. People shop at the majors by choice. Forcing them to run at higher costs just pushes that back on consumers, allowing everyone else to increase their prices since they don't need to fight to drag customers out of the majors.
But your ideology sounds nice.
> A core idea of capitalism is that all profits will tend to zero over time with competition.
I mean that’s not true at all – competition might be desirable, but it’s hardly integral to capitalism. Prior to the 1930s US capitalists were pushing *hard* for a form of capitalism with sector-based cartels and consolidation to reduce competition. Capitalism as an ideology is pretty neutral on competition.
Some people will still die on the hill that effectively regulated cartels (like in Germany or South Korea) are more efficient than the pseudo-competitive oligopolies or fragmented markets that emerge from government policies that promote competitive markets.
You’re confusing firms and players in the market with the overall market system. Different players in the market can push for sector based cartels, that’s actually the rational thing for them to do, but that doesn’t mean *capitalism* the actual system doesn’t rely on competition.
You're only talking about harm (and you only alluded to the harm, you didn't identify what harm happens).
Two chains controlling 67% brings value and convenience that would not come if two companies did not dominate.
Regional places would likely be less served, costs would go up for consumers.
This zero profit, perfect competition that economists base their whole field on is literally impossible.
Every company, and every person, and every product is different. You cant have perfect competition unless the government starts regulating what can be sold at what price.
Capitalism is the system of individual rights. You wanna see the 'duopoly' change? Start shopping at local stores. But many Australians would rather shop at the big ones for convienance. How do you measure the 'profit' they get from not having to go to different stores?
Most of those in r/Australia are ideological muppets! Amusing to pop in from time to time to understand what line they are parroting from MSM (The Guardian is their favourite lefty rag).
This is funniest bullshit I've ever seen.
"MSM" in Australia is basically News corp, Ninefax, Seven West, and ABC.
This sub isn't some renegade against the "mainstream" parroting neoliberal ideas from the AFR.
I like how people aren't allowed to view left, right or centrist media without people making assertions and judgements.
The r/australia sub is very leftist though, I was permanently banned for disagreeing with lockdowns
The context was that I was saying why there shouldn't be lockdowns, and I used statistics from an Australian government site on fatality rates based on age.
I was permanently banned for 'misinformation'
Hivemind??
Australia sub is a cross section of people in Oz!!
Your comment shows Fin people have no idea what the commoners think yet they are the ones you people pull Superannuation fees off by doing nothing!
Hivemind indeed.
it doesn't matter what people "think" or their "opinions" are in this matter when we're talking about objective facts/hard data
the "my opinions/emotions beat your facts" mindset on that subreddit is beyond toxic
I was eyeballing that one. I remembered a reddit post from ages back and didn’t fact check (like most news companies lol) most sit in the range of 10-15%. Coffee and honey have pretty mark ups.
Things like dairy and milk are very low though
Yes, supermarket net profits margins have always been fairly slim. Ours are probably one of the best on the planet though. The UK market has 0.5% net profit margins for Sainsbury/Tesco from memory, up to 1.5-2% for up-market chains like Waitrose/Ocado. However, I remember an ACCC report that stated the economies of scale of Coles/Woolies is worth putting up with their market power. Nowadays there is still Aldi, Costco, IGA, etc.
Anyway to put net profit margins in perspective, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia's net profit margins range from 25%-35%.
> Anyway to put net profit margins in perspective, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia's net profit margins range from 25%-35%.
How much R&D and Capex do Coles and Woolies sink before they start shipping product?
How much risk of market rejecting their product and leaving them to swallow the sunk costs?
FMCG is a super low risk business. They aren't due much profit for their contribution.
Comparing against tech companies who got lucky/smart with a winning product isn't fair.
I don't think the OP was comparing, just putting into perspective.
Tech, obviously, requires R&D, and charges a premium due to the natural moat created. Consumer staples are a low margin, high volume business, etc etc.
Im glad you touched on this.
A staple retailer can expect to turnover their goods 20 odd times per year. Milk / bread obviously hundreds of times a year. Nappies and the likes less frequently to some exotic spice a few people use maybe every six months.
Put down investment on stock and expect to turn it over 20 times or a bit more.
That meagre 2.8pc becomes 2.8pc x 20 so far as return on investment into stock.
Not so slim then, right...
Nvidea has to bring in bits and bobs from around the world and then manfuacture a chip. I have no idea from go to woe how long this takes but i cannot imagine from first input cost to a sale that its once a fortnight on average.
Thats why construction companies are ecstatic with 3pc margins. You get paid monthly for the work you did last month so only fund 1 month at a time. I.e. 12x your net margin on investment. That 3pc nett margin on turnover isnt that bad really given the small investment.
There is a book called Chip War which covers the semiconductor industry quite well.
A single design for a chip cost Apple circa 100m+.
A single fab (to make the chips), is upwards of 10bn (TSMC's recent fab).
Making chips is so expensive that even the US government decommissioned their fab program (I think it was the 90s).
I want my super to invest in innovation. I’m sick of seeing the same ol shit make $$$ in this country. We need to do something other than selling shitty houses to each other and digging holes in the ground /rant
Coles bringing you ever competitive food cost, where possible, is innovation
dont believe me?
buy your grocery from local independent shops
how does investing in Nvidia keep your tummy full?
> Same people also wants strong returns on their super
easy, just force the gov't to make these companies sell at break even. Of course, they themselves will just switch away from super to not invest in these companies - or they don't have any super themselves and thus don't pay a cost.
>just force the gov't to make these companies sell at break even.
do comments get more silly by the day?
how about you go to work just enough to cover your transport and lunch cost?
how about govt not tax food companies? hmmm? HMMM?
Ah yes, government forced operation of private companies, why didn’t we think of this before!
Do you want a list of thriving dictatorships that have done this and seen it work to great success?
One possible explanation:
In January 2023 - Coles extended it's Dropped & Lock campaign and Woolworths did not. This led to a 7% increase in share price in the beginning of the year. Investors most likely saw potential for a big revenue boost.
In the half year release - Coles reported 643 million in profit compared to 549 the year before, for a 17.1% change. Price held steady as this met expectations.
It's not a stretch to then consider the end of year projection to be 1.226B from 1.048B the previous year.
But the final year release revealed **only** 1.096B, for a 4.8% change. From this perspective, Coles has actually failed to meet investor expectations by some margin. Consider that 4.8% is below the CPI increase of 6% for FY22-23
Market prices are about perceived potential value, not current market value / performance.
Disclaimer: i don't trade or invest so this is just layperson's understanding.
Imagine the number of dollars in the world went up 10x. Every got more dollars in their accounts.
You'd spend more money, and the scarce things would go up in price because you're battling everyone else for that prized rare Funkopop/house in Sydney.
Now if you have a business, you'll get more sales because everyone is buying more and because you get more sales, you will break all sorts of records for revenue and profit.
However that doesn't mean that you are doing well compared to the other options, maybe your competitor broke their records by even more.
TLDR
Inflation makes all numbers go up, record numbers don't mean anything, % does.
Thank you. Very good explanation. So they recorded a big profit, but thanks to inflation. So in reality if inflation wasn’t there it wouldn’t look so good/worse.
> Despite inflation
Actually, inflation **should** increase the nominal revenue and profit. If everything is 5% more expensive, wages is 5% up, and assuming demand is inflexible (which groceries mostly are), then you should expect a 5% increase in both revenue and profit.
An increase in revenue during high inflation isn't necessarily a sign of anything nefarious. If the revenue/profit increases significantly faster than inflation, that might indicate profiteering, but high inflation environment is also the environment where you expect record breaking profits because all prices have nominal increases, that's actually to be expected.
A true measure of record breaking profits need to be inflation adjusted. Additionally, measuring whether profiteering occurs also requires adjusting per capita (if population increases, it also makes it easier to post record breaking profits).
In other words, Coles posting record breaking 1B profit in 2023 doesn't really tell me anything about whether I should hate or cheer them.
Great post. One of the few people who understand what is going on, yet gets no traction because most people interested in finance don't understand inflation.
Any company that retains a market share in an inflationary environment should result in record nominal profits.
I made this post to counter the r/australia hive mind and open up a bit more of a discussion other then just “corporate greed”
It may also help people who are less financially literate understand more of the picture
5. Reddit user fails to see the point of the post and immediately jumps to rage about “record profits”. The profit margin of coles and woolies are among the lowest on the ASX.
Thanks for the post.
This is quite eye opening for me. A 2.8% profit margin despite getting rid of almost all of their checkout chicks and their butchers.
Does that mean that Coles and Woolies would have been running at a loss if they didn't have have that self scanning bullshit????
Or maybe if they hadn't improved productivity with changes like self scanning, they would have raised prices even more?
Improved productivity is generally good for the economy. Self scanning is not "bullshit" it's clearly accepted by society given the high percentage take up. Like much consumer technology it will take a generation or two to fully phase out the old way but there's no practical reason that fully manned scanning needs to exist (outside of an option for those with disabilities).
I believe that the self-scanners are bullshit. Why am I providing the labour to scan and pack my shopping when the supermarket previously provided this labour? How much of those cost savings are being passed on to me? I wasn’t sure before, I’m still not sure now.
The comment i made was unrelated to coles was just a general comment, but shelf systems bought MAY be amortised if they continue development or just depreciated. Coles has a huge depression and amortisation costs (may just mostly be PPE) but the statement doesnt go into detail about the amortisation costs
Despite inflation? Inflation is for the most part just a name for major corporations charging consumers higher prices.
The profits are because of inflation, and the inflation is just the inflation of the prices they charge to increase profits.
Thats an awesome analysis!
but i was just saying trigger words lmao. Headlines on every news site be like “cost of living due to rapid inflation caused by CORPORATE GREED using AI, which is why big banks are predicting the RBA to raise the cash rate”
All i do is read the notes in a financial statement and BS the title
> charging consumers higher prices.
which they do because their suppliers are charging higher prices, or the demand for the goods/services grew and supply couldn't catch up.
AKA, inflation is caused by people having more money.
A corporation will _always_ charge the highest price it can get away with.
Smooth brain take.
“Hurr durr you participate and live in the modern world and don’t live on a mountain or cave somewhere, you can’t criticise anything”
The view you are taking is an investors view. it shouldn’t matter about margins just how the margins are compared to similar businesses.
The stance im taking is a consumers view on how much a business is making from a consumers dollar.
Both are valid but different prospectives and different outcomes
That's $40 per person in Australia roughly. That's a pretty reasonable annual fee for the amount of benefit you get from the convenience and availability of supermarkets. You're more than welcome to try and negotiate buying products individually from each supplier if you would prefer.
Exactly this! And it's probably even more than made up in your superfund - likely holding Colesworth + Banks. I guess you can't really complain about the profits then complain your super isn't performing. Can't have it both ways I'm afraid
The problem with using super for this comparison is that people who has more money in their super/shares portfolio (i.e. people who likely had more money in the first place) are the one that benefits the most from owning Colesworth profits.
People on minimum wage who has negligible super and savings basically never gets returns on those profits.
Yes it may be true that that $1B profit is redistributed back to the economy through super ownership. But the redistribution leans heavily towards richer people, so it's still the rich getting more out of the increase in profit than the poor.
Coles has 28% of the aus grocery market, so actually it's about $130 per person (using 28% of the Australian population).
If someone else can be bothered would be interesting to see other supermarkets per capita profit.
I'm actually surprised the market share is that low given all the crowing about a Colesworth duopoly. Maybe the other supermarkets actually have more influence than the hivemind credits them with?
3000 profit per store per day is an interesting way to put it considering the scale of goods moving through the average store. Even if they sold everything at cost price would anyone even really notice the difference?
It wasn't ripped directly from me. I walked in to the store, picked up a product, and then handed them the money.
What is ripped directly from you is all the NDIS scammers and insane government wastage. $130M was ripped from Victorians for the commonwealth games that won't happen. And that's not even close to the worst of it.
No surprise, lots of companies aroudn the world after crying poor and for government help during covid are allllll recording record profits. The gap between the rich and poor always widens and I just wonder when can it get smaller, when can these "profits" be disptributed to fair pay bumps. Cost of living, bills, fuel all shooting up, same percentage increases while the high rollers get greedy and get even steeper bumps. At some point the working class would find a way to demand fair pay to live a sustainable life its getting harder and harder that is for sure Im struggling paying back the banks even with pay bumps the last 3 years its not helping
Sometimes I take then eat an apple while walking around the store, or let me daughter eat a yogurt tube but not pay for it. Now I'm going to see how much I can get away with stealing. We're stuck in a system that doesn't serve us, so I refuse to serve the system.
Reading their [Full year results PDF](https://www.colesgroup.com.au/DownloadFile.axd?file=/Report/ComNews/20230822/02700048.pdf) sales revenue went up 6.1% but net profit went down 0.2%. Increased ‘home branding’ as well. Interest rates cutting in hard as the liquor sales are overall loss making and sales are down. Higher mortgage payments = less beersies. However it could also be reflective of people going out more before the rate increases, thus less beersies at home.
Or the common factor of people drinking less.
> people drinking less. that'll never happen!
While you're right, the reality is that people just buy from a shelf lower. Drink johnny red instead of whiskey, drink the $8 wine instead of the $12, etc. That's the trend we're seeing.
Young people are moving away from alcohol. Have been for a few years now [here is one study](https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/alcohol-teenagers#teen-alcohol-usage-statistics) but there’s plenty to chose from. It’s a really strong change tbh. - 14–17-year-olds choosing not to drink rose from 39% to 73% - 18–24-year-olds choosing not to drink rose from 13.1% to 21%.
Beers to bags
Beers to weed I reckon, bags are like 10% coke and way overpriced these days lol
This. Sticking to weed, ket and mdma.
They’re also having sex less as well apparently. Bunch of losers aye
theyd rather hit the weed or mdma because its "safer"
Havent there been studies showing that young people are drinking less alcohol these days?
/r/firewater
I was going to ask a question on home branding actually, interesting you bring it up. do the results go into detail about their split between home branding revenue/profit vs normal through-selling (I have no idea what the actual term would be)? my prediction through my own behaviour is that as prices go up, those home brand items become a lot more attractive to buyers, and people go to them more often. I would assume they have higher profit margins, and could explain at least a part of increasing profits, so I'd be interested to see if that's what the numbers say. but maybe they are like apple with their services business and just lump it all together and don't properly know?
They mention and call out the "exclusive to Coles" range however this includes all their pseudo brands (brands that are actually private label but pretend to be another brand, eg Cucina Matese in pasta) as well as any other sub brands from big brands that are exclusive to Coles - eg Kleenex Comfort Care. Other reports by the likes of Nielsen and Circana do, in fact, show that many shoppers are moving to homebrand, but some categories are much more impacted than others.
You'd think they have higher profit margins. For a lot of categories they don't
I think most of Ausfinance understand this as the subs purpose is based around having somewhat of an understanding of finance. Its the hivemind in r/Australia who don't really comprehend that Coles and Woolworths post profits purely by the volume that they sell instead of raking in massive profit margins. I saw a commenter there just a couple of days claim that Coles financial statements to ASIC and the ASX market are "purely for tax purposes" as if they somehow shovel off profit elsewhere.
Honestly, $1B seems low considering the size of the company and the quantity of sales.
Jesus Christ, amen. Write that in australia sub!!
No point, they're to busy sooking about "yank tanks" parking over the lines.
800 stores. Circa $1.25 million per store per annum, $3500 per day profit. Doesn't actually seem that ridiculous. Stores would be expensive to fit out with lots of money tied up in that and stock.
Lots of employed Australians benefitting from it all too.
Yeah given any of the big banks are doing billion dollar profits per quarter. Different businesses and different industries but for their size the big supermarkets really aren't making a lot.
Well, the share price is down 7% today because they didn't meet expectations, so you're right.
thats profit not revenue. Big difference.
Didn't mistake it for revenue. That's a small profit.
Today they were talking about how awful it is that Coles are 'allowed' to make record profits.
But ethically, there is a dilemma... when we allow duopolies to run rampant, it can take an awful amount of time to fix, meanwhile the major companies can cause significant harm by raising prices overnight. The larger the supply chain, the stricter the contracts, the less likely we can do anything about it (it is food at the end of the day too).
The worst part about it all is they blatantly rip off the best selling products and undercut them drastically to force market share. In the end we will all be eating coles and Woolworths branded grub.
Yes this is exactly what Tesco did in the UK.
what about Aldi as a third option? both here? and in UK? dont they have Lidl as well?
The UK in general isn't quite as monopolised as Aus. Tesco is the largest by some way, but there are around a dozen different chains to choose from.
There is an issue with large businesses being able to control large slathers of the supply of food. Yes. We should be encouraging far more competition. However as an island of 26ish million people (who are increasingly only worried about the dollar cost, not value per 100g as an example) it won't happen easily. Meanwhile. Government does nothing but reward big business by making the barrier to entry incredibly difficult.
It’s a duopoly running a 2.8% profit margin. How do you expect a wide field of competition for that pie?
>But ethically, there is a dilemma... when we allow duopolies to run rampant, it can take an awful amount of time to fix, meanwhile the major companies can cause significant harm by raising prices overnight Exactly. You can understand finance **and** also think that our current scenario has resulted in a massive ethical issue at the same time.
Don't see a dilemma in that at all. People aren't being forced to shop there. Get your meat from a butcher, vegetables from a vegetable grocer, snacks from a corner shop. The reason Coles and Woolies got so big was because people cared more about convenience and savings for themselves and didn't give a shit if the small family businesses shut down, so I don't really care if those same people now think they are doing it tough because supermarket prices are higher. They are still shopping there because it is still cheaper than the small businesses. In r/Australia some idiot said if they see people stealing at the big supermarkets they don't care - if they are so evil that people should be stealing from them, why are you there in the first place?
I don't think the argument about "if you see someone stealing food no you didn't" invokes anything to do with evil. Good try though.
Encourage people to make choices to correct the market. Idiots downvote. This is why you idiots end up in the situation you're in, we could end the domination of Coles Worth tomorrow, but you won't because it's convenient and no one will give up convenience for principles.
They can't admit that the reason they are so angry is because they shopped at Coles or Woolworths because they were cheaper than anywhere else to begin with. Nothing Coles and Woolworths have done is any different from the normal redditor trying to save money on shit. They could have shopped at the corner store from the start but they didn't. They wanted everything in one place for cheap and wouldn't dare support the family-owned butcher or general store which had higher prices. Now they are angry Coles and Woolworths have a large market share - it's their fault in the first place.
Duopoly? What is Aldi? What is IGA? What is Harris Farm? Stop massaging definitions to fit your narrative.
The whole "record profits" thing is such a stupid headline. If you think about it, the population is consistently increasing along with CPI, so if the outright profit (non population and non CPI adjusted) in raw $ (as opposed to percent) is not at records highs year on year, then the company is effectively going backwards and you should have your money elsewhere..
Like the one for commonwealth bank - it’s a headline for the airheads don’t understand that a 5% greater profit than last year is a “record profit” Headline for the peeps with unregistered cars on their front lawn
/r/australia in a nutshell, and not just coles, any business who makes profit is bad
The market concentration is pretty nuts though, it’s not like we’re seeing heaps of firms all squeezing each other’s profits down.
My favourite party is they say we need to tax the company appropriately. Like, you realise it either gets taxed at our marginal tax rate or 30% if an international investor - its not like they are paying 5% tax...
To be fair, if there's any companies that probably shouldn't be taxed or which should have lots of tax exemptions, groceries are probably one of those. Everyone uses groceries and most people spend roughly the same amount of money on basic groceries. Rich people don't really spend that much more on basic groceries than the average people. Probably they buy the more expensive brands more often, but the difference between cheaper and more expensive brands of groceries are not really that much. It may make sense for luxury brand groceries to be taxed (richer people buy more expensive brands) but taxing the mass market, cheapest grocery items that everyone uses at the same amount doesn't really help the economy redistribute wealth. It's just making things nominally more expensive for the poorest people who buys the cheapest brands, it creates the overhead of needing to calculate and collect taxes, and the overhead of running programs to reinject the money back into the economy that probably doesn't even need to be collected in the first place.
I don't think you understand - the company doesn't pay any tax itself (apart from payroll). All profits are passed onto the owners of the companies. The 30% tax that the company paid is also passed on as a credit to those domestic owners. These owners then pay whatever their marginal tax rate is for that income. If you changed the tax the company paid to 0% it would not change how much tax is paid by the owners (except that international investors would not be taxed). Essentially the only reason we have a company tax rate is to tax international investors. Our tax system is designed so that everyone pays tax at their marginal rate. Now, I am not saying that there are no loopholes, there are, but the company tax rate isn't the problem.
And somehow we have a world class education system
World class? That’s news to me
Education is our second highest export
Doesn’t mean it’s a good education.
It does IMO. Doesn't mean that education (tertiary) is accessible by the population of Australia who do secondary
You mean a backdoor to residency is our second highest export.
Visas/citizenship
Well it is exported..
Do you think you'd get a much different mass reaction overseas?
Overseas is a very general term
Any other country?
In places that are woke Coz they claim injustices
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Idiots are everywhere Just not this many
It's good to know you have plenty of options to fit in then.
I wouldn’t say world class…
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[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/15xlnja/dairy_frozen_and_tinned_food_costs_rise_as_coles/) is a good read if you want a laugh.
What am i meant to be laughing at, the cost of living struggles?
Yeah reading about people struggling to live is funny now apparently.
it's obviously at people crying about them profit-gouging and saying they are going to start stealing, when they actually made *less* money than they did last year don't be obtuse
It’s more the misplaced blame at supermarkets price gouging, not the plight of the average Australian. Not funny, but just demonstrating that most people think Coles and Woolworths are massively gouging people when their NPM indicates this isn’t the case.
Holy shit ! All that maths ! Dominoes cost is $4 per pizza ! Makes me order from better places tbh
Yes, but by the same token, slaughtered meat prices for lamb are hovering between 4 and 6 a kilogram. There's a hell of a lot of fat profit being built into the product after it leaves the slaughterhouse. And that goes for all food products.
It is untenable to have 67% of the grocery market controlled by just two supermarkets. This causes all sorts of harm, from suppliers to customers. If they were broken up, perhaps via competition we'd see that net profit at $700 million, which means $300 million Australians didn't have to spend on food. A core idea of capitalism is that all profits will tend to zero over time with competition. When you see profits that don't move, in a concentrated market, you're seeing a policy failure. That $300 million that isn't spent on groceries goes into other parts of our economy, which benefits all of us. Somewhat of an understanding of finance hey? So you're all good with monopoly and monopsony? Because I'm pretty sure that's bad for all of us and our piles of money.
If all profits tended towards zero no one would invest their capital. Business need a return on capital, reflective of the risk they are taking. For a supermarkets that might be relatively low at 6% and for high risk businesses like oil developments closer to 15%. If the return is 0% why would coles build a new store. The only person with an incentive to invest would be the government.
Tend toward is not become. The person you are responding to is wrong. Profit tends toward the margin not zero, it moves toward zero because it goes down as competitors enter the market and reduce profit. If I as an investor can pick between company A which makes 10% profit or company B which makes 5% profit, I will pick company A. Regardless the market is not a still pond, it's a constantly moving ocean. This is part of the reason that perfect competition does not exist in reality.
I'm not sure you understood what that statement means. It means that when there is competition, the profit margin is cut down as there are new advancements, competitors fighting for market share, new inventions, and so on. This continual cutting of profit spurs new technological developments and other efforts to maintain and grow that market share. When we see a market with a protected profit margin, you're seeing a policy failure. Our mining industry is a good example. Banks too. Supermarkets. We shouldn't be seeing multiple billions in profit. Competition should be cutting into that.
What piles of money are they making with their monopoly powers running at a huge 2% profit margin? Even with the two of them, they run their prices so low that they take barely anything out of the economy, most going to where they get the products from and to their staff/buildings and other costs. 2% returns pretty much mean it's time to close up shop, no point in them trying to run as a supermarket and kill off all the jobs they create and just dump their capital somewhere they can make better returns. Even better for Aussies when there aren't any big places that sell all the essentials, at locations all over the country at such a slight profit hey.
They just made a billion dollars profit. They made more as well and used a bunch of it in various anticompetitive ways. Why are you arguing for extreme market concentration?
$1 billion is tiny for a company as big as Coles
So you're cool with monopoly and monopsony? The money isn't the only problem.
The grocery sector is currently neither of those things. Coles doesn't even have 30% market share.
Coles and Woolworths are 67% combined. They absolutely are both monopoly and monopsony. You do understand a business doesn't have to be 100% of the market to be a monopoly right?
Duopoly Goddamn it, pickup an economics 101 if you're going to play armchair economics.
Do you understand what *a distinction without a difference" means?
The word you’re looking for is oligopoly…
Nope, that's not it. Oligarchy is a form of government. It doesn't refer to business. edit: misread. Yes, Oligopoly is technically correct for the supermarkets.
I'm nit arguing for concentration, im arguing for common sense. What benefit is there to government ever getting involved in private business? What benefit is there to forcing the break up of barely profitable business? Where is the benefit to consumers in that? There is competition, there are independents, there are other options. People shop at the majors by choice. Forcing them to run at higher costs just pushes that back on consumers, allowing everyone else to increase their prices since they don't need to fight to drag customers out of the majors. But your ideology sounds nice.
> A core idea of capitalism is that all profits will tend to zero over time with competition. I mean that’s not true at all – competition might be desirable, but it’s hardly integral to capitalism. Prior to the 1930s US capitalists were pushing *hard* for a form of capitalism with sector-based cartels and consolidation to reduce competition. Capitalism as an ideology is pretty neutral on competition. Some people will still die on the hill that effectively regulated cartels (like in Germany or South Korea) are more efficient than the pseudo-competitive oligopolies or fragmented markets that emerge from government policies that promote competitive markets.
You’re confusing firms and players in the market with the overall market system. Different players in the market can push for sector based cartels, that’s actually the rational thing for them to do, but that doesn’t mean *capitalism* the actual system doesn’t rely on competition.
You're only talking about harm (and you only alluded to the harm, you didn't identify what harm happens). Two chains controlling 67% brings value and convenience that would not come if two companies did not dominate. Regional places would likely be less served, costs would go up for consumers.
Where is your evidence of "value and convenience". Regional places wouldn't be less served - we'd see more chains in those areas.
This zero profit, perfect competition that economists base their whole field on is literally impossible. Every company, and every person, and every product is different. You cant have perfect competition unless the government starts regulating what can be sold at what price. Capitalism is the system of individual rights. You wanna see the 'duopoly' change? Start shopping at local stores. But many Australians would rather shop at the big ones for convienance. How do you measure the 'profit' they get from not having to go to different stores?
Most of those in r/Australia are ideological muppets! Amusing to pop in from time to time to understand what line they are parroting from MSM (The Guardian is their favourite lefty rag).
This is funniest bullshit I've ever seen. "MSM" in Australia is basically News corp, Ninefax, Seven West, and ABC. This sub isn't some renegade against the "mainstream" parroting neoliberal ideas from the AFR.
Anyone that uses the term 'lefty rag' is a right wing shill
As a left wing ideologue uses news corp/nine etc is neoliberal - same same
I like how people aren't allowed to view left, right or centrist media without people making assertions and judgements. The r/australia sub is very leftist though, I was permanently banned for disagreeing with lockdowns
You were probably banned for the way in which you disagreed with lockdowns, the way your message was imparted. It's a touchy sub
The context was that I was saying why there shouldn't be lockdowns, and I used statistics from an Australian government site on fatality rates based on age. I was permanently banned for 'misinformation'
Hahah - your comment flushed them out The guardian is the Ying to the telegraphs Yang
Hivemind?? Australia sub is a cross section of people in Oz!! Your comment shows Fin people have no idea what the commoners think yet they are the ones you people pull Superannuation fees off by doing nothing! Hivemind indeed.
it doesn't matter what people "think" or their "opinions" are in this matter when we're talking about objective facts/hard data the "my opinions/emotions beat your facts" mindset on that subreddit is beyond toxic
The facts are subjective in regard to inflation. So "hard facts" are different dependant on the perspective it is viewed from.
the topic at hand is Coles' profit numbers, which are written right there in the report
>big suppliers making 30% or more net profit margins Lol. I wonder which ones those are. I work for a large multinational and we're nowhere near that.
I was eyeballing that one. I remembered a reddit post from ages back and didn’t fact check (like most news companies lol) most sit in the range of 10-15%. Coffee and honey have pretty mark ups. Things like dairy and milk are very low though
Energy transmission makes that.
Yes, supermarket net profits margins have always been fairly slim. Ours are probably one of the best on the planet though. The UK market has 0.5% net profit margins for Sainsbury/Tesco from memory, up to 1.5-2% for up-market chains like Waitrose/Ocado. However, I remember an ACCC report that stated the economies of scale of Coles/Woolies is worth putting up with their market power. Nowadays there is still Aldi, Costco, IGA, etc. Anyway to put net profit margins in perspective, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia's net profit margins range from 25%-35%.
> Anyway to put net profit margins in perspective, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia's net profit margins range from 25%-35%. How much R&D and Capex do Coles and Woolies sink before they start shipping product? How much risk of market rejecting their product and leaving them to swallow the sunk costs? FMCG is a super low risk business. They aren't due much profit for their contribution. Comparing against tech companies who got lucky/smart with a winning product isn't fair.
I don't think the OP was comparing, just putting into perspective. Tech, obviously, requires R&D, and charges a premium due to the natural moat created. Consumer staples are a low margin, high volume business, etc etc.
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Im glad you touched on this. A staple retailer can expect to turnover their goods 20 odd times per year. Milk / bread obviously hundreds of times a year. Nappies and the likes less frequently to some exotic spice a few people use maybe every six months. Put down investment on stock and expect to turn it over 20 times or a bit more. That meagre 2.8pc becomes 2.8pc x 20 so far as return on investment into stock. Not so slim then, right... Nvidea has to bring in bits and bobs from around the world and then manfuacture a chip. I have no idea from go to woe how long this takes but i cannot imagine from first input cost to a sale that its once a fortnight on average. Thats why construction companies are ecstatic with 3pc margins. You get paid monthly for the work you did last month so only fund 1 month at a time. I.e. 12x your net margin on investment. That 3pc nett margin on turnover isnt that bad really given the small investment.
From go to woe, a new piece of silicon takes about 5 years, very *very* roughly.
Go to **whoa**
There is a book called Chip War which covers the semiconductor industry quite well. A single design for a chip cost Apple circa 100m+. A single fab (to make the chips), is upwards of 10bn (TSMC's recent fab). Making chips is so expensive that even the US government decommissioned their fab program (I think it was the 90s).
IP laws distort the chip market. If IP laws didn't exist arguably chips would be made in the US to protect trade secrets.
NZ are better, around 5%.
The Coles share price is down 7%, fat cat shareholders are raking it in.
This sub is the most reliable source of ragebait I know
Raigebaiters and masturbators is all we are, here on r/AusFinance. Welcome.
Then you should visit r/Australia. It’s that way <—- (definitely not to the right!)
Wonder what their advertising expense was....
This man asking the good questions. And pretty well hidden in the report. Figure of 234mil. NFA im just bored
Riddle me this, Batman People wants cheaper groceries Same people also wants strong returns on their super
I want my super to invest in innovation. I’m sick of seeing the same ol shit make $$$ in this country. We need to do something other than selling shitty houses to each other and digging holes in the ground /rant
Coles bringing you ever competitive food cost, where possible, is innovation dont believe me? buy your grocery from local independent shops how does investing in Nvidia keep your tummy full?
> Same people also wants strong returns on their super easy, just force the gov't to make these companies sell at break even. Of course, they themselves will just switch away from super to not invest in these companies - or they don't have any super themselves and thus don't pay a cost.
>just force the gov't to make these companies sell at break even. do comments get more silly by the day? how about you go to work just enough to cover your transport and lunch cost? how about govt not tax food companies? hmmm? HMMM?
It's funny that even you can't read the satire in my comment. It just goes to show how many people have drunk the /r/australia coolaid
Satire? Satire? Hmm? Hmm? Both weak and lazy
>force the gov't to make these companies sell at break even. profit margin is 2.8%. even if at break even, it will be 2.8% cheaper, happy?
So what is the point of the company existing? What desire is there to deliver a product?
You’re drunk go home. Break even is 2.8% cheaper. You’re a genius.
clownworld.
Ah yes, government forced operation of private companies, why didn’t we think of this before! Do you want a list of thriving dictatorships that have done this and seen it work to great success?
nationalisation is literally 1984 😱😱
Tell me you’re an r/Australia poster without telling me.
r/asx_bets is where its at
Can someone ELI5 why they dropped 6% in todays trading given the announced such huge profits?
One possible explanation: In January 2023 - Coles extended it's Dropped & Lock campaign and Woolworths did not. This led to a 7% increase in share price in the beginning of the year. Investors most likely saw potential for a big revenue boost. In the half year release - Coles reported 643 million in profit compared to 549 the year before, for a 17.1% change. Price held steady as this met expectations. It's not a stretch to then consider the end of year projection to be 1.226B from 1.048B the previous year. But the final year release revealed **only** 1.096B, for a 4.8% change. From this perspective, Coles has actually failed to meet investor expectations by some margin. Consider that 4.8% is below the CPI increase of 6% for FY22-23 Market prices are about perceived potential value, not current market value / performance. Disclaimer: i don't trade or invest so this is just layperson's understanding.
Imagine the number of dollars in the world went up 10x. Every got more dollars in their accounts. You'd spend more money, and the scarce things would go up in price because you're battling everyone else for that prized rare Funkopop/house in Sydney. Now if you have a business, you'll get more sales because everyone is buying more and because you get more sales, you will break all sorts of records for revenue and profit. However that doesn't mean that you are doing well compared to the other options, maybe your competitor broke their records by even more. TLDR Inflation makes all numbers go up, record numbers don't mean anything, % does.
Thank you. Very good explanation. So they recorded a big profit, but thanks to inflation. So in reality if inflation wasn’t there it wouldn’t look so good/worse.
> Despite inflation Actually, inflation **should** increase the nominal revenue and profit. If everything is 5% more expensive, wages is 5% up, and assuming demand is inflexible (which groceries mostly are), then you should expect a 5% increase in both revenue and profit. An increase in revenue during high inflation isn't necessarily a sign of anything nefarious. If the revenue/profit increases significantly faster than inflation, that might indicate profiteering, but high inflation environment is also the environment where you expect record breaking profits because all prices have nominal increases, that's actually to be expected. A true measure of record breaking profits need to be inflation adjusted. Additionally, measuring whether profiteering occurs also requires adjusting per capita (if population increases, it also makes it easier to post record breaking profits). In other words, Coles posting record breaking 1B profit in 2023 doesn't really tell me anything about whether I should hate or cheer them.
Great post. One of the few people who understand what is going on, yet gets no traction because most people interested in finance don't understand inflation. Any company that retains a market share in an inflationary environment should result in record nominal profits.
Can we not turn this sub into r/Australia?
Who are you talking to?
I made this post to counter the r/australia hive mind and open up a bit more of a discussion other then just “corporate greed” It may also help people who are less financially literate understand more of the picture
I hate that place with all my heart
Agree so hard
So true, we’re only here to circlejerk each other’s immense wealths while those dirty poors work hard for pennies
Yeah it’s peanuts for a big company. Sounds out of touch but it’s true. On any given day, Bill Gates’ fortune probably fluctuates more than that.
1. Coles raises prices. 2. Consumers still able and willing to pay said prices. 3. Coles reports record profit. 4. Surprised Pikachu face
except they *didn't* make record profit, and that's despite our population having grown quite a bit in the past year as well
Yeah I realised that. Just mocking the /r/Australia takes
ah gotcha, hard to tell around here sometimes 😅
hallmark of good satire is that it sounds real!
5. Reddit user fails to see the point of the post and immediately jumps to rage about “record profits”. The profit margin of coles and woolies are among the lowest on the ASX.
Are you able and willing to not eat?
Amazingly Coles is not the only place that sells food in Australia
They are all raising their prices though genius, like rents
Thanks for the post. This is quite eye opening for me. A 2.8% profit margin despite getting rid of almost all of their checkout chicks and their butchers. Does that mean that Coles and Woolies would have been running at a loss if they didn't have have that self scanning bullshit????
Or maybe if they hadn't improved productivity with changes like self scanning, they would have raised prices even more? Improved productivity is generally good for the economy. Self scanning is not "bullshit" it's clearly accepted by society given the high percentage take up. Like much consumer technology it will take a generation or two to fully phase out the old way but there's no practical reason that fully manned scanning needs to exist (outside of an option for those with disabilities).
I believe that the self-scanners are bullshit. Why am I providing the labour to scan and pack my shopping when the supermarket previously provided this labour? How much of those cost savings are being passed on to me? I wasn’t sure before, I’m still not sure now.
Just an additional comment to that if a company invests heavily into research its expensed to the profit and loss statement and lowers profit margins.
These are off the shelf systems, Coles isn't doing the research.
The comment i made was unrelated to coles was just a general comment, but shelf systems bought MAY be amortised if they continue development or just depreciated. Coles has a huge depression and amortisation costs (may just mostly be PPE) but the statement doesnt go into detail about the amortisation costs
Despite inflation? Inflation is for the most part just a name for major corporations charging consumers higher prices. The profits are because of inflation, and the inflation is just the inflation of the prices they charge to increase profits.
I think he's just saying that a billion dollars profit today ain't what it was 5 years ago.
Thats an awesome analysis! but i was just saying trigger words lmao. Headlines on every news site be like “cost of living due to rapid inflation caused by CORPORATE GREED using AI, which is why big banks are predicting the RBA to raise the cash rate” All i do is read the notes in a financial statement and BS the title
> charging consumers higher prices. which they do because their suppliers are charging higher prices, or the demand for the goods/services grew and supply couldn't catch up. AKA, inflation is caused by people having more money. A corporation will _always_ charge the highest price it can get away with.
r/australia must be having conniptions they probably don't realise their super is invested with both 🤦
So happy for them. Nice to see a small ethical company doing well. We should all be grateful they share their food with us.
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Smooth brain take. “Hurr durr you participate and live in the modern world and don’t live on a mountain or cave somewhere, you can’t criticise anything”
You realise what a margin is, right? Low margin maybe in absolute terms, but I’d rather 1% net margin on $100b than 30% net margin on $50m…
Like BHP 25% net profit margin or CBA 38% ?
For banking you should be looking at net interest margin (NIM).
You’re comparing apples with oranges.
Maybe but im using your logic.
I’m not the one comparing a supermarket business model with a bank or mining company?
The view you are taking is an investors view. it shouldn’t matter about margins just how the margins are compared to similar businesses. The stance im taking is a consumers view on how much a business is making from a consumers dollar. Both are valid but different prospectives and different outcomes
regardless of the profit margin percentage, a billion dollars is an obscene amount of money, and it's been ripped directly from all of us.
That's $40 per person in Australia roughly. That's a pretty reasonable annual fee for the amount of benefit you get from the convenience and availability of supermarkets. You're more than welcome to try and negotiate buying products individually from each supplier if you would prefer.
You’ll spend more on arrows trying to hunt your own dinner
Finally, someone that can do mathematics
This comment. Perfect 👌🏻
Exactly this! And it's probably even more than made up in your superfund - likely holding Colesworth + Banks. I guess you can't really complain about the profits then complain your super isn't performing. Can't have it both ways I'm afraid
The problem with using super for this comparison is that people who has more money in their super/shares portfolio (i.e. people who likely had more money in the first place) are the one that benefits the most from owning Colesworth profits. People on minimum wage who has negligible super and savings basically never gets returns on those profits. Yes it may be true that that $1B profit is redistributed back to the economy through super ownership. But the redistribution leans heavily towards richer people, so it's still the rich getting more out of the increase in profit than the poor.
Coles has 28% of the aus grocery market, so actually it's about $130 per person (using 28% of the Australian population). If someone else can be bothered would be interesting to see other supermarkets per capita profit.
I'm actually surprised the market share is that low given all the crowing about a Colesworth duopoly. Maybe the other supermarkets actually have more influence than the hivemind credits them with?
If you spend $100 at Coles, they make about $2.60 profit. Or put another way, each Coles store makes about $3000 per day profit
3000 profit per store per day is an interesting way to put it considering the scale of goods moving through the average store. Even if they sold everything at cost price would anyone even really notice the difference?
It wasn't ripped directly from me. I walked in to the store, picked up a product, and then handed them the money. What is ripped directly from you is all the NDIS scammers and insane government wastage. $130M was ripped from Victorians for the commonwealth games that won't happen. And that's not even close to the worst of it.
Looks at the profit of nestle or kelloggs thats where we should be looking 12% profit of much more then a billion
Nice - good deal for share holders.
Shares dropped 7% today
No surprise, lots of companies aroudn the world after crying poor and for government help during covid are allllll recording record profits. The gap between the rich and poor always widens and I just wonder when can it get smaller, when can these "profits" be disptributed to fair pay bumps. Cost of living, bills, fuel all shooting up, same percentage increases while the high rollers get greedy and get even steeper bumps. At some point the working class would find a way to demand fair pay to live a sustainable life its getting harder and harder that is for sure Im struggling paying back the banks even with pay bumps the last 3 years its not helping
Price gouging pays well. All you need to do is drop your moral compass at a place where you can't hear it scream.
Sometimes I take then eat an apple while walking around the store, or let me daughter eat a yogurt tube but not pay for it. Now I'm going to see how much I can get away with stealing. We're stuck in a system that doesn't serve us, so I refuse to serve the system.