'Looking for a turnaround': Green shoots emerge at Woolies after crunch quarter
The sheer volume and variety of problems raised by shareholders at the AGM showed the scale of the challenge facing the struggling retailer. But a turnaround may have begun.
Inside Woolies’ sprawling headquarters in the western Sydney suburb of Bella Vista on Thursday, chair Scott Perkins and CEO Amanda Bardwell faced a four-hour interrogation as attendees picked apart the group’s first-quarter sales result.
Complaints were plentiful. Wilderness Society’s Victoria Jack grilled them about their deforestation pledge. Julieanne Mills from the Australian Shareholders Association queried BIG W’s IT. Activist shareholder David Kingston suggested the board dress more “folksy” like their red-polo-wearing Coles counterparts.
There were really two numbers that counted this week: 2.1% – the first-quarter growth figure for the group’s core supermarkets business – and 2.7 – the percentage-point gap with Coles’ corresponding result of 4.8%.
“What’s interesting, though, is how the market has reacted to these numbers,” Allan Gray portfolio manager Suhas Nayak told Capital Brief.
