Coles Group Limited (COL) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Coles Group 1H26 results conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Leah Weckett, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Good morning and thank you for joining us for our half-year results call this morning. Before I begin, I 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 Lorber, our Chief Executive of Liquor. Moving now to slide three. 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 supermarket 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 and we delivered cost savings of $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. Finally, we completed our liquor lamb banner simplification program and while there are c...