Waitrose has completed 10 successive quarters of customer growth to reach what it said was record levels.
Speaking this week as Waitrose and parent company John Lewis Partnership published its results for the first half of the year, Waitrose executive director James Bailey said the retailer had now increased customer numbers for the tenth consecutive quarter.
Sales for the 26 weeks to 27 July were up 5% to £3.9m. It said volumes were up 2% while the average cost per items was also up 2%.
Availability also hit a record level of 96.5% during the period following recent investment in new systems and technology. Alongside this, Waitrose said it was seeing growing levels of customer satisfaction and that it was the highest-rated grocer in the latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index. Key to this, Bailey suggested, was a review of shift patterns for in-store partners that had added around 17,000 extra shop floor hours across its estate every weekend.
This helped the supermarket record “strong” profit growth in the period as adjusted operating profit increased by £75m to £113m.
Across the John Lewis Partnership as a whole, sales topped £5.9bn during the period, an increase of 2% year on year, while total revenue rose 2% to £5.2bn.
The group also reduced pre-tax losses before exceptional items by 91% to £5m, with pre-tax losses almost halving to £30m despite one-off costs of £25m related to the ongoing simplification of the business.
“These results confirm that our transformation plan is working and we expect profits to grow significantly for the full year, a marked improvement from where we were two years ago,” said CEO Nish Kankiwala.
“We continue to invest heavily in quality, service and value, and customers are responding well – with more people shopping with us and customer satisfaction increasing. While we have much more to do, we’re well set up for a positive peak trading period and on target to significantly improve our performance for the full year.”
Former Tesco UK CEO Jason Tarry, who is replacing Sharon White as JLP executive chair, will officially join the business on 16 September.
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