Business Review

Food

Operating profit for Grocery Retail increased significantly, underpinned by strong sales performance and cost benefits from our improvement programmes. Convenience sales were impacted by disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly impacted traffic into stores.
Group Sales *
72% 57 % 15 %
Group Profit †
68% 58 % 10 %
Grocery Retail
Convenience Stores
*

Including share of associates and joint ventures.

†

Based on operating profit before effect of adopting IFRS 16 and share of results of associates and joint ventures, excluding selling, general and administrative expenses and non-trading items.

Indonesia Singapore Malaysia Cambodia Taiwan Mainland China Hong Kong Macau The Philippines Grocery Retail Convenience Stores
US$
22.1 billion
Total Sales ‡
US$
324 million
Operating Profit
5,626 stores
Store Network ‡
‡ Including 100% of associates and joint ventures.

Grocery Retail

Dairy Farm’s Grocery Retail business has been serving our customers for over 70 years. Today we lead the industry in Asia, offering the freshest produce, excellent service and great value through a range of iconic brands.

Total Grocery Retail sales increased by 3% to US$5.3 billion. This performance was driven by strong double-digit like-for-like sales growth, partially offset by the annualisation impact of the Group’s space optimisation programme, which was executed in 2019. The strong like-for-like sales performance was driven by a combination of a shift in customer behaviour towards eating-at-home and operational improvements to our range, quality and pricing. Operating profit increased from US$63 million to US$267 million, primarily driven by strong sales performance and cost benefits from our improvement programmes.

Sales in Hong Kong and Macau were significantly ahead of the prior year, with strong double-digit like-for-like sales growth. Reported profitability was supported by strong sales growth, the ongoing execution of improvement programmes as well as government subsidies.

Our price reinvestment campaign in Taiwan, as well as changing customer behaviours, supported strong sales growth for Wellcome Taiwan. During the year, the Group announced that it had entered into an agreement with Carrefour for them to acquire 100% of Wellcome Taiwan.

By bringing these businesses together, team members and customers will benefit from being served by a larger group that can use its combined strength and scale to improve quality, service and price competition. The transaction completed on 31st December 2020 and the combined entity now becomes the largest multi-format food retailer in Taiwan.

Double-digit like-for-like sales growth drives strength in Grocery Retail performance.

In Southeast Asia, strong like-for-like sales performance in Singapore and Malaysia was partially offset by challenging trading conditions in Indonesia. Profitability for Southeast Asia was supported by strong sales performance, as well as key programmes implemented as part of the Group’s multi-year transformation. In particular, performance from the Group’s store revitalisation and price reinvestment programmes has been encouraging. Profitability in Indonesia, however, reduced significantly due to weak sales performance.

During the year, the Group launched price reinvestment campaigns across key regions to continue to support our customer value proposition.

Meadows is now the number 1 brand across Dairy Farm.

Convenience

With over 30 years of delivering the convenience shopping experience, Dairy Farm operates the 7-Eleven franchise in Hong Kong, Macau, South China and Singapore and offers innovative products and services to customers.

Convenience sales were impacted by disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly impacted traffic into stores. Total sales reduced by 4% to US$2.1 billion, with reduced like-for-like sales partially offset by some new store growth in South China. Operating profit reduced to US$57 million, driven by a combination of a shortfall in sales, store disruption and a product mix shift towards lower margin product categories.

We continue to invest in the growth of our 7-Eleven store network in Guangdong. During the year, 7-Eleven South China began a project to significantly upgrade its legacy IT systems with a new end-to-end agile IT solution to support both an improved customer shopping experience and its future growth ambitions. Upon implementation the system will support the business in scaling up both its company-owned and franchise store networks.