Bunnings, Officeworks start FY21 off with a bang for Wesfarmers

Wesfarmers continued its strong performance in FY20 into the beginning of the new financial year, delivering growth across almost all of its stable of retail brands in the year-to-October.

Home and hardware business Bunnings saw sales grow 25.2 per cent during the period, while Officeworks grew 23.4 per cent.

Catch Group, which was purchased in July of 2019, delivered gross transactional value growth of 114.4 per cent in the year so far due to the increasing consumer movement online.

Kmart Group, however, didn’t fare as well as Wesfarmers’ other businesses, with Kmart itself delivering sales growth of 3.7 per cent and Target seeing sales fall by 2.2 per cent.

Work is underway to address the continued underperformance of Target, Wesfarmers noted, with nine large format stores converted to Kmart stores and six Target Country stores converted to K Hub stores during the year to date.

“Despite the challenging operating environment, the results across the Group’s retail businesses reflect their continued focus on meeting the changing needs of customers and delivering greater value, quality and convenience while providing safe and trusted environments for customers to shop,” said Wesfarmers managing director Rob Scott.

“The trading restrictions in Melbourne were difficult for team members and customers, and it is encouraging to see progress with the reopening of stores over recent weeks. As a result of significant pent-up demand, the trading performance across stores in Melbourne has been very strong since they re-opened to retail customers.”

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