Aldi UK and Ireland reported a 17 percent fall in 2016 operating profit on Monday, a third straight year of decline, reflecting its strategy of maintaining a price gap over larger rivals as well as investment in infrastructure.
Price cutting led by Aldi and fellow German discounter Lidl has transformed the competitive landscape of UK food retailing over the last decade, driving down the returns of Britain’s big four players - market leader Tesco (TSCO.L), Sainsbury’s (SBRY.L), Asda (WMT.N) and Morrisons (MRW.L).
The big four have been forced to fight back, reducing their own prices, moving away from multi-buy promotions and improving service.
For the year to Dec. 31 2016 the British arm of the German discount supermarket Aldi Sud made an operating profit of 211.3 million pounds, down from 255.6 million pounds in 2015.
Sales increased 13.5 percent to a record 8.74 billion pounds, driven by an aggressive store opening programme which attracted new customers.
Aldi, Britain’s fifth biggest supermarket, currently trades from 726 UK stores, giving it a UK grocery market share of 6.9 percent, according to researcher Kantar Worldpanel.
It plans to have over 1,000 stores by 2022.
Aldi said like-for-like sales, which strips out the impact of new space, were “strongly positive” during 2016 and had accelerated in 2017.
“The fact that more and more customers walk through our doors every day of the week gives us the confidence to carry on investing,” said Matthew Barnes, chief executive Aldi UK and Ireland.
Aldi said in 2016 it spent 450 million pounds opening news stores and improving its distribution centres in the UK and Ireland, taking investment over five years to 2 billion pounds.
Future capital expenditure plans remained “entirely unaffected” by the UK’s decision to leave the EU. It expects to invest 459 million pounds during 2017.
źródło: Reuters