Myer is "supercharging online"

Myer is "supercharging" its online operations with strong results, achieving a 47.5 percent increase in group online sales to $424.1 million

CEO John King told the company's 2022 half year results briefing that online sales represent 27.9 percent of total sales by the retailer.

“The facts behind our online business are sometimes lost in the coverage of the day but the growth you are seeing means we are outpacing our peers and competitors," King said.

King added Myer had readjusted its reported numbers to reflect the financial half July to December, to match the reporting period used by most of its competitors.

“On a comparable basis, we actually grew 58.3 percent for the six months July to December." he said.

"This obviously includes an extra month of lockdown in July, which I think demonstrates the considerable strength we had online during this period.

“If you compare at a total level, our 58 percent has outpaced brands like David Jones at 44 percent, Kmart/Target at 44 percent and Catch at one percent”.

King said Myer’s homewares and beauty categories saw strong sales growth and that “this is why we will continually to aggressively drive our online business.”

King also said that Myer will open national distribution centre (NDC) later this calendar year, which will be fully operational in the middle of next calendar year.

The NDC is on track to open in the third quarter of this calendar year 2022, “improving the way we fulfil orders to our customers online, and also replenish stock to our stores.”

“In addition to this, our team have been focused on improving the customer experience across our digital channels, and also our crossover experiences into stores," King said.

King added over 70 percent of transactions were from customers that are part of the Myer One loyalty program and that the company has been “doing even more work to provide suppliers access to this data ... with a new proof-of-concept underway”.

And he also said that work had been put into improving the way Myer communicated with its customers, "allowing us to leverage more insight to deliver a more relevant message and offer to them."

Running the numbers

On results more broadly, Myer’s chief financial officer Nigel Chadwick said “cash continues to be a key focus".

"We will continue to be disciplined in our approach to both [operating expenses] and [capital expenditures] moving forward," he said.

“Having said that, we've got a number of potential investment opportunities in the pipeline, including continuing to improve our online presence moving further into a centralised distribution model, modest upgrades to physical stores and core system upgrades.”

By the end of the year Chadwick expects capital expendituresto sit around $60 to $80 million.

Myer’s statutory net profit after tax (NPAT) was $32.3 million, down from $43 million.