Asda Sees Decline In Annual Like-For-Like Sales

• Total revenue, excluding fuel, was broadly flat at £21.7bn, while like-for-like sales were 3.4% lower

• Group Adjusted EBITDA after rent increased by 5.8% to £1.14bn in 2024

• Disciplined cash management delivers £0.6bn in free cashflow allowing continued investment

• Asda ended FY24 with net debt of £3.8bn and over £0.8bn in cash on its balance sheet. Leverage reduced again to 2.9 times

• Significant programme of strategic price investment, including expanding Rollback to 25% of Asda’s product range

• Market share stabilises, with 0.3% rise to 12.6% since December (Kantar data)[1]

• Additional investment in store hours drives improvements in availability and customer experience

Asda today [14th March] updated on its performance for the year to 31st December 2024 and the progress it is making to lower prices across its entire range as part of its Rollback to Asda Price strategy.

The supermarket’s total revenue declined by 0.8% to £21.7bn in FY24, while like-for-like sales (excluding fuel) were lower by 3.4%.

Asda grew adjusted EBITDA after rent by 5.8% to £1.14bn during the year, driven by improved gross margins, particularly in non-food reflecting the strength and scale of its George business, as well as a full year of profit from the 356 Asda Express convenience stores and forecourt sites acquired from EG Group.

Allan Leighton, Asda’s Executive Chairman, said: “Everyone is focused on making Asda the number one choice again for busy hard-working families who demand value. This is what’s driving all of our actions across pricing, ranging, merchandising and every part of the business.

“Following the return of Rollback in January, our price advantage has strengthened and customers’ perceptions of the value we offer is starting to improve. We will move thousands more products to Rollback at regular intervals this year.

“Looking ahead we still have plenty of work to get our business firing on all cylinders again. While regaining customers’ trust will take time, we will undertake a substantive and well backed programme of investment in price, availability and the shopping experience to deliver this. This will materially reduce our profitability this year, which we expect to reverse as our market share recovers and improves over time.”

Robust balance sheet

A continued, consistent and disciplined focus on cash management during FY24 delivered £0.6bn in free cashflow, which helped reduce net leverage to 2.9x (FY23: 3.0x), and enables Asda to invest in new value propositions like Rollback and Asda Price.

Asda remains a highly cash generative business and the supermarket’s net debt at the end of December 2024 was £3.8bn (FY23 £3.8bn) – net of more than £800m cash on the balance sheet.

During the year Asda refinanced the vast majority of its 2025 and 2026 maturities of £3.2bn, including paying down £0.3bn from cash. This pushed out all the remaining maturities into the next decade.

Rollback to Asda Price

Since the year end, Asda stepped up its investment in value by bringing back its iconic Rollback to Asda Price proposition. Launched at the end of January, with an average reduction of 25% across 4,000 popular products, Rollback has now been expanded to roughly a quarter of Asda’s entire range.

Rollback has re-established Asda as the best value traditional supermarket for shoppers. This position is reflected in the Which? basket comparison for February, which showed that Asda was the cheapest traditional big four supermarket, even when competitor loyalty prices were included in the comparison.

Asda will add thousands more products to Rollback at regular intervals during the year as part of its strategic shift to move its entire product range to a new low ‘Asda Price’ by the end of 2026.

Improvements in availability and customer experience

Asda made two additional investments in store hours during H2 2024 totaling £43m, focused on replenishment and improving store standards. This has made a positive difference for shoppers, with improvements in availability and increase in customer satisfaction scores since Q4. 

In addition, Asda has twice topped The Grocer magazine’s weekly ‘store of the week’ mystery shopper survey during February – equalling the total number of wins for the whole of 2024.  

Supporting young families & local communities 

Asda’s fashion brand George remained the top choice for young families throughout this period.

The retailer’s ‘Back to School’ range was a standout success, capturing 13% of the schoolwear market, its best performance to date, cementing its No. 1 position in this market as customers embraced the value, quality and durability of George school uniforms.

To further support families, Asda launched its ‘Cashpot for Schools’ campaign in September. This industry-first initiative enabled customers to donate 0.5% of their shopping value to a local primary school of their choice every time they used the Asda Rewards app during a three-month period.

The campaign raised £5.7m in total and more than 21,000 schools across the UK received donations of between £100 and £4,500.

Michael Gleeson, Asda’s Chief Financial Officer, said: “We have a clear plan to reset our value offering and meet the demands of our current and future customers – as proven by our improving satisfaction scores.* *While it is encouraging that our market share performance is stabilising, we know what we need to do to regain our sector leading value position, and we are executing against this. Asda is a highly cash generative business and our strategy is backed by a robust balance sheet as we continue to make progress on our deleveraging commitments, having pushed all of our near-term debt maturities into the next decade.”

Project Future

‘Project Future’ – Europe’s largest systems implementation project, which involves the separation of circa 2,500 legacy Walmart systems and migration to new Asda platforms is nearing completion. Most parts of the Asda business have now migrated to new systems, including all 799 convenience locations, 85 smaller supermarkets, 20 depots, HR, payroll, finance, CRM and the George.com clothing brand. Asda is on course to complete the rest of the programme this year.

Source : Asda

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