Ahold Delhaize Helped Customers Save More in Q4

At a time of rampant inflation, Ahold Delhaize redoubled its efforts to bring customers superior value, and its efforts were successful in its fourth quarter: The retail conglomerate reported group net sales were €23.4 billion, an 8.1% increase at constant exchange rates, and up 15.9% at actual exchange rates. According to the company, group net sales were driven by comparable-sales growth excluding gasoline of 7.9%, and, to a lesser extent, by foreign currency translation benefits and higher gasoline sales. Q4 group comps benefited by about 0.4 percentage points from the net impact of calendar shifts and weather.

Also during the quarter, group net consumer online sales grew by 5.0% at constant exchange rates, led by a strong performance in the United States, which saw a 17.3% increase versus the prior year. Online sales in grocery rose 14.4% at constant exchange rates.

In fact, to bolster the Save For Our Customers program and provide additional stimulus to key Leading Together strategic priorities, Ahold Delhaize has introduced the group-wide Accelerate initiative. “This initiative builds on our existing Leading Together efforts to create more agile organizations, to capture more scale and empower our people to take action to drive efficiency,” explained Muller. “In particular, we will continue to evaluate additional savings and efficiency levers to streamline organizational structures and processes, optimize go-to-market propositions, increase joint sourcing, and consolidate IT – with a clear priority to unlock resources to accelerate our Save for Our Customers program and focus investments on high-return projects. I am confident this proactive approach will make our organization stronger and ensure we can continue to deliver on our track record of driving consistent long-term value creation for all stakeholders.”