Australia Retail: Supermarkets: Downgrade WOW to Neutral on valuation; on-demand delivery momentum shift to COL a risk to watch

Research evidence excerpt

Australia Retail: Supermarkets: Downgrade WOW to Neutral on valuation; on-demand delivery momentum shift to COL a risk to watch

Goldman Sachs Australia Retail: Supermarkets

were on demand in 3Q26, with delivery ~58% of online sales and total online sales

16.6% of sales. This implies on demand delivery is running at ~4.5% of WOW Aus Food

sales, including UberEats (until July), MILKRUN, DoorDash and Woolworths branded

on-demand delivery (i.e. via the WOW app/website). MILKRUN is >50% of these sales.

Assuming 1) UberEats is ~20% of on-demand delivery sales i.e. ~0.9% of total sales (with

the remaining 20% spread across DoorDash and WOW branded <2 hour delivery); and;

2) 30%-90% of this transfers to COL via UberEats from July, we estimate this could be a

0.3%-0.8% headwind to WOW Aus Food sales. This corresponds to a 0.4%-1.1% tailwind

to COL Supermarket sales from July (Exhibit 4), driving a net swing of ~1.6% in sales

growth between WOW and COL.

We lift our COL FY27 supermarket sales growth from 4.4% to 4.6%, now in line with

our WOW FY27 growth forecasts

WOW is lapping easier comps than COL in 4Q26 and 1Q27 and therefore, absent a

significant shift (including from UberEats in 1Q27 as discussed above) we would expect

the sales growth gap to COL to be maintained / widen in 4Q26/1Q27. Thereafter, we

expect COL regains the sales growth lead in 2Q27, assisted by much easier comps and

the UberEats exclusivity (Exhibit 5). Whilst the UberEats deal is likely to be lower margin

than COL’s traditional business, the incrementality of the shift should assist overall profit

growth. This lifts our COL EPS +1.6% in FY27E. We make no changes to our WOW

earnings forecasts.

GSE Earnings expectations vs. consensus: modest upside to WOW FY28; Slight