Asda reports record online sales figures
Leeds-headquartered supermarket giant Asda has seen its like-for-like sales excluding fuel, increase by 3.8% year-on-year.
The business has published its second quarter earnings covering the period from 1st April to 30th June 2020. The trading quarter began the week after lockdown was imposed across the UK on 23rd March.
The supermarket says it also delivered record online sales in the quarter – seeing its online grocery sales double and click and collect sales quadruple during quarter two, with transactional data showing that many of these new customers were new to Asda.
To meet the growing demand, Asda has increased its online capacity by 65% since March to 700,000 weekly slots and provided 1.4 million free of charge slots for clinically vulnerable customers.
Asda plans to increase its online capacity to 740,000 slots per week by the end of the year – and has set its sights on increasing capacity further still with to up to one million slots made available in 2021.
The supermarket is also expanding its delivery partnership trial with Uber Eats to 25 more stores over the next eight weeks and has reinstated its same day and express click and collect service at more than 300 stores.
Doug McMillon, CEO and president of the supermarket’s owner, Walmart, said: “Excluding fuel, Asda’s performance demonstrated the resilience of the business with growth in a challenging period.”
Asda CEO and president, Roger Burnley, said: “The pandemic has created a structural shift in customer behaviours towards grocery shopping.
“We have accelerated our online capacity expansion to meet levels we had anticipated reaching in eight years within a matter of weeks and we will continue to expand this offer.
“We will also maintain focus on ensuring our in-store experience delivers what customers want from a shopping trip – great value, relevant range and ease.”
Although fuel sales decreased significantly as lockdown was imposed, Asda says the gradual easing and return to work for many in August has seen motorists return to the pumps and fuel volumes return to around 90% of pre-Covid levels.
However, customer spend at the pump remains down year on year.
Geroge Home sales are growing 13% ahead of the market, while Asda’s premium Extra Special range has outperformed the market with a sales uplift of 19.4% year-on-year.
When lockdown was implemented Asda says it responded by introducing measures to protect staff and customers.
The business also recruited 23,000 temporary workers, to ensure it could continue serving customers during the height of the pandemic.
