UK Edition
Supermarkets have hardly been stock market favourites in recent years, partly because of what looked like the inexorable rise of Aldi and Lidl. But investors may have had something else in mind, too: the sheer difficulty of making online shopping profitable.
While Tesco may have made a profit margin of 5pc (before interest and tax) from sales made in its stores, before the pandemic it was making a loss of 4pc of the value of every online order, according to estimates from Exane, the investment firm.
This is not a welcome state of affairs if your online business is steadily growing at the expense of your in-store one. You might imagine that the pandemic has therefore worsened the problem for Tesco (and others) because 10 years’ growth in online sales, let’s say, has been compressed into one. Indeed, the proportion of Tesco’s sales in Britain made online has grown from about 9pc to 16pc. But there is more to the story.
During the pandemic the value of individual online orders has also increased. This helps dilute the effect of the high fixed costs of delivery and “picking” of the orders in the shops. In addition, drivers have been able to deliver more orders on each round as the average distance between customers has fallen because more have signed up.
Last year Tesco’s fleet delivered 21pc more orders per van than in 2019, according to Majedie, an asset manager that holds shares in the company. At the same time the proportion of online orders that are click and collect has increased from around 13pc of the total to roughly 21pc. As this avoids delivery costs, profitability is better.
“While Tesco does not disclose its online profitability specifically, our engagement with the company has confirmed it is now enjoying a distinctly better economic model than before Covid-19, such that it is no longer seeing significant [profit margin] dilution from online sales relative to in-store,” Majedie said.
That is quite a remarkable shift compared with the margin estimates mentioned above. The asset manager said the market was underestimating the impact of this change.
But there is more to the Tesco story than this, partly because the chain has had a good pandemic in other ways. Customers have been reassured by its coronavirus safety measures, such as “traffic lights” to control entry, and have come back to Tesco’s superstores from the German discounters because their size and range of products mean that shoppers are less likely to bunch in particular places inside the stores.
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A further side effect of the virus has been less of what supermarkets call “promiscuous” shopping: going to more than one in search of the best offers from each – not a good idea if you want to minimise social contact.
Instead, customers increasingly want “everyday low prices” rather than endlessly changing special offers – and once customers perceive, say, Tesco as offering that value they feel more loyalty to the brand. Tesco’s Clubcard helps to cement this feeling.
Not only has the threat from Aldi and Lidl diminished but Asda is likely to be less aggressive a competitor on price now that it is under new ownership. When it was part of the giant Walmart group there was plenty of money to fund loss-leaders or price cuts but its new ownership – the Issa brothers backed by private equity – involves a lot of debt and the firm will need to keep a close eye on profitability.
If you put all these reasons for shoppers to choose Tesco together the result in terms of profits should be significant. This is because supermarkets have what is called “high operational gearing”, which means fixed costs are high and therefore relatively small increases in turnover can translate into big rises in profits once those fixed costs are covered.
Tesco’s transformation following a series of crises about seven years ago was largely thanks to Dave Lewis, who stepped down as chief executive in October last year. His replacement, Ken Murphy, formerly of Walgreens Boots Alliance, and the new finance director who starts next month are expected to adopt an evolutionary approach that builds on Mr Lewis’s work rather than one of drastic change.
James de Uphaugh of Majedie said: “Tesco offers a free cash flow yield of 9pc and a dividend yield of about 4pc. It is a market leader that is gently gaining market share and has a well liked brand.” We said buy in July last year and remain positive.
Questor says: hold
Ticker: TSCO
Share price at close: 234.4p
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