Thursday, August 28, 2008
Amsterdam, the Netherlands – Ahold today published its interim financial report for the second quarter and half year 2008. Ahold CEO John Rishton said “We continued to invest in price and gave increased focus to promotions, both of which helped to drive sales and win customers but, as anticipated, impacted margins.
“In Europe, as part of Albert Heijn’s price positioning strategy, food price inflation was only partially passed on to customers during the quarter, and strong promotions including the Euro 2008 Football Championships temporarily impacted margins. At Albert/Hypernova, we also did not pass on all food price inflation to customers this quarter, as we continued the repositioning started a year ago.
“In the United States, the Value Improvement Program has now expanded beyond price repositioning to marketing and branding. We unveiled new logos and a number of brand initiatives for Stop & Shop and Giant-Landover last week as a further step in Ahold’s global strategy to build powerful local consumer brands. Giant-Carlisle continued to gain share in a highly competitive market.
“We are confident we will manage the balance between sales growth and margin and deliver our underlying retail operating margin guidance for 2008 of 4.8-5.3%.”