Willy’s continues phenomenal growth in high inflationary times

The Swedish soft discount food chain Willy’s continues to outgrow the market with it’s phenomenal growth streak. During the rapid increase of inflation, Willy’s has grown by double digits for three consecutive quarters. Since Q2/2021, Willy’s has grown faster than the market, especially during 2022.

In the last quarter, Willy’s revenues jumped by a whopping +23,2% (after +20% growth in Q3/2022). Only small part of the fantastic growth is from new stores, as the like-for-like growth was a staggering +20,2%!

Last year was a year of firsts for Willy’s as the company broke the 9 billion SEK sales barrier for the first time in Q2/2022 and the 10 billion SEK barrier in Q4.

Better than expected online performance

Axfood managed to buck the trend also with the online sales. Despite long decline in the overall online grocery market in Sweden, Axfood reported a 8,8% comparable (Willy’s and Hemköp online) growth for the online channel. In the Q4/2021 Axfood sold it’s pure play online grocery store mat.se to Mathem.

When including the mat.se revenues from last year, the online channel declined -3,1%. The online grocery market declined by -7,4%.

Online represents 5,4% of all Axfood retail sales. This is higher than the market average of 4,3%.

As the economy remains tight and inflation runs high, it will be highly likely that Willy’s keeps on outperforming the market. It remains interesting to see how ICA has performed. ICA Gruppen reports its Q4 figures on 8th of February.

Find more about Axfood from our archives:

• Willys continuing to outgrow the market (25.10.2022)

• Willy’s - Soft discounter not soft on price and growth (21.9.2022)

• Axfood winning the market by a wide margin (21.4.2022)

• Axfood growing slower, but more profitably (25.10.2021)

• Willy’s and Lidl driving growth in Swedish groceries (14.9.2021)

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