What Coles' FY26 results say about its tech roadmap

Coles Group is Australia's second-largest grocer, with 870 supermarkets and 988 liquor stores at 28 June 2026 and $45.6 billion of annual sales. It matters to anyone running retail technology in this country for a simple reason: alongside Woolworths Group it sets the local benchmark for what a large retailer can get out of automation, loyalty data and online fulfilment. This piece reads the 2026 Full Year Results Release (25 August 2026) and the 2026 Annual Report for what they say about technology, and checks it against what Coles has actually shipped.

What the filings say

For the 52 weeks to 28 June 2026, Coles reported group sales revenue of $45,580 million, up 2.8 per cent, and group EBIT excluding significant items of $2,322 million, up 9.9 per cent. Net profit after tax excluding significant items was $1,255 million, up 13.7 per cent. Liquor was the weak spot: sales revenue fell 3.3 per cent to $3,547 million and EBIT fell 47.8 per cent to $59 million.

The technology story sits inside the Supermarkets numbers. eCommerce sales grew 26.4 per cent to $5.6 billion, and penetration rose 2.4 percentage points to 13.6 per cent of Supermarkets sales. The results release says sales growth in the first eight weeks of FY27 was consistent with the fourth quarter, with eCommerce penetration increasing to 15.7 per cent. Coles is now converting roughly one dollar in seven of its supermarket sales online.

Two other numbers carry the data agenda. Flybuys active members reached 10.3 million, up 3.5 per cent (Annual Report, p. 11). Coles 360, the retail media business, grew income 10 per cent, which the Annual Report attributes to "new adserving and first party audience capabilities" (p. 23). Neither figure is broken out as revenue in the segment note, so the size of the media business in dollars remains undisclosed.

On spend, Coles guided FY27 capital expenditure to approximately $1.55 billion. The release does not split technology from property, but it names the projects: completion of building construction at the Victorian automated distribution centre with automation fit-out commenced, and further automation inside the two customer fulfilment centres, including "on grid robotic pick arms, auto frame loading and auto bagging technology".

The Annual Report also describes an "expanded strategic partnership with Accenture to establish the Coles Capability Centre", with benefits targeted to reach $100 million annualised by the end of FY29. The company frames this as capability rather than cost-out, though the two are not mutually exclusive.

What Coles has actually shipped

Online fulfilment. The Ocado-powered customer fulfilment centres are the largest single technology bet of the past five years. The first, at Truganina in Melbourne, went live in 2024; the second, at Wetherill Park in Sydney, opened on 11 October 2024 with more than 700 bots and capacity for more than 10,000 orders a day. FY26 is the first year both sites "delivered positive EBITDA" (Annual Report, p. 11), with sales growth ahead of the broader eCommerce business. That is the milestone investors were waiting for, and it is now on the record.

Supply chain automation. The Victorian automated distribution centre completed building construction in FY26 and is in automation fit-out, according to the results release. Coles has not published a go-live date for it.

Generative AI for staff. Coles announced its OpenAI partnership on 30 October 2025, with a full corporate rollout planned for February 2026. The Annual Report confirms Coles "rolled out ChatGPT Enterprise to store support centre team members" during FY26 (p. 11). The release named the intended uses: research, administrative tasks, data insights, compliance, task-specific chatbots, plus supply chain optimisation, computer vision for produce stock monitoring, rostering and replenishment, and product ranging.

Analytics in operations. The Annual Report says management expanded "the use of advanced analytics and digital tools to improve forecasting, rostering, store-specific ranging, operational decision-making and team member productivity" (p. 11). Coles has not disclosed which platforms sit behind this in the filings. Separately, Inside Retail reported on 7 September 2026 that Coles confirmed its three-year Palantir agreement, used for rostering, store operations and supply chain planning, will not be renewed at its 2027 expiry. That is trade press, not a filing, and Coles has not said what replaces it.

Retail media. Coles 360's 10 per cent growth came with new ad-serving and first-party audience products. The filings do not name the ad-tech stack, the number of advertisers or the revenue base, so the growth rate is the only public measure of the business.

What is not in the filings. There is no disclosure of a customer-facing generative AI product, no electronic shelf label rollout figure, and no update on Coles Plus subscription numbers. Absence from a results release is not evidence that work has stopped, but it does mean those programmes are not yet material enough, or mature enough, for Coles to report on them.

What the hiring says

The public record here is thin. Coles' careers site has recently listed a Head of Technology for Data and AI Engineering and an Operations Manager (Data and AI focused), both at the Hawthorn East store support centre and both now closed to applications. Taken with the Accenture Capability Centre, the pattern suggests Coles is keeping a small internal layer of data and AI leadership while moving delivery capacity to a partner. That is an inference from a handful of ads, not a disclosed plan.

Say versus do

On eCommerce, the filings and the shipped product line up: two CFCs, positive EBITDA, penetration rising every half. On retail media, the growth rate is disclosed but the base is not, so the 10 per cent cannot be sized. On AI, the Annual Report describes rollout to the store support centre and a list of intended use cases; it does not report measured outcomes from any of them, and it flags AI as a risk area, citing "inaccurate or inappropriate data, unintended bias or ethical risks" (p. 35). The gap is not between claim and reality so much as between ambition and evidence: Coles has said where the AI money is going but has not yet put a number on what it returned.

Liquor is the other gap. A 47.8 per cent fall in EBIT is not a technology story, but it is a reminder that the digital programme has so far been a Supermarkets programme.

What an Australian retailer can take from it

Three things travel. First, automated fulfilment took Coles roughly five years from site selection to positive EBITDA, and it took two sites operating at scale. Anyone modelling a similar investment should plan on that horizon. Second, the loyalty base is the asset that makes the media business possible: 10.3 million active members is the reason advertisers buy first-party audiences. A retailer without the membership number should build that first, because the media margin follows the audience and not the other way round. Third, Coles has chosen to give staff a general-purpose AI tool before it has published any customer-facing AI outcome. Whether that sequencing is right is a fair question for any board; the FY27 filings will show whether it produced measurable results.

Sources: Coles Group 2026 Full Year Results Release (ASX, 25 August 2026); Coles Group 2026 Annual Report; Coles Group media releases of 11 October 2024 and 30 October 2025. Figures are quoted as filed for the 52 weeks ended 28 June 2026.