Sobeys’ parent starts fiscal 2025 with a bang

Empire Co. Ltd., the parent company of Canadian grocers Sobeys, FreshCo, Safeway, and several others, is seeing market conditions improving following a promising 2025 first quarter earnings report on Thursday.

Food retail sales were just over $8.1 billion, which is a 0.8% improvement year over year and beat estimates of $8.05 billion, and gross profit came in at $2.1 billion, a 2.5% increase. Adjusted EBITDA was just under $648 million for the first quarter that ended Aug. 3, an increase of 2.2% year over year. Net earnings were just over $197 million.

Same-store sales excluding fuel improved 1.0% year over year.

“We enter fiscal 2025 with confidence due to strengthening same-store sales growth and strong control of our margins and costs,” said Michael Medline, president and CEO of Empire, during the earnings call. “We are increasingly optimistic as market conditions are gradually improving, contributing to a more predictable operating environment.”

Empire’s ecommerce arm, Voila, did particularly well in the first quarter. Voila grew year-over-year sales 26.2%.

During fiscal year 2025 capital spend for the Stellarton, Nova Scotia-based company is expected to be about $700 million, with approximately half of the investment allocated to store renovations and new store expansion.

Sobeys has about 1,600 stores across 10 Canadian provinces and oversees the operations of Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods, and Lawtons Drugs as well as more than 350 retail fuel locations.