The Co-op's revenue was hit because fewer Britons died last year
The company, which is the UK's largest mutual business and is owned by more than eight million members, has faced increased competition among the supermarkets and has sold off its farms and pharmacies over the last year to shore up cash.
However, the Co-op can't seem to catch a break.
Co-op revealed in a trading statement for the 52 weeks ending January 3, 2015, that while it is frantically "rebuilding" the company and focusing on certain businesses, its revenue was hit because less Britons died last year.
The Co-op said that its funeralcare business saw sales fall almost 2%, by £7 million, which was "affected by a particularly low death rate."
Other sales figures in the trading update show a fall too:
- Group revenue of £9.4 billion in 2014, (2013: £9.7 billion)
- Group underlying operating profit £172 million (2013: £177 million)
- General insurance revenue fell to £371 million (2013: £476m)
- Legal services' revenues declined by a third to £23 million and made £5 million in losses for 2014.
The group even said that its profits were buoyed up from the sale of its farms and pharmacies business (emphasis ours):
"We made solid progress in 2014 as we successfully concluded the Rescue phase of our turnaround. The hard work of Rebuilding The Co-operative Group for the next generation, and restoring it to its rightful place at the heart of communities up and down the UK, is now underway," said Richard Pennycook, Chief Executive of The Co-op Group, in a statement.
"A significant element of our 2014 profit relates to one-off disposal gains on the sale of our Farms and Pharmacy businesses and property disposals. Without these we would, at best, have broken even. Against that backdrop, and given the need to invest in all our businesses, the Board will not be recommending a dividend to members and believes that a resumption of dividend payments is unlikely until the Rebuild phase is complete and we have returned to sustainable profitable growth."
However, it wasn't all doom and gloom for the Co-op, less people may have died in 2014 to help sales but more people were buying its food.
The Co-op, which is the UK's fifth biggest food retailer with almost 2,800 local, convenience and medium-sized stores, revealed that like-for-like sales were up 0.4% overall.
"We acquired 82 new convenience stores and refurbished more than 700 stores; prices were lowered across 40 categories and the investment in own-brand product continued with over 170 awards for quality won during the year," said the group.