Grocery suppliers prefer Coles over Woolies; Costa Group launches $637 million IPO: Midday Roundup

Supermarket suppliers much prefer supplying their product to Coles over Woolworths, according to research from UBS. 

The UBS Supermarket Supplier Survey, which asked suppliers to rate both major supermarket chains across a range of areas, reveals Woolworths has the lowest level of satisfaction in the survey’s eight years in operation, reports Fairfax.

Overall, Woolworths scored 5.7 out of 10 in the ratings, in comparison to Coles, which is sitting at its highest ever rating of 7.1.

The category UBS says is most worrying for Woolworths is its decline in customer-facing areas, dropping 0.4 points in effectiveness of promotional campaign and 0.6 points around in-store execution.

Costa Group launches $637 million IPO

Costa Group is hoping to raise between $541 million and $637.4 million in an initial public offering, which would give the family-owned business a $839.4 million market capitalisation, the Financial Review reports.

The fruit and vegetable grower’s IPO will be priced at $2.20 to $2.70 a share, which is 14.8 to 17.6-times the company’s forecast financial year net profit in 2016, after tax.

If the public offering is successful, the company will list on the Australian Securities Exchange with a $703.9 million to $839.4 million market capitalisation on July 24.

Retail brokers are due to have bids in for the stocks by July 16.

Shares down as markets pause on Greece

Local shares are down this morning as global markets continue to await any movement on the Greek debt crisis.

“Markets seem to be exactly where they were last Friday as far as Greece is concerned,” Ric Spooner, chief market analyst at CMC Markets said in a statement.

“The world is waiting on another set of ‘last ditch’ meetings with a general expectation that crisis will be averted but concerned that there is some room for doubt. The bottom line as far as today’s trading is concerned may be to leave both buyers and sellers cautious.”

The S&P/ASX200 benchmark was down 95.6 points to 5537.1 points at 11:50AM AEST. On Thursday, the Dow Jones closed down 0.42%, falling 75.71 points to 17,890.4 points.