Owners of Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES) shares may want to know what their company could say next week at the annual general meeting (AGM).
It's been a good few years for the company, with retailers like Bunnings, Kmart and Officeworks performing well.
AGMs give investors an opportunity to vote on any important matters that the company has raised, including voting on directors.
However, most investors may want to know about other things the company could say. Below are three areas I think the business will want to tell investors about.
FY24 recap
While the FY24 result has already been announced, I'm sure Wesfarmers will highlight some of its financial highlights from the 2024 financial year.
In the last financial year, Wesfarmers reported its total revenue increased 1.5% to $44.2 billion, operating profit (EBIT) rose 3.3% to $4 billion and net profit increased 3.7% to $2.56 billion.
Let's briefly remind ourselves of the performance of the four biggest divisions.
Bunnings Group revenue increased 2.3% to $19 billion, and earnings rose 0.9% to $2.25 billion. Kmart Group revenue increased 4.4%, and earnings jumped 24.6% to $958 million. WesCEF (chemicals, energy and fertiliser) revenue fell 16.9% to $2.75 billion, and earnings sank 34.2% to $440 million. Officeworks revenue rose 2.3% to $3.4 billion, and earnings rose 4% to $208 million.
The board decided to grow the annual dividend per Wesfarmers share by 3.7% to $1.98.
Trading update
The trading update for FY25 to date could be the most interesting element to investors. Shareholders like to see how their business is performing, so a strong update could be exciting. A weaker-than-expected update could disappoint investors.
We don't know what the business will say, but it did give a short trading update when it released its FY24 result. It'd be surprising if the trading update is significantly different from what was said a couple of months ago.
Wesfarmers said in August how it had performed for the first eight weeks of FY25.
Kmart Group sales were "broadly in line with the growth in the second half of the 2024 financial year" (which was 4.1%).
Bunnings "continued to see positive sales growth, but growth has moderated from the second half of the 2024 financial year" (when it was 2.9%).
Officeworks "delivered sales growth slightly ahead of the growth in the second half of the 2024 financial year" (which was 2.8%).
Progress on initiatives
I expect Wesfarmers will also give some updates regarding its progress with various longer-term projects.
It has been working on the Mt Holland lithium project and related infrastructure, and I expect Wesfarmers will tell investors how it's going.
I'm also very curious to see what Wesfarmers says about its progress in growing the Anko brand in international markets.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the company highlight to owners of Wesfarmers shares how it has been working on reducing costs and increasing efficiencies during this period of elevated inflation, which has been a headwind for profit margins.
Overall, I think it could be a very intriguing AGM.
