How would you describe the perfect ASX retirement stock?
This question will likely prompt different answers from different investors. But I think most retirees would agree that the perfect stock to underpin one's golden years has to be a dividend-paying company.
Not just any ASX dividend stock, though. It should have a stable earnings base, one resilient to economic maladies like inflation and recessions. It should be able to use this earnings base to easily fund consistent, reliable, and fully-franked dividends.
There are a few blue-chip stocks that fit this bill for a perfect ASX retirement stock on our share market. I would argue that Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL) is one of those stocks.
Luckily, Coles was one of the ASX 200 shares that reported its latest earnings this week. As such, we have some fresh data we can go off in justifying this assessment.
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The latest numbers show why Coles is a perfect ASX retirement stock
On Tuesday, Coles revealed that it enjoyed revenue growth of 4.3% to $44.35 billion over the 2025 financial year, well above inflation. That helped push underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) up 10.7% to $4.05 billion, and underlying net profits after tax (NPAT) up 3.1% to $1.18 billion.
That enabled Coles to announce a final dividend of 32 cents per share, fully franked, in line with the company's final dividend from last year.
This full-year result was just the latest in a long line of annual revenue, earnings, and profit increases. The period between 2020 and 2025 has seen one severe recession (although the unprecedented COVID assistance made it a rather unique one in our economy's history) and the highest rates of inflation Australia has seen in decades.
Yet Coles has managed to not only survive, but thrive, amid these tough economic conditions. That bodes very well for its potential status as a perfect ASX retirement stock.
Coles also had built up a formidable track record as a dividend payer. 2025 will be the sixth year in a row the company has raised its annual dividend, which is impressive given Coles has only been listed on the ASX in its own right since late 2018.
Bar some completely unforeseeable disruption in how Australians eat and stock our households, it's highly likely, at least in my view, that Coles will continue to be a leading provider of these services to Australians. As such, I think it is a perfect ASX retirement stock to have in a portfolio today.
