THE Woolworths' retailing juggernaut does not seem fazed by buyer sentiment - brand or price.
The company has just notched up its 11th consecutive year of double-digit growth.
The nation's number one retailer announced a 10.1 per cent rise annual profit, to a whopping $2 billion, last week.
And its chief executive Michael Luscombe is forecasting even more to come - tipping as much as an 11 per cent increase in sales for 2011, driven by more cost cutting on its retail shelves.
Mr Luscombe said Woolies had also returned more than $1 billion to its shareholders - many of them mum and dad investors - in the past year and more than $8 billion in the past eight years.
Analysts say the rivalry between Woolies and Coles - the big two supermarkets in Australia - will remain complex because both companies are at different stages of their growth.
Shaw Stockbroking analyst Scott Marshall said Woolworths has shown careful cost management and the benefits of massive infrastructure investment over the past decade have defied the market and enabled the company to continue to grow.
