Kmart, once the troubled child within the Wesfarmers family, has mended its ways, though its sibling Target is now the one that is showing problems.

On Thursday, Wesfarmers reported that it turned a $2.56 billion profit for the 2024 financial year, a 3.7 per cent increase on the previous year, supported by revenues of $44.18 billion, up by around 1.5 per cent. Earnings before interest and tax grew 3.3 per cent.

Bunnings, the Wesfarmers-owned hardware retailer, has delivered revenues of $18.9 billion up 2.3 per cent as of year-end in June 2024, while Officeworks has managed to lift revenues 2.3 per cent to $3.41 billion and had earnings rise of 4 per cent to $208 million.

Wesfarmers’ Kmart Group meanwhile which includes Kmart and Target Australia saw the group revenue increase 4.4 per cent in 2024 to $11.1 billion from $10.63 billion in 2023. This is a sharp decline from the 16.9 per cent growth that Kmart Group revenue saw between 2022 ($9.01 billion) and 2023 ($10.53 billion).

In FY 24, while budget department store Kmart’s sales grew 6.4 per cent, Target’s sales declined 3.6 per cent.

In 2022, Kmart had full-year sales of $6.83 billion and saw a 22 per cent increase in 2023 to $8.33 billion. In FY 24, Kmart kept up growth, though not at the same pace, with a 6.4 per cent rise to $9.02 billion.

However, discount retailer Target, whose sales had only increased 1.1 per cent between 2022 and 2023 – it recorded $2.18 billion in sales in 2022 and $2.2 billion in 2023 – has seen itself slide in FY 2024 with a 3.6 per cent fall to $2.13 billion.

The Kmart Group’s earnings of $958 million in FY 24 were 24.6 per cent above the prior year and represented a record for the business, but it was Kmart and not Target that did the heavy lifting.

Last year, Wesfarmers said that it would merge the business units of Kmart and Target to create a $10 billion discount conglomerate. The two brands remain separate consumer-facing businesses.

However, this year, some items such as those of Kmart’s ‘Anko’ branded products began to appear in Target stores as part of that merger process. “The second half trading performance was relatively stronger in apparel and also included a disrupted period of sales with the changeover in Target’s general merchandise range to Anko,” said the group in a statement.

Starting from the first half of 2025, sales growth metrics will be reported only at a Kmart Group level.

Between Kmart and Target, they have kept their physical store network almost the same with Kmart losing just one store from 270 on June 30, 2023 to 269 on June 30, 2024, while Target’s number of stores remained constant over the period with a footprint of 124 stores, the majority of which were concentrated in NSW/ACT, Victoria and Queensland.