A: I think the divestment of the Endeavour Drinks business (Dan Murphy’s plus Australian Hotels) is one of the reasons Woolworths has been doing well. It has comprehensively outperformed Coles over the last few months. It is not the only reason: Woolworths is beating Coles in the supermarket business; BigW is firing; Coles is in the midst of a re-investment program: but it is one of them. Not only will the divestment potentially unlock “value” for shareholders, but Woolworths will come back on the list of stocks that some ESG focussed can buy. (The Australian Hotels business is a big operator of poker machines.

Would I buy more Woolworths shares ahead of the announcement? Not sure, it is always hard to know what is “already priced in”. As the old saying goes, buy the rumour, sell the fact. The AGL divestment announcement on Tuesday was a good example of this – it rallied in the days ahead of the announcement, and then got sold off very hard. I would,  however, buy Woolworths in preference to Coles.