Online has structurally stepped up throughout the pandemic, creating both  opportunities and challenges for retailers. The ability for retailers to thrive as  online takes a larger share of spending will be critical in driving long-term sales  growth and margin expansion. The channel mix seen in 1H22 as a result of  lockdowns was a window into the future and a test of retailer capabilities to pivot  to online. We assess the 1H22 sales and margin outcomes relative to pre-COVID  levels across 34 retail businesses. In our view, the retailers that thrived as the retail  environment shifted online were: Premier Investments, JB Hi-Fi and Harvey  Norman. The most challenging online economics exist for Woolworths, Coles and Wesfarmers.  Pandemic has accelerated pre-COVID trends. While online penetration was  rising pre-COVID, we expect the pandemic to have accelerated the pre-COVID  penetration trend by ~0.8ppts in food and ~2ppts in non-food, which we model  reaching 6% and 19% respectively in FY24, double pre-COVID levels. Once  normalised for lockdowns, penetration could accelerate at an even faster rate  given the pull-forward of investment in the online channel by retailers over the  past two years.