Zaandam-based Ahold Delhaize, one of the world’s largest food retail groups and a leader in both supermarkets and e-commerce, continued its strong performance during the fourth quarter of 2017, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Dick Boer, CEO of Ahold Delhaize, said: ‘2017 was the first full year as Ahold Delhaize, one in which we substantially completed the integration. We delivered synergies ahead of schedule and continued to show underlying operating margin expansion with stable or increasing market share in our major markets.’

The merged Belgo-Dutch company reported final-quarter 2017 earnings quadrupled and it is proposing to raise its dividend by 10.5% to €0.63 per share. Ahold Delhaize generates 66% of its revenues in the US where it operates several supermarket chains including Food Lion and Hannaford.

Ahold Delhaize reported full-year 2017 earnings 70% higher at €1.8bn on turnover virtually flat at €62.7bn on a pro-forma basis. The company operates more than 6,000 supermarkets in Europe and the US serving 50 million customers a week and has 369,000 employees.

‘We grew our online consumer sales by more than 20%, and realised €2.8bn online consumer sales and are well on track realising nearly €5bn by 2020,’ Boer said.