GOKONGWEI-LED Robinsons Retail Holdings, Inc. (RRHI) will focus on enhancing competitiveness and increasing investments in its hard discount grocery chains, pet retail offerings, and targeted acquisitions and adopting a disciplined approach to store locations, a senior executive said.
Speaking at an event organized by the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday, Vice President for Corporate Planning Gina Dipaling noted the company’s hard discount grocery chain, O!Save, in which RRHI holds a 23-percent stake, was rapidly gained traction among budget-conscious consumers.
O!Save is set to operate 400 stores across Luzon and is planning to add another 200 to 300 stores by next year, she added.
“O!Save is actually accelerating their expansion. By the end of this year, there will be 400 O!Save stores in Luzon,” Dipaling said. “There’s a plan to open another 200 to 300 [stores] next year, so they really need to scale up as well.”
Meanwhile, RRHI’s standalone mini-mart store Robinsons EasyMart will be enhancing its presence in the grocery space in tandem with O!Save to cater to full shopping lists by offering between 3,000 to 6,500 stock keeping units (SKUs).
Dipaling added that one of RRHI’s fastest-growing ventures is its pet retail segment amid increasing demand for pet products and services. To capitalize on this, she said that they were planning to further improve merchandise offerings, expand grooming services, and open more stores by 2025.
On possible acquisition plans, Dipaling said RRHI already has a presence in most formats in the retail segment.
“We’re into food, drugstore, department store, DIY (do it yourself) and toys, mass merchandise, appliances, and we’re into sports,” she noted.
“If we plan to enter into new businesses, it will be maybe a sub-segment of an existing segment already. For example, we have South Star, and then we purchased TGP, which is a sub-segment — this is another drugstore business, but more of a franchise business.”
She also said that RRHI evaluates potential stores to ensure every new site would have robust returns.
“For every store that we open, we actually compute the IRR (internal rate of return). As long as the potential new site of our store will have an IRR of around 14-16 percent, then we open the store. So it could be anywhere in the country,” Dipaling said, when asked about possible locations for new businesses.
RRHI shares on Thursday were unchanged at P36.50 apiece.
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