OREANDA-NEWS. On July 10, 2007 X5 Retail Group N.V., Russia's largest food retailer in terms of sales (LSE ticker: “FIVE”), provided a trading update on a pro-forma basis including store opening data and Like-for-Like (“LFL”) sales trends for Q2 2007, reported the press-centre of X5 Retail Group N.V.

X5 Retail Group N.V. gained additional net selling space of over 20,000 square metres in Q2 2007, comprising 4,400 square metres for the Perekriostok chain and 15,618 square metres for the Pyaterochka chain. As of 30 June 2007, X5 Retail Group N.V. operated 516,328  square metres of total net selling space.

In terms of numbers of stores, the Group opened 33 new Pyaterochka soft-discount stores and 3 new Perekrestok supermarkets during Q2 2007.  As a result, as of 30 June 2007, X5 Retail Group N.V. operated 539 company managed Pyaterochka soft-discount stores and 170 Perekrestok stores.   During Q2 2007, Pyaterochka’s franchisees opened 58 new stores. As of 30 June 2007, franchisees operated 591 Pyaterochka branded stores across Russia and Kazakhstan.  Perekrestok had 10 stores operated by franchisees in the Moscow area.

Andrei Rybakov, X5 Retail Group Head of Development commented:
“Having added approximately 50,000 sq.m. of net selling space so far this year, we are comfortably on track to achieve our year end target of adding 150,000 sq.m. to our selling space in 2007, given the seasonality of our new store opening operations. In addition to the on-going store opening efforts, we have made significant progress to secure future years “pipeline” of projects, including development of land bank for our hypermarkets and shopping centres, set up of X5 Development operations and progress in building up logistics and warehouse infrastructure in line with our strategic plans.” 

During Q2 2007, X5 Retail Group N.V. further enhanced the already strong Like-for-Like sales  trends across all chains and regions compared to Q1 2007.

Antonio Melo, X5 Retail Group COO, commented: 
“Our store operations show strong results across formats, especially in the core Moscow area market.  In St. Petersburg, Russia’s most competitive market, we continued to maintain positive traffic in Pyaterochka stores due to a series of initiatives that followed the merger last year, including increased advertising budgets, optimisation of the product range and restyling of the stores.

Another important achievement was a significant improvement of LfL sales performance of our regional network as a result of our regional expansion efforts. In particular we are pleased with the performance of our stores in the Urals region, which strongly benefited from the integration into our chain. 

Overall, an increase of 10% in number of customers in our LfL stores demonstrates that the chain has been making a clear progress in continuous improvement of its customer appeal and store value proposition. Strong LfL sales performance, combined with an integration effort and a strong national currency are building a solid basis to meet our key financial objectives in 2007 and beyond.”