CRC Confident in 2021 Business Plan to Drive Sales Growth Over 10%

Ready to Pay Dividends of 0.40 Baht per Share

Bangkok, March 1, 2021 – Mr. Yonn Phokthap, CEO of Central Retail Corporation Public Company Limited (CRC) stated that Central Retail has shown a V-shape recovery since the third and fourth quarters of 2020, continuing to grow strongly with total revenue of 51,077 million baht, a QoQ increase of 7%, and a profit of 1,102 million baht, a QoQ increase of 27%. This allows Central Retail to close the year 2020 with total revenue of 194,311 million baht (a decrease of 13%) and a net profit of 341 million baht (a decrease of 97%), with sales growth of 180% through omnichannel, accounting for nearly 10% of total sales. The company is also ready to pay dividends to shareholders at 0.40 baht per share. Central Retail is confident that the business plan for 2021 will drive sales growth of over 10%.

Since 2017, Central Retail has announced its core strategy “New Central, New Retail” along with the organization's goal to be the “Central of Life,” creating a direction for business operations and developing an ecosystem to become the “New Central Retail Lifestyle & Food Platform” that is the best in Southeast Asia, leading to business success, including:

  1. Revamping and expanding new store formats across all business groups including fashion, food, and hardline to modernize and meet lifestyle needs, continuously creating new omnichannel experiences for customers.
  2. Launching the CENTRAL mobile platform that connects all business groups together while restructuring the Big Data of the existing loyalty customer base of 24 million people, creating Hyper-personalization Offers. This new platform consolidates products under Central Retail into one place to provide a seamless shopping experience and meet customer needs across all product categories. Currently, there are over 2 million users just two months after launch.

  1. Collaborating with partners to strengthen Central Retail's ecosystem by partnering with JD Central Marketplace and JD Digital to create digital payment services and financial transaction solutions (DOLFIN), and with Grab for Quick Commerce to provide on-demand services, starting with food ordering and Tops Grocery through the app, which has been very successful and has expanded to other product categories to meet on-demand needs nationwide.
  2. Acquiring businesses to strengthen the hardline segment by investing over 12 billion baht to acquire OfficeMate, B2S, and Meb (the number one e-book store), including an omnichannel platform for B2B customers. Recently, they launched a new flagship store “B2S Think Space” at Central Chidlom, which has received an unexpectedly positive response from customers.
  3. Thai Watsadu under the hardline group has become the number one in revenue and the number one omnichannel home improvement retailer within just 11 years of operation, generating nearly 28 billion baht in total revenue last year, with plans to accelerate business expansion both in Thailand and abroad to double sales within 3-5 years.

 

  1. Food business 
    • In Thailand, continuously upgrading and opening branches to create the best food destination experience for customers, transforming the Ladprao branch into Central Food Hall and continuously upgrading the Westgate and Salaya branches.
    • In Vietnam, focusing on food and lifestyle shopping centers under the Big C/GO! brand, launching various business formats and channels (Multi-format), bringing the success of Tops Market to Vietnam and expanding GO! supermarkets to secondary provinces to cover all of Vietnam within 5 years. Currently, Central Retail has covered over 30 key provinces in Vietnam (accounting for 85% of the country's GDP) and will continue to expand as Vietnam has business potential in food and lifestyle shopping centers that is twice that of Thailand.

 

“2021 is still a challenging year, but Central Retail remains committed and confident that we can drive the business to grow over 10% with an investment budget of 18 billion baht planned to strengthen Central Retail further, reinforcing our leadership in the Thai retail business,” Mr. Yonn Phokthap concluded.