China: Leading hypermarket saw success in 2014

Sun Art Retail Group Limited, a leading hypermarket operator in China, has announced its 2014 annual results. Turnover increased by 6.6% to RMB91,855 million. Profit attributable to equity shareholders of the Company increased by 4.8% to RMB2,908 million. Basic earnings per share amounted to RMB0.30. For the year ended 31 December 2014, gross profit was RMB20,998 million, an increase of 12.8% from 2013. Gross profit margin increased 1.3ppt to 22.9%. The increase in gross profit margin was a result of improvements in the Group’s product mix and further common negotiations by the Group’s two banners, Auchan and RT-Mart. Operating margin and net profit margin were respectively 4.6% and 3.3%,. If not for the losses incurred by the Group’s new venture www.feiniu.com, the growth rate of profit for the year would have been higher by around 5.5 percentage points. This shows both the underlying strength of the Group’s brickand-mortar business and the Group’s commitment to develop Feiniu.com, whose capital was increased by RMB500 million at year end.

The Group maintained a healthy financial position. As at 31 December 2014, gearing ratio stayed at 0.61, identical to last year. Net cash amounted to RMB5,482 million. Inventory turnover days and trade payable turnover days were 58 days and 83 days, respectively.

Mr. Bruno Robert Mercier, the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of the Group commented “In 2014, China’s retail sales of consumer goods grew 10.9% to RMB 26,239 billion; online retail sales grew 49.7 %. In response to this evolving environment, our e-commerce site Feiniu.com started operations at the beginning of the year, and we have by now developed both IOS and Android mobile applications for the convenience of our customers. At the end of the year, we have around 1.4 million members of which around 400,000 are active. And by the end of January 2015, the average number of daily transactions has increased 10 fold after just one year of operations.”

Click here to read more at todayir.com.

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