Moreover, it also budgeted a 35% to 40% increase in sales, in line with the previous years, which should reach more than EUR1 billion.
“We should target 200 new stores. We have an investment budget of about EUR50 million, which will mainly go towards network expansion and logistics development,” says Daniel Cirstea, the Romanian who has been running the store chain for about two years.
Profi’s plans for 2017 are the boldest announced by a retailer so far, as all retailers used to open 200 stores together in the previous years.
Profi opened more than 130 new stores in 2016, which makes it expansion champion and accounted for more than half of the total modern retail store openings last year.
“We posted more than 3.5 billion lei (EUR780 million) sales last year and expect to keep growing at the same pace as of late. We had like-for-like double-digit growth every month in 2016,” Daniel Cirstea says.
Profi’s sales have been going up at a rate of about 30% to 40% in each of the last few years so if the growth pace continues, it should see more than EUR1 billion sales this year.
Private equity firm Enterprise Investors sold Profi supermarket chain to Mid Europa Partners for EUR533 million at the end of last year. The new owner announced at the time of the acquisition that it was aiming for 1,000 stores, a mark no other retailer has hit so far.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)