LPP storming on up
Retail & leisureFor the first time, more than half of its revenues came from abroad. The group has 1,785 stores and by the end of the next financial year (which is to be changed to the end of January 2021) it hopes to have over 1,800. Over the last three months revenues were over PLN 2.7 bln, up 15 pct y-o-y. The company ended the year with an operating profit of PLN 880 mln , 16 pct more than in 2018 and registered an annual margin of 53.4 pct.
“We are no longer going to develop in outlet centres because we are managing our goods inventory better. We closed 20 such stores last year and will close more. Eventually we will only have outlet centre stores in Poland, Russia and Ukraine,” says Przemysław Lutkiewicz, the deputy CEO for finance at LPP. The company is also closing less profitable stores. “We are investing in the Sinsay brand. We have expanded our range to cosmetics and a children's collection and now we are considering introducing a men's collection. The stores themselves have grown in size to 1,000-1,500 sqm and we are also entering smaller towns with populations of 10,000 to 100,000 people with retail park and high street locations. We plan to open up to 50 Sinsay stores in the CEE, in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic as well as in the CIS in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus,” he adds. This year the company intends to enter North Macedonia with all of its brands.
In 2019 LPP opened a fulfilment centre in Romania, and a similar centre is to be opened in Slovakia this quarter. In June construction work is to begin for a centre in Brześć-Kujawski, between Bydgoszcz and Łódź. “The construction will take a year, maybe a little less but setting up the machinery needed on the site will take us another year,” explains Przemysław Lutkiewicz.
In 2019, LPP also opened online stores in 14 new countries. “We are pleased with the results of our online sales, which generated more than PLN 1 bln in revenues last year, making up a 11.4 pct share. The increased interest in online shopping abroad is particularly remarkable. Romania, Hungary, the UK and Slovakia are all countries where above average results were achieved,” emphasises Przemysław Lutkiewicz.
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