Page 130 - RusRPTJan21

9.1.5​ Retail sector news
Number of Russian grocery stores up 3.4% YTD and most companies plan to resume rollout in 2021.
According to 2GIS, the number of grocery shops in cities with a population over onemn people has increased by 3.4% YTD to 139,600 as of September 2020. The leader was the supermarket format, which added 5.2% y/y, followed by the convenience and hypermarket formats with 2.5-3.0% growth y/y.
The modest footprint expansion in 2020 has been buffeted by multiple headwinds associated with macroeconomic and consumer conditions, lockdown limitations on construction, companies’ liquidity management, and the structural switch to e-grocery. The latter has expanded 4x y/y to RUB145bn in 2020, as it has seen a huge boost in the form of demand and promotion this year.
Leading food retail chains are also slowing their organic rollout in 2020. In our model, we forecast 1,410 net openings for​ ​X5 Retail Group​ and 845 for​ ​Magnit (including 550 drogeries), which result in 7% y/y and 3% y/y selling space advances, respectively.
130 ​RUSSIA Country Report​ January 2021 www.intellinews.com