Polish convenience store group Żabka posted an 18% rise in third-quarter adjusted core profit, driven by new store openings, higher sales and margin, as well as improvements to cost efficiency.
Adjusted EBITDA – earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, adjusted by one-off items – for the period rose to 1.12 billion zlotys (€260 million), supported by revenues of 6.58 billion zlotys (€1.51 billion), the company said.
The like-for-like sales (LFL) growth for the quarter more than halved to 6% due to a high-base effect from last year, when it was aided by high inflation and "unusually" good weather, according to the company.
LFL sales for the first nine months of the year grew to 8.6%.
The number of stores rose by 10% on the year to 10,906, with Żabka adding 266 new stores in the third quarter.
Store Openings
"By the end of the year, we aim to open about 1,100 stores in Poland and Romania, and achieve increase of sales in existing locations in the expected range of 7.5-9%," said CEO Tomasz Suchanski cited in a statement.
The group had 10,014 shops at the end of 2023. It had said it saw potential for about 19,500 stores in Poland, and planned to open 4,500 new units between 2004 and 2028.
The firm, one of Poland's most recognisable brands, recently joined its listed rivals Dino, and Eurocash on Warsaw bourse in a 6.45-billion-zloty IPO.
Marta Wrochna-Łastowska, CFO of Zabka Group, added, “In line with our projections from the IPO, in the medium term we seek to raise the adjusted EBITDA margin toward the upper end of the range of 12–13%.
“The recent sales results, normalisation of energy costs, and increased efficiencies in operating scale should also lead to improvement in the EBITDA margin in 2024 compared to 2023.”
News by Reuters, additional reporting by ESM.
