Far Eastern accessibility stores – Newspaper Kommersant No. 200 (7401) dated 10/27/2022

Following the Siberian retail companies Slata and Krasny Yar, X5 Group may buy out a stake in the Sambury chain operating in the Far East. This federal district has a low level of competition in the retail market – this could attract a major player. However, experts warn, he will have to face a shortage of quality space for shops and difficulties with logistics.

As two sources told Kommersant in the retail market, X5 Group is considering a partnership with the Far Eastern retail chain Samberi. According to them, such a deal could follow a similar scenario, as in the case of the Siberian chains Slata and Krasny Yar. Earlier it became known that X5 Group was buying out controlling stakes in these companies, and on October 14, the Federal Antimonopoly Service agreed on the acquisition of X5 Group by 70% in Slat and Krasny Yar.

X5 Group did not provide comment. Sambury did not respond to Kommersant’s request.

There are 30 hypermarkets and 12 supermarkets operating under the Sambury brand in the Khabarovsk and Primorsky Territories, the Amur Region and the Jewish Autonomous Region. The network is part of the Nevada Group of Companies, which also develops the Sambury Express and Raz Dva networks. The co-owners of Nevada-Vostok LLC, the operating company of Nevada Group of Companies, are Yuri Egorov (43.7%), Marina Merkulova (29.45%), Sergey Bulygin (21.85%) and Lev Volkov (5%), according to SPARK-Interfax. At the end of 2021, the revenue of Nevada-Vostok amounted to 50 billion rubles, net profit – 726.7 million rubles.

The partnership with Sambury was also discussed by other federal retailers, including Magnit and Lenta, one of Kommersant’s interlocutors clarifies. Magnit said they were studying the Far East market. The company is also already using the logistics infrastructure of the Far East to supply goods to the west of the country. Lenta declined to comment.

According to Infoline-Analytics, Nevada Group became the largest retailers in the Far East in 2021 by revenue, Remy Group (brands Ekonomych, Remy, Remy City) and federal Torgservice Group (traffic light and Mayak discounters).

The share of ten large FMCG retail chains in the Far East at the end of 2021 amounted to 21.7%, which is approximately 1.7 times lower than in the whole country, Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of Infoline-Analytics, notes: “This indicates a low level competition in the retail market in this part of the country.”

In the regions of this federal district, today there is a shortage of free high-quality locations for opening new stores, says One Story partner Olga Sumishevskaya. Relatively small volumes of high-rise housing and shopping centers are being built in the Far East, which limits the supply of commercial real estate, Mr. Burmistrov adds.

Marat Ibragimov, a senior analyst at Gazprombank, notes that the interest of federal retailers in entering the Far East may also be due to the federal government’s attention to the development of regions in this part of the country, which should stimulate their economic development. According to the expert, a company’s entry into a new region is often associated with a temporary decrease in profitability due to complicated logistics. Therefore, partnership with a local player can be optimal for minimizing such losses, Mr. Ibragimov believes.

Mikhail Burmistrov notes that the option of entering into a strategic partnership can be beneficial both for federal retail chains, which do not need to build infrastructure from scratch and launch distribution centers, and for local retailers who do not want to completely sell their business. In addition, Ms. Sumishevskaya believes that for regional retailers, partnership with a federal player provides an opportunity to improve internal business processes and introduce new technologies.

Alina Savitskaya