RUSSIA: Magnit reports slowdown in Q2 growth | Progresiv

Magnit, Russia’s largest grocer, has reported a strong rise in first-half sales, despite a slowdown in the second quarter. 

The group saw revenue for the six months to end-June grow by 30% to 453.7bn roubles, despite sales in the second quarter growing by just 27.3%, hurt by a 24.6% increase in June. The group’s drugstores continued to outperform all the other formats, while the ‘Magnit family’ stores also did well. 

CEO Sergey Galitskiy attributed the lower June sales to “the high base effect, a much lower inflation rate (0.2% vs 0.6% in June 2014), as well as the average ticket decline due to customers trading down”.
As of 30 June, Magnit operated more than 10,700 stores across Russia. (www.kamcity.com)