Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc., the listed retail unit of the Gokongwei group, is planning a wider footprint in places outside the National Capital Region, spearheaded by its drugstore and supermarket units.
“With 30 percent of our stores located in Metro Manila, we want to accelerate our expansion outside the capital. In terms of formats, were looking to open more of our core supermarket and drugstore banners,” Robina Gokongwei-Pe, president and CEO, said at at the company’s annual stockholders meeting.
The company’s supermarket business consists of Robinsons Supermarket, Shopwise, The Marketplace which it acquired from the Rustans group, and Robinsons Easymart. It also owns Southstar Drug, The Generics Pharmacy (TGP) and Rose Pharmacy.
Given stiff competition in the supermarket business, particularly from the emerging hard discount stores, Pe said RRHI is committed to maintaining market share by continuing to differentiate and offer a wide range of relevant products and providing exceptional shopping experience, be it offline or online.
“We have entered the hard discount category through a stake in O!Save which is aggressively expanding, Hard discounters focus on small pack sizes and sachets, versus our core supermarket formats that offer regular and large pack sizes, suggests that there is limited pricing pressure for some products.
“Our margins should remain intact as we continuously enhance our product mix and gain more scale,” she said.
As for its drugstore business, Pe positions the company to be more accessible to customers.
“By doing so, we aim to boost our market share and brand value. We believe there is opportunity to increase market coverage for all our banners, as there are a lot of municipalities and barangays in the Philippines that still lack drugstores.”
In terms of major acquisitions, the company said it is always on the lookout for such opportunities. “Should there be an opportunity, we will be ready to capitalize,” Pe said.
