Sun Art Retail Group Limited - TodayIR.com
Sun Art Retail Group Limited - TodayIR.com
Sun Art Retail Group Limited - TodayIR.com
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CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S STATEMENT<br />
Dear Shareholders,<br />
2012 was a challenging year for the Chinese entire retail industry, with a slowing of GDP growth for most of<br />
the year. Nonetheless, I am happy to report <strong>Sun</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Retail</strong> <strong>Group</strong> did manage to achieve strong results from<br />
our operations in China.<br />
Our sales revenue grew 14.1% to RMB75,936 million in 2012. The key drivers of our growth were the same<br />
store sales growth at 3.3% and the successful opening of 43 stores during the year (another 3 stores opened<br />
during the first two months of 2013). According to Euromonitor “<strong>Retail</strong>ing in China” report, our leading<br />
position on the market continued to improve with our market share increasing 0.5 percentage points to 13.6%.<br />
Our rental in<strong>com</strong>e increased 24.0% reflecting the pulling power of the customer traffic of our two brands<br />
RT-Mart and Auchan. More and more reputed local and international brands are asking to open shops in our<br />
<strong>com</strong>mercial centres in 2012. We had the pleasure to wel<strong>com</strong>e UNIQLO and Starbucks, on top of the existing<br />
roster of brands.<br />
In order to open those stores we invested a total of RMB3,377 million, as well as RMB1,631 million to renovate<br />
older stores in order to keep the momentum of same store sales growth. Our total investment therefore<br />
increased 20.4% over 2011.<br />
Our profitability continued to improve, with a profit after tax reaching RMB2,533 million, an increase of 27.6%<br />
over 2011. As a consequence, and in line with indications provided before IPO, the Board has re<strong>com</strong>mended<br />
the payment of a dividend of HKD1,145 million, translating into HKD0.12 per share.<br />
This profitability was driven by a strong increase in operating profit, which grew 21.1%, with an increase in<br />
profit margin of 0.2 percentage points from 4.3% to 4.5%.<br />
In order to continue to improve our cost position, we will continue to strive to improve our operational<br />
effectiveness: the RT-Mart banner South and North East logistics centres are now fully operational, and have<br />
started to deliver some products to the recently opened Auchan banner stores in these regions. The Auchan<br />
banner East China logistics centre should start operating in March 2013. Besides a number of initiatives have<br />
been taken at store level to improve our productivity.<br />
We also made great progress in the <strong>com</strong>mercial development of own brands and sold more than 100 million<br />
items under the “Big Thumb”, “RT-Mart” and “Auchan” brands in 2012. We anticipate the growth of these<br />
products to grow at more than 30% as existing items are rolled in new regions and new products are being<br />
created.<br />
<strong>Sun</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Retail</strong> <strong>Group</strong> <strong>Limited</strong><br />
Annual Report 2012<br />
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