September 21 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian supermarket chain T-Market, a unit of Lithuania's Maxima Grupe, swung to a net loss of 982,000 euro ($973,195) in the first six months of 2022 from a net profit of 689,000 euro a year earlier, although revenue grew 16.6% on the year, the Baltic group said on Wednesday.
T-Market's sales in the January-June period amounted to 111.95 million euro, Maxima Grupe said in a consolidated interim financial statement.
The strong performance was chiefly the result of investments in store network expansion, the parent company noted. However, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on business at the beginning of the year were compounded by the start of the war in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on Russia and Belarus. As electricity prices surged, the group also covered those expenses from its own funds, it added.
T-Market's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) reflected a negative trend for the group as a whole, dropping to 6.2 million euro in the first half of 2022 from 7.17 million euro in the same period of 2021.
Like-for-like (LFL) revenue, or the growth in sales as recorded by the same number of stores in the year prior, increased by 16.6% in the review period.
The Bulgarian operations contributed to a 10.3% yearly jump in Maxima Grupe's overall first-half revenue to 2.4 billion euro. The group has other operations in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland, with only the Polish unit, where first-half sales rose 26.1%, exceeding the annual rate of revenue growth registered in Bulgaria.
Looking ahead, the Lithuanian retailer's focus in Bulgaria will be on organic growth and increasing the share of group revenue derived from the local market.
In March, Maxima Bulgaria said it plans to open up to 30 new stores under the T-Market brand this year, after unveiling its 100th store in the town of Kubrat, northeastern Bulgaria.
In 2021, T-Market's revenue grew 8% year-on-year to 197 million euro, with a share of 2.5% of the local retail market and over 2,260 staff, according to the group's latest annual report.
Maxima has been present in Bulgaria through T-Market since 2005.
($ = 1.00921 euro)