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Dufry organic growth accelerates in Q1

The world’s largest travel retailer Dufry Group saw its 2017 first quarter organic sales accelerate 7.2%, building on a 1% uplift achieved in its last fiscal year.

Dufry CEO Julián Díaz is “very confident” in his company’s start to 2017

Turnover climbed 4.7% in Q1 to CHF 1.70 billion (US$1.72bn) driven by “steady” growth in the US, UK and Spain, and “significant improvements” in South America, Eastern Europe and Turkey.

Dufry, which acquired World Duty Free Group in 2015, said it continued to benefit from synergies from the deal with gross profit margin climbing from 58.6% to 59.6%.

The Latin America region was a star performer in the quarter with organic growth up 12.7%. The UK, Central and Eastern Europe climbed 8.8%, while North America posted 4.8% gains. Southern Europe and Africa was stable at 2.8%, but sales turned negative across Asia, Middle East and Australia, pegged back by a total of -0.4% due to weakness in Hong Kong, Singapore and a temporary closure in Melbourne, Australia.

Dufry’s 2016 full-year turnover stood at CHF 7.83bn (US$7.90bn), up 27.5% year on year.

The company said the 2017 focus was business development, with 7,200sqm retail space already refurbished this year, with plans to revamp 19,500sqm more.

In addition, the firm has added 5,600sqm retail space and has already signed contracts to open a further 23,000sqm in 2017/18.

Further profitability is expected from the end of 2017 following the roll out of a new business operating model of best practices, processes and procedures.

“I am very confident with the good start we had in 2017,” said Julian Diaz, Dufry Group CEO.

“The efforts we have put and the measures we have implemented to recover organic growth are finally showing a significant impact in the sales performance, together with better economic and political conditions in several markets. After turning positive in the third quarter of 2016 with a +1.3% organic growth, we posted +5.6% organic growth in Q4, and now report a good start into 2017 with organic growth accelerating to 7.2%.”

He added: “Dufry’s fundamentals are strong, and our strategy of diversification by geographies and channels puts Dufry in the right position to strongly benefit from the normalised business environment. At Dufry we are all committed and working towards a successful year.”

Last month Dufry saw a major shift in ownership when Hainan-based conglomerate HNA Group acquired a 16.79% stake in Dufry Group in what many analysts thought could be the start of a hostile takeover bid.

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