Central Retail Corporation Public Company Limited (CRC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I would like to welcome everyone to the session performance update for the quarter 4 and the full year 2025 Central Retail. And as usual, I would like to introduce our management who is our key speaker today. First, Mr. Panet Mahankanurak, our CFO.

[Foreign Language]

And second, Mr. Olivier Langlet, Central Retail Vietnam CEO, joining us here soon today.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. And myself Rangsirach Pornsutee Head of IR, I will be the host for today's session. And we have prepared a brief presentation to walk you over with our key overview, business highlights and the financial results, and we'll save the latter time -- the latter half of the session for the Q&A as usual. So without further ado, allow me to pass on to Panet Mahankanurak.

[Foreign Language]. Okay. Olivier. Can I pass it on to you please?

Sure. Thank you, [ Khun Panet ]. So '25 for Vietnam, it's quite a good GDP growth as it has been several times mentioned, the last quarter was even higher than the average of the year. And for '26, the government still target a growth above 10% for the entire year. It was also a very good year in terms of tourism. Tourism grew by 20% (sic) [ 20.4% ] versus last year in terms of international tourists, reaching the high of 21 million (sic) [ 21.2 million ] never done before. So that was quite good also in terms of performance for the country. Export and import, solid double-digit growth as well and an indicator that we like to follow very closely and very much, this is the number of new or re-opened enterprise that has increased sharply in '25 by 27% (sic) [ 27.4% ] due to the different policies that the government has put it in place to promote the private economy. For sure, when we look at our growth plans, it's firmly on track, and it will accelerate in '26. We had -- and I will explain that later, Successful GO and mini go opening in '25, but also our 2 flagship malls were relaunched late December and early January, that will definitely fuel our '26 growth. You will see as well that FMCG, the fast-moving consumer goods has a growth momentum and continue to gain market share in a very profitable way. And '26 started also very well with a strong Tet-to-Tet sales and an opening that we had in January of mini go mini go Cu Chi. On top of that, our Lifestyle & Sports business also enjoy a robust double-digit sales growth in the country. So moving to mall first, let's deep dive. At the end of '24, we have 44 malls in 24 provinces. What is good to see is the increase that we had in terms of visits, almost plus 9% versus last year. So a very good performance also there in terms of visit. And we will open 1 mall in '26 in the last quarter of the year. Occupancy rate also has grew significantly, reaching 89% in the last quarter, if we exclude the 2 flagship mall that we were renovating that is Thang Long and Dong Nai. The 2 malls that we opened in '25 also overshoot their target Hung Yen that opened in July '25 reached almost 10,000 visits per day, while Yen Bai in the Lao Cai province in the Northeast of Vietnam was also successful in September '25 in a Tier 4 city, reaching 4,000 visits a day. Big, big renovation for us last year regarding the mall of Thang Long and Dong Nai. Those 2 malls are among the oldest one we have in Vietnam, but as well the biggest one. And Thang Long was relaunched very successfully in December '25, reaching almost 23,000 customer per day. And Dong Nai has been also successfully relaunched mid of January and fully ready for Tet so that's pretty good. And in '26, we are already busy with the construction of Tuyen Quang also located in the North that should open mid of December this -- in the last quarter of this '26 year. We had a very successful period of Christmas and New Year. And you know that for the format, hypermarket is very important to be present when we are talking about seasonality and high seasonality. So that's the reason why for us, Christmas, New Year and then Tet it was very good to see a growth of 8% of traffic in our mall and 4% in like-for-like due to all the activation that we have done across the country. Looking at the foods business, we continue, as I mentioned before, to gain profitable market share with, of course, our 2 GO Hyper that has opened last year, but we have also planned for this '26 2 GO Hyper and 6 mini go that will open also this year. When I look at the Nielsen tracker in terms of market share, you see that we gained 80 basis points in the super and hypermarket segment, reaching almost 39% of market share, meaning that we are clearly a leader in that format of hypermarket in Vietnam. Looking at still the growth momentum also the quarter 4 was mid-single digits and Omni sales plus mid-single digit and for the fiscal year, mid-teens. We had -- we are still fueling, let's say, some investment in Omni to improve the customer experience. And I must say that reaching almost, let's say, 13% of penetration is a very good performance. Traffic is also very good, 4% increase last year with a 3% traffic more also in our like-for-like store. So expansion is very important, but having also a healthy [ park of stores ] in like-for-like is also very important. We launched some several initiatives as well last year in terms of private label like GO Viet Farm and Viet Gems that has been really appreciated by the community and all those products hook up certified. Another event that also happened in the last quarter of '25 was the launch of the one that has been launched in November '25, very successful. It has been launched in our hypermarkets Tops Urban and mini go nationwide, reaching 81% of membership sales penetration. Today, we are close to be at 85%. So I think that this is one of the most successful loyalty program you have here in Vietnam. We have 4.3 member at the end of '25, but already more than 5 million members at the end of January. So a very good start for the one that we will be able to activate very soon. Our concept rural as well working well mini go. You know that this is a very successful concept that one. We opened 1 store in October and 1 store in January this year with a high teens performance in terms of quarter 4. And when I look at fiscal year, double-digit growth and the same-store growth also high single-digit, very good performance of those stores. It means that for us, at the end of '26, we will have 45 Go hypermarkets and 21 mini go across 26 province out of the 34 we have in Vietnam. And as I mentioned before, Tet's very great start of '26, strong Tet-to-Tet development. A lot of activation has been done across the country. And definitely, I'm pretty sure that when we will look at the market share at the end of February, we will see a great improvement of our market share at that time. Last but not least, our lifestyle and sports that continue we need to fuel the growth of our company here in Vietnam with a robust double-digit sales growth in total, but as well in online for the quarter, but also for the fiscal year. It's due -- and it's across all the brands that we are operating this year. We opened one more Supersports early in Hanoi in January. HOKA also, as I mentioned before, has been successfully launched in the country, and we opened a second one this year. Crocs also still very successful with 2 stores that have opened in the quarter 4, and we should still continue the expansion this year. And last but not least, Dyson as well with 21 stores by the end of December, targeting to open at least 3 to 4 stores in '26. This is the momentum for Vietnam. I give back the word to [ Khun Panet ].

Thank you. Second part would be the financial results recap.

[Foreign Language].