X5 Retail Group N.V. (FIVE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
May 20, 2020
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorGood afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our X5 Online Business Webcast and Online Conference and Retail. We are going to hear a presentation of the speakers. Then you will have a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And I've got to tell you that the conference is recorded today on the 25th of May 2020. Over to your speaker, Head of Corporate Finance and IR, Natalia Zagvozdina. Thank you.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveThank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of X5 Retail Group, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you here at today's call devoted to the development of our online businesses of our company. And today, you are going to hear the presentations from Head of Strategy, Vladimir Salakhutdinov; the Head of Perekrestok Online, Leonid Dovladbegyan; the Head of FoodTech, which is largely about express delivery, Vladimir Kholyaznikov; also Svetlana Demyashkevich, the CFO of the company; as well as myself and Andrey Vasin as well as representatives of IR. We're going to start with a short presentation. We hope to do it in 20, 30 minutes. And the presentation is available in the -- our webcast. Page 2 is our regular disclaimer. And then Andrey will tell you more about the rules for the Q&A. But now, without much ado, I'm giving the floor to Vladimir Salakhutdinov.
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveGood day. Good afternoon, colleagues, and I'll start with the presentation. And I suggest we move away to Slide 4. And before we start talking about just online businesses, let's talk a little bit about the e-grocery. And here, you can see the food retail market in Russia. And you can see that we see significant acceleration, which primarily was accelerated by the COVID. But anyways, this trend was open even before that, and this won't change much after. And now we are taking this into account in our strategy that this trend will accelerate. You can also have a look at the share of online services in other food retail businesses. And seeing in other countries, you can see that Russia is still lagging behind a lot of developed economies. And so we have a lot to catch up with. Now in the next slide, you are going to see the online food retail market. And this shows that its structure and segments are shown here. And here, we can see already that in the digital space, we also have different formats and missions. And this is already clearly differentiated with different players, and we see ourselves present in 2 key missions or formats. That is stocking up. That is online hypermarkets. And we are going to talk about our Perekrestok Online business. And then when we'll speak about the e-version of our proximity stores, express deliveries from both Pyaterochka and Perekrestok proximity stores and supermarkets. Now the next slide. This is our mission. And what's very important here in Slide 6 is that all of these missions, the e-grocery, they do not exist as stand-alone businesses. We view them as the continuation of our CVP in online. We are seeing that there is no clear line between the 2 because we are saying that they're very often more than 60% of our customers, when they come to the store, they already know what they will buy and why they have come to this particular store. So this is decided even before. It's very important throughout the customer journey to be with our customers, and this is only possible if we develop digital services. And so this is key for our development right now. Next slide now. Slide 7 shows our positioning as X5 in the online food retail market. And this is data for Q1 and for April. And according to Infoline estimates, X5 is #1. And I believe, right now, since the market is big, and we see such fast growth, that probably it is too premature to compare different players. And we believe there is enough space for everyone. And I'm also sure that those who are shown here, definitely, will continue to accelerate its growth. And together, we will build this market, and we will also build the customer needs. If we look at where we see ourselves, for us, the online businesses are not optional or stand-alone. They are part of our core business, marking out of our CVP, built around the core CVP. And long term or near term, we are looking at 15% to 20% of this whole market. And we know how to get there, and we are planning this in our strategy. Now I would like to hand over the presentation to the next speaker.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveThank you very much, Vladimir. Thank you for the presentation. And now over to Leonid Dovladbegyan, who is going to take us through that stock-up mission.
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveGood afternoon, colleagues. My name is Leonid, and I'm Head of Perekrestok Online. Perekrestok Online is an online supermarket, which is about stocking-up missions. What it means is that we compete primarily with online hypermarkets. As you can see, its share is quite big, and we also have express delivery. If you look at the global trends, the hypermarkets are losing their share. And the deliveries are growing. And stocking-up is still quite a big part of online. And this is exactly what we see in Slide 9. And top-left diagram shows the growth of the online hypermarket segment. Moving on to Slide 10. You can see that our business model is about the assembly of the dark stores. What are they? Basically, they are the distribution centers, 15,000 to 20,000 square meters. And we get orders from the app, from the website. Then what happens, we have a certain area for the delivery. And then in the dark store, we have the pickers. And the pick rate is quite high. And then the courier is sent to the client. And this is the most efficient, both for the stocking up. And this is good because it ensures high efficiency of assembly and shipping, which is hard to achieve at operating a supermarket. And here you can see what our dark stores look like. It's similar to what you can find elsewhere. You can see that it is highly automated, and we have all the high automation systems with high availability and quality. Then in Slide 12, you can see the evolution of perekrestok.ru's CVP. And we are quite fast with a wide assortment, very convenient with high quality of service. And our NPS last year stood at around 80%. And according to our model, you can see that our target is 50,000 SKUs. Currently, it is at 30,000. And it is a high-low model for the assortment and EDLP in assortment of the core products. So we grew really fast in the market, as you can see from Slide 13, and we are continuing our growth, and we are growing dramatically. Last year, we were #2 in the market. And this year, we are continuing the growth. And then on Slide 14, you can see our key operating metrics. As you can see, we have usual 40, 50 SKUs per order because it is about stocking up. We have 30,000 SKUs in the assortment. And right now, we have our 4 dark stores, 3 in Moscow and 1 in St. Pete. And additionally, I can tell you that we are also opening 1 in May. We opened I Nizhny Novgorod. And we target with the share back in stocking up by 2020 and achieving positive EBITDA from 2021. And this is what we are able to achieve. That's it from my side.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveThank you very much, Leonid. And I would like to ask our next speaker, Vladimir Kholyaznikov, to speak somewhat slower, so that we can catch up. Okay. Over to Vladimir Kholyaznikov.
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveThank you, colleagues. This is Vladimir Kholyaznikov, FoodTech Director. In Slide 16, we show the new markets that started to emerge in 2019, and we saw the -- or great evolvement of the new segment. By 2024, we expect it to come to 30% of the total e-grocery market in the key markets. And 2019 was about piloting different services of express delivery with our ultra-fast delivery in 2019. It stood at roughly RUB 1 billion. And by 2024, it is expected to grow to RUB 200 billion. In terms of the segment, we believe that this is the industry and the segment that we'll primarily develop in big metropolitan areas like Moscow, St. Pete and cities with population over 1 million, where there are people who are really demanding express delivery. As to the key focus areas, the service is about a wide assortment and a hyperlocal infrastructure, good knowledge of the clients and really reliable delivery. Slide 17 shows our business model. Express delivery business model uses our own infrastructure, our own stores, supermarkets and proximity stores, Perekrestok and Pyaterochka. And we use mobile-first approach. All the orders are placed through our mobile apps. Now we have 2, Pyaterochka.Dostavka and Perekrestok Bystro. And we have the system of routing, which sends the order to the nearest store. And their picking and their assembly is fully integrated into the business processes of the store and the company overall. And the quality assurance and the picking is done by our store employees, and that's a new business process that we have already introduced in 200 of our stores. As to delivering, we hand over that assembled order to our partners, third-party couriers. We have 20 different partners in different sectors of presence. In terms of SLA, given the COVID situation, our click to deliver before, it was 1.5 hours. And over the past weeks, we have targeted a shorter delivery time, and this is around 45 minutes in the main geography. And up to 45% of our orders are delivered within 20 minutes. So we've positioned our ourselves around the current positioning of our chains within X5 Group. So the online business is an extension of our off-line business. We will continue our focus on own infrastructure of 16,000 stores. And we see that 76% of our households are within 1 kilometer from one of X5's stores. And in Russia, overall, we see a similar number, which means that we can ensure quite a competitive delivery service long term, as the people in the cities are ready to order online. As to the operating model, the main difference between the format is that we focus on quite a narrow assortment. That is a proximity store assortment in Pyaterochka right now is the main metric, apart from the categories that you cannot sell online. It's around 4,500 SKUs. And in Perekrestok supermarkets, it's around 8,000 SKUs. Then Slide 18 shows the basic achievements over this short period of time. Right now, 200 stores are doing the express delivery. And we see to -- around 12,000 orders per day delivered. We see quite a high average ticket as compared to brick-and-mortar. It's around RUB 1,800. We are delivering quite heavy orders. It is 12 kilos and 15 to 17 SKUs. As to our current position in delivery, we offer the paid-for delivery. They pay RUB 99 for all orders. We believe that we are strong in availability and affordable prices. Right now, we are big in Moscow. We have covered 80% of households in St. Pete and roughly 100% of all households in Kazan. And by the end of this year, we expect to enter 6 other cities with a population above 1 million, both with Perekrestok and Pyaterochka. Then in Slide 19, I just have to thank you. That's it from my side much.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveVladimir, thank you very much. Thank you very much for this presentation. Definitely, we are happy that we were able to squeeze the presentation in the 20 minutes that we allocated. And now Andrey Vasin will tell you how we're going to enter the Q&A.
Andrey Vasin
executiveYes. Thank you very much, colleagues. Since we are running this as a webcast, and some people have used phone lines, some are on the Russian lines, some on the English, write down your questions and send them to us. We will try to answer all of those. If you are in the Russian line, just write in Russian. And once again, the speakers, please make sure you speak slowly so that we manage to catch everything. Okay. Natalia, she will start with the first question.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveAll right. We already got some questions. And I suggest we start with the strategic questions. And Vladimir, the first question to you. Could you, once again, put into words the strategy of X5 in e-grocery? What segments do you believe are most promising? And what are the most exciting new services?
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveOkay. So we have to -- Vladimir here. Probably just a few things from Vladimir Salakhutdinov as Head of Strategy. Now this is our vision about working in the digital space. We are covering all the client missions in the digital space. Everything that is about buying food, that's about online hypermarkets, for stocking up and as well to buying with express delivery. What's very important for us also, we are looking at -- like I said, at the digital space from the perspective of the customer journey. And we want to be everywhere starting from planning and to the selection of what to buy and where to buy. And buying itself is also there. And the third important point is that we are not scaling up the services or the businesses where we don't see positive economics. We are not looking at digital as, once again, stand-alone venture projects that are not related to the core business. Today, we cannot talk about retail without taking into account the digital component, online component. We only scale up whatever we believe in, in terms of positive economics. And our promise to the shareholders is that we achieve positive financial after 3 years of operation. And this is how we develop our digital strategy.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much, Vladimir. And the next question probably is a continuation of the previous one. It's to Svetlana. When did you start investing in online? How much did you invest? What is the potential return on these investments?
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveGood afternoon, everyone. That's true. We started the first pilot projects in Perekrestok in 2017. And after that, just as in all the other businesses, we pivoted our model because we always use iterations. We start with the pilots. Then we find the model which we believe is most efficient in terms of growth and our financial results. And then this starts actually scaling up. And this is about Perekrestok Online. As to express delivery, we started investing in this last year, and we started with local pilot projects in a few stores. And then we had a better understanding of how we should build a platform. And we went through the acquisition of an existing team of a platform, which insured there is a much-needed space for the development of the service. And so it is up and flying already this year. For understanding the scale of investments, we would like to give just a few estimates. Starting from 2017, if you look at CapEx, it has been around RUB 3 billion invested and a comparable number of the OpEx that we had at different stages of the project are considered a cost. We believe that for the total scale of X5, that is RUB 5 billion to RUB 6 billion. For the development of very significant and visible businesses, which are visible and significant, both for X5 and for the whole of Russia, are very efficient investments. Let me remind you that we have as the internal requirement of 19% of IRR. And so all the new businesses should be in line with that minimal IRR. And this is what we achieve and overachieve as an additional condition. After 3 years of initial investing, we should achieve a positive EBITDA. And Vladimir already mentioned this, and, so far, we have adhered to this, we believe that in Russia, this is a base position that ensures the right investments. We are not ready to invest into loss-making businesses for many years.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveThank you, Svetlana. Leonid, the question to you. Now so far, the leader is Utkonos. Are there any advantages in the operational model of Perekrestok, which will enable you to become a leader?
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveRight now, we see that Perekrestok Online was the fastest-growing operator in 2019. And this is quite a mature business, and now we are at #2. And it also shows excellent results. As to the operating model, given the purchasing power of X5, and given the strong operating model with dark stores of 20,000 square meters -- 15,000, 20,000 square meters, which are located in close proximity to the customers at any ways. So they have the right space to ensure the stocking up our mission. It means that the target for us this year is 50,000 SKUs. And in St. Pete and Moscow, we are using this model. And we believe that the dark stores there are ideal for the logistics. And we have now 16 to 18 stops per truck per trip, and this is very good. And so we also see that customer retention numbers are great, which attests to their efficiency of the operating model. Let me talk to you separately about assortment policy and our -- two-hour delivery, which are an excellent result in the market, giving really high-quality service, which makes us operationally efficient and attractive for the customer.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveAnd now the question is to have Vladimir Kholyaznikov. And this question comes from several participants. What is the difference between the delivery model between different players in the market? And how is X5 different and maybe better from the competitors in express delivery?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveWe are definitely leveraging the main advantages of the company. We are building the delivery around our own stores, on the basis of our stores, which long-term means a faster rollout and much lower CapEx because you mentioned a few ways. The main models that they are using is about building physical infrastructure, such as a set of local dark stores in the cities of presence. While at X5, we piloted both models. And we decided to develop delivery using our own stores because we saw that in terms of a rollout, CapEx, additional OpEx, when it comes to overhead, we believe it is more efficient to work from own stores. And in terms of the working capital and the ability to sell our own inventory from the store faster makes that model a lot more financially resilient and robust. We will continue developing in regional cities. We'll see what it looks like. But right now, our main focus is on this type of development. Moreover, a significant part of the results we showed in Q1 is relying on the access to those customer base. And with about 40 million of loyalty card customers well, those are active customers, we have even more who have taken loyalty cards, but then stopped using. And with the loyalty program enables us to offer, to access and to former customers the services that would help us to expand the introduction with the customers. And we believe that. As to CapEx, definitely, we have an advantage there. The integration in our existing processes in the stores will give us an advantage in terms of OpEx as well as the knowledge of the customer and access to the customer and the fast rollout of this service, definitely are our competitive strengths against the other players in the segment. Thank you very much.
Andrey Vasin
executiveDear colleagues, I would like to tell you that you can download our presentation in our website, in the Investor Relations. And let's move on with the questions. And could you provide a comment on the forecast about the different shares in -- of the e-grocery market? And do you think that the online marketplaces will grow significantly? Vladimir Kholyaznikov, this is a question to you.
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveYou can say that, right now, the market initially has already shaped itself. And now hypermarkets are really big, but we can say that all the key marketplaces that are out there in the market have shown interest to the e-groceries. And express delivery has been developing fast. And our estimate show, that is also confirmed by different analysts, is that the key players, those that are building their ambitions in the market, they will take a certain niche in the market. And this share will increase. So that's about express delivery and online marketplaces. Probably it has to do with the fact that they are at a very nascent stage. In the next 2, 3 years, their volumes will go up significantly.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveAnd Leonid Dovladbegyan also wanted to add something to this.
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveI just wanted to add that, right now, when you look at the redistribution of the shares have to do with the express delivery. For example, what will -- we sold you over -- during the lockdown. And we don't see a significant change in the share of our marketplace. That's because they are about stocking up. And if you were talking about traditional marketplaces, probably the share of express delivery is growing, but we don't see dramatic growth in online marketplaces.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. And the next question is, can you cover how the pricing policy in express delivery is different from the online hypermarket and off-line? And how much more attractive is X5 against the competitors?
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveProbably Vladimir Kholyaznikov can start this, and then Leonid will add something about the online supermarket.
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveYes. Thank you. It's Vladimir. Thank you. This is Vladimir Kholyaznikov. And if you look at the pricing of X5 in express delivery, is just to get enough there. So therefore, our new customers would use the shelf prices, more or less, as we don't have separate pricing online, although we do have some promos around additional benefits for the royalty program. But anyway, that assortment is in line with our online store of X5.
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveAnd we are building up on this -- the express delivery, and it is about omnichannel. Perekrestok Online is about stocking up. And in practice, it means that we are building the prices in terms of the top products. And we are setting ourselves against direct competitors in online. So this will use different systems of price comparison. And this was quite a big system of pricing. And most of the times, we work directly with the suppliers. So we receive back then to the dark stores and then deliver from the dark stores. And we deliver inside express delivery from the stores. And we build their prices in online visits. So on high-low pricing policy, which means that our prices are low, and we are very market-driven as compared to our competitors. And we see that our customers are buying from Yandex.Market. And from now on, they are competitors. We're quite relevant there.
Andrey Vasin
executiveA few questions to Vladimir Kholyaznikov about the express delivery. What potential do you see for expanding the assortment in express delivery? Do you have a plan to move to your own courier services? What are the advantages and disadvantages for working in-house and also in couriers?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveIn terms of the assortment, yes, we do see the potential for expanding. And just as our retail chain, so we see that there is interest to ready meals since we are going to expand this segment using our existing infrastructure, our kitchen factory and cooperation with existing suppliers. So we are going to add these items. We're going to test ready meals. We also expect the authorization maybe this year to sell alcohol, and then we will be able to do that as to courier service. We see that in Russia as the existing market for online has quite a competitive offering in 3PL logistics. We see that in different segments. And there is quite a rich range of players. So we expect some different services, both in regional centers and metropolitan areas. And so we don't see significant difference in terms of quality of service between in-house and outsourcing because we, as an IT platform that is built inside X5 for express delivery from our stores. We are using the power of crowd-sourcing solution is using around 10 different partners for courier delivery, which are co-creating the service with us for us. And so with open competition, we are doing it quite efficiently. Going forward, definitely, we will look at different options and scenarios where we're developing the delivery service, and we are going to adapt to events and then market conditions. Right now, the dynamics is such that as offerings in the courier markets are increasing. So in the COVID outbreak, we see that every single service and taxi aggregator is doing the last mile. So it looks like the competition there is high, and it means that you can get some good terms from them. Going forward, we'll adapt. We'll see.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThe next question is to Vladimir Salakhutdinov and Vladimir Kholyaznikov. Can you tell us about Perekrestok Bystro? How is it different from the delivery from Pyaterochka? And why do you want to develop 2 brands?
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveVladimir Salakhutdinov. I will start, and then my namesake will continue. Like we said before, the delivery from our chains is the expansion of the CVP of a particular chain. And this works for Pyaterochka, and this also works for Perekrestok. And it is built on a single platform. And we do use the same operating principles, and Vladimir can probably provide more color.
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveYes. Thank you, Vladimir. Actually, as to our approach, in the headquarters of the X5, we build a centralized platform that then integrates our chains. In terms of IT, CapEx and operations, the costs that we are additionally utilizing, what we have already invested in. Both of the chains in terms of the business are providing the customers a chance to buy additional more products. So express delivery is about additional buying. It's -- at Pyaterochka, it is the main -- the core buying. Then at Perekrestok supermarkets, this is something that they normally would buy from the off-line Perekrestok store. We believe that it is a very good fit for the services of these both chains. And we are going to give the existing customer base of 40-plus million. And in terms of consumption and understanding of the customers of our services, we believe we have been able to differentiate them quite well. So we do need them quite well. And we recognize well when and how they are ready to buy. Those apps have the pricing of the chains. For Pyaterochka, it is a narrower assortment. For Perekrestok, it is quite a wide range and a lot of ready to eat, primarily in-house produced and some coming from our supply chain. So the central operating platform and the single operating model enables us to offer the customers yet another customer journey under the brand of each of those chains.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. And the next question is around cannibalization of online services by online services. And separately, in the express delivery, we said that there isn't much cannibalization from the express delivery and proximity stores. And some people find it hard to believe.
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveLet me, let's say, a few things since we operate several formats, we always track all types of cannibalization very closely, and we always do financial modeling. And when we approve the model and when we do the piloting, we always check out for cannibalization. What we see in Perekrestok Online, this was one of the items we tracked, we measured with the Big Data. And we try to assess the effect of cannibalization before the rollout. But given when we are talking about opening up a -- of other stores, whenever we open a new off-line store, we always add the initial cannibalization that we calculate according to our statistics. And we use it as an input for every arm of one store opening. And we always make sure that the IRR is right for both the old and the new store. So that those operations stand-alone should ensure the right return, given the cannibalization that we measure regularly. So the overall approach is like this. And probably, you can add more details.
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveThis is Vladimir Salakhutdinov. There are 2 things you've got to account for. One, there's a broad philosophical question. This is what you see in many industries. For example, the telecom, where the Internet and the data traffic is cannibalizing the voice services, which doesn't mean they should stop that. This is our approach, too, in our development. And so when we look at cannibalization, how do we know it's not that high? We did research, and we saw that when we add the express service from the store, we saw that the biggest growth happens among the customers, which were not loyal or regular customers. And if you look at those, who regularly come to our stores, they don't use that much express service. And we see extra usage of express services by those who've used us before or used us from time-to-time. And so this is something that we were able to confirm.
Andrey Vasin
executiveAnd the next question probably is to you. What is the EBITDA in the online operations when they reach maturity when they ramp up? And when are we going to get the positive EBITDA? After 3 years, what would be the investments by then?
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveAs to the investments I already showed you how much it has cost us. We have different levels of investments in different areas. Perekrestok Online, this is that CapEx into building dark stores and buying trucks. And in express delivery, it is primarily about OpEx. And the biggest cost item is courier delivery. You've got to understand here that in terms of how we see the online businesses and express delivery, express delivery is part of the existing off-line businesses. And they are a part of the economics of those online businesses, both in terms of the costs and revenue. We are definitely making sure that the additional extension of the CVP and services wouldn't dilute our existing businesses. We are aware of that. And as to Perekrestok Online, it's about the model. And since the model is more mature here, we see very positive dynamics. And this year, for example, we saw that for the old dark stores, the business economics were positive. And it's not about the pandemic, but also about the successful development of the services. And some of the assumptions that we've put into the model last year has been overachieved.
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveThank you very much. If I could add a few words. I would just like to add that after Q1, we saw that 2 dark stores had positive economics. The third achieved positive economics before COVID-19. And COVID has not even influenced that. So it's just the new dark store, which is not yet fully utilized that is ramping up that has not yet reached positive economics.
Andrey Vasin
executiveAnd the next question is to Vladimir Kholyaznikov. We know that express delivery in Moscow operates through dark stores, not just for operating stores. What is the advantage of this model? Can you assume that after an ordinary Pyaterochka stores, we will open dark stores?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveThank you for this question. Yes, in Moscow, at this point, we have 7 dark stores. And in terms of the approach to the development of the new business model, we are actively piloting different concepts that we see in the market. Right now, the average life of the dark stores is 8 weeks. The others are even younger. And in development so far, we are not targeting to make a lot of deliveries so far from the dark stores. But we are ready to look opportunistically at our own network. And wherever we see high density for this, probably they can do online orders. And in these situations, probably sometimes, it would make sense using enough, too. And we are refining the model. But yes, we have not fully analyzed it yet. We do not see as of yet metrics that could make us change the existing strategy. We will continue piloting the new model, and we will also pilot new concepts that will be in-built into our own stores and also the dark stores to identify what the model of express delivery will look in the next 5 years.
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveI would like to add just one more thing. I believe what's important here to understand the advantages of the fact that we have multiple formats. We can use some components of our business. For example, that's true where we open the dark stores for express delivery of Pyaterochka. In terms of Pyaterochka stores is that we relocate the stores that underperform. And we can experiment with them as dark stores. Or for example, the dark store for Perekrestok Online could use the former Karusel hypermarket facilities. And we are leveraging here our advantages. And here, we are looking at the leverage of our customer base. And that's also a future advantage.
Andrey Vasin
executiveAnd now a few specific questions to Leonid. How many dark stores in Perekrestok.ru will we see by the end of 2020, 2021?
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveNow look, and now we have 4 dark stores, 3 in Moscow, 1 in St. Pete. The fifth is going to be opened on the 30th of May, very soon, in Nizhny Novgorod. And we are looking at the opportunity of opening more dark stores, and we are looking at Moscow, St. Pete and yet another city. The final decision hasn't been made yet. And so far, I cannot provide a comment on the number of dark stores. It's premature. Because of COVID, we have accelerated the development by 6 weeks, and we are revisiting our plan. And before COVID, we expected to open 5 dark stores, both in 2020 and 2021, but most likely we are going to increase this plan.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you. One more question about Perekrestok.ru. Are you going to increase the assortment in Perekrestok? And what will happen with an average ticket? And Vladimir, probably -- Vladimir Salakhutdinov would add something here from the express delivery aside.
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveThe average ticket is growing year-on-year. And now, we pay RUB 4,500 until we see the transform to further growth. With the assortment, it's around 30,000 SKUs and 33,000 SKUs right now. And we are planning to go to 50,000. And next year, we expect a further increase it. So far, we are looking at the threshold of our 100,000 SKUs. And here, it's not so much about the numbers, but about how the categories will expand. It's about a bigger hypermarket, which means adding more fresh groceries and also associated goods, household care, household goods. And we could make a big entrance into kids' goods and pet retail and household chemicals. So these are the main categories for growth. So it's not about the number of SKUs, but rather about making sure that we have good positions in all of those categories growing vertically.
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveAnd a short comment for express delivery. For us, the ticket is at an attractive level. It is RUB 1,900 in May. In April, it was worth more than RUB 2,000. And we are not planning to promote the increase of the average ticket. Our initiatives will be more around ensuring that we have higher frequency of interactions with the customer and the increase of our target audience. Because we believe that one of the differentiators of express delivery is a big addressable market. And the smaller average ticket will go into that.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much, gentlemen. Do we have any further questions through the audio line?
Operator
operatorRight now, we haven't received any questions. [Operator Instructions]
Andrey Vasin
executiveThe next question is about our financial forecast. How significant can be the share of online sales as a percentage of revenue in the next 5 years?
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveRight now, we are at the stage of validating our new strategy and looking at various scenarios right now. So right now, probably we're not even going to provide an argument, a number. But right now, in April, for Moscow alone, where we have the digital businesses that are developing most actively, it's more than 2%. If you look at some of our stores, if we are talking express delivery, we have many examples when the total volume of traffic online is 30%. 30% of their sales are done online. We are looking at all of these numbers, and, in the near future, we will be able to refine our forecast.
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveLet me add to this. We said before that we are looking at our ambitions. And our ambition is to take 20% of our revenue coming from online businesses in the next 10 years. So we are keeping this. And probably, it is 10% coming from the new businesses in the next 5 years. And with the existing acceleration rate, it is very real. And this is very true. We are going to finalize that and to work on development. We'll get back to you with this.
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveVery briefly, yesterday, Perekrestok Online, we showed that it is 8% of the total Perekrestok business in Moscow, 10% in St. Pete.
Andrey Vasin
executiveAnd the next question is to Vladimir Kholyaznikov. And probably Vladimir Salakhutdinov probably could add something here. In Russia, overall, the express delivery, is it going to be in demand long term? It's going to be a relevant. Question one. And post-COVID, most likely the demand will shift more towards evening deliveries when people get back from work. And so that delivery should be done during the prime evening hours. What do you think about that?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveLet me start on this. And this works like this. We assume that any service that is convenient for the customer will be in demand. And the convenience there is about the platform of usage, and the retention rate here is one of the highest among all the services. And why do we know that? We see that from our statistics. And we also make the conclusion that it is positive experience for our customers. And they will continue using those post-COVID. As to the frequency and time distribution policy, Vladimir can provide more comment. Thank you.
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveAs to the retention rate, I believe this is a good illustration of what is happening, what's the story there. According to ourselves and according to experts is that we have one of the best retention rates in our customer base. And we also see that this retention was comparable before COVID and during. We see that the pandemic actually accelerated the increase in the average ticket, and the behaviors of the customers have not changed. What has changed is the addressable market in March and April, it became significantly larger. And it became so big that all the growth that express delivery of X5 achieved was from the organic inflow of customers, we believe, convenience and the fact that express delivery is an organic addition to the existing services. And this is an alternative to going to a proximity store. This will not change long term. And as to different devices, and probably with deliberate future with evening hours, COVID changed the situation somewhat. Before the lockdown, the distribution of the orders mirrored the peak hours of our stores. And let me tell you that we have quite a big work load in lunch hours and evening hours. And express delivery's situation mirrors that because express delivery is the mirror of our retailer business. It's not a stand-alone business. It's the extension of the retail market using the same scenarios that people have when they go to a store. So these scenarios are part of our long-term planning and in our operating model of express delivery. And we are going to adjust to those peak hours. And we know them very well for every single location. Every store connected to the delivery has statistics, and we use those to plan every process to deliver express delivery, both assembly and also courier delivery. So we don't expect here to see a dramatic change in the situation post the lockdown.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. The next question is quite comprehensive in terms of X5. What 3 areas are the most difficult to develop the free delivery service?
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveLet me start maybe -- this is Vladimir Salakhutdinov. Probably the hardest thing for us is -- this is what we saw before and this is what is still there. Although we have covered a big part, this is putting together the traditional off-line business with the disruptive rapid online technologies. It's not just about organizing some units with separate functions, but it is a major transformation of the whole organization. So we are in the process of digital transformation, which changed significantly both the approach to organizing and creating the new products and values inside. And to a large extent, it also changes the way we operate. And we make sure that those areas can develop at the same speed inside the big organization as they would as stand-alone. We have converged a journey over the past 6, 12 months. And we see that so far, this has been quite a successful journey. We're happy with the results.
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveAnd another thing, and this is a very important factor for us, because, on the one hand, we see that as one of the biggest retailers, we have a lot of contacts with our off-line customers, the 15 million customers, who come to us daily. But this is not digital. And when we convert -- and whether we will be able to convert this, the digital space is a challenge. But we know how to deal that with that, and we are setting very ambitious goals. And definitely, we are going to see in the next 3 to 5 years most of our loyal customers, and that is dozens of millions people, they will become our online traffic for the online businesses until we are addressing digital traffic efficiently. Although this is just barely a scratch.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. Svetlana. the next question probably is for you. What is the CapEx planned for online in 2020 and beyond in the next few years?
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveAs I said before, is the CapEx primarily has to do with Perekrestok Online. And as Leonid said, this year, apart from the dark stores that we already opened in April and that we are going to open at the end of May, most of the investments have been made. And right now, we are looking at whether there are ways to open additional ones there in 2020, 2021. And we'll make a decision once we see that it makes sense, if the model works as accepted. So in the budget for 2020, we are not allocating significant investments into this. And 1 dark store is around RUB 600 million, I think. And since we are targeting like 50,000 SKUs, the things -- also, so far, the development has been highly successful. This is an exciting buzz, and we have invested around RUB 3 billion CapEx over the past 3 years. The total CapEx of X5 last year was RUB 80 billion. If the model works and if we see interest, and if it works in terms of the assortment, we will continue doing that.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. And what about unit economics in Pyaterochka.Express? What average ticket for Pyaterochka Express makes it profitable for you? And how long will it take you to achieve positive EBITDA in Pyaterochka.Express?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveThank you for the question. And with the current ticket, we are operational and profitable long term. We believe that the ticket of RUB 1,500 plus is enough to show good economics. And generally speaking, we see that in April and May, we will over-deliver in terms of the economics in Moscow, once again, in April-May. And generally, we adhere to the target of our promise to the shareholders. All our businesses should become operational and profitable in 3 years with that IRR. We are getting there. And the situation provides the tailwind, but even given the conservative forecast for the market development, even if you assume conservative development here, express delivery will go ahead.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. And the next question is probably to Vladimir Salakhutdinov and Leonid Dovladbegyan. What we are answering, whatever we are ready to disclose for this business, how much does it cost to acquire a client in Perekrestok Online and Pyaterochka?
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveWe do not disclose this and Perekrestok Online, because if you look at the market, this is quite a competitive market. And it is a bidding market in the real term. We wouldn't like to disclose then our costs. We believe, though, that we have excellent retention, efficient acquisition costs. And we can say that these numbers are good. And every year, the acquisition costs are going down per customer.
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveDear colleagues, for express delivery, all the growth that happened was based on the organic traffic. We started experimenting with paid-for marketing. Primarily the marketing is integrated into the existing marketing campaigns of our chains. And in May, you will be able to see the marketing campaigns in traditional channels, including online advertising. We don't know what the costs will be. What we know is the behaviors of our customers. And we have some cohorts of customers with quite a long history. And new cohorts, those that we acquired during the lockdown perform even better. And so we can basically forecast the lifetime value. And we will be able to know more when we see how the market develops. So far, it has been organic. In complicated geographies like Moscow with high level of service and high competition. We were able to build organically quite a big business, which already creates significant value for X5 and for our customers.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. One more question. It is about unit economics and the structure of costs. And once again, we are not ready to disclose any specific numbers. But within the cost structure, Leonid and Vladimir, could you speak about the key costs for each of the businesses, online hypermarkets and express delivery? What are the key components?
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveI've got what I have left in front. For us, the main costs are OpEx, which are the -- of course, for the placement and to the assembly and the last mile. Our marketing costs are quite high, and also then the staff costs. This is the structure of our OpEx. As to the CapEx, since it is about infrastructure, we have quite a bit big CapEx. Once again, we see positive economics in our facilities. And as Svetlana said, next year, we should see business a bit positive at the business overall. And to specific OpEx, we don't disclose that. And I can just additionally tell you. For example, for the pick rate numbers, our competitors are not just in Russia, but globally, too. And you can compare ourselves to the benchmarks in the U.K. and U.S. And additional numbers like picking, there are cost-contributing items. We track them globally, and we believe that we are on par.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveIf I can add something so that everyone will understands/does that mean you spend roughly the same amount in absolute numbers? Can you spend a little bit more?
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveassembly picking is a little bit more than the delivery. But in the delivery, we see good potential for improvement because the economics is changing them. And when you open a new dark store, we have a shorter delivery distance. And this increases our economics. And we also have plans for further improvement of our economic, and what we can do also to the back-office change. We have projects for the improvement of dark stores and back-office, but, anyways, the numbers look a little bit different now.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveVladimir Kholyaznikov, can you say something about the express delivery?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveSpeaking by the same categories, yes, for express delivery, the key cost there is the cost of delivery. Right now, we ask the customers to pay for that delivery. We charge them RUB 99 per delivery. And this doesn't fully cover our cost of delivery. So far, we are subsidizing the cost of delivery -- the direct cost of delivery. And as the volume of this business picks up, and as we use more efficiently the resources, the courier services, and as we see more partners through delivery, we will have to subsidize this less. The second important cost item is picking costs. And right now, in terms of the weight in P&L, it is similar to the previous item. And what is different for the express delivery is low-marketing costs because it is a small mobile team. And it is a very low CapEx business model because we are targeting leveraging our own infrastructure. We are using existing stores. In terms of forecast, to a large extent, we are integrating the further sales of express delivery and also using it inside the overall business processes. We integrate them into the KPIs of the heads of stores, regional supervisors and business processes. So we are creating full-fledged services at Pyaterochka. And this is happening also in Perekrestok for the express delivery. So the model is about relatively low CapEx on the one hand, on the other hand, less additional OpEx through overhead to ensure the right quality of the processes.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveCan I ask here a follow-up question? We are talking about Pyaterochka. In Pyaterochka, where you do express delivery, do you have to hire new employees? Or the picking is done by the existing store employees?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveThe operating model for the picking personnel is as follows. Whenever we launch a new territory in a new city a store, initially, the picking is done by the existing store personnel. Once we go above a certain threshold of deliveries within 1 day from 1 store, then we add additional FTEs to do the picking. The target model is 2 years. Dedicated staff with the existing required productivity that can be done now by 1 picker. So yes, n long-term model is to use additional FTEs or additional full-time staff.
Andrey Vasin
executiveAnd the next question probably is to Svetlana and to Vladimir. Can you assess the further investments in infrastructure that you would need to make sure that you take over 20% of the online market, dark stores, transportation, et cetera or the other infrastructure? This is about our slide to Capital Markets Day presentation.
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveYou understand that we cannot give you a specific number. The situation is changing as the market is changing and the competitive environment, too. And this is an ongoing process of refining and fine-tuning the models. But let me show to you how we look at this. We have a 10-year model. And right now, we are working on a 5-year model, where we are looking at both the development of the existing business and the development of these ongoing businesses. And we also have some constraints and bunch of issues in which we live, and we are not planning to change them. Therefore, that is our leverage. We expect to have it at 1.8, max 2 times. And we don't want to decrease our return on investment. We want to increase it in the ideal case. And so the minimal level of the region for the new business is the same, 19%. Then we also have the requirement about achieving profitability. That is positive EBITDA after the operation. And not to ignored, we are continuing to pay dividends. We are planning to continue to invest. Many of you know that we are increasing the absolute amount every year. And we still have a very comfortable leverage in that level. And we are very well positioned to invest into new businesses and digital transformation, which is pivotal, not just for the new businesses, but also for the ongoing -- for the core business. With the result, we are creating a future long-term advantage here.
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveAnd I would like to add here. And right now, we are not making any statements about the target share of online business because primarily we are driven by the wishes of the customer. Because what you see is it can be a big share in metropolitan areas. If you speak about the business of X5 in some regions, probably it will -- less sought after. And there are also some constraints where the bulk rather -- it is very important the shareholder value and the profits will go up from the development of new businesses, and this is what we are going to target long term.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much. The next question is to Leonid Dovladbegyan. In the presentation, you spoke about the target model for Perekrestok.ru. You looked at Ocado. Are you planning to use robotics in the warehouses for online delivery?
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveA very good question. And, yes, we believe that this is a very good model. Right now, we already have quite a high level of automation for Russia, automation of the systems of the wearable terminals and the system of navigation to the warehouse. This is built on gravitation, APC analysis of the categories. And also, we have very good software for this. As to robotized warehouses, we still have to understand that the labor costs are different in the U.K. and Russia. And this is the cornerstone for robotics. Right now, it's not economically efficient. We know how it works in Ocado. And we know the payback period in the U.K. and we are not sure if we should go that way because the labor costs and the difference in legislation in Russia and the U.K. make it more difficult. We don't need it right now with the level of inventory that we've set out, and not right now.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveThe question is about cannibalization to Leonid Dovladbegyan and Vladimir Kholyaznikov. So probably, you could speak about the profiles of the e-customers. And Vladimir Salakhutdinov, you said that in the express delivery, you have a lot of new customers. Can you add something about this profile of a customer and scale? Is there any cannibalization for the off-line?
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveSince it has the becoming up time and again, I would not even talk about cannibalization because we are one company, and one and the same customer could shop online with Pyaterochka and Perekrestok. But our customers want a particular service. It's just a question whether they will get it at X5 Retail Group or somebody else. So it doesn't make sense talking about cannibalization. Once again, this is not right. And we are not looking at, is there competition from the express delivery? Because we are about stocking up. It's about OZON and museum. And so people choose between going to a museum or buying in OZON. Those are different missions. And if a person wants to shop and buy an ice cream, they will go to one place and they will stock up in another. So I wouldn't talk here about cannibalization. But rather, like Vladimir said, how do we ensure the consistency between different formats? And given the numbers, we see that the customers that are using Perekrestok Online are not becoming less loyal to brick-and-mortar Pyaterochka. And we know that from our big data. And in Perekrestok Online, we get new customers, who then go also to brick-and-mortar store . And sometimes, we use our big customer base providing to them new digital services. It's not about cannibalization, but rather about providing some things that is complementary. So as to the profile, it's primarily family people. When Svetlana talked about our thinking about opening the service, they told us, the consultants, that online clients will be busy professionals. But then we understood that our customers are people who are planning, stocking up, parents with children, who cook at home, who make a list of food. And they buy every 2 weeks, and so they are ready to buy for 2 weeks. And they also get certain involvement into other categories like diapers and household chemistry, everything that they don't want to carry from the store, or drinking water. So those are goods that are low-value, high-volume. And primarily, our customer is a woman -- 39 years old is the median age, and this is 1.7 orders per month.
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveVladimir Kholyaznikov. I would like to add a few things. Although it is hard to add something, I fully support the idea of Leonid that we are inside X5, and we have the shared commitment expanding the set of services that enables the customers to meet their needs with their changing customer journeys. If we don't do that, other customers will. We also believe that the pressures developing inside X5 have become an integral part of our overall company. And so we are learning. And thanks to our transformation, we already see a lot of data that is customer-centric rather than format- or business-centric. And in express delivery during the lockdown, if you try to assess any effect of cannibalization just because definitely we saw the inflow into express delivery. During the lockdown, people went into the app and other online formats in the market. So that -- because people had concerns about going out, going to the stores. So we cannot talk about cannibalization. We can say that we provide services according to the acute need and we provide the service on behalf of the advantage. And before the lockdown, when we were in peaceful times, we thought that in terms of the target audience at that point of Pyaterochka, the target audience, they were very similar that, for them, the measure of fine was different. And a lot of customers are people who have limited mobility and were the relatives buying for people, who are -- who had limited mobility. Unlike retirees or disabled people, almost all of our customers are mothers, who have children, with the average age being 30, 35 devoting their heart. And given their maternity leaves or their geographies, they cannot themselves go to the stores and -- or could carry heavy bags when you already have a stroller. It's not what they want. So they are moving to this service. And before COVID, 90% of Express services in Pyaterochka all came from the nonfrequent customers of Pyaterochka, judging by their loyalty cards. Because more than -- right now, which is 70-plus percent. But in Q1, 80% of the buying was done with loyalty cards. And we could see where people spent the money before and what they spent overall and what our share of the loyalties.. And we saw the significant inflow of the customers, who before were not active segments for X5. The customers, who, for whatever reason, do not use our chain actively, we saw the increase in their spend between online and off-line formats. How the situation will change post lockdown, now let's look ahead and adapt to the needs of our guests or customers. But in express delivery and stocking up, we are differentiating between the formats less and less, and we see how we can best serve them on behalf of the company.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you very much, dear colleagues. We will take 2 more questions because we have so worked for more than 90 minutes now. And probably, you can answer them very briefly. The question is to Vladimir Salakhutdinov and Vladimir Kholyaznikov. How is the delivery sort of going to compete with aggregators? And where do you see the advantage of Pyaterochka as compared to the aggregators like Yandex Lavka, for example?
Vladimir Kholyaznikov
executiveOkay. Let me start with that. Probably, now I wouldn't draw a line between that of express delivery and the aggregators because any weight in the digital phase, they reserve their ability to aggregate several services. This is a natural characteristic. But even inside an aggregator, a customer selects a particular supplier or service. And I believe this is going to be a single space, a single field. And competition will happen along the lines of the quality of the service, the assortment, the loyalty to the brand. In our case, it will be as a brand of a chain and also customer experience and privileges and benefits that we create.
Andrey Vasin
executiveThank you. And the last question to Svetlana and Vladimir. Do I understand correctly that the online business is more marginal in gross margin because of the higher share of non-food in the ticket, but it is more costly because of staff costs and transportation costs?
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveProbably Leonid could take this.
Leonid Dovladbegyan
executiveAs to the understanding, the highest-margin categories are bakery and ready-to-eat. And I don't know what we should compare it to. Probably, if we compare it to a standard model of -- in electronics too early, are more costly because we use fridges or we use chillers. We also use refrigerator trucks. But if you look at big nonfood, then probably our business is less costly because we have standard boxes. And so it is a difficult question to answer, but nonfood definitely is not the highest-margin business.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveThank you very much, Leonid. Now I want to ask Svetlana and Vladimir Salakhutdinov if they want to make any ending remarks.
Svetlana Demyashkevich
executiveThanks a lot for being with us, and thanks for tracking the success of our businesses and continued interest. And we are very grateful for your support in this.
Vladimir Salakhutdinov;Head of Strategy
executiveAnd I would also like to add. Today, we had a lot of questions around cannibalization and competition and different market shares. And what's very important here, and I would like to emphasize that, right now, the online market and -- but we are still at the very early stages of online grocery. And there is enough headroom for several big players. And we are very interested in the overall development of the market, so that we build the right set of needs in the client. Then it will be easier for all of us to develop and grow in this market. Thank you very much.
Natalia Zagvozdina
executiveI would like to thank once again all the speakers of X5, who found the time to be with us. I want to thank you all for the questions. And all the questions from the analysts and investors that we were not able to answer, we are ready to answer them in the off-line mode. Okay. Goodbye, and stay well. Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
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