By Reuters Staff
2 Min Read
MOSCOW, April 15 (Reuters) - Russian low-cost retailer Fix Price’s first-quarter revenue rose 29.2% to 51.7 billion roubles ($672.7 million), the company said on Thursday, in its first financial results statement since its market debut in London last month.
Fix Price raised around $2 billion in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in early March, capitalising on the COVID-19 pandemic reducing Russians’ spending power.
That was the biggest Russian IPO since western sanctions were introduced in 2014.
Fix Price, which sells low-priced goods in walk-in shops and online, has now posted 17 consecutive quarters of double-digit like-for-like sales growth, Chief Executive Dmitry Kirsanov said. In the first quarter, like-for-like sales grew 11.9%.
Breakingviews
3 Min Read
The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics centre in Boves, France, January 19, 2019. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol
WASHINGTON (Reuters Breakingviews) - Alibaba’s, $2.8 billion fine from the Chinese antitrust watchdog ought to worry U.S. rival Amazon.com. Beijing’s case against Jack Ma’s e-commerce giant shows it’s possible to define the market and single out data usage in ways that American regulators haven’t yet managed to do, but could.
Big U.S. technology firms have eluded regulators for several reasons. One is that in trying to pinpoint market abuse, watchdogs first have to agree what that market is. Even that isn’t simple. Last year, Bezos told Congress that his company competes in the overall retail market, where it has less than 4% market share in the United States. But in e-commerce, it has 40% of sales, compared to No. 2 Walmart with 7%, according to eMarketer.
By Reuters Staff
1 Min Read
FILE PHOTO: A Walmart worker organises products for Christmas season at a Walmart store in Teterboro, New Jersey, U.S., October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
(Reuters) - Walmart Inc said on Wednesday it expected to convert two-thirds of its U.S. hourly store roles to full-time positions by the end of the current fiscal year, as the retailer looks to retain workers.
Pickup and delivery businesses have boomed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting Walmart to create more full-time jobs for such roles with consistent schedules.
With the latest move, Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart will have 100,000 more full-time positions than it did five years ago, it said in a blog post here.
3 Min Read
(Reuters) - Silicon Valley self-driving startup Gatik and Isuzu North America Corp on Tuesday said they will work together to build autonomous delivery trucks that Gatik will use to serve its retailer customers.
Gatik, which works with Walmart Inc in Arkansas and Louisiana and Loblaw Companies Ltd in Canada to deliver goods to stores from warehouses using autonomous trucks with safety drivers, has seen a boom in business as the pandemic has boosted sales at grocery stores.
“What I can share is our revenue is in the millions. So this is not a free service that we offer,” said co-founder and chief executive Gautam Narang. He said Gatik’s business model for now is to be a delivery service provider for retailers using self-driving technology rather than selling the technology to automakers.
By Reuters Staff
2 Min Read
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African food producer Libstar Holdings Ltd reported a 13.1% drop in full-year operating profit on Wednesday, hit by expenses of 65 million rand ($4.37 million) related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Libstar, producer of Denny mushrooms and Lancewood dairy products, said normalised operating profit fell to 774 million rand in the 12 months ended Dec. 31 from 890 million rand a year earlier.
Normalised headline earnings per share from continuing operations fell 13.8% to 71.3 cents.
The expenses were related to donations to needy communities, personnel-related expenses and costs of personal protective equipment. Including other items, operating expenses increased by 22.0% to 2.1 billion rand, Libstar said.