Dutch non-food discounter Action has achieved a 23 % sales growth last year, ending the year at 4.21 billion euros in sales. However, that was mostly done through opening new stores: comparable growth was ‘only’ 3.2 %.
Expansion
Another positive came from the company’s EBITDA, which went up 16.3 % to 450 million euros. “Our continued success underlines the strength of the Action customer proposition of a broad, surprising and ever-changing product range at the lowest price”, CEO Sander van der Laan said in a press release. He repeated that Action aims to more than double its turnover to 10 billion euros in a few years’ time.
Adding 230 stores and 5000 employees to its network, Action now has 1325 stores in seven countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Nederlands and Poland. Most of the new stores were opened in Germany and France, while in Belgium and the Netherlands 48 stores were renovated.
Problems
Despite the strong sales and earnings growth, Action suffered from a few serious problems last year. Blaming exactly its strong growth, the chain said it was unable to keep up with its own growth, delaying the opening of twenty more stores to 2019. Moreover, the ‘gilets jaunes’ protests in France also had a detrimental effect on French sales.
Action has now sped up its investment programme, opening two new warehouses on top of its existing five. Further growth and internationalisation should be boosted by the opening of two more warehouses in the next two years.
