illion). Wholesale sales under Makro’s four different banners grew by 4.7 per cent, to 71.7 billion baht (US$2.2 billion). Note that although Makro is billed as a wholesaler, its customer base includes an enthusiastic consumer segment that prefers the Makro bulk-buy experience and uses it as an alternative go-to for products it cannot get at a regular supermarket. Makro’s top line was lifted by the opening of 10 stores, most of them in Thailand, bringing the fleet to 175. Same-store sales in Thailand where the company does more than 80 per cent of its business grew by a very modest 0.4 per cent. The retail side of the conglomerate, primarily under the Lotus’s banner, grew by 3.4 per cent to  55.7 billion baht (US$1.7 billion) with the opening of 110 new stores, all but four of them the convenience format that goes head-to-head in Thailand with Tops Daily, Big C Mini and 7-Eleven, but typically has a much greater focus on fresh food than its competitors. The openings brought the retail store portfolio to 2553. Same-store sales for the retail business in Thailand were up 1.9 per cent. The channel mix continues to change markedly as the company invests in its omnichannel business, driving omnichannel sales up in just 12 months from less than 15 per cent to just under 20 per cent of company sales. In the fourth quarter, omnichannel increased by 38 per cent year-on-year. The third company reporting segment is rental and retail services from space it leases to small tenants in its self-anchored malls in Thailand and Malaysia. Although it is a much smaller income stream than wholesale or retail sales, it is important and becoming more so. Revenues for this segment amounted to 3.6 billion baht (US$100.7 million), slightly down (-1.1 per cent) from a year ago. Occupancy was down a fraction but still well above 90 per cent. The company hinted quaintly that the slight occupancy decline was due to space being offline due to renovations: “Some branches returned leased space for strategic reinvention.” Going forward though, CP Axtra sees a big opportunity in this segment to increase the amount of mall space. Its strategic plan calls for the addition of 80,000 square metres of leasable space in 2025 and 240,000 square metres by 2029. Some of this will be anchored by Makro stores whereas until now the space has mostly been anchored by Lotus’s hypermarkets. The gross profit margin on sales for the three company segments improved to 14.9 per cent in the fourth quarter, an increase of 90 basis points from the same quarter last year. Net earnings were 4.0 billion baht (US$120 million), up 20.7 per cent year-on-year.   For the full year, company revenues came in at 512.0 billion baht (US$15.5 billion), up 4.5 per cent year-over-year, and net after-tax profit to 10.6 billion baht (US$320 million), an increase of 22.3 per cent. Both the wholesale and retail businesses enjoyed sales growth in the mid-single digits while mall income edged up 0.1 per cent. Same-store sales for the wholesale business in Thailand were 1.8 per cent higher than in 2023, and 3.6 per cent higher for the retail business.  In terms of the product mix, the contribution to sales of fresh food, dry food and non-food all remained identical to 2023 in both the wholesale and retail businesses (41/52/7 for wholesale and 26/63/11 for retail). The customer mix was also very stable, with the hotel/restaurant/catering (HoReCa) segment increasing slightly in its contribution.  Big C also reported out 2024 Big C, the retailing arm of Berli Jucker and a major competitor of Lotus’s, also reported its results for the fourth quarter and whole of 2024. In the fourth quarter, Big C’s sales increased by 3.2 per cent on the same quarter a year ago, to 26.9 billion Thai baht (US$816 million) with the company again flagging its fresh food sales as a strong performer. Gross margin improved to 19.4 per cent, and net profit was 1.3 billion baht (US$39.7 million), an increase of 28.0 per cent on the fourth quarter of 2023. Same-store sales improved 2.2 per cent on the fourth quarter of last year. The company’s bigger-ticket discretionary items have not been flying out the door, and the fourth quarter was the first time this year that same-store sales have achieved meaningful growth, thanks to fresh food and some improvement in dry food sales too. For the year as a whole, sales at Big C reached 116.3 billion baht (US$3.5 billion), an increase of 2.0 per cent year-on-year. However, the increase was solely due to store openings, with same-store sales edging down by 0.8 per cent. Big C has delivered net profit of 4.0 billion baht (US$121 million), up 7.8 per cent from 2023.   Rental and other income Big C’s retail rental and services business, mostly derived from the more than 1.1 million square metres of space it rents in its hypermarket-anchored malls, breached 10 per cent of total revenues in 2024. Nonetheless, they were flat year-over-year in the fourth quarter and down 1.3 per cent for the year. The occupancy rate, below 90 per cent, languishes well below where it should be.  Big C’s store fleet keeps growing Big C accounted for 61 per cent of Berli Jucker’s total revenues in the fourth quarter. It ended the quarter with more than 1800 stores, including 155 hypermarkets, plus supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacies, bookstores and coffee shops. It also has a network of 10,733 ‘Donjai’ stores, which are independent mom-and-pops that commit to buying a minimum amount of inventory from Big C itself in exchange for technological and other upgrades. Incremental improvement For both CP Axtra and Big C then, it was a year of incremental rather than seismic improvement, with new stores doing the heavy lifting to drive sales growth and upside still to be exploited in the shopping centre rental segment of their businesses. Further reading: Makro and Lotus’s parent company CP Axtra sustains sales momentum