Discount and e-commerce win: these are the world's biggest retailers

Discounters and online players are on the rise in the charts of the world’s largest retailers, and so are retail companies based in the Asian region. Noteworthy, however, is the strong performance of one Benelux player.

Pre-Covid figures

Each year, Deloitte publishes its ranking of the 250 largest retailers worldwide, under the title Global Powers of Retailing. Recently, the 24th edition of the report was published. In the top ten, Amazon overtook Costco and secured second place. Amazon is still at a considerable distance from leader Walmart. Working in a larger home market helps: American retailers not only dominate the top ten but also account for 47.1 per cent of the total turnover of the entire top 250. Europe is represented by the highest number of retailers in the list (87). Asia is the strongest growing region.

For the sake of clarity, the ranking is based on retail turnover in the financial year ending 30 June 2020 – not on market capitalisation. The figures are still largely pre-Covid.

International activities

The ten largest retailers put together account for 32.7 per cent of the turnover of all 250 companies put together. Growth did slow down somewhat for the top ten retailers in 2019: only Amazon advanced by double digits. On average, the top ten retailers are active in 13 different countries. Most international retailers are hard discounters. Aldi generates 68.9 per cent of its sales outside of its home market. Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland) is active in most countries: 33. However, two retailers appearing in the top ten are only active in their home market: the Americans Kroger and CVS.

Several major players have divested some international activities since 2018 because they were not profitable and/or offered too little growth perspective: Walmart, for example, called it quits in the UK, Japan, Brazil and Argentina. CVS left Brazil. Tesco withdrew from Thailand, Malaysia and Poland.

Newcomers and growers

Looking at the Benelux players in the top 250, we see that Ahold Delhaize (in 12th place) does not make it to the top ten. The Louis Delhaize Group is in 119th place, Colruyt Group takes place 120, Jumbo is 145th, Action is 187th and GrandVision 228th.

Significant: of the 12 newcomers in the ranking, 9 are from the Asian region. There are also two European newcomers: the Italian optical group EssilorLuxottica – and this is without the planned merger with GrandVision – and the French electro group HTM, the holding company behind chains such as Boulanger, Electro Dépôt and Krëfel.

The list of the fastest growers is dominated by online players and discounters. South Korean e-commerce player Coupang made the strongest progress, followed by Indian retail group Reliance Retail and by American online interior retailer Wayfair. Notable is the growth of JD Sports through a series of international acquisitions and the growth of Turkish hard discounter chains BIM and A101.

Winners of lockdown

Based on – sometimes provisional – sales figures for the 2020 financial year, the report also looks at the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the retail sector. Not surprisingly, online giants Amazon and China’s JD.com posted the strongest growth figures. Also, hardware stores Lowe’s and Home Depot are among the winners in the lockdown, as consumers invested more in their homes. Among the supermarkets, Ahold Delhaize is performing remarkably well. The largest decreases in sales occurred logically among retailers active in the fashion and luxury goods sectors, retailers in travel locations and retailers with limited e-commerce activity.

Remarkable, finally, is this sentence on page 43 of the report: “Carrefour S.A. has been excluded from this year’s report at the company’s request”…

The world’s ten largest retailers

(Source: Deloitte Global Powers of Retailing 2021)

The ten strongest growers in 2020

(Source: Deloitte Global Powers of Retailing 2021)