Thanks to a sharp increase in demand for electrical appliances during lockdowns and an enormous growth in e-commerce, Ceconomy, MediaMarkt‘s parent company, can present a good report.
Switch to e-commerce
Ceconomy, the group behind electronics retailers MediaMarkt and Saturn, suffered only a limited loss of sales in its broken financial year 2019/20, despite shop closures as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Sales amounted to 20.8 billion euros, 1.8 per cent less than the previous year. These results occurred over a period in which stores had to be closed for over six weeks. Operating profit amounted to 236 million euros, which is better than expected.
Ceconomy was able to benefit from increased demand for technical equipment for people working from home and was also able to respond well to the switch to e-commerce: online sales increased by 44.1 per cent to 4.2 billion euros, and already account for 20.2 per cent of total sales. The retailer attracted more than six million new online customers.
“In the middle of a transformation”
“This year has been very challenging. We have seen what we can achieve, and we will emerge stronger from this experience. We have shown a strong start to the financial year, then coped well with the situation of store closures, and now we have set up a clear strategy for the future development of the company,” says CEO Bernhard Düttmann. “We are no longer at the beginning of the transformation, we are right in the middle of it. We are determined to improve continuously and to use our strength to take advantage of growth opportunities.”
It is also understood that the group reached a settlement with the Kellerhals family, who once founded MediaMarkt and still held 21.6 per cent of MediaSaturn’s shares. Ceconomy now owns 100 per cent of MediaSaturn and the family holding company Convergenta acquired 25.9 per cent of Ceconomy’s shares.
