Puregold drops convenience store

PUREGOLD Price Club, Inc. has sold its stake in the Lawson chain of convenience stores after accepting its Japanese partner’s offer to buy out its 70% stake in the venture.
In a disclosure to the stock exchange on Friday, Puregold said it has signed a share purchase agreement with Lawson, Inc. to sell its 4.9 million shares in PG Lawson, Inc.
The Lucio L. Co-led company entered into a 70-30 joint venture agreement with Lawson, Inc. and Lawson Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. to form PG Lawson back in 2015, marking its foray into the convenience store business.
The Lawson brand is among the top convenience store chains in Japan, where it currently has 14,083 stores, according to the company’s website. The brand is also present in China, Thailand, Indonesia, and some parts of the United States.
PG Lawson is under the umbrella of Puregold’s wholly owned subsidiary, Entenso Equities, Inc. The company had 34 stores in the country as of March.
“The divestment decision will enable Puregold to rebalance its risks portfolio in the grocery retail sector and focus its resources in the further development and strengthening of the Puregold brand,” the company said.
The company’s retail formats include hypermarkets carrying the Puregold Price Club brand, which offers a variety of food and non-food products catering to both retail customers and resellers. It also operates Puregold Junior as its supermarket format, containing more food and non-food formats compared to hypermarkets.
It also has Puregold Extra as the discounters segment and S&R Membership shopping.
Puregold did not disclose the value of the transaction, but noted that it is less than 10% of its total assets.
The listed firm realized a net income of P5.84 billion in 2017, 5.7% higher than what it earned the year before following a 10.6% increase in consolidated sales to P124 billion for the year.
Puregold ended 2017 with 372 stores in the country, 309 of which are Puregold stores, 14 S&R membership shopping warehouses, 32 S&R New York-style QSR, nine NE Bodega Supermarkets, and eight Budgetlane supermarkets.
The company had earlier disclosed that it is looking to open 25 new Puregold stores this year alongside two S&R warehouses.
Shares in Puregold went up by 10 centavos or 0.21% to close at P47.50 each at the Philippine Stock Exchange on Friday. — Arra B. Francia