Matahari to invest $106m for 16 new stores this year

JAKARTA (JP): PT Matahari Putra Prima, a publicly-listed retail company, said yesterday that it will open 16 new stores this year with a total investment of Rp 250 billion (US$106 million).

"To finance the projects we issued bonds worth $100 million through the Luxembourg Stock Exchange in March," a company director, Antonius Hanifah Komala, said after an annual company shareholders meeting yesterday.

Hanifah said the planned stores -- 10 Matahari stores, four Mega M stores and two Gallerias -- will be built in Bogor and Depok in West Java, Pluit in West Jakarta, Jambi, Batam in Riau, Surabaya in East Java and Bandung in West Java.

Matahari operates Matahari and Galleria department stores, which offer apparel and fashion products for middle- to upper- income shoppers, Mega M department stores, which focus on food, hard goods and clothes, and Super Ekonomi shops which offer food for low-income customers.

Mega M and Super Ekonomi are the new formats launched by the company last year and currently under evaluation.

Hanifah said that in 1995 the company opened 12 new Matahari stores, two Galleria stores, two Mega M stores, and four Super Ekonomi stores, with a combined retail space of 193,000 square meters.

"As of the end of last year, we operated 70 stores in 29 cities with total retail space of 512,100 square meters," Hanifah said.

The 12 new stores opened last year, according Hanifah, booked Rp 225 billion in total sales last year.

Hanifah said that Matahari has become the biggest retail company in Indonesia.

He said that of the company's net sales of Rp 1.4 trillion last year, 87 percent came from Matahari stores, 7 percent from Galleria, 3 percent from Mega M and another 3 percent from Super Ekonomi.

Super Ekonomi, which is now operating in five locations, has yet to turn a profit.

As for the company's financial performance, Hanifah said that the management expects an increase of about 42 percent in sale revenues to Rp 2 trillion this year.

"In line with the projected sales increase, we expect to book Rp 51 billion in net profits this year, compared to Rp 38.6 billion last year," he said. "We booked Rp 21 billion in the first quarter of this year."

Hanifah also said that yesterday the company's shareholders approved proposed dividends of Rp 50 per share, totaling Rp 11 billion, or 29 percent of 1995's net profits. (alo)