26 November 2023
Epicenter plans to open new shopping malls and is also preparing to build an oilseeds crusher in the Khmelnytskyi region.
In the retail business, the company continues its shift from the format of pure construction materials hypermarkets to the format of shopping malls with the wide range of goods, including sports goods, electronics, household chemicals, food products and food courts.
According to Forbes, over the past year, Epicenter opened two large shopping centers: in Lviv (90,000 square meters) and Kyiv (30,000 square meters).
In the spring of 2024, the company plans to open its first classical shopping mall - Green Gallery, which will be located in the suburbs of Kyiv - on the Odesa highway, where the Nova Liniya hypermarket used to be located (these hypermarkets are part of the Epicenter group). The commercial area of the mall will be 62,000 square meters, of which 53,000 square meters will be occupied by stores of the group - Food Market, Intersport, Deco, E.PIC, TseTe and others.
Also, Epicenter continues to build a new shopping mall instead of destroyed as a result of hostilities construction materials hypermarket in Bucha. Its total area will be almost 100,000 square meters, which is five times more than the destroyed shopping center.
As of October 2023, the retailer operated 74 hypermarkets, including Nova Liniya (before the full-scale invasion, there were more than 80, but a number of stores were damaged, while four hypermarkets - in Mariupol, Kherson, Chernihiv and Bucha - were completely destroyed).
Epicenter continues to develop in the agricultural segment as well.
Recently, the company announced plans to build an industrial park in the town of Horodok, Khmelnytskyi region, which will combine three plants - for bioethanol production, oilseeds crush, and waste processing. The structure of the complex will also include a solar power plant, a thermal power station and a silo.
By the way, not far from the place where the new industrial park will be located, there is another silo of the company - Zakupnyansky HPP with a total storage capacity of 105 thousand tons of grain. It should also be noted that the main part of the group's land bank is located in Khmelnytskyi and Vinnytsia regions.
Epicenter has more than 160,000 hectares of land under cultivation, and its total grain storage capacity exceeds 1.5 million tons.
The further development of the company, both in the agriculture direction and in retail, is facilitated by the availability of own financial resources - in 2022, despite the full-scale Russian invasion, EBITDA of LLC Epicenter-K alone (excluding other companies of the group) was more than UAH 9 billion, net profit - UAH 3.6 billion (in 2021 - UAH 4.2 billion).
The group has a fairly moderate debt burden and, basing on our estimations, a good financial standing.