X5 To Buy Out 28 Franchise Stores To Expand In Russia’s Urals

Bloomberg:

X5 Retail Group NV, Russia’s largest supermarket company, agreed to buy out 28 stores in the Urals run by a franchisee to expand in the region.

X5 will pay $18 million for Kama Retail, the operator of Pyaterochka discount supermarkets in the city of Perm, Moscow- based X5 said today in a Regulatory News Service statement. The 28 stores have 9,300 square meters (101,000 square feet) of selling space and generated $50 million in revenue in 2007.

The acquisition “will allow us to expand the group’s presence in the Urals by adding to its existing discounter chains in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk,” Chief Executive Officer Lev Khasis said in the statement.

X5 plans to complete the purchase in April.