Long Chau pharmacy chain earns nearly 16,000 billion VND in 2023

In 2023, Long Chau pharmacy chain's revenue increased by 66% to nearly 16,000 billion VND and accounted for half of FPT Retail's total revenue.

According to the business results report, in the fourth quarter of 2023, FPT Digital Retail Joint Stock Company (FRT Retail) had a consolidated loss before tax of VND 97 billion. FRT Retail explained that this loss was mainly due to some expenses such as business performance bonuses when Long Chau exceeded the plan, the cost of closing 36 ineffective FPT Shop stores that were fully recorded in the period, and opening a vaccine injection center.

Accumulated for the whole year of 2023, FPT Retail's consolidated pre-tax profit was negative VND294 billion. This is the first time the company reported a loss (by year) since listing on HoSE in 2018.

This result is also contrary to the company's business plan set out in 2023. Forecasting a challenging year with continuously declining consumer purchasing power and increasing market competition, FPT Retail aims to halve its profit compared to 2022, down to about VND240 billion.

By the end of last year, the FPT Shop chain had 755 stores, down more than 30 stores compared to the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, the Long Chau chain increased by 560 to nearly 1,500 stores.

This pharmacy chain also continues to be a bright spot and growth driver for FPT Retail. Revenue from Long Chau increased by 66% last year and contributed half of the total revenue of VND31,850 billion. The year before, revenue from Long Chau only accounted for over 30% of the retailer's total revenue.

Some analysts also believe that Long Chau will be a long-term driving force for FPT Retail.

FPT Retail said the average monthly revenue of each Long Chau pharmacy remained at approximately VND1.1 billion last year. Long Chau is also far ahead of other competitors in the market such as Pharmacity and An Khang in terms of the number of stores.

According to SSI Research, Long Chau has certain competitive advantages over its peers, such as a wider product range, larger scale, and higher prescription drug revenue, which helps the chain gain market share from the hospital channel. The unit estimates that the Long Chau pharmacy chain can achieve a profit of VND385 billion in 2024.

As for FPT Shop, SSI Research believes that it can recover with a profit of VND155 billion this year based on the assumption of maintaining the current number of stores.

Earlier this month, the retail giant also officially entered the mobile telecommunications market by providing a virtual mobile network with the prefix 0775. This move aims to help FPT Retail take advantage of and promote the existing advantages from the FPT Shop system, which sells more than 1.5 million smartphones and IoT devices to the market each year.

Mr. Tu

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