Flemingo: half way to $2bn target

By Doug Newhouse |


Flemingo International Group CEO Atul Ahuja has confirmed the company is ‘half way’ towards meeting its $2bn sales target by 2020.

 

Responding to one of several questions from TRBusiness at a press conference held at the TFWA event in Cannes last week, he said: “Well in 2004 we were zero, next year we’ll be half way, so we’ve grown a thousand times in 10 years. So we need to just double in the next five years.”

 

Ahuja then explained that he expects future growth to come from a combination of organic growth, new concessions and ‘a little bit of acquisition’, as he also responded to a further TRBusiness question explaining that the current shareholding split between Flemingo’s investors today is now ‘more or less equal’, between Albright Capital Management, Capital International Corp (China Development Financial Holdings Corp/CDIB/), Samena Capital and Samara Capital.

 

Amongst his answers to several questions from other media, Ahuja said the current total financial investment in Flemingo today is ‘close to $150m’ and he confirmed that the retailer still plans to list on the stock exchange within the next 12-18 months.

 

 

Atul Ahuja, CEO, Flemingo International.

 

SPREADING THE RISK

He added that Flemingo has also spread its risk across 35 countries and its offer across different formats and it believes in the premise that ‘small is big’. By this, he added that ‘we are focusing on everything that is below the radar of our competitors’.

 

Having said that, TRBusiness asked Ahuja what his reaction and that of his shareholders might be if another company were to turn the tables and approach Flemingo with a view to buy it?

 

Ahuja replied: “Well we have already been approached several times over the last few years,” adding that ‘so far’ the answer has always been no.

 

But would the company ever consider an offer in future, we asked… after all, everyone always says they’ve got their price?

 

Ahuja responded: “You are absolutely right. If the price is right, why not?”

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