Aditya Birla Retail (ABRL) has piled up losses of nearly 4,800 crore even since it entered retail market seven years back.
ABRL, widened its losses to Rs. 596 crore during year ended March 2014 compared to Rs. 510 crore a year ago, though sales more than doubled at Rs. 2,510 crore after merging its arm Trinethra Super-retail in itself, revealed last week’s filing with the Registrar of Companies.
ABRL now has an accumulated loss of Rs. 4,745 crore, which includes book value of Trinethra Retail that it acquired in 2007 along with investments and costs of building retail infrastructure. “These are not operating loss but our investment over the years. The accumulated losses reflect initial infrastructural investments, cost of store closures, goodwill on acquisition of Trinethra and Fabmall and interest cost on borrowings. At store operating level, we are already profitable and EBIDTA positive is just a year away,” Mr. Pranab Barua, Aditya Birla Group director (retail & apparel business) said.
Mr. Barua, a former Reckitt & Benckiser managing director, came into the Aditya Birla group through Trinethra Retail in 2007, which gave it access to over five lakh square feet of retail space, through 170 stores. The Company ended FY14 with 490 ‘More’ branded supermarkets and 14 hypermarkets covering around 19.3 lakh square feet retail space.