The Face and the Back of the Growth of Konzum’s Easter Sales

Just a day after the announcement that the settlement for Agrokor has been completed, the group sent out a statement about the significant increase in Konzum’s sales compared to last year’s Easter season. A 17 percent higher turnover was achieved than last Easter. The statement does not mention that last year the majority of Easter shopping was done at the peak of the group’s crisis, in the week when the lex Agrokor was passed. Given that this year’s turnover has increased by one percent compared to 2016, it is clear how low last year’s ‘Easter’ base was.

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Konzum’s CEO Slavko Ledić boasted that employees received Easter bonuses of 700 kuna in accordance with the Collective Agreement. The question is how creditors, especially suppliers, view this. Because, while Ledić emphasizes that he is ‘extremely satisfied with the results’ achieved in the past period, he did not mention that Konzum had a negative EBITDA in the first two months of this year (minus 17.6 million kuna), and that the plan is for Konzum to end this year with an EBITDA in the negative of 23.6 million kuna, as reported by Lider in the new issue.

Accordingly, and in the spirit of the recently reached agreement, according to which the payment of ‘border debt’ to suppliers in this and the next three years depends on Konzum’s business performance, suppliers will, as Lider writes, have only good faith this year instead of a quarter of the promised amount, hoping that things will improve in the next three years.

So perhaps some of the suppliers will be able to pay out bonuses, Easter bonuses, and Christmas bonuses in some of the coming years.