Last year, the Siko company had a turnover of over five billion crowns for the first time. EBITDA (before taxes, depreciation and interest) will be about more than CZK 100 million higher year-on-year, when it was CZK 460 million the year before. These are qualified estimates, the exact results will be at the end of April. The largest Czech seller of bathroom equipment is investing over half a billion crowns this year. It wants to increase turnover by eight percent, according to the company’s CEO Tomáš Vala.
“At the beginning of the year, we suffered from closed stores. The market has recovered since the second quarter and exceeded our expectations. We are improving the quality of customer care with complete bathrooms and kitchens. “The market has also started to get used to new products with the SAT logo, including the most economical toilet,” said Vala.
The year before, the company had a consolidated turnover of CZK 4.38 billion in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. When brick-and-mortar stores closed due to coronavirus restrictions, online sales accounted for more than 50 percent of retail sales. Now it’s between 30 and 40 percent. Some time ago, the company invested CZK 150 million in the start-up company Swiss Aqua Technologies. It also owns a patent for a gentle toilet, which is enough to flush 1.5 liters of water. According to Vala, turnover also increased due to consolidations with companies in which Siko holds a majority. Siko has previously bought a minority stake in a French bathroom company with a turnover of over half a billion crowns. Livea owns 51 percent of the French e-shop. Newly, Siko also sells in Britain.
The group is investing over CZK 500 million this year. It is building new stores in Slovakia in Košice and Bratislava, instead of the current rentals. It will remodel showrooms for tens of millions. “We are replacing one of the kitchen suppliers with another manufacturer from Germany, and German kitchens will make up about 90 percent of our offer,” said Vala. Siko is number two on the market in kitchens, the largest being Ikea. This year, Siko will invest about CZK 80 million in digitization. In Čimelice, a new semi-automatic warehouse is planned with CZK 400 million within two years due to foreign expansion. It wants to double the area of its warehouses.
The Siko Group has about 1,000 employees in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Last year, from January to November, the average gross salary was CZK 39,097. This year, the company would like to raise average salaries by about seven percent.
The company was founded in 1991 by Jaroslava Valová, a 43-year-old mother of three. The business started in the living room, the first store was in Čimelice by the main road to Prague. The name Siko is an abbreviation of the words construction, insulation, ceramics and tiling. Siko also develops its own brands.
Source: Siko and CTK
