Austrian drugstore chain dm drogerie markt increased its turnover in the Czech Republic by around 18.3 percent to CZK 16.3 billion in the last financial year, which ran from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023. The company announced today. The company spent approximately CZK 169 million on investments, of which CZK 130 million went into modernising and expanding its network to 255 stores. The chain opened six new stores in the Czech Republic and renovated 13.
The company did not disclose its financial result. In the 2021/2022 financial year, according to its financial statements, it reported a net profit of CZK 474.8 million and sales of CZK 11.7 billion.
The company invested another CZK 26m in logistics. Eight million crowns were spent on modernising the central administration building and five million crowns were invested in IT infrastructure. “Thanks to the trust and loyalty of our customers, we were able to invest heavily in prices from our own resources and at the same time participate in shaping a sustainable future in terms of ecology, technology and especially with regard to further deepening our relationships with our customers,” said dm Managing Director Markéta Kajabová.
According to the company, the increase in turnover is mainly due to a higher number of customers. Some 144,154 people visited dm’s domestic brick-and-mortar stores in the past business year, up by 16.7 percent compared to 2021/2022, according to the report. The number of employees also expanded, up 460 to 4,568, according to the report. The chain has increased wages for all workers in the Czech Republic since January this year. Those in junior positions received the biggest increase, 12 per cent.
Goods in dm drugstores for 2022/2023 have become about 4.2 percent more expensive year-on-year. “Also thanks to the positive development of the euro exchange rate, in May and June 2023, dm proceeded to long-term price reductions on nearly 2,000 products, mainly private dm brands. This was approximately 12 percent of the entire assortment,” the company said in a statement.
Overall, the dm group, which operates in 10 other European countries in addition to the Czech Republic and Austria, posted sales of 4.5 billion euros (about 111.2 billion crowns) last business year, an increase of 23.1 percent. The group opened 64 new stores and operated a total of 1,910. The number of employees rose by 2,971 to a total of 28,132. The company invested more than €150 million (CZK 3.7 billion), mainly in expanding its sales network.
One of the biggest competitors of the dm chain on the Czech and European markets is the Rossmann drugstore. The latter almost doubled its net profit in the Czech Republic last year to CZK 200m. The company’s sales also increased by approximately 21 percent to CZK 5.08 billion.
Source: dm drogerie and CTK
