a Tops Food Hall at the new Dusit Central Park mall in Bangkok and 15 Tops Daily mini-supermarkets (or convenience stores, depending on your taste). New specialty stores were opened in both Thailand and Vietnam, partly offsetting closures. Meanwhile, in its Vietnam mall business, Central was actively expanding, opening two new GO! malls, one about 65 kilometres south of Hanoi in Hung Yen and another 150 kilometres northwest of the capital in Yen Bai. By the end of the quarter, the company operated 3,797 stores, comprising 85 department stores, 87 Thaiwatsadu home improvement superstores, 13 Go Wholesale stores (the now two-year-old format that is going up against Makro in Thailand), 716 Tops supermarkets, 43 Go! hypermarkets (all in Vietnam) and a slew of specialty formats. Net sales area was up by 2 per cent from the same period last year. However, it should be noted that these numbers include nine department stores under the La Rinascente banner in Italy, which the company will formally divest in early December. Given the obvious room for improvement in Southeast Asia, the parting of ways with La Rinascente couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. Apart from its retail stores, the company now also operates 77 shopping malls in Thailand and Vietnam with a combined net leasable area of more than 790,000sqm, up 6 per cent from a year ago. The Thai malls, dubbed Robinson lifestyle malls, are an edited-down version of the full-scale super-regionals operated by Central Retail’s sibling company, Central Pattana. Sales are still dragging, though Total company revenues in the third quarter declined by 0.9 per cent on a year-over-year basis to 62.5 billion Thai baht (US$1.9 billion). Headline retail sales in Thailand edged up by 1 per cent, but the combined company results were biased downward by the appreciation of the Thai baht, which caused 7 per cent growth in Vietnam to be dragged down a full 13 per cent to become a 6 per cent decline. The net result was a 0.2 per cent decline in company-wide sales. Two of the three broad sales segments that Central reports – hardlines and fashion – experienced slight decreases in revenues, while the third – food, primarily from its supermarket, mini-supermarket and wholesale businesses – was flat to last year’s. Revenue from rental services provided at Central’s 77 malls was up 2 per cent, but still only accounted for just over 3 per cent of total company revenues. Gross profit margin on sales for the quarter strengthened to 26 per cent due mainly to a shift in the sales mix to higher-margin products. However, selling and administrative expenses increased too for a variety of reasons, and this affected net profit, which was down 38 per cent from a year ago to 1,392 million baht (US$43.5 million). The third-quarter results brought total revenues for the year to date to 194,440 million baht (US$6.1 billion), an increase of 0.5 per cent from the first nine months of 2024. Revenue from sales was up 0.7 per cent, but net after-tax profit declined 19.6 per cent to 5,104 million baht (US$160 million). Same-store sales have still not turned around. Same-store sales growth is still something of a concern: across the portfolio of stores, it was down 4 per cent in the third quarter. Negative growth occurred in all three segments: food (-6 per cent), hardlines (-3 per cent) and fashion (-4 per cent). This continues a pattern that has become well and truly entrenched since the second quarter of last year, with Vietnam being the weakest link. There, Central is weeding out unprofitable stores in the hardlines segment, which has been plagued by poor performance at its Nguyen Kim appliance chain. It has closed nine NK units over the past 12 months, but clearly, there is still more work to be done. In Thailand it has also been doing some weeding: a net 19 specialty stores under the Powerbuy, Officemate and B2S banners have been shuttered over the course of the year. Mall leasing Vietnam has also been problematic for Central in the mall leasing segment. The company has added four Go! malls over the past 12 months to bring the total to 44, but occupancy is a tepid 86 per cent and rental income is down by a hefty 9 per cent, partly offsetting solid growth in the Thailand operations, where no new Robinson lifestyle or Tops Plaza malls have been opened this year. Can Central revive its sales growth? It’s an easy out to look at the macro picture and blame stagnant sales on weak consumer confidence, low wage growth and tariff jitters. Tourism also continues to take a belting, with international arrivals in Thailand down more than 13 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter. Some of those tourists are being pinched by neighbouring countries, including Vietnam itself, Central’s second-biggest market. The decline in tourist numbers is making both the government and retailers edgy, with good reason, given that visitors from abroad account for more than 10 per cent of the country’s GDP. However, there are clearly operational issues that Central needs to address, and not just in a few dysfunctional Vietnamese appliance stores. Despite adding 130 food stores over the past year, food sales are flat, and same-store sales are negative. The Tops Food Hall concept seems overhyped and in need of a rethink, with its unexceptional supermarket product mix, disorienting store configuration and notoriously sour customer checkout experience. In many Tops supermarkets, robots roll aimlessly around the store, seemingly with little purpose other than to get in the way. Add to that the increased incoherence of the supermarkets with all the Christmas clutter – despite the fact that it’s a Buddhist country, the Christmas paraphernalia seems to be introduced to stores even earlier in Thailand than in the West – and it adds up to an ordinary shopping experience at best. Further reading: Central Retail: Even a juggernaut can get the wobbles