The Hindu Business Line : Piramyd to have 8 lakh sq. ft retail space by March 07

THE Managing Director and CEO of Piramyd Retail, Mr Krish Iyer, says Piramyd will break even at both operating and net levels by the end of financial year 2006. He adds that Piramyd Retail will have 8 lakh sq. ft of retail space by March 2007.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with Krish Iyer:

Do you think you will break even this year the way business is moving?

Yes, we will. In fact, in Q2 itself we posted a small profit. Overall, the profit in the first half of the year was about Rs 60 lakh at the net level.

So you will break even both at the operating and net levels by the end of this year?

Yes.

Do you think you can achieve an EPS of Rs 4.8 in the next financial year?

I will not comment on that, because as a policy we have decided not to give guidance on numbers. But we have started rolling out stores as planned. In the last week we rolled out five outlets - two Piramyd Megastores and three TruMart outlets. We will also roll out one more Megastore by the end of March or early April. We are rolling out other TruMart stores.

Similarly, as far as growth in retail space is concerned, from 2.74 lakh sq. ft that we had in October we have added about 1.44 lakh sq. ft in January. In terms of number of stores, we are planning to add more in the next couple of years. We are in the process of signing property. We already have some properties which are signed up and are under construction.

Could you break up the growth in terms of department store and supermarket space? What sort of revenue growth have you been seeing?

In terms of department store space, it was about 1.08 lakh sq. ft. At the beginning of the financial year on April 1 2005, we had three stores and we added four more in the current fiscal year.

March or early April, we will add the fifth. So the additional space is about 3 lakh sq. ft in the department store segment.

In the food retail or FHPC (food, home and personal care) segment, we had retail space of about 21,000 sq. ft, and by March 2006 the total space will go up to 48,000 sq. ft.

There is a delay by a couple of months on account of regulatory reasons, but barring that, we expect to achieve this kind of growth for the current year.

By March 2007, the total retail space is expected to go to about 8 lakh sq. ft, and that seems to be on course for both the businesses put together.

What are the essential differences between you and what some of your peers are trying to do?

As far as the departmental store model is concerned, we are catering to the upper middle- and upper classes, but TruMart, our FHPC store, essentially caters to the middle-, upper middle- and the upper classes.

The Piramyd Mega store, to a large extent, is comparable to Shoppers' Stop.