...Largest Food Retailers to Gain Market Position Amid Hard Times Russia's biggest retail chains will benefit from high inflation and gain more market share from traditional retail and smaller chains in 2015. Consumers' heightened focus on price has led to greater footfall for the largest chains. The large retailers will benefit from the increased availability of retail space for rent, facilitating their expansion plans. In February 2015 consumer prices grew by 16.7% yoy with food inflation reaching 24.9% yoy according to the Russian State Statistics Service (Rosstat). Growth in footfall accelerated for economy formats, while most of hypermarket chains saw declining traffic and much slower growth in the value of average shopping baskets as consumers traded down. Groups with high exposure to economy formats such as X5 Retail Group (BB/Stable) are better positioned to withstand the economic downturn and gain market share. We expect 1H15 like-for-like sales growth will be weaker for hypermarket...
