LONDON (ShareCast) - Russian food retail giant X5 raised its full-year sales growth forecast as it reported a 61% rise in first-quarter net sales to $1.78bn.

Net profit jumped 219% to $86.3m, helped by the significant depreciation of the US dollar against the rouble, while earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation increased by 50% to $161m.

The company revised its full year like-for-like sales growth forecast to around 17% in rouble terms and net sales growth forecast to over 40% in rouble terms. Gross margin and EBITDA margin targets remain unchanged at 25.8 - 26.2% and 8.8 - 9.0% respectively.

“Q1 gross margin reflects both seasonality and our continuous investment in customer loyalty, while EBITDA margin benefited from higher sales volumes,” said chief executive Evgeny Kornilov.

“We continue to focus on further improvement of the efficiency of our business by upgrading systems, optimizing store operations and enhancing logistics capacity,” he added.

• News Channel