[vc_column_textFirst draft: 20 January 2018, with an update on 20 July 2025
Sales in distribution are measured by gross revenues (1), including new openings and renovations.
But there is another, healthier (2) and clearer method to understand whether a business is really doing well or not, regardless of network development:
constant network sales, which exclude new openings and major restructuring in the measured year.
Obviously, this figure is a must (obligation) for all listed companies, especially in the USA, where the terms used are comparable store sales, identical store sales or like-store sales.
In the USA the term like for like (sales) is also used.
Interesting is Walmart‘s approach that only includes in renovations those that do not increase floor space by more than 5%.
Esselunga has a weekly report that, among other things, releases constant net sales. It’s a change that I personally made and that my father, Bernardo Caprotti, appreciated at the time (I have one of his writings in my archives).
(1) Net of promotional revenues (or supplier contributions), which can weigh more than 10% of sales.
(2) if you only publish gross sales, which include new openings, you can hide the problems of the pre-existing supermarket network.
Who, in Italy, has released the figures on a constant perimeter is Unicomm (Selex) of which we were partners, with Esselunga, in the central purchasing organisation Esd Italia, with which we bought consumer goods worth €4 billion and which contributed so much to the improvement of our profits in the early 2000s.
Giancarlo Paola gave the figures to Food magazine.
It is to be hoped that this method will be adopted by everyone in our peninsula, regardless of a possible listing on the stock exchange and of whether sales – of the old supermarkets, already on the net – are going well or not.
