AEON Saw Gradual Recovery in Profitability with Higher PBT for the 4Q FY2020

KUALA LUMPUR 24 Feb. - AEON Co. (M) Bhd.  delivered PBT of RM39.8 million for the Fourth Quarter (4Q) of the FY2020 vs RM35.7 million in the preceding quarter.

The Company remains resilient and gradually recovering backed by the improvement in customer sentiment. Due to less favourable seasonal celebrations from Christmas, New Year and Back-to-School, revenue for the 4Q fell by 21.7% to RM916 million versus same quarter last year.

For the full year of FY2020, AEON revenue declined by 10.7% to RM4.05 billion from previous year. The drop in the revenue is mainly due to lower sales recorded in its apparel and home segments, which were closed during MCO period and resurgence of COVID-19 cases in 4Q.

Shafie Shamsuddin, CEO and Managing Director of AEON said, “We have acknowledged that the pandemic will continue to impact our business at least in 2021.

Currently we are providing more than 20,000 jobs within our ecosystem. Thus, it is imperative to navigate the pandemic and leverage it as a catalyst to change towards our re-development of skills and competencies so that we will be agile towards the New Retail. We are very grateful that our people and our partners remain strong to drive our agile and entrepreneurial culture to overcome this crisis together.”

“FY2020 was the year where we started to embark on our transformational journey and experimented with new initiatives. For example, we have seen sales growth in some of our stores especially in Malay-concentrated areas after tailoring our assortments according to the demand. We will continue to review our customer segments and to revamp the assortments to serve our customers’ needs,” added Shafie.

AEON has recorded RM101.8 million of PBT versus RM196.9 million in FY2019. To negate the negative impact of the pandemic, AEON has seen a reduction in operating expenses by RM386 million for FY2020 versus FY2019. AEON managed to turnaround its profitability in the second half of FY2020 with its lean and agile cost structure. The new cost structure is expected to bring sustainable earnings for the company in FY2021.

With the recent partnership cemented with Boxed, AEON is set to utilise its state-of-the-art technology to accelerate AEON’s expansion into “New Retail” offerings. The Company aims for its new digital platforms to contribute 15% to 20% of its retail revenue over the next five years.

Amidst challenging market conditions, AEON proposed a final dividend of 1.5 sen per ordinary share for FY2020 which is equivalent to RM21.06 million or 50.8% payout ratio. - DagangNews.com