The Ministop PH brand, which had been co-owned by Robinsons Retail Holdings [RRHI 57.95 0.52%] and Ministop Japan in a typical 60-40 split through Robinsons Convenience Stores (RCS), will now be 100% owned by Robinsons Supermarket Corporation (RSC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of RRHI, after RSC agreed to purchase all of Ministop Japan’s interest in the Ministop PH holdco. RRHI now owns 100% of the exclusive Ministop franchise rights in the Philippines.
According to the RRHI press release, RRHI will continue to operate the existing stores under the “Ministop” brand for a “transition period” of unspecified length, after which, the stores will be “repurposed and appropriately rebranded” by RRHI to cater to the popular ready-to-eat offerings such as “Uncle John’s Fried Chicken and Kariman”.
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It’s hard to get a good feel for RRHI’s intentions with the brand, but they clearly want to lean-in to the profitable ready-to-eat segment and maintain a significant e-payment footprint.
We don’t have any information on whether RRHI will look to add locations once the Ministop franchise is rebranded, or exactly what “repurposed” means in this context for the existing stores.
Reading between the lines, it seems to me that RRHI will probably go a couple of different directions with the locations once the transition period is over and it is free to do what it wants under a new brand and wholly-owned corporate identity.
I don’t have a good feel for the Gokongwei Family’s grand vision here, so I’m going to wait on additional disclosures to see how RRHI’s new convenience store will fit into our overall convenience store ecosystem.
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