Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc. (RRHI), a member of the Gokongwei Group, is seeking to accelerate its expansion outside of Metro Manila—mainly through its supermarket and drugstore businesses.

During the firm’s annual stockholders’ meeting, RRHI President and CEO Robina Gokongwei-Pe said that, “With 30 percent of our stores located in Metro Manila, we want to accelerate our expansion outside the capital. In terms of formats, were looking to open more of our core supermarket and drugstore banners."

RRHI’s supermarket business consists of Robinsons Supermarket, The Marketplace (acquired from Rustans), and Robinsons Easymart. It also owns Southstar Drug, TGP (The Generics Pharmacy), and Rose Pharmacy.

Amid stiff competition in the supermarket business, particularly from the emerging hard discount stores, Gokongwei-Pe said RRHI intends to maintain market share by continuing to differentiate by “offering a wide range of relevant products and providing an exceptional shopping experience either offline or online.”

She also noted that, “Our margins should remain intact as we continuously enhance our product mix and gain more scale.”

Meanwhile, Gokongwei-Pe said “We have entered the hard discount category through a stake in O! Save which is aggressively expanding.”

But she pointed out, “That hard discounters’ focus on small pack sizes and sachets, versus our core supermarket formats that offer regular and large pack sizes, suggests that there is limited pricing pressure for some products.”

For its drugstore business, Gokongwei-Pe said that its aspiration for the segment is to simply "become more accessible to our customers" to boost its market share and brand value. 

“We believe there is opportunity to increase market coverage for all our banners, as there are a lot of municipalities and barangays in the Philippines that still lack drugstores. In terms of major acquisitions. We are always on the lookout for value accretive M&As should there be an opportunity, we will be ready to capitalize,” she added.