UK wholesaler Booker is likely to see a boost in sales and performance following its acquisition of Musgrave Group’s Budgens and Londis business, a leading analyst has revealed.
Shore Capital Stockbrokers’ Darren Shirley said that the move will “further broaden the Booker business for a number of reasons”.
He said that the Budgens business offers a “lot of capability […] especially in the chilled prepared foods market, where we believe that Booker will gain the benefit of access to its supply chain.”
The addition of Musgrave GB’s business could lift Booker’s sales as high as £7.5 billion (2014: £4.75 billion).
In addition, the move “takes Booker into the small supermarket segment of the market and augments the business’s presence in the more affluent neighbourhoods and towns where Budgens trades in the south and east of England.”
The fact that no conversion programme is scheduled for the business should make “integration relatively straightforward”, while the Budgens and Londis businesses also provide “independent operators with the potential opportunity for more adept commercial options depending upon the location of any store, the local income structures and store size (for example many Budgens are effectively small supermarkets whereas Premier/Londis/Family Shopper tend to be smaller units).”
Excluding the addition of the Budgens and Londis businesses, Shore Capital expects to see Booker’s sales rise marginally this year, to £4.86 billion.
Stephen Wynne-Jones
Checkout Magazine
2nd June 2015
