Magazine Luiza reviews projections upwards and expects ending year with US$ 2.8 billion
Valor Econômico
The President of the Magazine Luiza, Luiza Helena Trajano, plans on resisting to move from the second to third place in the ranking of the retail in 2010 and she is challenging its sales force to exceed the initial goal of selling R$ 4.6 billion (US$ 2.6 billion) in the year. The goal now is to get to R$ 5 billion (US$ 2.8 billion), the same earnings projected by Máquina de Vendas (Sales Machine), holding company resulting from the merger between the chains Ricardo Eletro and Insinuante. The result of the first quarter, with growth of 43% in the sales, well above the expected 25%, made her even more excited. The businesswoman has denied the intention of joining others companies and she said she is only interested in acquisitions. And she has denied she is negotiating an agreement with the Lojas Cem, as it was rumored in the press. Yesterday, Lojas Cem also denied any negotiation.
Luiza had been avoiding publicly commenting the activity of the competition, but she gave her opinion yesterday, during a lecture at the supermarkets fair that is being held in Curitiba. "I got very angry. Their problem was not merging, but to step up to the second place. They spoke of my number in the past and of theirs in the future. It's correct to merge, but it is not OK to show wrong figures", she added, referring to announcement made by Máquina de Vendas as a R$ 5 billion (US$ 2.8 billion) holding company. But even considering 2009 the earnings of Ricardo Eletro and Insinuante together - little more than R$ 4 billion (US$ 2.03 billion) -, exceeds the R$ 3.82 billion (US$ 2 billion) obtained by Magazine Luiza.