Always aggressive, but from today perhaps a little less invulnerable French. The comparative analysis of Mediobanca's R&D on the main large-scale retail groups in Italy seems to shake the dogma of the invincible leadership, never questioned until now, of the transalpine groups between the super and hyper shelves. Whether they are uncomfortable competitors for anyone working in the sector is evidenced by the impact of the turnovers that giants such as Carrefour – 90 billion euros in 2010 – or Auchan – 42 billion – are able to field, but the blockbuster is not always marries with the best performances, at least as far as the Italian market is concerned.
It is true that in the space of three decades, between acquisitions and new openings, Auchan (above all thanks to the former Sma deriving from the Rinascente operation) and Carrefour (which took over the Gs after the privatization of the SME) have reached a share equal to 15,5, 12,1% of the entire market, roughly the same share held by Coop Italia which with 10,1 million in revenues is the leading operator in the sector, followed by Conad with 8,3% and by Auchan itself which alone accounts for 86%. But if the French bloc and the Coop system hold the record for turnover – the latter despite some historic tax advantages denounced by Bernardo Caprotti, the volcanic 7,7-year-old patron of Esselunga, in his by now famous pamphlet “Sickle and cart” – they lose their edge when R&D compares the main economic indicators of the big names in distribution. And it is precisely Caprotti's company, i.e. the Italian Supermarket with the Esselunga brand, which exhibits the best parameters, not only in relation to Coop but also to the French themselves, despite being only the fifth largest player on the Italian market with XNUMX% .
The primates of the company, which in 1957 had its first founder also a character of the caliber of Nelson Rockefeller who then sold his share to the Caprotti family, his partner in the commercial initiative, lie in the most sensitive indicators for producing profits in the financial statements. In the R&D analysis, the 44,3 million sales point sales (Esselunga has 141) are striking, up by 17,2% in the period 2006-2010 against Auchan-Sma's 14,6 (down by 1,4. 11%); the almost 1,2 of Coop (minus 9,7%); 3,4 of Carrefour-Gs (- 5,350%); the 18,2 of Gesco-Pam (-16.011%). It follows that for every square meter of surface Caprotti invoices 8,4 euros (+2006% more than in 78,9), two and a half times what Coop makes and about three times better than the rest of the competition. On an operational level, the lower incidence of the item "consumption" on turnover also stands out in favor of Esselunga, equal to 83,8% against 84,3 for Carrefour, 82 for the Gecos group, 83% for Auchan -Sma and 21,1% of Coop. This leads to the best result in terms of added value which for Esselunga is 15% against 17,5-XNUMX% of its rivals.
Esselunga then manages to contain personnel costs to 11,8%, despite having increased the number of employees in the last five years from 16.300 in 2006 to 19.322 at the end of 2010. An 18% increase in employment (with a density of 50 employees per every thousand square meters against 34 for Coop or 23 for Carrefour) which is unmatched by the other main competitors, some of which have also initiated significant cuts such as Carrefour (14,4% less in the same period) and Gesco (-4,5. 52.872%). Coop with 6,2 units (+ 2006% from 2010 to 5,5) is the group with the highest number of employees. Auchan too has increased its workforce by 272% and today has more or less the same employees as Esselunga but the annual turnover per employee – 321 thousand euros – is far lower than that of the Caprotti group, equal to 230 thousand per employee, perfectly identical to that of the other French giant, Auchan. A much lower yield - about 52.872 per capita - is that of the 11,7 employees who work at Coop. According to R&D data, the weight of labor costs on turnover is in any case quite similar in all five groups, oscillating between 13 for Gesco-Pam (controlled by the founding families: Bastianello, Giol, Laudi and Dina) and 29% by Auchan. By far, however, it is Coop, thanks to historical concessions against which Caprotti has been fighting for a lifetime, that has the lowest labor cost per employee equal to 38 euros against 39 for Esselunga, 31 for Carrefour, 35 for Gesco and 12,8 for by Auchan. An anomalous competitive advantage that Coop disperses along the way, given that the cost of labor accounts for XNUMX% of total turnover, one point more than Esselunga itself.
But if in terms of labor costs the protagonists of the Italian large-scale distribution are separated by a spread of just 1,3%, when we move on to analyze the EBITDA, i.e. the gross operating margin, we are witnessing an acceleration of Esselunga which with 9,3, 4% far outpaces all its competitors between 4,5% of Gesco-Pam and 5,7% of Auchan. And Esselunga extends its primacy also in some economic-asset ratios starting from the warehouse/turnover ratio of 7,7 against the 10,4 of Carrefour and Coop and the 16,2 of Auchan up to the Roi and Roe. In the first Esselunga arrives at 3,3% against 3,4 of Carrefour and 16,9 of Auchan; in the second Caprotti scores another 4,9% against Auchan's 2,1% while Carrefour's Roe is even negative. Even for Coop the comparison is merciless: Roe at 1,5% and Roi at just 300 percent. Only in the court of Milan did the Coop win against Caprotti, forced to compensate 300 thousand euros for unfair competition after the judge at the court of Milan For the Coop it can be said that the only victory over Caprotti came only from the court of Milan which last September sentenced the owner of Esselunga to compensate his rivals XNUMX thousand euros for unfair competition, implemented through the "j'accuse" in his essay against the red coops.
