The consumer electronics and white goods chain store expects its sales to drop by 5% to 10% this year; nevertheless, the company still hopes to keep its gross margin within 24.5% to 25%, M.Video’s management announced via a conference call.


The company’s sales decreased by 20% in the third quarter of 2009, while the total receipts declined by 5%, or down to 19.1 billion RUR.


‘The Russian white goods market has shrunk by over 30% since the beginning of the year, so we don’t really expect the market to recover noticeably in the last quarter of 2009, even though this quarter is usually marked by the top retail sales of the year. Still, M.Video will probably open over twenty new hypermarkets by the end of the year,’ Gazeta.Ru quoted M.Video President Alexander Tynkovan as saying.


M.Video reports the number of its retail hypermarkets came to 169 at the end of September 2009.