Message from the CEO

In 2020, OR GROUP changed business model and launched a rebranding program. At present, the company operates on the promising market of online retail, cutting edge technologies and services, which gives new opportunities for performance increase.

2020 was one of the most challenging years not only for our company but also for the entire Russian non-food retail sector. We faced challenges that required from us flexibility, mobility and high speed of decision-making; we operated in conditions of a high degree of uncertainty. However, the 2020 crisis has an important positive moment: it triggered the transformation processes and pushed us to modernize the business model like many other companies and implement long-overdue changes.

In November 2020, we announced an important decision for the company — changing the positioning and rebranding. The rebranding is the result of the changes that have already taken place in the company — the development of an omnichannel trade model and marketplace, priority for online sales, development of the service and logistics component of the business. Moving beyond the fashion segment, which is one of the rebranding goals, we open up new opportunities for the growth of key indicators — revenue, EBITDA and profit.

In 2020, we modernized the format of our store, which is now a sales point with a wide variety of stock, which has a positive effect on conversion and the number of positions in the receipt. The transition to the marketplace model while cooperating with suppliers has allowed us to significantly expand the range of goods. In 2020, we achieved great results on this project: we had 750 partners by the end of the year and sold 2.105 million partners' goods in just a year.

In 2020, we launched a new mobile application westfalika.ru and an updated version of the westfalika.ru website in the marketplace format. The online sales exceeded RUB 900 mln, with their share in the revenue of the westfalika.ru selling platform achieving 20%. The growing popularity of the mobile application and the development of the online marketplace will allow us to continue to increase online sales: we plan to raise their share in the selling platform revenue to 30% in 2021. In the mid-term, the share will exceed 50%.

We have achieved significant results in the partners' pickup points project, which allows us to develop the logistic infrastructure for the parcels delivery. By the end of 2020, we cooperated with 13 partners, including large logistic operator and online retailers. Last year, we increased the number of pickup points by more than 30% — from 1,732 to 2,312. In 2021, their number will more than double. The project provides a significant increase in traffic: in 2020, we attracted an additional 1.5 million customers. In 2021, we are going to increase monthly release volumes to 500 thousand and raise foot traffic by 6 million persons due to the PUP project. We also receive additional income in the form of a commission which we plan to triple this year.

The business area demonstrating growth in the crisis year of 2020 is cash loans issuing. By the end of 2020, the proceeds from cash loans increased by 26%, their share in the total revenue of the Group exceeded 25%. We consider developing additional services for customers to be promising, especially in the distance format. We plan to introduce and develop new technologies in 2021, including online loan processing.

In the nearest future we will focus on implementing the diversified business model, developing the range of goods due to partner products and marketplace, increasing online and mobile sales and their share in net retail sales, improving the logistic infrastructure and developing partners' pickup points, strengthening the direction of add-on services and building of services ecosystem for our customers. The new positioning will open up additional opportunities for us to increase the number of potential customers and grow our business.

Sincerely, Anton Titov,
CEO of OR GROUP