JAPAN’S Mitsubishi Corp. has sold its stake in Robinsons Convenience Stores Inc. (RCSI), which owns the franchise of the Ministop stores in the country, giving the Gokongwei-owned firm higher ownership in the country’s second-largest convenience store chain.
In its disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc. said on Monday that a deal was struck between its wholly owned subsidiary Robinson’s Inc. and Mitsubishi, which previously owned a 12-percent stake in RCSI.
The Japanese firm is selling its 8-percent stake RCSI to the Gokongwei firm and the remaining 4 percent back to Ministop Co. Ltd.
Robinsons Retail’s effective ownership in RCSI increased to 59.1 percent from 51 percent.
Ministop Co. Ltd. now owns 40.9 percent of the convenience store.
“We remain fully committed in keeping and growing our convenience store business. The CVS [convenience, value, service] format is the fastest-growing retail channel in the region and we intend to take advantage of this trend,” said Robina Y. Gokongwei-Pe, president and CEO of Robinsons Retail.
RCSI is the exclusive master franchisee of Ministop in the Philippines.
For the six-month period ended June 2018, Ministop generated total system-wide sales amounting to P4.5 billion with merchandise sales of P3 billion.
To date, there are 492 Ministop branches in key areas of Metro Manila, Luzon and the Visayas.