X5 Retail sees sales doubling every 2-3 years

X5 Retail Group CEO Lev Khasis talks to Reuters in Moscow September 15, 2009.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's top food retailer, X5 (PJPq.L), plans to double sales in rouble terms every 2-3 years and aims to boost its food retail market share to 25-30 percent in a decade, its chief executive officer said on Tuesday.

"We can grow at the same pace as today or even faster for at least the next 10 years, taking into account mergers and acquisitions, and double sales every two or three years," Lev Khasis told Reuters Russia Investment Summit.

X5, which has grown to become the country's largest retailer by revenue in the past decade, currently has a food retail market share of less than 5 percent.

Khasis said that X5 had been using the financial downturn to acquire more stores at less cost and that the current environment also offered cheaper opportunities to expand through acquisitions.

"We know how much we can increase sales and increase the efficiency of those chains we could potentially acquire. To this end, I think the next 12 months are very promising from this point of view," he said.

Consumer demand in Russia, however, will take at least two years to recover to levels seen before the country entered its first recession in a decade.

"The entire market, by our estimates, has contracted by about 5 percent," Khasis said.

"To talk of a revival is premature. The country can expect another two years at the levels which we see today. Only then will it be possible to talk about the start of stable, long-term upturn."

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova, Robin Paxton, Melissa Akin, Maria Plis, Chris Wickham, Aleksandras Budrys, Alfred Kueppers and Anton Zverev; Editing by David Cowell)