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Spanish supermarket giant Mercadona closed another "spectacular year" in December 2024. As founder and president Juan Roig stated himself, the Valencia-based store chain exceeded its own forecasts and stood at the forefront of industry competition.
In numbers: Spain's leading food retailer achieved a turnover of 38.8 billion euros, an increase of 9%, and profits shot up by 37% to almost 1.4 billion euros, well above the forecast of 1 billion.
Roig attributed these exceptional figures to the 100 million tourists in Spain in 2024 and the payoff after five years of Mercadona in Portugal. It was precisely Spain's neighbour that contributed 1.8 billion of the 3.8 billion euros. "This year, for the first time, Portugal has been profitable and this has benefited our overall results," he said.
During his speech at the annual press conference to announce the results, Juan Roig commemorated the 'Dana' tragedy and the 224 victims it left behind, among them four entrepreneur friends of Roig. Mercadona's president donated 108 million euros for reconstruction work to repair the damage caused by the floods, which affected 21 Mercadona shops. "I still find it hard to talk about the 'Dana'. It has been a particularly hard year for us," said Roig.
He refused to comment on the potential dismissal of Carlos Mazón as president of the Valencian government (Generalita), but he expressed his thoughts on the late reaction that left "a million Spaniards helpless for four days". "What we most need to analyse as a society is what happened after 30 October. One million Spaniards felt helpless, the first four days were disastrous. We saw neither agility nor coordination in the response. The management of the different public administrations failed," said Roig.
Despite the difficult year, Mercadona created 6,000 new jobs in 2024 (4,300 in Spain and 1,700 in Portugal), reaching a total workforce of 110,000 employees, with an average net salary of 2,100 euros per month (after four years of seniority). The company distributed a total of 700 million euros among all employees, meaning that an employee with more than four years of seniority received a gross variable remuneration of 6,000 euros on 1 March.
A further 1.1 billion was reinvested in the company (80% of the total net profit) and the remaining 275 million was distributed as a dividend among the company's nine shareholders.
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