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Richmond Mercurio - The Philippine Star
March 25, 2025 | 12:00am
A customer is seen inside a 7-Eleven convenience store along a street in central Tokyo on September 9, 2024. Shares in the Japanese owner of 7-Eleven plunged 12 percent on February 27, 2025 after reports said a bid by the convenience store giant's founding family to go private had failed.
AFP / Richard A. Brooks
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Seven Corp. (PSC), the exclusive licensee of convenience store giant 7-Eleven in the Philippines, is pursuing its aggressive store expansion after sustaining a jump in profitability last year.
PSC president and CEO Jose Victor Paterno said the company is on track to open 500 7-Eleven branches this year, the most in the company’s history.
“We opened 400 last year. This year, the plan is 500. The growth in more than half of our stores is in Visayas and Mindanao. Post-COVID, Visayas and Mindanao really grew. I think it’s mostly because of digital freelancers,” Paterno told The STAR.
Asked if 500 stores annually will be the direction of the company going forward, Paterno said “we hope so.”
“But we’ll take it year by year. I think you grow year by year and see,” he said.
Paterno said that the company typically needs to prepare a year or two ahead to open a store.
“We do have a database of locations where we want to go. So when I say 500, I already know all of them already,” he said.
PSC opened its first 7-Eleven store at the corner of EDSA and Kamias Road in Metro Manila in 1984.
Last year, the company reached a new milestone with the opening of the 4,000th 7-Eleven store at the Newport District in Pasay.
The company’s continuing expansion is fueled by demand not only in Metro Manila but also in the provinces, supported by the favorable economic environment in the country.
PSC has yet to release its full year 2024 financial results, but Paterno said the company closed the year with higher profit and sales.
“It’s up, but it’s just not as good as 2023. It’s not going to be that, but it’s up,” he said.
PSC’s net income in 2023 soared by 69 percent to P3.48 billion as retail sales and service income of both corporate and franchise-operated 7-Eleven stores improved.
In the nine months ending September 2024, the company generated a net profit of P2.58 billion, up by 13.6 percent from P2.27 billion in the prior year.
Systemwide sales for the period grew by 16.5 percent to P68.84 billion driven by an increase in same-store sales and higher average customer count at mature stores.
PSC ended the third quarter of last year with a nationwide store count of 4,022 stores. Of that number, 52 percent are company-owned and the rest are franchised. Stores located in Visayas and Mindanao have exceeded 1,000.
