About the company Lenta IPJSC
Security pageLenta is one of the largest Russian food retail chains, historically built around hypermarkets — large stores with a wide range on the outskirts of cities. In recent years the company has been actively adding smaller formats alongside them. The shares trade on the Moscow Exchange under the ticker LENT.
What the company does
A hypermarket is a model built on the big shopping trip: the customer drives in once a week, fills a trolley to the top, and the average ticket is high. The format wins on range and on price thanks to volume, but loses on convenience: nobody drives to one for a loaf of bread.
That is exactly why the company is expanding into convenience stores and delivery: shopping habits have shifted towards frequent small purchases, and a chain made up of hypermarkets alone loses share not because of quality but because of format. Buying convenience store chains was the response to that shift.
The economics are the same as across all of food retail: a thin markup, enormous turnover, and profit decided by the cost of logistics and staff.
Business lines
Hypermarkets
Large stores with a wide range and a high average ticket.
Convenience stores
A walking-distance format, acquired and developed as a response to changing shopping habits.
Online sales
Delivery from stores and partnerships with aggregators.
History
- 1993The company is founded in Saint Petersburg.
- 2014Listing of the shares on the London and Moscow exchanges.
- 2021–2023Acquisition of convenience store chains and a turn away from the "hypermarkets only" model.
Business review
Strengths and weaknesses describe the business itself. Opportunities and threats describe what may happen around it.
Strengths
- A marked acceleration in revenue after the acquisition of convenience store chains.
- Well-developed logistics inherited from the hypermarkets.
Weaknesses
- Hypermarkets are a format with falling footfall.
- Debt that has grown on the back of acquisitions.
- Profitability below that of the industry leaders.
Opportunities
- Developing small formats brings back the customer who left for convenience stores.
- Hypermarkets remain a good deal for the big shopping trip and as a base for delivery.
- Private labels lift the margin without raising the shelf price.
- Market consolidation: the share of small chains leaving the market goes to the large ones.
Threats
- The hypermarket format is losing out to changing habits: the customer shops more often and buys less.
- The markup is capped by competition and by the regulator's attention to socially significant goods.
- Staff costs are rising along with the labour shortage.
- Integrating the acquired chains takes time and money.
Frequently asked questions
What does Lenta do?
It is a food retail chain: hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores, as well as grocery delivery. The company sells food and everyday consumer goods.
How does a hypermarket differ from a convenience store?
In size, range and the pattern of the visit. People drive to a hypermarket once a week for a big shop, and walk into a convenience store almost every day for a few items. The former has the higher average ticket, the latter the higher visit frequency.
Why does a hypermarket chain buy convenience stores?
Because shopping habits have shifted towards frequent small purchases. A chain consisting only of large stores loses share not because of quality but because of format, and adding small formats is a way to win that customer back.
Issuer profile
What the company does
The company is classified under the «Retail & consumer» sector, using the taxonomy we apply when comparing securities with one another.
The same sector holds 26 issuers on the platform, and their figures are computed by one method — so this company's revenue, profit and leverage can be compared with them directly.
The company is registered in Russia and identified in regulatory disclosure by tax number 3906399157. That number locates its statements in state registries regardless of how its name is spelled — and the spelling differs even between official documents.
Listed securities
The issuer has 1 security listed: 1 share class. All are shown on this page, including those trading in different modes and different currencies.
Across Moscow Exchange quotation list levels the securities split as follows: 1 at level 1. The level reflects how strict the disclosure, turnover and track-record requirements the issue meets are — not how attractive the investment is.
Financial statements
The most recent annual report we hold is for 2025 under IFRS. The standard is named for a reason: IFRS and RAS compute the same quantities by different rules, disagree by design and are never averaged.
Revenue for 2025 was 1.10T ₽.
That is 24.3 % more than in 2024, when revenue was 888.30B ₽. The comparison stays within one reporting standard — otherwise the growth could turn out to be a change of accounting rules and nothing more.
Net income for 2025 was 34.90B ₽.
Of every unit of revenue, 3.2 % remained as net income. This is the ratio of two figures already named above rather than a separate line from the report: comparing it across companies is meaningful only within one sector and one reporting standard.
Equity stands at 180.10B ₽ against total assets of 604.50B ₽. The difference between the two is the company's liabilities, and the larger it is relative to equity, the more the business depends on borrowed money.
This section is assembled from our own data on the company's securities, dividends and financial statements. It is a description, not a recommendation.