The profits of the largest Russian retail chains fell threefold

At the end of 2025, the net profit of the 50 largest Russian retailers amounted to 215 billion rubles, which is more than 2.5 times less than a year earlier, and business profitability decreased from 3.3 percent to 1.1 percent. Vedomosti writes about this with reference to company reports.

This dynamics is observed against the backdrop of a noticeable increase in revenue - from 18.2 trillion rubles to 19.7 trillion, that is, by 8.3 percent, which is higher than official inflation.

However, only the result for the top 10 looks truly positive (plus 11.4 percent, 13.8 trillion rubles), and the remaining 40 retail chains added only five percent to their revenue.

The publication associates the drop in net profit of retailers with rising costs of servicing loans, rising costs of logistics, the need to increase salaries, as well as a slowdown in demand, which is explained by the desire of Russians to save money.

Maria Vit, project manager at Yakov and Partners, noted that not the last factor was competition and traffic, because of which the business was forced to turn to discounts.