Brokers' take

Retail Staples RHB Research, Aug 30

According to Buddhist and Taoist customs, during the Hungry Ghost Festival, devotees make food and paper offerings to the deceased. This period is an intense one for supermarket sales. This month, we visited over 10 supermarkets and came away positive on Sheng Siong's ability to capture most of the sales during this season.

It had more space, more goods, hence more sales during the 7th month. Based on the outlets we visited, we believe Sheng Siong has the widest range and availability of prayer items, often taking up an entire section of shelf space for the smaller outlets (<8,000 sq ft) or having an area outside the premises that is dedicated to stock packages for the festival (for the larger outlets that span >10,000sq ft). This is in contrast to its peers (NTUC FairPrice and Dairy Farm) which only have small shelves of limited prayer packages in the smaller outlets.