Cencosud Boston Consulting Group Matrix

Cencosud's Peruvian supermarkets, notably Wong and Metro, are shining stars. In 2024, they delivered an impressive 11.5% EBITDA margin, showcasing robust profitability. This strong financial performance underscores their leading position in a dynamic retail landscape.

The digital push is also paying off handsomely. Peru's online sales surged by 44% in the first quarter of 2025, with Wong achieving double-digit online penetration. These figures highlight Cencosud's successful adaptation to evolving consumer habits and its strong market standing.

Cencosud's private label brands are a clear 'Star' within its business portfolio, exhibiting strong growth and market share. In Q1 2025, these brands saw a significant 14.3% sales increase, with penetration growing by 57 basis points year-over-year. This performance is directly aligned with consumer preferences for value, making these brands a key focus for continued investment and profitability.

Cencosud Financial Services, including its Cencosud Scotiabank joint venture, represents a significant Cash Cow for the conglomerate. With a robust credit card base of approximately 2.5 million cards, this segment generates consistent and substantial cash flow.

Operating within a mature financial market, Cencosud Financial Services is a stable generator of earnings. This steady income stream is crucial for Cencosud, as it helps fund other strategic growth areas and investments across the group.

Cencosud's Cash Cows are business units that generate more cash than they consume, operating in mature markets with strong competitive positions. These segments provide stable, predictable revenue streams crucial for funding other business activities and investments across the conglomerate.

The Chilean supermarket operations, including Jumbo and Santa Isabel, along with Cencosud Shopping Centers, exemplify these reliable performers. Their high occupancy rates and strong EBITDA margins in 2023 and 2024 demonstrate their consistent financial contribution and market dominance.

Furthermore, Cencosud Financial Services, with its substantial credit card base, and the Easy home improvement banner, despite market maturity, continue to be significant cash generators. The Paris department stores, showing remarkable 83.6% Adjusted EBITDA growth in Q4 2024, also solidify their cash cow status through strategic improvements and favorable market conditions like increased tourism.

Cencosud's ambitious vision for a unified 'Retail Ecosystem' necessitates the retirement of outdated IT infrastructure. These legacy systems, often characterized by their siloed nature and high maintenance costs, represent significant operational drag.

In 2024, companies across retail are investing heavily in modernizing their digital backbone. For Cencosud, this means reallocating resources away from these cash-consuming legacy platforms, which hinder seamless data flow and innovation, towards building a more integrated and agile digital future.

Cencosud's 'Dogs' represent business units or assets with low market share in slow-growing industries, demanding significant resources without commensurate returns. The divestment of the Bretas supermarket chain in Brazil, which reported a mere 0.5% net profit margin in 2024, exemplifies this classification. Similarly, the closure of six underperforming Brazilian stores, contributing to a R$1.2 billion net loss for the segment in 2023, highlights the financial drain associated with these assets.

These 'Dogs' often include legacy retail formats or niche product categories experiencing declining consumer interest. For instance, certain smaller format stores not aligned with the Spid convenience strategy, or electronics sub-segments like feature phones facing obsolescence, are prime examples. Cencosud's strategic imperative to modernize IT infrastructure also involves phasing out cash-consuming legacy platforms that hinder innovation, further categorizing them as 'Dogs'.

Cencosud Media, Cencosud's retail media arm, is positioned as a potential star within the company's strategic framework, leveraging its growing digital presence to monetize customer data and traffic. This unit taps into the booming retail media market, a sector projected to see significant expansion in the coming years.

While the retail media sector offers substantial growth opportunities, Cencosud Media is still in its nascent stages, requiring considerable investment to build scale and capture market share. For instance, the global retail media ad spend was estimated to reach $125.7 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow substantially, indicating the potential but also the competitive landscape Cencosud Media operates within.

Cencosud's new Spid convenience stores in Chile, launched in late 2024, represent a significant investment into a high-growth segment. This strategic move places Spid as a Question Mark, requiring substantial capital to gain traction against established competitors.

The company's recent acquisition of Makro in Argentina marks its entry into the wholesale Cash & Carry market, a sector with considerable growth potential. However, Cencosud's minimal existing presence in this format means it's a Question Mark, demanding significant investment to build a competitive foothold.

Cencosud's ventures into digital payment solutions and fintech are positioned as future growth engines, but currently operate with low market share. These initiatives require substantial capital to scale and effectively compete in the dynamic fintech landscape.

The expansion into developing regions, including 24 new supermarket openings in 2024, targets markets with high growth potential but lower current penetration. These investments are characteristic of Question Marks, aiming to build market share and improve performance in areas like Colombia and Brazil.