X5 GROUP ESTABLISHES 'HELPING OUT' CHARITABLE FOUNDATION TO ADVANCE ITS SOCIAL, CHARITABLE INITIATIVES

Moscow, 14 March 2024 - X5 Group ("X5" or the "Company", LSE and MOEX ticker: FIVE), a leading Russian food retailer that operates the Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, and Chizhik retail chains, announces the establishment of the Helping Out corporate foundation to centralise all its charitable and social initiatives. The Foundation will focus primarily on providing food aid to people in need, promoting healthy lifestyles, creating a comfortable and safe environment for local communities, and fostering a culture of volunteering.

Ekaterina Lobacheva, X5 Group President, commented:

"We established the Helping Out charitable foundation to offer professional and effective assistance to as many people as possible. Our mission is to build a system of mutual aid and support for people in difficult situations throughout the country. We wanted to create a platform that brings together our millions of customers, as well as hundreds of thousands of caring employees and thousands of suppliers and partners. By leveraging X5 Group's experience, scale and technological capabilities, we aim to create an accessible aid infrastructure to offer daily help to those who need it."

By creating an in-house charitable foundation, the Company aims to significantly increase the amount of funding that will be allocated towards charitable programmes and expand the number of people who will be able to receive assistance under key charitable and social programmes run by X5 Group. The Foundation will engage new partners and reinforce its collaboration with local non-profits by leveraging X5's own infrastructure and digital services.

X5 plans to transform this initiative into a tool to support its strategic sustainability goals, which in turn contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the national development goals of the Russian Federation through 2030. The latter include maintaining the country's population, supporting health and well-being, and creating a comfortable and safe environment.

As part of its food aid initiatives, the Foundation will further develop multiple formats to provide food aid to various categories of people in need. This includes scaling up the Basket of Kindness food aid project, increasing the volume of products nearing their expiration date that are donated through food sharing, boosting donations from X5 Group's retail chains and dark stores, and expanding the distribution of food assistance cards. Along with basic food aid, the Foundation will promote healthy lifestyles and offer education on the basics of proper nutrition.

The Foundation will draw on X5 Group's vast, country-wide footprint to support local communities across Russia by helping them to implement their initiatives and address key challenges. These efforts will be consolidated around the Company's existing projects, such as Local Community Centres (LCCs, social initiatives for local neighbourhoods run via local Pyaterochka stores); the Safety Zone project to help lost and disoriented people in partnership with LizaAlert; programmes to create an accessible environment, promote inclusion, prevent social orphanhood and provide help to animals; as well as various green initiatives and support for farmers and local producers. The Foundation will also develop comprehensive volunteering programmes to support and encourage volunteering among X5 employees and local communities. 

X5 has been consistently involved in food assistance programmes since 2015 through its Basket of Kindness project. Over this period, more than 1.152 million people in need received 2,467 tonnes of food and non-food items. X5 was also the first retailer to pioneer food drives and food sharing projects in Russia in partnership with organisations such as Foodbank Rus, Foodsharing and others. Today, X5's food sharing programme covers Moscow, St Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Ryazan, Izhevsk, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh and Tomsk. The project involves 62 Pyaterochka and Perekrestok stores, 11 dark stores and one distribution centre. Last year, over 95,000 people received 56 tonnes of non-expired food and non-food products through the project.

X5 Retail Group N.V. (LSE and MOEX: FIVE; Expert RA - ruAAA; ACRA - AAA(RU)) is a leading Russian food retailer. The Company operates proximity stores under the Pyaterochka brand, Perekrestok supermarkets and Chizhik hard discounters. X5 provides an omnichannel experience to its customers, integrating retail stores and e-commerce through its businesses Vprok.ru, 5Post and Mnogo Lososya.

As of 31 December 2023, X5 had 24,472 Company-operated stores. It has the leading market position in both Moscow and St Petersburg and a significant presence in the European part of Russia, as well as a growing presence in the Russian Far East. Its store base includes 21,308 Pyaterochka proximity stores, 972 Perekrestok supermarkets, 1,500 Chizhik hard discounters and 610 Krasny Yar and Slata stores. The Company operates 62 DCs and 5,344 Company-owned trucks across the Russian Federation.

X5 is one of the largest employers in Russia. The Company employs over 372 thousand people.

For the full year 2022, revenue totalled RUB 2,605,232 million (USD 38,005 million*), EBITDA pre-IFRS 16 reached RUB 186,788 million (USD 2,725 million*), and net profit pre-IFRS 16 for the period amounted to RUB 52,248 million (USD 762 million*). In 9M 2023, revenue totalled RUB 2,264,643 million (USD 27,386 million**), adjusted EBITDA pre-IFRS 16 reached RUB 163,212 million (USD 1,974 million**), and net profit pre-IFRS 16 amounted to RUB 71,250 million (USD 862 million**).

Forward-looking statements

This announcement includes statements that are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements". These forward-looking statements can be identified by the fact that they do not only relate to historical or current events. Forward-looking statements often use words such as "anticipate", "target", "expect", "estimate", "intend", "expected", "plan", "goal", "believe", or other words of similar meaning.

By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to future events and circumstances, a number of which are beyond X5 Group N.V.'s control. As a result, actual future results may differ materially from the plans, goals and expectations set out in these forward-looking statements.

Any forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of X5 Group N.V. speak only as of the date of this announcement. Save as required by any applicable laws or regulations, X5 Group N.V. undertakes no obligation publicly to release the results of any revisions to any forward-looking statements in this document that may occur due to any change in its expectations or to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this document.

* FX rate: 68.5494 USD/RUB

** FX rate: 82.6934 USD/RUB