Enterprise Investors buys 49% of Polish retailer Dino

Dino is a convenience store chain founded with Polish capital in 1999. For the time being, the chain has 97 stores in western Poland, the company opening around 1-2 stores a month. Dino revenues totaled €97 million in 2009, and this year it expects 30% increase to roughly €135 million.

“We consider Dino as an attractive investment. We are impressed by the alert development pace of the network over the past three years, a period in which the company has practically tripled its profit. We see new opportunities for the future development of Dino in the expansion of the chain to various regions of Poland”, said Michal Rusiecki, managing partner at Enterprise Investors (EI), and the person responsible for the investment.

“Our objective is to expand the chain dynamically by opening at least 30-40 new units in the next years. It will be much easier to achieve our goals together with EI”, said Szymon Piduch, president of Dino.

Enterprise Investors is one of the largest and oldest private equity and venture capital fund in Central and Eastern Europe. The aggregate capital of the seven funds under Enterprise Investors’ custody stands at nearly €1.7 billion. So far, the seven funds invested €1.3 billion in 118 companies operating in various sectors and sold around 91 companies generating €1.4 billion. The funds have investments in 27 companies. Enterprise Investors has a wide investment experience in retail, investing almost €270 million in various retail chains.

In 2002, EI listed Emperia holding (former Eldorado) at WSE, Warsaw Stock Exchange, after the development of its retail chain (Stokrotka and Groszek stores) together with the owners and management of the company. In 2005-2007, the funds invested in Artima, the Romanian supermarket chain it sold afterwards to Carrefour, thus tripling its initial investment. In 2009, EI acquired one of the largest supermarket chains