Steady Gains: Latin American Department Stores Achieve 7% Growth by June

Latin American retail is still going strong. The region’s department stores, the ideal playground for local and international fashion, continue to be relevant and profitable, maintaining the good pace with which they began fiscal 2025. Between January and July, the five largest groups in the sector posted a combined turnover of $23,276.6 million, 6.67% more than in the same period of the previous year.

Taking into account only the second quarter of the year, the growth was similar, since Falabella, Cencosud, Liverpool, El Palacio de Hierro and Ripley recorded a 6.9% increase in turnover between April and June, up to 12,105.5 million dollars.

Mexico’s El Palacio de Hierro was the department store that drove the progress in the first half of the year, as it was the company that grew the most between January and June, with a year-on-year increase of 12.4%.

Chile’s Cencosud maintained its leadership as the Latin American department store with the highest turnover, with a turnover of 8,581.9 million dollars. However, the group that owns the Paris stores was the one that grew the least in the first half of the year, with a 3.8% increase in turnover.

The five Latin American giants posted a positive profit of $1,235 million between January and June

Falabella and Liverpool, on the other hand, were just short of double-digit growth. The Chilean group increased its sales by 9.2% between January and June, while the Mexican group grew by 9.1%. Finally, Ripley generated a turnover of $1.07 billion, 5.4% more than in the first half of 2024.

In the second quarter alone, El Palacio de Hierro also grew the most, while Ripley was the group that recorded the smallest increase in revenues, with a growth of 3.7% between April and June.

All in all, the five Latin American department store groups recorded a combined profit of $1.23 billion between January and June. The only company that failed to improve its profitability was Liverpool, which plummeted 39% in profit in the first half of the year, to $304.9 million.

On the other hand, the three Chilean groups increased their profits to triple digits, with Ripley, which went from a profit of nine million dollars in 2024 to $32.5 million in the first six months of 2025, its highest result in the last seven years.

El Palacio de Hierro, on the other hand, obtained a more moderate, although positive, result. In the first six months, the Mexican luxury department store posted a profit of 75.8 million dollars, 9.9% more than in the previous year.

Both Palacio de Hierro and Ripley are far behind their rivals in terms of turnover and profit, with turnover in the billions of dollars in the first half of the year and profits of less than 80 million dollars.