l in your crown – are pushed by competition and increasingly demanding consumers to outshine your other mall stores.  When your control of prime real estate platforms lets you expand without constraints and get the best spaces, since you and your sibling can decide what goes where and even act as gatekeeper to filter new entrants, rather like a bouncer at a nightclub. What you have is Central Retail, the Thai giant that owns and operates its stores and malls in both Thailand and Vietnam, in close cahoots with Central Pattana, Thailand’s biggest and meanest mall operator. Its first half of 2026 is now in the can, and there are strong indications that it is successfully executing a strategic pivot: same-store sales trends are improving (on an admittedly very low base, more on that below); the company is pruning underperforming concepts, downsizing others, and adopting a more disciplined regional focus and allocation of capital. The big reset At the end of the half, Central operated 3,834 stores in Thailand and Vietnam that leave almost no retail category untouched. It also owns 75 shopping malls in the two countries with a combined net leasable area of 779,000sqm, slightly more than the same time last year. The malls it operates in Thailand (dubbed Robinson Lifestyle malls) are cut-down versions of the giant shoeboxes operated by its sibling company Central Pattana. Central Retail and Central Pattana are joined at the hip though, with both heavily dependent on the other. As part of the strategic reset, Central Retail has already dumped assets it cannot improve on and while it is expanding its store count in growth categories such as food, health and beauty and home improvement, it is actively downsizing in underperforming ones. Thus, it has killed off 11 units of Power Buy, B2S, and Officemate over the last 12 months. That comes on top of its exit from the NK appliance business in Vietnam in April, severing another 39 stores. Still, there is more work to do in rightsizing the portfolio. Same-store sales growth is showing improvement but overall was still down by 0.1 per cent in the first half. While the company’s food segment built on its 2 per cent growth in the first quarter with 3 per cent growth in the second – the first positive results for two years – these came from a negative base (-3 per cent and -4 per cent in the first and second quarters of last year respectively). Moreover, both the hardlines and fashion segments, while making headway, are still not showing same-store sales growth. The two-year stacks (the simple aggregate of same-store sales growth for the past two years) for hardlines and fashion in the most recent quarter were -7.5 per cent and -5 per cent respectively. These are not numbers that would make retail executives feel like going out and dancing in the streets. In fashion, it has taken a 40 per cent stake in JD Sports, partly in the hope of improving the merchandising of its own Supersports multibrand sporting goods stores. This too is a good strategic move with the local market in mind: athleisure is something Supersports isn’t good at but JD Sports is, and since Thais often enjoy the appearance of working out more than they enjoy actually doing it, more athleisure is an appropriate merchandising pivot. The half-year report card Total company revenue from continuing operations for the first half grew 2.4 per cent year-on-year to 123.7 billion Thai baht (US$3.9 billion). Store and online sales, which comprise the lion’s share of total revenues, advanced by 2.2 per cent but this was overwhelmingly due to the performance of the food segment, which grew by 6.1 per cent and now comprises 46 per cent of company sales. Meanwhile, fashion segment sales increased by 2.1 per cent and hardlines fell by 2.9 per cent. The latter was partly due to the April 2026 divestiture of the company’s NK appliance chain in Vietnam: not counting that, sales still fell by 0.5 per cent. Overall sales growth slightly outpaced 2.2 per cent growth in selling area, although increased online sales were instrumental in driving growth. Gross margin as a percentage of sales improved by an impressive 110 basis points, to 24.8 per cent, outpacing growth in the SG&A ratio. Finance costs were down sharply and there was more income from the company’s share of profits from its acquisition of 40 per cent of JD Sports earlier in the year. Put together, net profit grew by 35 per cent from the first half last year, to 5.0 billion baht (US$155 million). While Thailand struggles, Vietnam booms Central’s efforts to realign its merchandising are bearing fruit despite an overall economic environment that isn’t particularly helpful. The Thai government has continued to inject stimulus but because of the way the stimulus programmes have been designed the benefits have accrued primarily to the independent retail sector. To boot, the Thai economy is still weak, although the country’s central bank has upgraded its 2026 growth forecast for Thailand to 1.9 per cent. Soaring energy and fertiliser prices suggest that food inflation is a dead certainty in the months ahead, piling more pressure on a Thai consumer already groaning under debt. The tourism numbers are OK but nothing special, down just over three per cent year-on-year through the end of July. The situation is brighter in Vietnam, which is experiencing a tourism boom of its own, and where economic growth is expected to gallop ahead of the rest of the region if the IMF forecasts are to be believed, and where the central planners in Hanoi are pushing domestic consumption for more balanced growth. Further reading: How Central Retail plans to become Thailand’s market leader