RIYADH: Saudi-headquartered Jarir Marketing Co., better known as Jarir Bookstore, has opened its first-ever branch in Bahrain with an SR28 million ($7.5 million) investment.
Encompassing an area of 4,308 square meters, the new showroom brings the number of Jarir Bookstores inside and outside the Kingdom to 68, according to a bourse filing.
Located in Manama city, the Bahraini branch will hold all the product range offered in Jarir Bookstore.
Jarir expects the expansion to have an impact on its financial statements for the current quarter.
Listed on the Saudi Exchange, Jarir started as a small bookshop in 1974, eventually expanding its offerings to toys, electronics, and office supplies.
It has operations across Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait, further to the latest addition of Bahrain.
For the first half of 2022, the retailer reported a 6 percent drop in profit on the back of lower sales.
Its net profit dropped to SR428 million from SR457 million in the same period a year earlier.
This came as revenues slipped by 5.5 percent to SR4.3 billion, due to lower sales from smartphones and accessories, and computers and their supplies.
Jarir added that it saw an increase in marketing expenses as a result of increased spending on advertisements, however, the adverse impact of such an increase was mitigated by the gain of SR10 million from the sale of the company's property in Khobar.
The company also proposed a dividend payout of SR1.45 per share, totaling SR174 million, for the second quarter of 2022.
