Pepco Group skips the 2024/25 dividend - a Dutch holding in WIG20 focuses on restructuring after a weak 2024

Pepco Group skips the 2024/25 dividend - a Dutch WIG20 holding focuses on restructuring

Pepco Group N.V. - a Dutch holding company registered in Amsterdam, whose shares have been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange under the ticker PCO since 2021 - skips the dividend for the 2024/25 financial year. It is the first year in which the company, a constituent of the WIG20 index, deliberately forgoes a payout in order to fund the restructuring launched after a disappointing 2024: the closure of the Pepco store network in the United Kingdom and deep operational problems in Germany.

The board's decision is unambiguous: the cash that would otherwise reach shareholders will fund margin recovery and the cleanup of the foreign-market portfolio. The PCO share price hovers around PLN 22 as of 1 May 2026 - significantly below the 2021 IPO level, when the company debuted on the WSE as one of the largest retail listings in the exchange's history.

Polish Pepco operates from Poznan, the holding sits in the Netherlands

The Polish network operator is Pepco Poland - a limited-liability company with KRS code 0000111962, headquartered in Poznan, in Wielkopolskie voivodeship. It is this entity that runs more than 1,700 discount stores in Poland - making Poland the largest operating market of the entire group.

The ownership chain stacks up across three layers: Pepco Poland Sp. z o.o. (the operator in Poland) - Pepco Group N.V. (the holding company registered in the Netherlands and the issuer of WSE-listed shares) - Pepkor Holdings Ltd. (a listed holding company from South Africa holding roughly 70 percent of Pepco Group shares). The remaining ~30 percent is free float - predominantly Polish open-end pension funds, investment funds, and retail shareholders. The State Treasury holds no stake in either Pepco Group or Pepco Poland.

The full group covers more than 4,000 stores in 18 European countries, trading under Pepco (Central and Eastern Europe - Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania), Poundland in the United Kingdom, and Dealz in the remaining jurisdictions. The logistics centre serving the Polish market is located in Lubzie near Poznan.

Polish retail in WIG20 - three capital strategies

Pepco Group is one of three Polish retail-sector companies present in the WIG20 - and each pursues a completely different capital policy, which makes the trio a clinical case study on the differences between models of returning capital to shareholders.

LPP - the Gdansk-based owner of the Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito, and Sinsay brands - recommends a dividend of approximately PLN 210 per share for 2025, giving a yield of around 1 percent at the current share price. LPP's strategy is full operational control in Polish hands plus a regular distribution of a fixed amount from a growing profit.

Dino Polska - a chain of supermarkets from near Krotoszyn with deep coverage in smaller towns - has consistently paid no dividend since its 2017 listing. Tomasz Biernacki, the dominant shareholder, treats the entire net profit as fuel for opening additional stores, which has driven the network from 600 to more than 2,700 outlets in seven years.

Pepco fits a third, intermediate path - and is the only one of the three to justify a zero dividend not by growth, but by restructuring. That is a fundamental qualitative distinction: Dino retains cash in order to expand; Pepco retains cash in order to repair itself and clean up inherited problems in the UK and DE segments.

Implication: foreign capital origin as a decision filter

The most important consequence of Pepco's ownership structure surfaces only when one tries to answer a single question: who actually makes the dividend decision and who funds it. The decision is taken by the board of the Dutch holding Pepco Group N.V., is approved by the general meeting of shareholders in Amsterdam, and the majority vote belongs to South Africa's Pepkor Holdings. The cash flow runs in the opposite direction: operating profit is generated above all by the Polish operator Pepco Poland, which pays an intra-group dividend to the Dutch holding, and from there onward - were any payout to shareholders to occur at all - to Pepkor in Johannesburg.

For an investor the distinction between the operator (Pepco Poland Sp. z o.o., KRS 0000111962, headquartered in Poznan) and the share issuer (Pepco Group N.V., headquartered in Amsterdam, ticker PCO) is absolutely critical - because a dividend never flows from the Polish operator directly to listed shareholders. It flows from the holding for which the Polish operator works. That is also why the Polish financial statements of Pepco Poland - even though they describe a 1,700-store network and several billion zloty of annual revenue - never map one-to-one onto the PCO share price on the WSE.

“Pepco is the cleanest example of how foreign capital works in Polish retail. The operator generates profit in Poznan, the Dutch holding decides its fate, the South African majority shareholder filters the strategic choices. A Polish stock-market investor buys shares of a company whose capital decision is taken in Amsterdam under pressure from Johannesburg - and it is precisely that distance between operation and issuer that best explains why a UK and DE restructuring can suspend a payout from a Polish operation.”

What you will find in the Pepco Poland profile

The Pepco Poland Sp. z o.o. profile in our database carries the full financial history of the Polish operator - from the first Pepco stores in Poland, through the dynamic expansion of 2015–2023, up to today's footprint of more than 1,700 outlets. The Financial statements section lets you trace the revenue and operating-margin dynamics of the Polish operation in contrast to the consolidated results of the entire Pepco Group N.V. - a particularly relevant comparison given the ongoing UK and DE restructuring, because it shows that the Polish part of the group remains profitable and that it is funding the cleanup of the broader portfolio.

The profile also captures the management board of Pepco Poland, the beneficial-owner chain leading via Pepco Group N.V. up to Pepkor Holdings, logistics data (the Lubzie distribution centre near Poznan), and the complete KRS registry-event history since 2002.

Data: Strefa Inwestorow / Pepco Group N.V. - capital-policy statement for the 2024/25 financial year; WSE - PCO share price as of 1 May 2026; KRS - current readout for Pepco Poland Sp. z o.o., as of 2026-05-01.