Russian grocery retailer Magnit said today (11 May) that net income fell during the first quarter as margins were hit by higher fuel costs and consumer taxes.

For the quarter ended 31 March, net income was down 7.5% to RUB1.7bn (US$61m), despite revenue increasing some 53% on the previous year to RUB75bn.

It attributed the growth in sales to a 35.9% increase in selling space as well as a 20.1% increase in like-for-like sales.

CEO Sergey Galitskiy said: “We liked [the] sales growth rate in the first quarter and did not transfer additional expenditures through increase of fuel cost and social tax to the customer which resulted in lower EBITDA vs. consensus. But, from the second quarter, we have started to gradually transfer increased costs to the customer, at that we are confident in fulfilling EBITDA margin and sales plans provided earlier.”