The company has made the decision to divest its stake in Heineken, giving it the opportunity to resume its expansion plans in the United States. In February, FEMSA announced an offer of common shares of Heineken NV and Heineken Holding NV HEIO.AS and of unsecured notes of the latter for an amount of approximately 3,000 and 500 million euros, respectively.
A few days later, the American businessman Bill Gates acquired a 3.76% stake in the Mexican bottling company, according to information from the financial registry of the Netherlands.
On Tuesday, the Mexican bottling company FEMSA announced that it has made an offer of shares of Heineken and Heineken Holding NV for a value of 3.3 billion euros.
With this barrier removed, FEMSA could now be ready to reactivate its project to open a considerable number of Oxxo stores in Texas.
The challenge of bringing Oxxos to the US
But the expansion of Oxxo’s presence to the north may encounter obstacles in the US market. Experts agree that the local channel in that country is different, with few traditional sales channels, such as neighborhood stores. In addition, during the pandemic, trips to physical stores decreased considerably, while online purchases experienced a significant increase.
“In the United States, the market is more complicated than in Mexico. Here, there is a large territorial extension and there is not so much competition, which has allowed Oxxo to have more than 20,000 stores locally,” says Marisol Huerta, a stock market analyst. from the Ve por Más bank. “In any case, Oxxo will have to compete with similar formats and attract consumers for whom going to the supermarket is a more frequent activity,” he adds.
Although FEMSA is motivated and willing to face the challenges that arise in the US market, it is clear that Oxxo’s expansion in this context will require careful adaptation to the particularities of the market and the preferences of local consumers.