Page 18 - CRC_One Report 2021_EN

Business Overview and Performance Corporate Governance Financial Statements Enclosure

MESSAGE FROM THE CEO

Dear Shareholders,

The year of 2021 was still a challenging year for the operations of the Company due to the COVID-19 outbreak
that has persisted around the world for over 2 years. Throughout the past year, the Company emphasized
and considered the health and safety of customers, employees, partners, and communities as its first priority,
and had implemented stringent hygiene measures in all establishments and offices. The Company has
cooperated with the government and strictly complied with official disease control measures. As a result,
non-food stores and certain stores of the food segment in Thailand and Vietnam were temporarily closed in the
second quarter through to the third quarter, and in Italy at the beginning of the year, which inevitably affected
business performance.

Nevertheless, the Company had learned to deal with and adapt to the COVID-19 crisis and reinvent our
operational strategy, focusing on creating proactive approaches in combination with reactive ones to turn the
crisis into opportunity. The Company has applied the concept of “Resilience Reimagined” to flexibly adapt and
create new opportunities and a new corporate
culture while also instilling the concept of Digital
First. We have armed over 50,000 digitally
savvy employees and scaled their workflows
to be omni-centric in every dimension and
continue to invest in the development of the
Central Retail Ecosystem and full-fledged
omnichannel platforms that seamlessly connect
offline and online experiences. At the same
time, the Company has strategically adjusted its
business model and portfolio to a business that is
sustainable and growing at a fast pace in line with
shifting market trends and consumer demands
in every business segment. This started from
the fashion segment, which gathers world-class
premium brands, where the network of Central
Retail Europe was leveraged to magnify
product varieties and truly meet the needs of
high-end lifestyle customers, through to hardline
and food segments by focusing more on the
mass market. We expanded our branches in
Thailand and Vietnam, having Thai Watsadu as
our flagship business for hardline products and
launched a model store of daily home convenience
to respond to service needs of all customers
anytime, anywhere called go! WOW. Moreover,
we introduced Thailand’s successful Tops market
in Vietnam and continued to thrive with M&A
strategy as we successfully acquired COL, the
leading office supplies, book, entertainment
media, lifestyle product, and No. 1 e-Book
provider under trademarks OfficeMate, B2S,
and MEB.

18 Annual Report 2021 (Form 56-1 One-Report)