Metro Company Overview

METRO AG is the Düsseldorf-based management holding company of an international food-wholesale group focused on professional HoReCa operators and independent Traders. Its lineage begins with a 1964 cash-and-carry store in Mülheim an der Ruhr, while the present METRO AG emerged from the 2017 demerger that separated wholesale from CECONOMY. By the 17 August 2026 evidence cutoff, METRO remained a German stock corporation but had been delisted from Frankfurt since April 2025. Control is concentrated through EP Global Commerce and the wider EP Group structure. METRO earns primarily by supplying food and related goods through stores, Food Service Distribution, and digital channels; delivery expansion is central to current growth. Its professional customers are served across more than 30 countries. Steffen Greubel leads execution, while a co-determined Supervisory Board oversees management. The strategic advantage is the connected store-delivery-digital network; the core constraints are demand volatility, currency effects, transformation execution, sourcing, and logistics.

Boundary and current status: company profile and the H1 2025/26 report.

METRO’s defining historical arc is not simple expansion: it moved from a self-service wholesale innovation into a broad retail conglomerate and then deliberately back toward professional wholesale. The 2017 demerger created the present corporate boundary, and the later sale of Real plus sCore strategy sharpened the group around multichannel food wholesale.

The first store opened in Mülheim an der Ruhr in 1964 for business customers who selected goods, paid directly, and transported purchases themselves. METRO identifies Otto Beisheim and Wilhelm Schmidt-Ruthenbeck as founders whose entrepreneurial influence still features in company history. International expansion followed quickly, while the 1990s brought retail holdings and a much broader group structure.

Milestones are documented in METRO’s company history and the delisting record.

Why does the 2017 split define today’s METRO?

The legal entity behind today’s wholesale group was the absorbing company in the 2017 demerger, while the former METRO AG became CECONOMY AG. That boundary prevents old consumer-electronics operations from being mistaken for current METRO.

• Wholesale became the independent strategic core.
• CECONOMY retained the former METRO AG lineage.
• Current group reporting follows the new METRO AG boundary.

The entity transition is set out in the 2016/17 report.

METRO frames its direction through a stated ambition and customer proposition rather than relying on one formal mission-and-vision formula. Its corporate pages emphasize leadership in food wholesale, success alongside HoReCa and Trader customers, and a responsibility approach that seeks to balance economic, environmental, and social objectives.

The customer-facing positioning, “We redefine what wholesale can do for you,” fits the operating shift from a place where businesses collect stock to a connected service system that can also deliver, source, digitize ordering, and support restaurant or trader operations. The strategic test is therefore practical: does METRO make professional customers more effective while improving its own productivity and profitability?

Values are expressed through operating principles rather than a single enumerated corporate-values list. The company links sustainability to its business principles and says its human-rights declaration anchors respect for people and environmental concerns in both its operations and supply chain. That matters because wholesale scale creates leverage not only over price and availability, but also over supplier standards, product quality, and working practices.

The evidence also qualifies the aspiration. In H1 2025/26, METRO reported that transformation in Germany was depressing sales and earnings in the short term. A purpose centered on professional-customer success therefore has to coexist with assortment, pricing, network, and cost changes that can create friction while the model is being rebuilt.

Direction and responsibility are described on the company profile and human-rights approach.

METRO is shareholder-owned, but control is now highly concentrated. The H1 2025/26 report states that EP Global Commerce GmbH directly held 68.6% based on votes registered at the latest AGM and identifies Daniel Křetínský as ultimate controlling party under IAS 24.13; Frankfurt delisting had already ended public-market trading.

Legal ownership, accounting control, and board management are distinct. EPGC is the direct shareholder named in the interim report; EP Group entities consolidate METRO from 1 April 2025; and Křetínský is identified as the ultimate controlling party. Patrik Tkáč has significant indirect EPGC interests and a voting-rights agreement with Křetínský. None of that turns the Management Board into the legal owner: it remains the executive organ of METRO AG.

Co-determination remains a meaningful counterweight within formal oversight. METRO’s Supervisory Board has ten shareholder representatives and ten employee representatives. Its chairman, Roman Šilha, is also Head of Mergers and Acquisitions at EP Global Commerce a.s. and VESA Equity Investment, connecting the controlling-owner ecosystem directly with board leadership while preserving the statutory employee representation structure.

Delivery changes METRO from a destination wholesaler into a replenishment partner embedded in a customer’s operating rhythm. It is already the fastest-growing major channel: FY 2024/25 delivery sales rose 14% to about €9 billion, and Q3 2025/26 delivery sales increased 8.3% in local currency to €2.5 billion.

This matters economically because a restaurant or caterer often needs frequent, predictable, temperature-controlled supply rather than occasional bulk collection. Delivery can deepen the relationship, increase METRO’s share of a customer’s purchasing basket, and make product availability and route density more consequential. It also makes network design, warehouse throughput, last-mile costs, and order quality more important than in the classic cash-and-carry model.

The mix is not a claim that stores are disappearing. They remain the largest sales base and act as assortment, sourcing, pickup, and—in 524 locations—out-of-store delivery infrastructure. The strategic shift is that METRO increasingly asks one network to support both self-service and delivery, while dedicated FSD companies and depots extend reach where a warehouse-store format is less suitable.

METRO’s operating model combines procurement scale with localized professional assortments, physical inventory, delivery logistics, and digital ordering. The principal payer is the professional customer buying goods; stores and FSD generate the bulk of group sales, while METRO MARKETS, DISH, property, sourcing, technology, and shared services support or extend the core wholesale proposition.

Inputs start with supplier relationships, food and non-food merchandise, own brands, fresh-product expertise, real estate, warehousing, transport, technology, and employees. Central capabilities include procurement and quality assurance, while country operations adapt ranges and commercial terms to local demand. The output is not merely product movement: METRO sells availability, breadth, purchasing convenience, and a reliable replenishment system to businesses whose own service depends on stock being ready when needed.

The operating sequence follows METRO’s business-model page.

The economics hinge on merchandise margin and operating efficiency at very large sales volumes. METRO’s cost leadership efforts target procurement and material expense, IT standardization, organization, and network productivity. In a wholesale model with high merchandise throughput, small improvements in sourcing, handling, route density, stock productivity, or overhead can materially change earnings without changing the customer proposition.

METRO AG itself is the central management holding rather than the store operator in every country. This distinction matters when reading legal-entity accounts: group economics belong to the consolidated METRO group, while the parent also performs central management, licensing, financing, governance, and service functions for operating subsidiaries.

METRO’s core demand comes from professional operators, not household consumers. HoReCa customers include hotels, restaurants, caterers, bars, cafés, and canteens; Traders include independent grocers and kiosks. The chooser, buyer, user, and payer can be the same owner-manager in a small business or separate procurement and kitchen roles in larger accounts.

What does a HoReCa customer need?

Restaurants, hotels, caterers, cafés, bars, and canteens need dependable food supply, ultra-fresh assortment, professional non-food equipment, flexible pickup or delivery, and increasingly digital ordering and operating tools.

What does an independent Trader need?

Small grocers and kiosks need resale-ready assortments, competitive purchasing economics, stock availability, and in selected markets franchise support that can improve merchandising, store format, and customer proposition.

The customer distinction and small-business emphasis come from the company profile.

Acquisition and selling happen through several routes rather than a single marketing funnel. Large stores create local physical reach and product discovery; field and account sales support delivery relationships; digital ordering reduces friction for repeat purchases; METRO MARKETS broadens professional equipment online; and DISH adds hospitality software. In Trader markets, franchise formats can make METRO part of the retailer’s commercial system rather than only its upstream supplier.

Retention is therefore operational more than promotional. A professional customer returns when the right product is available, delivery arrives as promised, pricing remains workable, and ordering fits the business workflow. METRO’s FY 2024/25 strategic indicators—97% stock availability, a 26% own-brand sales share, and 77% sales from strategic customers—show which levers management itself watches when measuring the quality of that relationship.

Competition should be defined market by market: the relevant decision is which supplier a professional food or hospitality operator uses for recurring food, fresh, non-food, pickup, or delivery needs. Transgourmet, Bidfood, Sysco, and Sligro overlap meaningfully, but their geographic footprints and channel mixes differ enough that none is a perfect group-wide proxy.

Transgourmet is the clearest European multichannel analogue because it combines cash-and-carry and wholesale supply in several METRO markets. Bidcorp’s Bidfood businesses are more delivery-led and locally managed. Sligro combines self-service and delivery in a narrower Benelux footprint. Sysco is a much larger foodservice distributor with substantial international reach, but its route-to-market is more distribution-centric than METRO’s store-heavy heritage.

Substitutes widen the competitive field further. A restaurant can split purchasing among local fresh specialists, direct manufacturers, retail supermarkets, online marketplaces, and national distributors. METRO’s defense is therefore not simply lower price; it is the combined value of professional assortment, procurement scale, own brands, immediate pickup, scheduled delivery, digital ordering, and local commercial knowledge. The relative importance of each differs sharply by country and customer size.

METRO’s near-term growth agenda is concentrated rather than diffuse: expand delivery, deepen strategic-customer purchasing, push ultra-fresh and own-brand assortment, grow digital channels, transform Germany, and remove structural cost. The July 2026 outlook still called for 3%–6% currency- and portfolio-adjusted sales growth, but with a tendency toward the lower end.

Delivery is the clearest implemented engine. In H1 2025/26, delivery sales grew 11.5% in local currency while store-based and other business grew 0.6%. Management also designated 2025/26 the “Year of Ultra Fresh” after ultra-fresh sales had risen from €5 billion in FY 2021 to €8 billion in FY 2025; the additional €1 billion ambition for 2025/26 is a company target, not an achieved result.

Efficiency is the second half of the strategy. METRO reported €100 million of savings in the first year of its Cost Leadership Programme and targets €300 million of annual savings from FY 2027/28. That target depends on IT standardization, centralized material expenses, organizational measures, and successful network changes; it should not be treated as already banked economics.

Current guidance also shows the tension between growth and transformation. Q3 reported sales rose 2.8% to €8.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA reached €362 million, but management retained a lower-end bias within the original annual sales-growth range. Growth quality therefore depends on whether delivery and West/East momentum can outweigh currency pressure and the short-term disruption of remaking Germany.

Progress, targets, and current guidance are reported in the FY 2024/25 update and July 2026 update.

Execution sits with a four-member Management Board led by Chairman Steffen Greubel; oversight sits with a 20-member co-determined Supervisory Board chaired by Roman Šilha. The division of responsibilities maps closely to METRO’s transformation priorities: customer and supply chain, country operations and people, finance and digital infrastructure, plus strategy and Germany.

Greubel has chaired the Management Board since May 2021 and is appointed through 31 December 2030. His background includes Würth and McKinsey’s European retail and consumer-goods practice. Deruyter brings direct METRO FSD experience, including leadership of Pro à Pro; Giesen brings multinational operations, pricing, and people-management experience from BP/Aral; Riegger’s background includes finance leadership at Aldi Süd USA and Lidl USA.

The Supervisory Board’s equal shareholder-employee composition is especially material after delisting because public-market discipline has changed while statutory board oversight remains. Šilha’s EPGC role makes ownership influence visible at the chair level, while employee representatives occupy half of the board. Oversight and execution therefore intersect with concentrated control, but they are not the same function.

Three dependencies are especially material: stable professional-customer demand and currencies, reliable sourcing and fulfillment, and disciplined transformation execution. They arise directly from METRO’s model. More delivery increases customer intimacy but also makes logistics performance more critical; international breadth diversifies demand but exposes reported results to currency and country-specific disruption.

Current demand and transformation pressures are described in the July 2026 update; supply-chain and quality responsibilities are mapped on the Management Board.

METRO today is best understood as a controlled, non-listed international wholesaler rebuilding the economics of cash-and-carry around delivery and digital service. Its identity comes from professional customers; its strategic tension is to increase convenience and share of wallet while making a large physical network more productive under concentrated ownership.

What is METRO’s durable core?

Professional food wholesale remains the anchor: procurement scale, local assortment, fresh expertise, stores, depots, and specialist delivery operations combine around HoReCa and Trader demand.

What is changing fastest?

Delivery is becoming the principal growth lever, while digital ordering, METRO MARKETS, DISH, own brands, and ultra-fresh categories extend the customer relationship beyond store visits.

What determines the next phase?

Execution will depend on balancing customer service with network transformation, cost discipline, currency and demand volatility, responsible sourcing, and the governance realities of concentrated EP-linked control.

This synthesis connects METRO’s latest July 2026 update with the control boundary in its H1 2025/26 report.