Our focus in the American market is centered on providing service to first, second and third generation Mexican consumers from the states of California, Nevada and Arizona under the same premise of offering the best price, assortment and comfort. Our product offering is focused on high quality groceries and perishable items in stores with an average of 3,700 square meters of sales space. Although there are other regional participants, today we are the largest food retailer in the southeastern United States in this market niche. Thanks to the rapid growth of the Hispanic population in these states, the outlook for us is highly encouraging.

During the fiscal year reported, we purchased eight stores in Los Angeles and inaugurated one more, bringing our presence in the United States to a total of 45 units today. The strategy that we have put into operation in this segment is to take advantage of opportunities that arise in our area of influence to purchase existing stores or grow organically by six stores per year.

Our supermarket operations in the United States registered sales equivalent to $13,179 million pesos in 2012, 13% above the prior year, that represented 21% of the consolidated revenues of the Group. These sales generated EBITDA of $489 million pesos, a level 20.9% higher than the amount obtained in the preceding fiscal year, and represented 12% of consolidated EBITDA of the Group.

With the objective of providing our suppliers with a single location for receiving merchandise, we opened our first distribution center in the United States in 2011. This step enabled us to optimize our operations in that country and to handle 50% of total purchases in 2012 for our retail business in the United States.