El Puerto de Liverpool, S.A.B. de C.V.

What it is

Liverpool is the largest chain of mid-to-upper-end department stores in Mexico. It operates 310 stores under the Liverpool and Suburbia names, 119 specialised boutiques and 29 shopping centres, and is one of the country’s leading credit-card issuers with more than 7.6 million cardholders.

The business has three engines: selling goods in stores and online, renting space in its Galerías malls, and lending to shoppers through its own store credit cards. The credit arm is what makes it more than a retailer.

Who owns it

Control sits with two founding families. The board is chaired within the Michel and Brémond families, who hold effective control through a two-tier share structure that concentrates voting power.

In plain terms, the company has full-voting shares (Series C1) and limited-voting shares (Series L), so the families steer big decisions even though outside investors own a large share of the economics. The structured data shows institutions holding only about 1.3% of the traded stock, leaving most of the public float in many small hands.

Who runs it

Enrique Güijosa is the chief executive (director general). He was previously the company’s finance chief, and moved up when Gonzalo Gallegos Martínez became the new finance director.

The board is chaired by Graciano Guichard González, a member of the controlling family, who took over on the retirement of long-time chairman Max David Michel. Madeleine Brémond serves as vice-chair, with three decades on the board.

The money, in plain words

Sales are growing steadily. Revenue rose from MXN 213.8bn (US$12.3 bn) to MXN 227.6bn (US$13.1bn) in FY2025, a gain of about 6.5% (our calculation).

It keeps about 7 centavos of profit from every peso of sales – a net profit margin of 7.3%, typical for a department store. For every peso owners put in, it earns roughly 10 back a year – a return on equity of 9.7% (our calculation: MXN 17.15bn (US$988 mn) profit on MXN 179.1bn (US$10.3 bn) equity).

The shares look cheap: investors pay about 8 pesos for each peso of yearly profit – a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.3, low. The dividend gives shareholders 2.9% a year on the share price.

The balance sheet is sturdy. It holds MXN 25.3bn (US$1.46bn) in cash against total debts of MXN 133.4bn (US$7.7 bn), and owns much of its store and mall property outright.

What it is doing now

The headline move is in the United States. In an all-cash deal valuing Nordstrom at about US$6.25bn, Liverpool and the Nordstrom family took the American chain private.

Liverpool now owns 49.9% of Nordstrom and the family 50.1%.

At home, growth is slowing. Güijosa warned that weak Mexican consumer spending and US tariff uncertainty – which has pushed up clothing and footwear costs – have caused a sharper slowdown than planned.

One sign already shows in the figures: net profit fell from MXN 23.2bn (US$1.3 bn) in FY2024 to MXN 17.15bn (US$988m) in FY2025, down about 26% (our calculation).

What to watch

• Whether the Nordstrom stake pays off or drains cash, given US retail’s troubles.
• Mexican shopper confidence, remittances and tariffs – the swing factors behind the profit drop.
• The credit arm: easy lending lifts sales but bad loans can bite in a downturn.

This is news, not investment advice.