7-Eleven to more than double North American store counts

Tokyo -- A Sunday report by Bloomberg said that 7-Eleven parent Seven & I Holdings Co. is planning more acquisitions here and may more than double the number of c-store stores it operates in North America.



The company “could increase our store number to 20,000 or even 30,000 [in North America],” chairman Toshifumi Suzuki told Bloomberg in an interview. 7-Eleven currently has more than 8,000 convenience stores in North America.



No time-frame for the planned expansion has been defined.



Seven & I has been acquiring smaller c-store chains in the U.S., adding more than 650 units in North America in the last fiscal year.



“There will be a huge potential in expansion in large cities in the U.S.,” Dairo Murata, analyst at JPMorgan Securities Japan Co., told Bloomberg.