Esteemed shareholders, business partners, and employees,

2024 was highlighted by both challenges and opportunities. At ŞOK Marketler, we focused on our goal of delivering quality products to our customers at the most affordable prices. Continuing our investments resolutely despite difficult conditions, we enjoyed the pride of fulfilling our responsibilities to our customers in every corner of Turkey as well as to our business partners and employees. We boosted our resilience while maintaining our steady growth.

As one of Turkey’s largest food retailers, we meet the needs of millions of customers each day with our store network covering 81 provinces. We are one of the largest contributors to the national economy and employment with new store openings and jobs created each year. We continued to open stores and create jobs in 2024. We embrace a business model aimed at social prosperity. Women constitute more than half of our employees and we are also among Turkey’s pioneering companies in this respect. At ŞOK Marketler, we believe in the importance of women’s empowerment for professional life and for the community and we center our hiring policy on this approach.

We observed a decline in our customers’ purchasing power in 2024. Developing competitive pricing policies became more critical than ever during this period. At ŞOK Marketler, we continued to contribute to customers’ budgets particularly in basic needs products with our “everyday low price” policy in 2024. We maintained the balance between affordable price and high quality in 2024 by investing in our deep-rooted private label brands such as Piyale, Mis, Mintax, Amigo, and Evin. We differentiated our brand not just with our pricing policy, but also with the trust we instilled in consumers. We will continue to support our growth in the period ahead by investing in our private label products.

Technological transformation is penetrating every aspect of retail. The digital habits of young people in particular accelerated the spread of e-commerce and fast delivery services. Our digitalization and innovation investments continued to be among the building blocks of our growth in 2024. Our “Cepte ŞOK” application with its redesigned interface, and our loyalty program “Win” which was launched in 2023, further simplified our customers’ shopping experience and earned their admiration. In addition to increasing customer satisfaction, these investments also boosted our operational efficiency. In the retail industry, it is critically important to quickly respond to the changing needs of customers and the market. To this end, our investments in digitalization will continue at the same pace in 2025.

As another initiative in 2024, we launched ŞOK 2.0 as our new store concept, which can be a trailblazer in Turkey’s contemporary retailing experience. Despite the rapid rise of e-commerce, we should remember that brick-and-mortar stores are being redefined as “experience spaces” and they play an important role in ensuring customer loyalty. Pursuant to this approach, we are expanding our ŞOK 2.0 store network as a way to offer a new experience space for our customers.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in 2023, ŞOK Marketler was among the companies delivering quickest and largest support to the region. In 2024, we continued to support our communities in the regions which were impacted by the earthquake. In addition to restoring the operations of our stores to pre-earthquake levels, we also became part of social solidarity by providing jobs to our citizens who were affected by the earthquake. As part of our “ŞOK’ta Ben de Varım (Count Me In)” project, we purchased products from women’s cooperatives in the earthquake region and supported the continuity of production and women’s employment in these regions. In partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Akbank, we launched the Supply Chain Financing Program in November to support the production processes of suppliers in the earthquake region.

In line with our sustainability vision, we carried out projects to improve our environmental, social, and economic impacts and we shared these projects in our sustainability report in 2024. Within the scope of our “Fair Agriculture from Farm to Table” project, we supported our farmers and local agricultural production while also managing to offer more affordable and healthier products to our customers.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my valued colleagues for their contributions to our success, our business partners for supporting our goals, our shareholders for their trust, and our customers for their loyalty and for motivating us to improve constantly. At ŞOK Marketler, we will continue to create value-added for our customers and our country with the same determination in accordance with our vision of being Turkey’s favorite food retail brand.

Respectfully,

Cengiz Solakoğlu

Chairman of the Board of Directors

ŞOK Marketler Tic. A.Ş.