Fawaz A Alhokair & Company, a Saudi fashion retailer operating brands including Gap and Mango, plans to open 400 stores over the course of 2014, Rob Cass, strategy and investor relations director at the company told MEED at the sidelines of a financial conference.

“We’re adding about 200 stores a year for the next five years in Saudi [Arabia] on our existing store footprint, and will be adding 200 stores internationally this year. We’re adding 100-150 internationally for the next four years,” he said.

The company, which has a market capitalisation of about $5bn, currently operates in 20 countries and is looking to expand into new markets, such as the US and the UK. In February, the firm acquired Spanish clothing retailer Blanco for €11m ($15.3m).

“We’re looking at brands that are in growth areas. When you work with well-known brands, you reach a certain point at which you can scale up internationally quite easily. We’re creating 12,000 jobs, corresponding to an average of four jobs a day,” said Cass.

“We’ll have in the next five years a large accumulative cash flow so we’ll be able to buy more assets in future. That is our next strategy beyond 2018. Our target percentage of sales coming from further acquisitions is 10-20 per cent of total sales of SR12bn ($3.2bn), which would represent SR1.5bn to SR2.5bn in incremental sales.”

He added the company’s non-listed business is looking to open eight malls in Saudi Arabia in areas of Riyadh and Jeddah that are currently under development.