The findings are relevant to Indonesia’s rapidly expanding modern retail sector, where companies must balance store expansion, inventory, logistics, technology, staffing, and other operating costs while maintaining profitability. Alfamart provides an important case because its business scale continued to grow throughout the period studied, but its profitability did not increase consistently.
Alfamart’s Assets Continued to Grow
According to the financial data analyzed by Fahrurozi and Abdurrohim, Alfamart’s total assets increased from approximately Rp23.99 trillion in 2019 to Rp38.80 trillion in 2024. This represents cumulative asset growth of about 61.7 percent.
However, higher asset growth did not automatically translate into higher profitability. The company’s Return on Assets (ROA), a measure of how effectively a company uses its assets to generate profit, increased from 4.82 percent in 2019 to 10.47 percent in 2023 before falling to 8.62 percent in 2024.
The divergence was particularly visible in 2024. Alfamart’s assets grew 13.29 percent, while net income attributable to owners declined 7.51 percent. The results indicate that expanding the company’s asset base does not necessarily produce an immediate or proportional increase in earnings.
Researchers Examined Three Financial Factors
The researchers analyzed annual financial data from Alfamart for 2019–2024. The data came from the company’s annual reports published through the Indonesia Stock Exchange and PT Sumber Alfaria Trijaya Tbk’s official website.
Three factors were examined:
- Capital structure, measured using the Debt-to-Equity Ratio (DER), which compares debt with shareholders’ equity.
- Operational efficiency, measured using the Operating Expenses to Operating Income (BOPO) ratio.
- Asset growth, measured through changes in the company’s total assets.
Profitability was measured using Return on Assets (ROA). The researchers analyzed the financial data using descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and statistical tests to determine whether each factor was associated with profitability individually and collectively.
Operational Efficiency Shows Significant Relationship With Profitability
The strongest partial finding concerned operational efficiency.
The analysis found a negative coefficient of -2.853 for BOPO, with a p-value of 0.006. This means that, within the six-year dataset, higher operating expenses relative to operating income were associated with lower ROA.
For a large retail network, operating expenses can include costs related to stores, employees, utilities, leases, logistics, inventory handling, information systems, and promotional activities. When these expenses increase faster than operating income, the return generated from company assets can decline.
The researchers emphasize that this finding should not be interpreted as a call for indiscriminate cost-cutting. Some expenses may support customer service, future sales, business expansion, or long-term efficiency. Instead, companies need to distinguish between productive spending and recurring costs that do not generate proportionate income.
Capital Structure and Asset Growth Were Not Significant Individually
Capital structure, represented by DER, showed a positive but statistically insignificant relationship with ROA. The coefficient was 0.140, with a p-value of 0.735.
The result suggests that changes in the proportion of debt relative to equity did not independently explain changes in Alfamart’s profitability during the period. Debt can provide funding for store expansion, logistics, inventory, and digital development, but its financial benefit depends on whether the returns generated by those investments exceed financing costs.
Asset growth also showed a positive but statistically insignificant relationship with ROA, with a p-value of 0.652. The researchers noted that newly added stores, warehouses, inventory, equipment, and technology may require time before they generate their expected revenue and returns.
The Three Factors Matter When Considered Together
Although DER and asset growth were not statistically significant individually, the three variables showed a significant relationship with profitability when analyzed simultaneously. The F-test produced a value of 296.810 with a p-value of 0.003.
The result suggests that profitability is connected to the interaction between financing decisions, operating costs, and asset investment rather than to a single financial ratio.
As Nur Ahmad Fahrurozi and Abdurrohim of Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani explain in their analysis, expansion requires financing, newly financed assets must generate operating capacity, and profitability ultimately depends on whether operating income grows sufficiently to cover financing and operating expenses.
Implications for Retail Business Management
The findings provide several practical considerations for retail companies. Management can monitor store productivity, logistics expenses, inventory turnover, employee scheduling, utilities, promotional spending, and digital operating costs.
Expansion decisions can also be evaluated beyond the simple increase in total assets. Measures such as sales per store, asset turnover, payback periods, incremental operating margins, and distribution-capacity utilization can help determine whether new investments are generating sufficient economic returns.
However, the researchers caution that the findings should not be generalized broadly. The analysis was based on only six annual observations, covering 2019–2024, and the researchers identified multicollinearity between DER and BOPO. They therefore describe the results as preliminary, company-specific evidence rather than stable causal relationships applicable to the entire retail industry.
Author Profiles
Nur Ahmad Fahrurozi — Author and corresponding author, Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani. The journal article does not state his academic degree or provide a separate detailed field-of-expertise profile.
Abdurrohim — Co-author, Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani. The journal article does not state his academic degree or provide a separate detailed field-of-expertise profile.
Research Source
Article title: “Influence Capital Structure, Operational Efficiency, and Asset Growth to Profitability at PT Sumber Alfaria Trijaya Tbk (Alfamart) Period 2019–2024”
Authors: Nur Ahmad Fahrurozi and Abdurrohim
Journal: Formosa Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Publication: Volume 5, No. 9, 2026, pp. 3125–3142
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55927/fjmr.v5i9.194
Official journal website: https://journalfjmr.my.id/index.php/fjmr
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