UPDATE 1-Russia's Magnit sales soar in March on new shops

MOSCOW, April 12 (Reuters) - Russian food retailer Magnit said its sales growth accelerated in March after it added twice as many new outlets as in February, but has so far failed to reverse customer outflows from mature stores.

Net retail sales rose by 31.5 percent in rouble terms, year-on-year, to 17.76 billion roubles ($605.7 million) after a 28 percent rise in February, Magnit said in a Monday statement.

The company opened 47 stores, compared with 24 additions in the previous period.

Like-for-like sales rose 2.86 percent in the first quarter on the back of a 3.43 percent increase in the average purchase size, while the number of transactions was down 0.60 percent.

Magnit, operator of a rapidly expanding network of hypermarkets and smaller local discount grocery stores, has seen signs of an outflow of customers from mature stores due to what analysts called a wrong pricing policy.

The company started to lower prices at the end of last year and pledged to keep cutting them in 2010 to stop price-conscious customers fleeing its stores.

Its rival X5 Retail Group reported on Friday a 7 percent rise in first-quarter like-for-like sales, in line with the previous period.
(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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