Decent start for Metro in 2013

Once again operational profit

“In many countries spending power of our
customers is affected by the economic crisis and the coinciding cuts made by
governments. Still we have succeeded in raising our profits and keeping our
sales stable on a yearly basis”, says a satisfied CEO of Metro AG, Olaf Koch
(photo).

“This shows the changes we initiated on a broad
front are paying off. This is abundantly clear on our home market Germany,
were we saw sales on a comparable basis rise again”, said Koch triumphantly.

Metro announced an operation profit of 14
million euro: a big surprise, because analysts were predicting a loss of 9.1
million euro. Total sales did drop slightly (-0.9%) to 15.5 billion euro, but
that still is a decent performance in these times of crisis. In Germany, still
worth 40% of total company turnover, sales rose by 1%. In the rest of Western
Europe sales declined by 6.6%.

Media Markt and Saturn do well

Especially the electronics branch Media Saturn
performs well, with a rise in sales of 2% to 5.1 billion euro. In Germany Media
Markt and Saturn even had a growth of 5.1% and in Eastern Europe there was a
growth of no less than 8.1%, but in Western Europe however there was a decline of
2.6%. Media-Saturn is especially growing fast online: sales roses by a massive 60.6%
and at 281 million euro is worth 5% of total electro sales.

Metro Cash & Carry and Real are faring less
well: at Real the drop in sales was limited to -0.9% (to 2.6 billion euro), but Metro Cash & Carry has to take a hit of -2.8% (to 7.1 billion euro). Once
again it is Western Europe that takes the biggest hit (-9%), but sales also
dropped in Germany (-4.0%). Eastern European activities remained at the same level (-0.3%).