Decent third quarter for Carrefour

French retail group Carrefour has published decent results for its third quarter, with an improved performance in France which soothed the analysts. Belgian results have remained stable.

Strong supermarkets

With a 21.8 billion euro turnover in the third quarter, Carrefour slightly outperformed analysts’ expectations. French like-for-like turnover remained relatively stable, despite a challenging economic background. Its hypermarkets still struggle, but the 1 % turnover drop is much better than the hypermarkets’ performance in the past few quarters. Carrefour’s supermarkets (+ 3.7 %) and convenience stores (+ 3.2 %) performed very well.

The transformation plan for the acquired Dia stores is still in full swing: 123 stores re-opened their doors in the third quarter, bringing the total to 535 by the end of the quarter. Everything should be finalized by the end of the year.

Status quo in Belgium

Belgian like-for-like turnover remained level at 1.064 billion euro, bringing the three quarters’ total to 3.197 billion euro, a 0.2 % increase. Looking at its European performances, Carrefour did well in Italy (+ 2.2 %), Spain (+ 1 %) and Romania, while Poland slumped slightly. Latin America boomed, with a 12.4 % turnover increase in Brazil and an astonishing 18 % increase in Argentina. China is Carrefour Asia’s problem area with a 7.8 % turnover dip, while Taiwan grew 3.3 %.

Carrefour feels these results validate its strategy: to go for a multiformat approach, with more emphasis on food. The retailer will continue its investments in several areas: expansion, store modernization, digital transformation, supply chain and IT infrastructure improvement.