Carrefour sees French recovery speed up

21.11 billion euro
turnover

Carrefour has announced a group
turnover of 21.11 billion euro in the third trimester, 6.67 % lower than in
the same trimester last year – partly due to the group’s exit from Greece,
Columbia, Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey. Eliminating the turnover those
countries had, meant that its drop was limited to 1.3 %.

Removing gas sales and the calendar effect resulted in a like-for-like turnover growth of 3.5 %. France, still Carrefour’s most
important market, helped quite a bit: turnover grew 1.4 % to 10.15 billion
euro. The like-for-like sales increased in all of the group’s formats,
especially in convenience stores (+5.9 %) and in hypermarkets (+2 to 3 %)

“Our action plans are starting to work, especially in France, where our price image has improved
a lot”, said CEO Pierre-Jean Sivignon during a conference call. “In our
hypermarkets, food sales have been on the rise for the fourth quarter running.”

International growth, also in Belgium

Carrefour saw its like-for-like turnover increase 3.6 % outside of France,
but the exchange rates ruined that piece
of good news. Turnover
eventually dropped 3.8 % lower, at 10.96 billion euro. The biggest
organic growth can be found in Latin America (Brazil rose 8.8 % and Argentina
even soared 22.3 %) and somewhat to a lesser extent in Asia. China managed to grew for the second
quarter running, this time adding 4.7 %.

European sales outside of France
dropped 2.7 %, but Carrefour sees a few positives: Spain is showing signs
of stabilizing, dropping 1.8 % (on a like-for-like basis), while Italy has
managed to slow down the drop (- 3.9 %). Belgium had a like-for-like growth of 1.6 %.