PARIS: French supermarket group Casino said Monday its third quarter sales were flat, with currency effects washing out gains internationally while accounting changes boosted results at home.
Sales rose 0.1 percent to 11.77 billion euros ($16 billion) in the period from July through September compared to the third quarter last year, beating market expectations of 11.67 billion.
Excluding the integration of its upscale supermarket chain in France, Monoprix, and its Brazilian chain GPA, sales growth excluding petrol came in at 6.6 percent.
Finance director Antoine Giscard d'Estaing called it the best improvement in almost two years during a conference call.
GPA continued to record strong growth of 12 percent during the quarter.
However a negative effect of 16.5 percent on exchange rates led to a 5.2 percent in the value of international sales to 6.73 percent.
Sales in France rebounded 8.1 percent, but this was mostly due to fully incorporating Monoprix into its results.
Without Monoprix, sales declined by 2.9 percent, although Giscard d'Estaing noted this was an improvement from the 3.3 percent drop recorded in the second quarter.
The company also pointed to the beginning of a turnaround in its hypermarkets thanks to the campaign to lower prices, with customer traffic up 1.3 percent and sales volume rising 1.5 percent.
While hypermarket sales were down 4.4 percent in the quarter, this was considerably lower than the 10.1 and 11.7 percent drops recorded in the previous quarters.
Giscard d'Estaing expressed hope for a return to growth in France at the end of this year or the beginning of 2014.
For the first six months of the year, Casino reported a net profit of 594 million euros compared to 125 million euros a year earlier, mainly due to consolidation effects.
Comments
Comments are closed.