(News Bulletin 247) – The distributor, which has multiplied asset sales for several months, is considering selling another part of Assai’s capital.

While interest rates continue to climb, the Casino group continues its race to reduce debt. And it could still sell shares in Brazilian retailer Assai to bail out. On the stock market, the news does not really arouse the enthusiasm of investors, the action unscrewing by 8.57% this Wednesday around 11 a.m. Casino also pays a lowering of recommendation from JPMorgan, which goes from “neutral” to “underweight” on the file, with a target price of 6.50 euros against 20.50 euros previously.

Tuesday evening, the Saint-Etienne distributor announced that it was considering selling shares in Assai again for around 600 million dollars. An amount “which could, if necessary, be increased depending on market conditions”. “No final decision has been taken on this proposed transaction, which would take the form of a secondary placement,” the statement added.

The group currently holds 30.5% of the capital of the Brazilian distributor. Casino had already sold in December 10.44% of the capital of this wholesale specialist for professionals and individuals listed in São Paulo and New York. At the time, the operation had allowed him to recover 490.8 million euros.

Pressure from banks

Under pressure from its creditors, Casino is accelerating its asset disposals. Last October, Casino sold its renewable energy subsidiary GreenYellow, recovering through this operation already 600 million euros.

Casino has embarked on a vast asset disposal plan deemed “non-strategic” since 2018, which should allow it to garner 4.5 billion euros. Originally, this plan was to be completed in March 2021, but this deadline was pushed back with the pandemic to “no later than the end of 2023”. But Casino’s creditors are worried and growing impatient.

Its main banks (Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas and Natixis) are also calling for a refocusing on France, as revealed by BFM Business last October. They are thus pushing to sell the group’s activities in Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay. These were valued at around 2.5 billion euros, before the sale of part of Assai’s shares in December.

A debt that continues to grow

Despite a disposal plan now almost complete, Casino is having great difficulty reducing its debt. The restructuring of the group and the cascade of holdings put in place by Jean-Charles Naouri seems more and more inevitable. As of September 30, the group’s gross financial debt amounted to 9.8 billion euros (for a group that generates 33.6 billion euros in revenue in 2022 and 2.5 billion euros of EBITDA over 12 months as of September 30, the annual results not yet having been fully published). A year earlier (end of September 2021), the gross financial debt was 8.75 billion euros.

At the same time, the company had 1.92 billion euros in cash at the end of September 2022, compared to 1.72 billion euros at the end of September 2021. That is a net debt of 7.9 billion euros at the end of September, compared to 7 .03 billion euros at the end of September 2021.

In addition, two minority shareholders of Casino filed a complaint in February with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), accusing the management of the group of financial and stock market manipulation. In particular, they accuse Jean-Charles Naouri of having invoiced “services to all the subsidiaries of the group” via the company Euris, owned by the latter. One of the shareholders suspects that “the services invoiced are only a disguised means of raising cash which ultimately benefits Jean-Charles Naouri via the payment of dividends”.

On the stock market, the group has fallen by 10.86% since January and weighs only 940 million euros. In 5 years, the group (which notably owns Monoprix, Franprix and Cdiscount) has lost more than 80% of its value.