PARIS (Reuters) – Casino is sanctioned on the stock market after reporting on Thursday a slowdown in the growth of its turnover in the first quarter, penalized by a still difficult situation in its supermarkets and hypermarkets in France.
On the Paris Stock Exchange, Casino shares dropped nearly 12% at 11:55 a.m., after losing up to 15% during the morning, marking the largest drop in the SBF 120.
For Barclays analysts, the results of the first quarter are mixed and the persistent weakness in the super- and hypermarkets is weighing on profitability.
Over the past quarter, Casino’s revenue reached 5.44 billion euros, up 1% like-for-like compared to an increase of 4.4% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Its revenues fell by 4.6% in France over the period, while they rose by 9.5% in Latin America where Casino controls the Brazilian Grupo Pao de Acucar.
In its supermarkets and hypermarkets in France, revenues fell by almost 10%.
“The context remained more difficult in Casino supermarkets and hypermarkets, which have been subject to significant price readjustment measures since the start of the year”, underlines Casino.
DISPOSAL PLAN
The group hopes that the price cuts – of 5% to 10% – taken in the context of inflation will help boost customer traffic, sales volumes and turnover in these department stores.
“Our goal is to stop the loss of market share and drive customer traffic,” David Lubek, chief financial officer, told analysts.
The distribution group, which sold assets to reduce its debt, wants to sell 4.5 billion euros in assets by the end of the year.
Casino indicates that at the end of the first quarter, asset disposals reached 4.2 billion euros.
These disposals include the sale of an 18.8% stake in the Brazilian supermarket chain Assaí for 723 million euros and the sale of assets in France.
At the end of March, Casino’s net debt in France amounted to 4.5 billion euros, stable compared to the end of the first quarter of 2022.
The group also intends to advance on the decline in stocks.
Last month, the Czech businessman Daniel Křetínský offered to take control of Casino via a capital increase of 1.1 billion euros, coming suddenly to compete with the proposed merger between the distributor and Teract.
(Report Dominique Vidalon, Matthieu Protard, edited by Kate Entringer)
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