(News Bulletin 247) – The owner of the Gamm Vert, Jardiland and Boulangeries Louise brands published accounts in the red at the end of its financial year ending at the end of June 2023, weighed down by the costs linked to its IPO in August 2022.

The Teract distribution group (Gamm Vert, Jardiland, Boulangeries Louise), once interested in a merger with Casino, revealed on Thursday a net loss of 106.6 million euros for its staggered 2022/23 financial year, due to the cost of its IPO.

The group’s shares fell by 0.3% around 3:40 p.m. on the Paris Stock Exchange.

The accounts of Teract, 75% owned by the agro-industry giant InVivo, “are exceptionally impacted by the cost of access to the market, as part of the merger of InVivo Retail with the SPAC 2MX Organic”, according to a communicated Thursday.

Teract comes from the merger in 2022 between the distribution activity of the union of agricultural cooperatives InVivo and the financial investment vehicle launched by the trio Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari. The latter, a major franchisee of the Casino group, became general manager of Teract.

The “market access costs” resulted in a charge of 91.4 million euros, specifies Teract. The company, which makes most of its sales in garden centers (808.6 million euros out of 902.1 million in turnover for the annual financial year ended June 30, 2023) had twice lowered its forecasts for profitability, at the beginning of June then at the end of July.

A group open to alliances and acquisitions

Moez-Alexandre Zouari declared Thursday that Teract aims for 2023-24 “growth in its business volume” via in particular the “development of the buoyant bakery-snack market and the acceleration of the franchise model and own brands in garden centers”.

He specifies that Teract “remains open to common sense alliances and acquisitions whose positioning would prove relevant and complementary downstream with the InVivo group”.

Teract, which also operates the Delbard, Jardineries du Terroir and Noa brands, previously closed its annual financial year on September 30, but announced at the beginning of June that it would now do so on June 30 “for the sake of harmonization and integration” with the results of ‘InVivo.

The entity negotiated for several months to integrate the French activity of the Casino distributor, before throwing in the towel at the beginning of June. The Niel-Pigasse-Zouari trio, also for a time interested in the takeover of Casino, ultimately did not submit an offer, leaving Czech billionaires Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, backed by the British fund Attestor, the only candidates for the takeover. of Casino.

(With AFP)