Casino enjoys positive second quarter
France: improvement at Géant hypermarkets aids second quarter
Casino highlighted the progress it was making in its home market. Although organic sales contracted by 0.2% during the second quarter, this was an improvement over the 1.4% contraction in the retailer’s first quarter. The second quarter performance was aided by growth at its Géant hypermarkets, where same-store sales rose by 2.1%, excluding petrol, buoyed by strength across the product range, with food sales growing by 3% and non-food volumes up by 3.5%.
Elsewhere in its operations in France, Casino said that at its supermarkets ‘traffic was positive’, aided by the implementation of price cuts, while at Monoprix ‘sales remained almost stable’ and convenience stores ‘recorded a sequential improvement’. Franprix-Leader Price remained the retailer’s main issue. Although ‘organic sales improved sequentially’, showing a contraction in 2.9% in the second quarter versus a contraction of 5.3% in the first, affected by the price cuts that had been implemented, they had helped to turn traffic positive in June.
International operations: organic growth at 12%
Casino said that in its international operations, organic sales were ‘very strong’ at 12%. In Latin America organic growth excluding petrol stood at 13.7%, while in Asia it was 4.3%. The retailer’s results in Latin America were driven by its performance in Brazil, where its GPA subsidiary saw same-store sales grow 9.8%, with its food banners underperforming slightly versus its non-food stores. GPA’s food banners were boosted by ‘the strong performance of the supermarkets and very strong performance of Assai’. At Colombia-based Exito, Casino said that organic growth was positive, aided by promotions and the addition of new stores in the second quarter.
In Asia, organic sales were up by 5.1%, with Big C in Thailand seeing sequential improvements in organic growth in the second quarter, while in Vietnam organic sales were up 9.4% as it ‘continued to expand at a robust pace’.
Strong growth in e-commerce division
Following on from the announcement that it was establishing a subsidiary that would own all its e-commerce operations, Casino will be pleased with the performance of its online operations. The retailer said that volume sales grew 23.9% at Cdiscount, aided by strong growth at its marketplace, ‘where business grew by 85%’, while at Nova Pontocom value sales grew by 37.5%, while volume rose by 44.1%.
source: RetailAnalysis
