Carrefour sees recovery on home territory
French sales up across fourth quarter
Carrefour has reported stronger sales in France across the fourth quarter of 2004 as it sees the impact of strategies to tackle stiff competition on its home territory.
The world’s second biggest retailer has reported full year sales growth of 4.2 per cent to €40,022m for 2004 as a whole, with sales outside France up 8.3 per cent. Like-for-like sales declined by 1 per cent.
In the three months to the end of December, total sales were €10,943m, with like-for-likes up 0.6 per cent.
Carrefour said that it has continued to strengthen its pricing position in France, ending the year with almost all its hypermarkets number one or number two on price in their local catchment area. A decision to accelerate investments in price cutting in the fourth quarter increased deflationary pressure, with average spend remaining negative.
However, customer numbers improved significantly, more-or-less flat over the quarter compared to a 2.6 per cent decline over the first nine months of 2004. Overall, French hypermarket like-for-likes, including petrol, were down 0.1 per cent across the quarter compared to a 3.6 per cent decline over the first nine months.
[img r]carrefourpoland.jpg[/img]Outside France, sales growth remained “robust” despite further investment in discounting and tough comparatives. Carrefour said: “The success of our commercial strategy, based on continual and substantial price rollbacks, can again be seen across all our zones in particular in the performance of Spanish hypermarkets, Greece, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and hard discount.”
Across the year, Carrefour opened 934 new stores worldwide, including 44 hypermarkets, 107 supermarkets, 554 hard discount stores and 225 convenience stores. The group now have 11,080 stores worldwide.
