Carrefour Brasil closed the first quarter of 2018 with consolidated gross sales, excluding gasoline, of R$12.3 billion (€2.92 billion), up 6.0% year on year.
The company noted that growth had occurred even in the context of strong and persistent food deflation.
Like-for-like (LFL) sales without gasoline were up 2.3% in the same period, thanks to a favourable calendar that included Easter. Excluding the calendar effect, same-store sales were 0.4% overall.
New Store Openings
The Easter period was marked by solid performance in both the Cash and Carry (Atacadão) and retail (Carrefour) business units, with a significant increase in the volume of seasonal items. This led to a 3.7% sales growth, as a result of new openings of both store formats, but with higher returns in the Cash & Carry model.
Carrefour Brasil Group opened four new stores in the Cash and Carry model in the first quarter of 2018. At the end of March, the retailer reached a total of 638 stores, of which 173 were Atacadão (including 23 wholesale).
In the year 2018, Carrefour Brasil Group plans to open 20 new Atacadão stores, 20 Express convenience stores and 10 new supermarket stores in the Market format.
Atacadão Banner
Atacadão’s gross sales increased by 5.7% to R$8.4 billion (€2.0 billion), of which 0.5% were like-for-like sales (1.4%, including the calendar effect).
Food deflation (-4.0% in the quarter) was still high in commodities, especially beans (-35.8%), sugar (-14.5%) and rice (-11.2%%), and thus temporarily limited Atacadão's sales growth, the retailer said.
The banner's expansion, which included 11 new stores and a wholesale delivery operation in 2017 and four new stores in Q1 2018, resulted in a 4.3% growth in sales.
The retailer said it expects to open 16 more stores in 2018 at consistent intervals throughout the year (with five to six stores expected for the second quarter).
Carrefour Brand
In the first three months of 2018, gross sales of the Carrefour brand, excluding gasoline, increased 6.7% to R$3.9 billion (€927.8 million), of which same-store sales rose by 0.1% (4.3% including the calendar effect).
Non-food sales continued to perform strongly in the quarter, with double-digit growth boosted by home appliances.
E-commerce was the fastest growing format within Carrefour (+103%) and accounted for 6.3% of sales without gasoline in Q1 2018, compared to just over 3% in the same period of 2017.
Although food categories remained affected by food deflation in the quarter, Easter sales performed well. Hypermarkets posted strong increases in sales volume (+4.1%) compared to Easter 2017 (which occurred in the second quarter), especially in chocolates, oils, wines and seasonal items (which experienced a growth of 10% or more).
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Branislav Pekic. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine
