Groupe Casino is continuing to streamline its store count, with the announcement yesterday that it has completed the sale of three hypermarkets, 11 Casino supermarkets and 16 Leader Price stores, for a combined €58 million.
And as with previous store sell-offs by the group, the move is likely to embolden its rivals... except, perhaps, Carrefour.
Stronger Leclerc
The latest sell off sees a hypermarket in Dole, near the Swiss border, to E. Leclerc, the current market leader in France, which recently hit a record high of 21.9% market share, according to Kantar data (for P05 2019), putting it firmly ahead of closest rival Carrefour (19.2%).
Les Mousquetaires, which runs the Intermarché banner, picks up hypermarkets in Nevers and Montauban, a move which is likely to embolden its 15.2% market share.
Elsewhere, Lidl, which currently holds 5.9% market share in France, has acquired a total of 27 stores as part of the deal – a sign of the discounter's growing aspirations.
Continuous Process
The latest sale isn't alone either, with Casino clearly eager to shed itself of underperforming stores in order to clear its debt levels. It has also outlined its intention to restructure its profitable Latin American business, and clearly sees little point in retaining less profitable outlets at home.
At the start of June, it announced plans to sell a hypermarket in Barberey-Saint-Sulpice to a Leclerc member and five stores (four Casino Supermarkets and a Leader Price) to Les Mousquetaires, for €18.3 million.
In May, it completed the sale of three hypermarkets, in Castelnaudary, Anglet and Castres to Leclerc members, for a total of €38 million.
The previous month, in April, it announced an agreement to sell a hypermarket in Carcassonne to a Leclerc member, a hypermarket in Château d'Olonne to an independent operator that plans to run the business as a Systeme U, and two Leader Price stores to Lidl.
Carrefour, Leclerc's closest rival, has remained relatively quiet during the sell-off process; no surprise given the retailer is in the midst of trying to optimise its own hypermarket portfolio.
Major Deals
As well as these one-off deals, Casino has also penned a couple of major sell-offs in recent months: April saw it sign a deal with Apollo Global Management to sell 12 Géant hypermarket, 20 Monoprix and Casino properties, for a deal that could be worth €470 million in time.
And in March, it completed the sale of 26 hypermarkets and supermarkets to Fortress Investment Group for €501 million, of which it has already received €392 million.
That particular sale enabled the group to reach its initial target of €1.5 billion in non-strategic asset disposals, upon which it promptly raised its target to €2.5 billion.
Meaning, in other words, that the 'great sell-off' is likely to show no signs of stopping just yet, meaning Leclerc and others – particularly Lidl – can embolden their portfolios and assert their authority more in the French market.
Once this process is completed, the French retail landscape could have a very different topography.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
