Metro AG reported a narrower second-quarter loss than analysts estimated, helped by a stronger performance from its electronics and wholesale stores and an early Easter.
The loss was €40 million ($45 million) before interest, taxes and special items, beating the average projection of €54.8 million. Revenue at Germany’s biggest retailer was €14.37 billion in the three months through March, little changed from a year earlier, Metro said in a statement.
Chief executive officer Olaf Koch is expanding sales at Cash & Carry wholesale stores and Media-Saturn electronics outlets, and repositioning its Real food stores for profit growth. Düsseldorf-based Metro may also be once again seeking a buyer for its Galeria Kaufhof department stores, according to a report last week.
“The rigorous realignment of our sales lines and our successful efforts to tap new retail channels and formats are increasingly paying off, particularly at Metro Cash & Carry and Media-Saturn,” Koch said in the statement. “Both sales divisions are now experiencing sustained positive like-for-like sales growth.”
Shares of Metro have risen 29 per cent this year, as Koch has taken steps to divest underperforming divisions and modernise its stores. The shopping run-up to Easter’s fall in early April this year helped second-quarter sales compared with last year, when the holiday fell later, Barclays said in a 21-April note to clients.
At its big-box Real food stores, on 24 April, Metro took a €450-million write-down for acquisitions made in the 1990s and said that it plans to invest “extensively” in the coming years to modernise the business.
Bloomberg News, edited by ESM
