Cnova, the e-commerce arm of retail giant Groupe Casino, has posted a 7.9% increase in fourth quarter net sales to €702.5 million.
Gross merchandise volume (GMV) was up 11.9% in organic terms in the quarter, the best quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2017, to amount to €1.2 billion. GMV growth for the quarter was driven by growing marketplace contribution (+3.8%), B2C services including travel, energy and mobile (+1.9%) and showrooms in Casino's Géant hypermarkets (2.6%), the company said.
The quarter also saw an acceleration of mobile traffic at the business, which now accounts for 65% of traffic share and a GMV share of 47%.
Cnova operates the Cdiscount web portal, which boasts 8.9 million active consumers, the group said.
As well as including key shopping periods such as Black Friday, Cdiscount's 20-year anniversary and Christmas, the period also saw CDiscount acquire Stootie, a peer-to-peer platform for personal and household services and 1001pneus, an online tyre vendor.
“Cnova confirmed in 2018 its commercial dynamism with 9.3% full-year organic GMV growth, a performance that improved significantly quarter over quarter to reach +11.9% for the fourth quarter," commented Emmanuel Grenier, Cnova chief executive.
Relevant Strategy
"These strong results illustrate the relevance of our strategy, which reinforce our positioning as the leading French e-merchant. Throughout the year, we focused on accelerating this strategic plan, striving to offer the best products and services to our customers at the most competitive prices while enhancing the customer’s experience all along the customer journey, on-line and off-line, both on desktop and mobile.
"We accelerated the development of our marketplace, launched various B2C services such as travel and ticketing and successfully initiated international sales. Off-line, the roll-out of showrooms in Géant hypermarkets accelerated."
In terms of the group's full-year performance, net sales amounted to €2.2 billion in 2018, organic growth of 5.1%.
GMV for the year saw organic growth of 9.3%, to reach €3.6 billion.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
