Carrefour posts first sales decline in euros

In just nine months, Romania became one of the countries where Carrefour witnessed the steepest sales declines, in stores more than one year old, after in 2008 it led in the ranking of the biggest organic growth rates globally together with Argentina and Brazil.

The French retailer registered 809m-euro sales in the first nine months on the Romanian market, with 22 hypermarkets and 24 supermarkets operating at the end of the period, according to company data.

In the past year, during which the company has further expanded at a fast rate adding 12 stores overall, of which 7 hypermarkets, consolidated sales in euros have started following a downward trend for the first time since the company entered the Romanian market, in 2002.

Sales in euros dropped by 1.2% in the first nine months of the year compared with a year ago, with the decline in Carrefour Romania's stores more than one year old amounting to 8%, according to the group's financial report. Sales in RON are still rising, though, with an increase of almost 15% being reported for the above-mentioned period, showing that network expansion could not wipe out the effect of RON decline against the euro.

Carrefour is the first food retailer operating in Romania that releases data on sales generated in the first nine months of 2009. Last year, Carrefour was the leader of the domestic hypermarket market, going beyond the 1bn-euro threshold in terms of sales for the first time.

The financial report also shows that unlike in previous years, the Romanian subsidiary leads in 2009 in the ranking of European companies with the biggest sales declines in stores more than one year old. By comparison, Carrefour Romania last year boasted the fastest organic growth rate of sales in Europe, of 6.5%. At group level, Carrefour reached 70.2bn-euro sales in the first nine months of the year, down 2.3% from the same period of 2008.

This year, Carrefour Romania gave up its travel agency unit it had brought domestically in mid-2007. This year, too, Carrefour was the first hypermarket chain that cut its sales area by giving up one of its locations of Braila. Instead, it resumed the expansion of former Artima network.

Carrefour Romania plans to add three new stores to its supermarket network by yearend.