Carrefour raises profits at 125.6% and strengthens focus on balanced expansion

Sao Paulo-the Carrefour Group presented in the third quarter of this year growth of 125.6% of net income, to R, and 5.3% $562 million in gross sales, driven by the store openings. The company has strengthened its focus on ' balanced ' business expansion against the competitor Grupo Pão de Açúcar (GPA), which has focused the opening in the atacarejo flag.
The strategy, according to the CEO of Carrefour in Brazil, Noël Prioux, since mira a scenario of economic recovery, when the company could capture the benefits of the investment in the expansion of Atacadão, Carrefour Express-convenience-model, and the recent release of e-commerce. "We expect the economic environment to continue improving gradually in coming quarters, when we can see the benefits of our continued expansion, both of Atacadão as Carrefour Express," he said.
In the last 12 months, the Group has opened 72 new stores, and flag 16 Atacadão and 53 Express. With the openings, the sales area has been extended to 6.2%. In addition to the focus on expansion of operations, the Executive stressed the continuity of initiatives for productivity gains and efficiency in all the Group's businesses.
The expressive growth of net profit in the quarter occurred mostly by non-recurring tax credits. During the period, were recognized ICMS credits-ST R $750 million in total. Discounted the value some extraordinary expenses recorded in the period, other operating income and expenses amounted to R $401 million. Excluding the amount, the profit would have been much smaller, with expansion of only 17.5%, compared to the previous year.
In the first nine months of the year, net income totaled R $1.002 billion, 56.8% more than the amount registered in the same interval last year. Excluding the non-recurring income and expenses the value falls to R $793 million, with a high of 14.6%.
About gross sales, the company registered growth of 5.3% in July to September, billing R $12.9 billion. The result was driven largely by the openings of new operations, since in same store basis (which considers only open units in the last 12 months) high was only 1.1%. To the command of the group, the performance was positive, considering the challenging framework. "We had a strong result in a scenario marked by the sharp drop in the prices of food," said CFO of Carrefour, Sébastien Durchon, in Conference call with analysts held yesterday.
The growth of the period was driven by Atacadão. The flag of atacarejo presented a breakthrough of the gross sales of 5.6%, which amounted to R $8.5 billion. Already sales ' same ' stores advanced 1.6% against the same interval last year. According to the President of Atacadão, Roberto Mussnich, the advance was driven by the strong expansion of the network. "We opened eight stores in the year, of which four were in the third quarter," he said.
He stressed that the company, which was very impacted by deflation, managed to compensate for the negative effect with a consistent increase in the volume of products sold and the average ticket purchases.
The Carrefour retail (supermarkets, hypermarkets, convenience stores and e-commerce) registered a lower growth in the third quarter, from 5% in gross sales and 0.1% on the basis of ' same ' stores. In addition, the area saw a drop in gross margin, which fell 0.5 percentage point. The reduction took place, according to the company, the greater participation of e-commerce in the ' mix ' of formats, since the operation has a lower profit margin, and the growth of the share of electronic products, also with lower profitability.
In the Conference call, the company also highlighted the significant growth in the area of financial solutions, which grew 22.5%, reaching a turnover of R $4.93 billion. Helped to advance the start of the credit card operation Atacadão, whose implementation has ended completely in October. According to the company, have already been issued more than 474,000 flag cards, and the result has been a 15% increase in the average ticket users.