Retailer Carrefour’s third-quarter sales accelerate, keeps goals under overhaul plan

PARIS (Reuters) – Carrefour , Europe’s largest retailer, said on Wednesday it achieved record 8.4% like-for-like sales growth in the third quarter, reflecting a stronger performance in its key markets of France, Spain and Brazil.

Carrefour added it was well on track with a strategic overhaul plan aimed at boosting earnings and sales, and that it was sticking with all its targets under the plan.

In France alone, Carrefour’s large hypermarkets accelerated the good momentum that started after an easing of an initial lockdown in May, to grow by 2.5.% after a 3.6% fall in the second quarter.

Third-quarter group sales came to 19.69 billion euros ($23.27 billion).

Growth reached 8.4 percent on a like-for-like basis – excluding fuel and calendar effects – against 6.3% in the second quarter. This was Carrefour’s best quarterly performance in at least 20 years.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)