Casino fell sharply on the Paris Bourse on Wednesday, after abandoning its earnings targets for 2028 and refraining from setting a new outlook for 2024 due to the change of control in its shareholder base.

In view of the planned sale of its hypermarkets and supermarkets - which will be treated as discontinued operations pending their takeover by Les Mousquetaires and Auchan - the retailer believes that its forecasts for the 2023-2028 period, published last November, are now 'obsolete'.

In particular, the business plan called for Ebitda after rents of 912 million euros in France in 2028.

For the 2023 financial year, the Group's Ebitda after rents fell by 38% to 341 million euros, based on sales of nine billion euros, down 3.7%.

Ultimately, Casino posted a net loss, Group share, of 5.7 billion euros over the past year, as a result of asset impairment, deferred taxes and financial charges.

But it was above all the 3.1 billion euros in goodwill write-downs for GPA and Grupo Exito and operating losses incurred by its hyper/supermarkets that weighed most heavily on the accounts.

As a reminder, the financial restructuring of the company includes an injection of equity capital to the tune of 1.2 billion euros, in order to strengthen the group's liquidity.

The project will also involve the conversion of the majority of the company's debt into capital.

After having been booked lower at the start of the morning, and having lost almost 20% shortly before 10:00 am, the share price limited its losses to only around 6% at 10:20 am.

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