Earnings Transcript for CA.PA - Q2 Fiscal Year 2017
Executives:
Alexandre Bompard - Chairman & CEO Pierre-Jean Sivignon - CFO
Analysts:
Maxime Mallet - Deutsche Bank Cedric Lecasble - Raymond James Arnaud Joly - Societe Generale Edouard Aubin - Morgan Stanley Andrew Gwynn - Exane Sreedhar Mahamkali - Macquarie Daniel Ekstein - UBS Bruno Monteyne - Bernstein David McCarthy - HSBC Andrew Porteous - HSBC
Alexandre Bompard:
Good evening, everyone. This is Alexandre Bompard, and I'm very pleased to be with you today to say a few words to introduce this call. After these few words, I will leave you with Pierre-Jean for the presentation of Carrefour Group's first half numbers. As you know, it has now been six weeks since I've taken over as CEO of Carrefour. Since then, I started visiting stores, logistic centers and e-commerce sites. I met the top executive of the Group, and I organized detailed business reviews of all of our operations. This allows me to start gaining a deep understanding of the Group, its culture and to learn more about its people, which is of extreme importance for me. I will continue this work in the coming weeks, notably by visiting the countries in which Carrefour is present. I've also have started working on constituting my management team and on the transformation plan of the Group. Six weeks is a short amount of time but it's enough time to confirm my initial impression that Carrefour is a great company with tremendous potential to further improve its performance. That's why I accepted with great enthusiasm the position that was offered to me. Carrefour has many strong assets. I will not list all of them, but let me name a few
Pierre-Jean Sivignon:
Thank you, Alexander. I am Pierre-Jean Sivignon, the CFO of Carrefour. I'm joined on this call by our Investor Relations team that is Mathilde, Anne-Sophie, Louis, and Alexander. Let us start on Slide number 3 with the key highlights of our first half performance. We posted solid sales growth of plus 6.2% this half and 2.1% on a like-for-like basis with net sales of €38.5 billion. This reflects continued expansion with 352 openings in the half, mainly geared towards convenience formats as well as the integration of 31 Eroski hypermarkets in Spain and 86 Billa supermarkets in Romania. This half provides another evidence of the continued rollout of our multi-format model. Our profitability decreased in the half, with EBITDA reaching €1.43 billion, down 1.2% at current exchange rates and 7% at constant exchange rates. The recurring income, recurring operating income is down 12.1% at current exchange rate and 21.5% at constant exchange rate, reaching €621 million. This represents, respectively, an EBITDA margin of 3.7% and a recurring operating margin of 1.6%. This growth in recurring operating income mainly reflects two key factors
Operator:
[Operation Instructions] We have a first question from Mr. Maxime Mallet from Deutsche Bank. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from Mr. Cedric Lecasble from Raymond James. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from Mr. Arnaud Joly from Societe Generale. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from Mr. Edouard Aubin from Morgan Stanley. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from Andrew Gwynn from Exane. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from Sreedhar Mahamkali from Macquarie. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from Mr. Daniel Ekstein from UBS. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from Mr. Bruno Monteyne from Bernstein. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Next question from David McCarthy from HSBC. Sir, please go ahead.
Operator:
Last question from Mr. Andrew Porteous from HSBC. Sir, please go ahead.
Pierre-Jean Sivignon:
Okay. I thank you very much for your time. And again, I leave it to you to contact the team to answer any questions you might have in addition to the one you've already asked. Thank you very much, and goodbye.
Operator:
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.
