Casino - comment

As always with Casino, a lot to digest with their results released this morning. Firstly, they would NOT have breached their covenants in September even if they did not get an advance of the GreenYellow proceeds from Farallon. Casino used the proceeds to buy back €55m of bonds in Q3 and additional €50m in October.

EBITDA in France has improved Q3 versus Q3 last year, +€34m, driven mainly by better margins in the France retail driven by top-line growth across the banners versus poor comps for Q3 2021.

On Disposals, apart from the GreenYellow, which completed in October, the Company announced an additional €65m received from Property and earn-out from Apollo and Fortress JVs. In addition, there is a further €115m of asset sales signed in the quarter, but not yet received. More importantly, Casino announced it is examining the potential to partially sell some of its LATAM assets, namely a secondary offering of part of Casino’s 41% stake in Assai. Proceeds could be c.¢500m with timing expected by the end of November.

We are going through our model and expect a fuller note later today.