Casino - comment

Casino announced the sale of a further 6.5% of Mercialys shares, reducing their stake to 10.3%. This has generated a further €59m of proceeds to Casino but in the overall context makes little difference. This asset was already classified as “Asset held for Sale” and it is no surprise that Casino continues to sell down its stake. The remaining stake is worth c. €90m.

It is a busy week for Casino, with Assai reporting their numbers after the close last night with a conference call at 1 pm London time today, GPA reporting after close tomorrow (Wednesday) with a conference call at 1 pm London time on Thursday, and Casino’s results on Friday morning with the call at 7 am London time.

Cnova released their results last week which were disappointing, with top-line flat on GMV level, down on Net Sales level, but more importantly, margins have reduced due to high marketing spend and other increased costs. As always with Cnova and Casino, management tries to talk about the long term strategy, but the reality is the short term Cnova story is not appealing.