Carrefour Sa

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Carrefour Q1 2026 sales webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to have a conversation with your speaker today, Mr. Mathieu Malige, CFO. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon to all of you and thank you for attending this 2026 Q1 Sales Call. I'm here with Sébastien Valentin, Head of Investor Relations and the rest of our IR team. Before we get into the numbers, I would like to remind you that Carrefour's operations in Romania are now accounted for as discontinued operations in accordance with the IFRS 5 accounting standard. Moreover, as announced during the presentation of our CAFOR 2030 strategic plan, we are today introducing our new reporting format centered on our three core countries, France, Spain, and Brazil. Let me start with a few key highlights before we get into the details of our Q1 numbers. The group had a solid start of the year with Q1 like-for-like sales up 2.2%. This performance was driven by accelerating business trends in France and Spain. Brazil is resilient in a still challenging market marked by this quarter by a sharp deceleration in food inflation. On the strategic front, we started the operational implementation of the CAREFUL 2030 plan with numerous initiatives. In Europe, we started to see the first positive effects of Concordis, our new European buying alliance, in our negotiations with major FMCG suppliers. We continued to improve the group's price competitiveness, notably in France and Spain. We kept expanding our growth formats with new convenience store openings in France and Spain. Additionally, we are pioneering a genetic commerce in France through the direct integration of Carrefour's offer into the chat GPT interface. And finally, at Atacadao, we launched Bullnus, our new entry-price private label range. As you can imagine, we have been closely monitoring the crisis in the Middle East since the end of February. To date, we have seen no material impact on Carrefour's business. As far as our energy costs are concerned, let me say that our energy efficiency has significantly improved over the past few years following heavy investments, and our energy costs are more than 85% edged for 2026. On the basis of this satisfactory quarter, we confirm our 2026 financial targets. Let's now dive into Q1 numbers on slide three with group sales. The total sales for the quarter reached 21.1 billion euros, increasing by 2.5% at constant currency. Group like-for-like sales were up 2.2% over the quarter. The scope effect had a negative contribution of 0.8% over the quarter, which includes perimeter adjustments in Brazil notably after the divestment of Nacional and Bonpreso stores last year. Petrol added 0.8 percentage points to growth, and the calendar effect was a positive 0.4%. Forex had an unfavorable impact on total sales growth of minus 2.1% over the quarter, mainly reflecting the depreciation of the Argentine peso. In total, Reported revenue was up 0.5% in Q1. Moving on to slide 4 with more details on the performance of France. Like-for-like sales accelerated to 1.4% in Q1 in a supportive market with food consumption holding up well, both in volume and value. All formats posted positive like-for-like growth. with a marked sequential improvement compared to Q4 2025. Market share increased over the quarter. The former CORA unmatched stores continue to ramp up with like-for-like sales now outperforming respective legacy formats by more than two points, reflecting the successful commercial transformation implemented throughout 2025. Carrefour continued to improve its price competitiveness with 200 private label products sold at cost and a first national wave of price cuts in March covering 500 SKUs. This was followed in April by a second national wave of price cuts, again covering more than 500 SKUs with an average price reduction of around 8%. These investments and further operating excellence are resonating with consumers, leading to an improved net promoter score up three points in France and up 11 points in ex-corastals. Let's now turn to Spain on slide five. Commercial momentum remains strong in the country on the back of a steel dynamic market, both in volume and value. Like for Like sales growth accelerated over the quarter with a 3.1% increase compared to 2% in Q4-25. This strong performance was driven by both food up 2.8% Like for Like with outstanding dynamics in fresh products and non-food up 4.3%. Carrefour continued to invest in its price leadership with a commitment to 1,000 unbeatable price products, which effectively supported consumer purchasing power and drove the NPS up by three points. Commercially, our omnichannel strategy is paying off with e-commerce up 9%. Finally, we successfully opened 34 new convenience stores in Spain over the quarter. Turning to slide six, On our operations in Brazil, we showed resilience in a still challenging environment. Q126 like-for-like sales declined slightly by 0.8%. The macroeconomic environment remained challenging with a still high interest rate. Volumes remained negative at low single-digit levels in line with Q4 after the lower point was reached in Q3. Food inflation dropped to 2% in Q1 compared to 4.1% in Q4 2025, weighing on both the cash and carry and retail formats. Against this backdrop, Atacadao delivered continued like-for-like market share gains. The quarter was also marked by the launch of the Bullness private level with 70 inaugural SKUs available to support purchasing power, which has been well received by customers. Carrefour retail food sales were up 2.8% and recorded growing volumes. In particular, hypermarkets delivered positive like-for-like sales growth of plus 1.1%. Non-food continued to decline as Carrefour Brazil maintained its focus on the profitability of its non-food digital operations. Sam's Club posted a strong 5.7% like-for-like growth driven by increases in both volume and the number of active members. Additionally, the financial services performed well with plus 15% increase in the credit portfolio. Moving on to the other countries segment on slide seven. In Belgium, sales growth came at plus 0.8% like for like, improving sequentially after plus 0.2% in Q4, supported by slightly positive volumes, despite a slowdown in food inflation. Poland continued to face a highly competitive local market and posted a decline of minus 2.9% in like for like sales, a similar dynamic to Q4. And finally, in Argentina, we recorded record market share in a difficult market still experiencing negative volumes. Let's wrap up on slide eight. As you have understood, we are pleased with our first quarter performance, which is in line with our expectations. We delivered clear sequential top line improvement in our core European markets of France and Spain. We maintained a resilient business trend in Brazil, despite navigating a still challenging macroeconomic environment that we believe will improve through the year. To date, we have seen no material impact from the conflict in the Middle East on the activities of the group. On the back of these solid starts to the year, we are confirming a full year 2026 financial target. I thank you for your attention. Sebastian and I are now happy to take your questions.

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We will now go to our first question. And our first question today comes from the line of Saria Lemene from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

good evening uh to all of you actually thank you for taking my question uh two if i may or maybe a third one but uh first back to uh the ukraine time you know the ukraine war we've seen of course a significant impact on the uh european consumer so can you build some kind of similarity this year with the current environment or is it different this time uh the kind of question linked to that is, do you see the risk of consumer behavior significantly changing from now on going forward in Europe mostly? So that would be the first question. The second one is on the price investment, especially in France. So as you said, you have been investing in two ways, launching new products and especially low entry price products. But are you currently happy where you are, or do you still believe that you have more to do going forward? I know, of course, it's a relative game versus what your competitors are doing, but some indication here would be helpful. And the last thing, are you able to potentially come to consensus for the group operating for 2026?

Thank you very much, Xavier. So first on inflation, we've gone through all the various institutes forecasting inflation. The consensus points towards a marginal uptick in inflation, with the central scenario suggesting inflation between 1.5% to 3% in Europe, and the French government mentioned 1.9% for France for 26, and that was mentioned last week. So I think very different outlook from the Ukraine situation that you referred to or the post-COVID wave of fibrin patient we had. It's really a marginal uptick. And so it's an inflationary environment which should not trigger a significant change in consumer behavior. That's today what's come back from the consensus of macroeconomic experts. In terms of price investment, so we have... invested right through the at-cost 200 prices through the two waves of each representing 500 products. And the price decrease has been 8% in average for each wave. So this is significant. Are we happy where we are? We're happy that all the efforts done over the past few years on the assortment, private level, obviously pricing and competitiveness in general, including loyalties, what we did on fruits and vegetables, on fresh. Well, all the value proposition and commercial proposition of Carrefour in France leads us to be in a position today to be gaining market share. I know this is a very important objective for us. Do we want to do more? Yes, we want to keep investing. We have proved in the past that we can combine improving our competitiveness with improving our bottom line. And so that's really the roadmap that we draw to you when we met a few weeks ago for this CARE 4 2030 plan. Well, as far as your third question, as far as the consensus is concerned, so today we're confirming our guidance and all our objectives, and this seems consistent with the current level of the consensus.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. We will now go to the next question. And the next question today comes from the line of Rob Joyce from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Thanks very much for taking my questions. The first one, I was wondering if you could give us an idea of the exit rates you've seen in terms of the end of March and into April in both France and Brazil. In particular, any sign of those volumes improving or food inflation picking up in Brazil, that would be really helpful. Second one, just to draw on Xavier's question there, I think at the full year presentation or the strategic strategy day, you gave us a relative pricing in France index. You were at 95.6 versus Leclerc at 92. Just wanted to know if you'd give us an update on that for the for the quarter or where you're at now. And then the final one, just in terms of the, I guess, the price negotiations we've seen in France. You mentioned there 1.9% inflation. Is that consistent with the way the negotiations finished at the end of February? And how would potential inflationary pressures be dealt with with those negotiations already concluded? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Rob. So it's a complex question on the exit rate because you know that Easter has moved a little bit versus last year, so always hard to anticipate. I think in terms of inflation, no significant change in Europe, you know, very stable levels. Maybe one point to note is in Brazil, as I mentioned in my speech, there's been a significant deceleration of food inflation in Brazil over Q1 versus Q4, notably driven by commodities, which were deflating, so negative inflation. And there's been in March and on the first few weeks of April an uptick in terms of inflation. And it seems that food inflation would be accelerating again. I'm being very, very cautious. It's Brazil and given the global macro uncertainty. But this is what we are seeing. I mention it because it's important, notably at Atacadao for B2B business. As you know, our B2B clients pay a lot of attention to the outlook to inflation and tend to refrain from buying when we have deflation, which was the case for commodities. And to the contrary, when they see inflation coming back, This is a signal for them to stock up. So we will look in detail at that in Q2. So pricing. So we have a yearly commitment to improve our pricing. So we will detail it each year during our annual presentation. and we'll make general comments on how things have improved on a quarterly basis. This is what we did this quarter. You may have seen, but I'm insisting, given your question, that this triplet was published by Nielsen last week, I think. You will see that Carrefour, both Hypers and Super, are improving versus the rest of the market. both versus Q1 last year and versus the average of 25, which we shared with you during our strategy presentation. So this is notably on that basis that I said in my introduction that our competitiveness had improved over the quarter. And obviously that does not factor the price decrease wave of April. Your third question was on inflation and what impact it could have on the discussions with our suppliers. So we just closed the negotiations with the suppliers a month and a half ago. There is no signal at this stage. It's a marginal uptick to inflation, which is anticipated by the government. So we are really in the framework in terms of inflation that was discussed. There are a number of clauses in these contracts. which organize the way negotiations could be reopened in a number of scenarios, including if inflation were to accelerate. We are absolutely not in this scenario. We are far from these ranges and from these limits. And so we do not anticipate any reopening of the negotiations with suppliers. By the way, we have only received a handful of requests. It's just a few on very specific products. So we don't think this is a scenario today.

Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone keypad. That is star 1 and 1 if you would like to ask a question. We will now go to our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Francois Degas from Kepler Chivro. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you to take my questions. Two questions on my side. I've been positively surprised by your characterization of the French market as dynamic. Could you share your view on market volume growth by category and how you see this evolving over the rest of the year? And my second question is about Cora on Match. The figures you are showing implies that despite negative price make effects due to the rollout of Carrefour pricing, the volumes have been very strong, I think mid-single digit. Is it correct? And do you believe it is sustainable? Thank you.

Thank you very much, François. So, well, the market in France turned to positive volume in Q2 last year, and it's been positive since then, and that's important. That's also important for an investment case. We have kept seeing in Q1 growth in volume and also in value, so it's a bit of a of inflation impacting the basket. I'm not going through this growth on a category by category basis, but what's important is that we noticed in Q4 that there had been some trading downs on festive products. And so the growth in volume was lower in Q4 than in the previous quarters. And we said in February that this is something that was not happening anymore in January and that January saw a comeback to a positive growth in volume, similar to what we had known in previous quarters. And so that has confirmed over the quarter. And so that's, I think, an important news that is worth sharing with you. On Cora and Match, so I share your analysis that indeed there has been significant investments made in the competitive, in the commercial proposition to customers, which has translated in deflation, obviously investment in everyday price, more promotion as these formats joined the Carrefour promotions. Also more private labels which have a lower price as we rolled out the Carrefour private label which has a strong success. So back in Q4, we commented on positive trend on traffic and now we've gone one step further. I share your view. with a positive dynamic in sales, so net of the pricing effect. I also mentioned in my introduction, I'm sure you flagged it, the NPS, which has significantly increased as a consequence of the commercial offer, but also the experience and level of service in the store. So we think that there is a fundamental trend that has been created. Now, we'll see how it will develop over the coming quarter. But what we can say today, this quarter is important because it's a confirmation in the sales number that the commercial model is generating more business at Cora and Matcha.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone keypad. That is star one and one. We have a follow up question. One moment, please. And your follow up question comes from the line of Rob Joyce from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Rob, your line is open. Are you muted?

Yeah, sorry. Thanks for letting me back on. Since there's not too many questions, I thought I'd jump on. In terms of the market share ex-cora match, how is that trending? I know you talked about that last year. Is market share, yeah, how is that ex-cora match? And then the second one, I don't know if you'll give us an update on this, but now I guess you're further through the... Romania disposal process. Can you give us any more indication of what you expect the kind of net cash in for that for the year to be when that eventually closes or we finish the year? And then the final one, any other updates on the kind of strategic review on those non-core countries you're able to share at this stage? Thank you.

Thank you, Rob. So, on market share. So, we're gaining market share ex-CoRa and Match. CoRa and Match are also contributing. It's a limited contribution, but it's a positive one. So, worth noting. But, but careful friends, you know, generated market share gains without CORA and match. On Romania, so no significant developments versus where we left you. The process, the antitrust process is still ongoing. We filed, well, the buyer filed antitrust a few weeks ago, and so we're still ready. The process is progressing per plan, and so no closing yet, but the process is progressing normally. And so I have no update to share on the numbers specifically. It will depend on the closing date. Obviously, we will update you that the numbers that we shared are still the same. As far as the third question regarding these non-strategic countries, the situation is similar to what we said in February. So the strategic review is finished. We have categorized our countries with strategic and non-strategic countries. And as far as non-strategic countries, we are working on improving their performance, creating more value. And if we were to receive an offer at some point that reflects the fair value of these assets, you know, the board would consider the opportunity. So no change versus what we said in February.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will hand the call back for closing remarks.

So many thanks for your time and attention. The team is available for any follow-up if you need that. Let me remind you of our upcoming events, which include our AGM on May 22nd, our ESG Strategy Day on June 16, and our H1 results on July 23rd. Thank you very much. Have a nice evening.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.