Paris, July 15 - French supermarket group Casino posted a 1.9 percent drop in second-quarter sales, broadly in line with analyst estimates, pulled down by lower petrol prices and declines at its French hypermarkets.
But the company said underlying sales excluding petrol and calendar effects rose 1.1 percent as 4.8 percent growth in its international business offset a 1.1 percent drop in its domestic market and hypermarket sales fell at a slower rate.
"Sales trend at the hypermarkets showed tangible improvement with same-store sales down 4.2 percent excluding petrol -- versus an 8.6 percent fall in the first quarter -- underpinned by the marketing initiatives launched since the end of March," Casino said in a statement on Wednesday.
The group reported second-quarter sales of 6.82 billion euros, including 4.32 billion in France, compared with the average 6.8 billion estimate from three analysts surveyed by Reuters, who expected France sales of 4.3 billion.
Larger rival Carrefour, the world's second-biggest retailer behind U.S. group Wal-Mart, is expected to post a 1.9 percent decline in second-quarter sales on Thursday to 23.28 billion euros.
Retailers have been struggling worldwide during the economic downturn as consumers pay more attention to household budgets and cut spending on non-essential items, weighing particularly on hypermarkets.
Casino said its French convenience formats were performing satisfactorily, with sales up, whilst discount customers were limiting their purchases, sending same-store sales at its Leader Price shops down 6.1 percent.
"The group is in line with its business plan and is continuing to rapidly deploy its cost-cutting programme and optimise its food and non-food product mixes," Casino said.
Casino added that it still expected to improve its net debt to EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) ratio by the end of the year and to bring it below 2.2 by the end of next year.
Casino shares, which rose 2.9 percent on Wednesday, have lost 14.3 percent so far this year, underperforming a 19.2 percent gain on the DJ Stoxx European retail index.