Carrefour posts solid sales for third quarter

Supermarket giant Carrefour, the world's second-biggest food retail company after Walmart, posted improved sales for the third quarter on Wednesday, with a good worldwide performance and despite low prices in France. Carrefour shares rose 2.37 percent to 27.44 euros in a falling Paris market on the better than expected result that comes after a significant change of strategy. In the July-September period, the group booked sales of 21.11 billion euros ($28.8 billion), which once foreign exchange variations were factored out, meant a 2.7-percent rise from a year ago. Over nine months, the sales rose 1.3 percent from a year ago, to 61.1 billion euros. Finance director Pierre-Jean Sivignon said performance "continued to be led by emerging markets, but also the domestic market". The company remained cautious however for its end of year outlook given an uncertain global economic context, especially after instability on the foreign exchange markets brought on by talk that the US federal reserve would scale back stimulus that had been propping up emerging country currencies. Sales in home-market France turned to the green in the third quarter, up 1.4 percent when they had dipped in the previous quarter. Sales in Brazil, Carrefour's second biggest market, rose 8.6 percent, and in Asia sales rose 3.7 percent. Burned by the global financial crisis that began five year ago, Carrefour has recently sold off assets in Indonesia, Colombia, Malaysia, Singapore, Greece and Turkey. In the company's new strategy plan, Carrefour remains committed to maintain operations in emerging markets, but only in countries where it is a dominant player. In the first six months of the year, the group posted a net profit of 902 million euros, up from a loss of 31 million euros in the same period of last year.