Guyenne & Gascogne to keep CCC stake

Guyenne & Gascogne, the French retail group which operates stores under the Carrefour and Champion fascias, will not sell its stake in the Spanish company Centros Commerciales Carrefour even though the latter company is being acquired by the Carrefour group.

Earlier this month, Carrefour announced that it was to buy out the remaining shares in CCC, its Spanish subsidiary, and there was some confusion over whether this would also include the 8 per cent stake in the unit held by Sogara, a joint venture between Guyenne & Gascogne and Carrefour.

Carrefour and Guyenne & Gascogne have worked together for many years, and there have been persistent rumours about the possible acquisition by the European retail market leader of the franchise group. But the status quo has been maintained, and while Carrefour continues to expand, it seems quite happy to leave Guyenne & Gascogne to run its own business.

This it does very well, as the company's latest results show. The company has announced a 4 per cent increase in turnover for the first half of the year to €554.8 million, but it was the operating profit increase of 78.4 per cent to €19.3 million which really stood out.

The company said it had benefited from a significant cost-cutting programme at Soagara, as well as an overall improvement in the performance of the Guyenne & Gascogne parent company, whose operating results reached €0.4 million in the first half compared to losses of €0.7 million in the same period a year earlier.

Consolidated net profits for the half more than doubled from €6.8 million to €16.5 million, helped by a one-off gain of €4.8 million from the sale of a number of shopping malls operated by Sogara, while Guyenne & Gascogne's share of CCC business contributed €3.6 million in profits, up from €3 million a year earlier.