The French retailer Casino has significantly lowered its financial forecasts for the year 2023, notably halving the operating profit expected in France, to 214 million euros, weighed down mainly by hypermarkets and supermarkets.
In a document presenting the agreement in principle concluded with its main creditors, Casino now provides for an Ebitda operating margin of 1.4%, against 2.9% initially announced.
The company also expects its available cash to drop to 595 million euros by the end of the year, from 2.1 billion at the end of 2022. But of this 595 million euros, around half will have to be used to repay a tax debt and social contributions to the State.
The French distributor in financial difficulties announced on Friday that it had reached an “agreement in principle” with “some of its main creditors” on the recapitalization and restructuring offer from billionaires Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière backed by the British fund Attestor. This agreement in principle provides for the signing in September of a binding agreement in which the signatories undertake “to support and carry out any step or action reasonably necessary” for the completion of the restructuring.
An accelerated safeguard procedure for the group, which has 200,000 employees worldwide, including a quarter in France, is then planned “in October”. The acquiring trio will bring in 1.2 billion euros in new money and their plan provides for the reduction of nearly 5 billion euros of the group’s debt as well as the sale of activities in South America, where three quarters of the Casino employees. Creditors will have to vote to validate “the proposed accelerated safeguard plans” in December 2023 and which will then have to be approved by the Commercial Court. The restructuring of Casino’s debt must take place “during the first quarter of 2024”, further detailed the group originally established in Saint-Étienne.
