The Fnac Darty group unveiled a slight loss in the first half on Wednesday, with sales almost stable over one year and which resisted in a context of high inflation.
Fnac Darty, which had returned to the green in the first half of 2021, recorded a net loss of 18 million euros (17.6 million francs) in the first six months of 2022, according to a press release.
This loss is explained in particular by an exceptional charge for the payment of a purchasing power bonus for 7 million euros, and by the cost linked to the deployment of new activities.
The group achieved 3.43 billion euros in turnover over the period (-1.1%), slightly better than the expectations of analysts polled by Factset and Bloomberg, and barely worse than in 2021 despite a ‘very high basis of comparison’.
Fnac Darty says it has succeeded in doing better than ‘the markets in which it operates’.
“Our turnover is almost balanced compared to last year, and up 7% compared to 2019”, reference year pre-Covid-19 epidemic, reacted to AFP its general manager Enrique Martinez.
‘For the moment, we cannot say that we have observed a negative effect on consumption’ because of the period of inflation.
Faced with the general rise in prices, consumers are being pushed to favor spending on fuel, food and daily necessities, to the detriment of businesses selling ‘discretionary goods’, i.e. those considered non-essential, clothing, high-tech or household equipment.
‘We have (…) product categories that worked well during Covid-19, household appliances, and others less well such as ticketing, and there with a changing timing, some products will work better than others’, detailed the company director.
In 2021, a year of strong recovery in consumption following the Covid-19 epidemic, Fnac Darty had not recorded spectacular growth but “for the moment, we are seeing good resistance in our activity”, he said. he adds.
The group, which achieves 22% of its online sales in the first half of the year (up 4 percentage points compared to the pre-Covid period), says “to continue its solid cost control thanks to the performance plans which have already made it possible to offset almost all of the inflation’ in the first half of the year.
The group, in which the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky holds more than 20% of the capital, has also announced that Antoine Gosset-Grainville, vice-president of the board of directors, had resigned.
He took over as head of the board of directors of the insurer Axa in April.
/ATS