Carrefour organic food helps cope with ‘woes’

Bloomberg

Carrefour SA’s growing sales of organic food helped the French retailer make up for continued weakness in its non-grocery business in the first quarter.
Comparable sales rose 2.7 percent to $22.4 billion, the company said, a result that met analysts’ estimates.
Growing sales of organic food are boosting Chief Executive Officer Alexandre Bompard’s effort to revamp the company’s sprawling suburban stores, which sell everything from garden hoses to green beans and jewellery under one roof. Sales at those stores have been persistently weak, and the non-food business remained a drag in the first quarter. Bompard’s strategy of hanging on to so-called hypermarkets contrasts with that of rival Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA, which has been selling off unprofitable big-box outlets to rivals including Leclerc and Intermarche.
Carrefour also said that its board would propose Alexandre Arnault to replace his father, Bernard Arnault, as a director through the rest of his term that ends at the company’s annual general meeting next year.