PARIS: Carrefour, France's largest publicly traded retailing group, saw its shares drop more than 13% Wednesday after it warned that the recent violent protests across France would dent profits.
Chief executive Alexandre Bompard said around 50 Carrefour stores were looted over the weekend, and it expects operating profit will be cut this year by 80 million to 200 million euros (US$90-US$225 million) as a result.
That could represent up to 60% of its operating profit in the fourth quarter, when year-end holiday spending usually generates significant revenue, analysts at Jefferies said.
"We were on track for our goals but then the deterioration of the social and security conditions required us to tell our investors, to tell the market, that we were no longer able to reach our targets for the last quarter," Bompard told France Inter radio on Wednesday.
The rioting had also inflated Carrefour's operating costs, and comes as consumer sentiment had already weakened because of surging energy prices.
"Obviously when a country is suffering to this extent, when you see these images from lots of French cities, the reality is that consumer spending, in particular discretionary spending for the year-end holidays is going to be impacted by what's happening," Bompard said.
Carrefour now expects stable or slight growth in adjusted earnings per share compared to last year, cutting back a previous forecast of high single-digit growth.
At around 10:30 am its shares were down 13.6% at 14.09 euros on the Paris stock exchange.
"Management would not be drawn on whether these impacts will last into early 2027," Jefferies analysts said in a research note, adding that "The scale of the impact is exceedingly hard to triangulate at this point."