Metro Update

Metro Group - home to Media Markt and Saturn - have announced their preliminary and unaudited figures for 2009. Revenues in local currency grew by 0.2% to €65.5bn, but in constant currency, revenues declined by 3.6%. For MSH, the announcement said that:

In an overall challenging year, Media Markt and Saturn were able to strengthen their leading market position in Europe. Sales grew by 3.7% to €19.7bn [adjusted for currency, that would have been growth by 5.5%].

Tesco Update

Tesco's Christmas and New Year trading statement shows that group sales increased by 7.5% in constant currency [6.9% in actual exchange rates] in the six weeks to 9th January 2010. In the UK, online sales - in food and non-food - grew by some 20% in this period.

Carrefour Update

Yesterday, Carrefour published their full year results for 2009. Revenues in France were down by 2.8%; in Spain, they were down by 5.8%; in Italy, they were down by 4.7%; and in Belgium, they were down by 2.2%. But it was a different story in Carrefour's growth markets. In Latin America, revenues were up by 9.4%; and in Asia, revenues were up by 8.8%. But in the European growth markets - that's Poland, Turkey, Romania, Greece and Portugal, revenues were down by 6.6%. Somewhat astonishingly, Carrefour opened or acquired over 1,000 new stores in 2009.

Best Buy Update

Back on 8th January, Best Buy reported that for the fiscal month of December [which ended on 2nd January], revenues increased some 13% to $8.5bn. One year ago, for a similar five week period, revenues came in at $7.5bn. The holiday period is absolutely critical to retailers like Best Buy where these five weeks represent a little under 10% of the year in trading days, but a little over 20% of annual revenues.

Top Global Retailers

Deloitte has just published the 'The Global Powers of Retailing 2010'. It's their 13th edition. The league table of the Top 250 retailers in the world shows that five of the Top 10 now come from Europe:

Carrefour

Metro

Tesco

Schwarz [Lidl]

Aldi

And the leading technology specialists are as follows:

023 Best Buy

043 Yamada Denki

065 DSGi

091 Gome

106 Kesa

116 Edion

117 Yodobashi

125 Suning

131 Casas Bahia

136 Apple

145 Bic

148 Euroset

149 K's

159 Eldorado

181 Kojima

191 RadioShack

222 Joshin Denki

250 Best Denki

This list clearly doesn't not separate the MediaMarkt business from Metro, or the Fnac business from PPR. And it does not even include the two biggest European buying groups, Euronics and Expert. It is also important to note that while this is the 2010 list, it is based on revenue figures from 2008 [but they do separate retail revenues from non-retail revenues before creating their league table].

Media Markt's Chinese Venture

Earlier today, Metro confirmed that they will be opening their first Media Markt store in China this year, probably in Shanghai. Metro's Chinese operation is in a JV with Foxconn Technology Group, with Metro owning 75% of the jointly-owned business.