Carrefour Under Pressure After Jefferies Downgrade
Carrefour trails at the bottom of the Paris stock exchange's main index, with the retail giant penalized by a downgrade from Jefferies, which shifted its rating from buy to hold and lowered its price target from 14.50 to 14 EUR.
"We believe the focus on France, Spain, and Brazil will be the main theme of the upcoming press conference, with the group outlining the recurring growth of free cash flow and EBIT through to 2030, based on the combined synergies of Cora/Match, optimization in Brazil, and performance in Spain. Our forecasts are extended through to 2030," the broker explains.
Jefferies' concern lies less with the success of the strategic review than with the health of these key markets. "The momentum of food retail sales in France and Carrefour's market share remain limited, and we believe the group finished 2025 with very weak growth in France, while analysts were already forecasting +1% in 2026. Brazilian consumers, for their part, continue to face significant challenges, with the risk of a decline in like-for-like sales potentially leading to a significant deterioration in margins," the broker concludes.
Carrefour will publish its annual results on February 17.
Carrefour is the No. 1 distribution group in Europe and No. 2 in the world. The group's activity is organized into 3 types of stores:
- hypermarkets: at the end of 2025, owns 1,189 stores under the Carrefour and Atacadão names;
- supermarkets: owns 4,107 stores under the Carrefour Market name;
- other : operates a network of 9,563 local stores (Carrefour Express, Carrefour City, Carrefour Contact, So.Bio, etc. names), 663 Cash & Carry stores, 197 stores (Soft discount and Sam's Club), as well as e-commerce sites (Carrefour, Ooshop, etc.).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: France (50.9%), Europe (24.2%) and Latin America (24.9%).
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