Metro’s preliminary results show that the German retailer has achieved a 1.6 % growth in its 2016/2017 fiscal year. Even on a like-for-like basis, there was still a slight growth: Metro itself considers it to be a successful year.
“Made progress”
In the past fiscal year, Metro’s turnover grew 1.6 % to 37.1 billion euro, but there was only 0.5 % left on a like-for-like basis: the remaining growth coming from positive exchange rate fluctuations. This is a definite improvement over last year’s 2.5 % turnover drop.
The fourth quarter 0.7 % turnover increase was in Metro’s first independent quarter after its Metro Group split. “We made some significant progress in the fourth quarter, particularly in METRO Wholesale’s delivery business and Real’s online business. We can look back on a positive financial year overall, in which we also successfully completed our transitional year and sharpened the focus of our business by splitting up the previous METRO GROUP”, CEO Olaf Koch said.
Metro Wholesale’s turnover grew 3 % to 29.9 billion euro and its like-for-like turnover grew 0.9 %. The division’s delivery services grew 25 % to 4.6 billion euro and currently has 759 stores in 25 countries.
Real once again suffered a 3.1 % turnover drop and 1 % like-for-like turnover drop to 7.2 billion euro. Fourth quarter like-for-like turnover grew 0.6 % though, but negative exchange rate fluctuations turned it into a 1 % turnover drop. According to Metro, Real’s online performance is good.
Metro’s final results will be published on 13 December.