Suning.com to pay cash for 80% Carrefour China stake苏宁48亿买下家乐福中国

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Shoppers at a Carrefour store in Beijing. The French retailer’s 210 hypermarkets in China suffered a 0.3 percentage point erosion in market share to 2.8 per cent at the end of the first quarter on year. 

Suning.com said it has signed an agreement on Sunday to pay 4.8 billion yuan (US$695.7 million) in cash for an 80-percent stake in Carrefour China as it seeks to strengthen its foothold in the fast-evolving retail market.

The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of 2019, pending regulatory approvals. Carrefour Group will retain a 20-percent stake in its China business and two seats out of seven on Carrefour China’s Supervisory Board.

Carrefour China reported net sales of 28.47 billion yuan in 2018, adding 5.9 percent from a year ago. It now operates a total of 210 hypermarkets and 24 convenience stores since the launch in China in 1995.

Suning operates a network of over 8,881 stores in more than 700 cities and boasts the country’s third-largest B2C e-commerce platform.

The local retailer said it hopes to complement offline retailing and merchandising with Carrefour's capability and to strengthen the consumer goods sector. 

The Nanjing-headquartered retailer, which started off by selling home appliances, has been strengthening its brick-and-mortar neighborhood store called Suning Xiaodian, or "small stores," targeting household consumption of daily goods and groceries mostly in lower-tier cities.

The integration of more than 6,000 Suning Xiaodian will allow Carrefour China's groceries and consumer goods to be dispatched to more local households.

Earlier this year Suning said it had acquired 37 Wanda department stores to combine them with its own existing offerings.

Carrefour was among the earliest multinational operators to adopt a smart retailing and a model store for WeChat payment for consumers.

It is, however, unclear how Carrefour China will handle its partnership with WeChat and Gome's shop-within-shop tie-up, which allows Gome to sell home appliances, smart devices and other consumer electronics to Carrefour shoppers.

Consumer goods sales through smaller format physical stores have been a bright spot in the overall flat market. 

The latest China Shopper Report from Bain & Company and Kantar Worldpanel suggest that offline stores may be poised to regain their momentum with smaller and more flexible formats as out-of-home consumption for food and beverages were especially strong for groceries and convenience stores.

Integration among retailers has spread from online-offline alliances toward tie-up between offline chain stores. 

Previous investments in this area were by Alibaba which acquired Hangzhou-headquartered InTime Retail Group and Tencent's investments in a number of supermarket chain stores including Yonghui.

Various efforts have been made by department store operators to upgrade the store facilities, the refinement of merchandise and services, supply chain optimization and restructuring of business models.

6月23日消息，苏宁易购公告称，公司全资子公司苏宁国际拟出资48亿元收购家乐福中国80%股份。

本次交易完成后，苏宁易购将成为家乐福中国控股股东，家乐福集团持股比例降至20%。

1995正式进入中国内地市场市场的家乐福，是最早一批在中国开展业务的外资零售企业之一，主营大型综合超市业务。截至2019年3月，家乐福中国在中国内地拥有约3,000万会员，开设有210家大型综合超市、24家便利店以及6大仓储配送中心，店面总建筑面积超过400万平方米，覆盖22个省份及51个大中型城市。

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