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Casino Group plans to sell Big C Vietnam

  • HONG KONG/BANGKOK, Feb 7 (Reuters) - France’s Casino Group has agreed to sell its majority stake in Thai hypermarket operator Big C Supercenter for 3.1 billion euros excluding debt ($3.5 billion).
  • Groupe Casino SA has agreed to sell its stake in Thai hypermarket operator Big C Supercenter PLC for EUR3.1 billion ($3.46 billion) to a Thai billionaire, marking.
  • Thai tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s holding company, TCC Group, will buy Casino’s 58.6% stake in Big C Thailand for 252.88 baht a share ($7.10), the company said in a statement on Sunday.

In April, the company announced the sale of Big C Vietnam to Central Group for 1 Billion dollars. In December 2017, Casino Group signed an agreement with Ocado to develop a technological platform with an automated warehouse in France. Announced a business partnership aiming at selling Monoprix food products to Amazon Prime Now customers.

Dec 18, 2015

France’s Casino Group announced plans on December 15 to sell its Big C supermarket chain in Vietnam to cut its debts by more than USD2.2 billionnext year.

In a statement on Tuesday, Casino, the majority shareholder in Big C supermarkets, will also sell some of its real estate in Thailand and Colombia, according to the Bangkok Post.

With 32 Big C outlets nationwide, including eight in HCM City, Big C ranks second among retailers in Vietnam after Co.op Mart. The sale of the Vietnam business could raise USD813.86 million for the firm, meanwhile, the value for Thailand and Colombia market is USD596.8 million and USD216.98 million respectively, Bruno Monteyne, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, told Bloomberg news.

The Casino Group is also the second European retailer to announce plans to sell its Vietnamese business, following Germany’s Metro Group which announced in August last year to sell its Vietnamese cash-and-carry unit to Thailand’s Berli Jucker at USD879 million.

Casino Group said it will continue to focus on its key markets in France, Latin America and Asia after selling its assets in Vietnam, Thailand and Colombia.

Big C owns almost 800,000 square metres of gross leasable area in its shopping malls located in prime locations in Thailand and over 300,000 square metres in Colombia.

Source: talkvietnam.com

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By Nick Kostov in Paris and P.R. Venkat in Singapore

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Groupe Casino SA has agreed to sell its stake in Thai hypermarket operator Big C Supercenter PLC for EUR3.1 billion ($3.46 billion) to a Thai billionaire, according to people familiar with the matter, marking a major step in the French grocer’s plans to cut its debt.

Thai tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s holding company, TCC Group, will buy Casino’s 58.6% stake in Big C Thailand for 252.88 baht a share ($7.10), these people said. They added that an agreement between the two could be announced before the market opens in Asia on Monday morning.

The sale is a key step in Casino’s attempts to reduce its debt pile. The retailer launched a EUR4 billion deleveraging plan in 2016 which includes selling its stake in the Thai supermarket as well as Vietnam retail assets. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in January put the French retailer’s debt on “negative watch” for a possible downgrade to junk status, citing concerns over weakness in Brazil and the retailer’s high debt pile.

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The sale, which is expected to complete on March 31, will allow Casino to hit 80% of its EUR4 billion deleveraging target, the people said.

Casino makes about 40% of its sales in Latin America, where a prolonged recession in Brazil has led to falling sales and declining profitability. Management remains bullish on Brazil, but the slowdown has made it more difficult for Casino to support the same level.

In December, the grocer disclosed plans to sell its Vietnamese retail operation and some of its real-estate holdings in Colombia–sales of which are ongoing.

In the process of selling its Vietnam unit, Casino received a number of expressions of interest for its larger Thai unit and decided to sell that asset as well.

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For Mr. Charoen, the deal boosts his retail presence in Thailand. He already owns a listed consumer products company called Berli Jucker PCL, which has interests from trading to packaging and retail. Last month, Mr. Charoen’s TCC Group closed a EUR655 million acquisition of Metro Group’s cash & carry wholesale business in Vietnam.

In recent years, deal hungry Thai tycoons like Mr. Charoen, the son of an ethnic Chinese street vendor in Bangkok, have been among the biggest spenders in the region.

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Mr. Charoen started a small distillery with partners after dropping out of school and successfully bid for government liquor concessions in Thailand. Since then, he has expanded his business to include wide-ranging interests from real estate to finance and agriculture. He became a household name in 2013 when he bought a controlling stake in Singapore-listed conglomerate Fraser & Neave that valued the firm at $11 billion.

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Casino entered the Thai market in 1999 when it acquired a stake in Big C, before adding rival Carrefour SA’s Thai operations in early 2011. Big C is now Thailand’s second-largest hypermarket operator after Tesco PLC’s Thai unit.

As of September last year, Big C and its subsidiaries operated 697 stores in Thailand. The company posted net profit of $38 million for the third quarter ended in September, down 14.5% over the same period last year.

Write to Nick Kostov at Nick.Kostov@wsj.com and P.R. Venkat at venkat.pr@wsj.com