Carrefour raises its capital expenditure goals as CEO Bompard reveals a new business plan.
PARIS – The biggest food store in Europe, Carrefour (EPA:CARR), said it wanted to save 4 billion euros in costs and have a net free cash flow of over 1.7 billion euros by 2026. This was part of a new plan by CEO Alexandre Bompard to make the group more stable in the face of rising inflation.
Carrefour told investors on Tuesday that it was increasing the amount it planned to invest each year, from 1.7 billion euros to 2.0 billion euros, before giving a presentation to investors later in the day.
In July 2017, Alexandre Bompard became chairman and CEO of Carrefour. In May 2021, he was given another three years to lead the company.
Related: Carrefour, a French store, will freeze prices on 100 items to fight inflation.
The war in Ukraine has made inflation worse, and he doesn’t have the extra money he would have had if two planned mergers with Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard and France’s Auchan had gone through last year.
The new plan builds on goals announced in November 2021 to spend 3 billion euros between 2022 and 2026 to speed up the growth of digital commerce. Carrefour wants to stay ahead of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) in grocery delivery, so the new plan builds on those goals.
($1 = 0.9996 euros)
