Carrefour retreats to France, Spain and Brazil with €1B yearly cost cuts to 2030
After Italy and Romania exits, Bompard's third plan targets 25% share in France, 20% in Brazil, €5B cash flow by 2028 — and €100M a year on AI.
What was changed
Presenting his third strategic plan since taking over as chairman and CEO in July 2017, Carrefour's Alexandre Bompard announced a radical narrowing: a perimeter reduced to three countries — France, Spain and Brazil — after exiting Italy and agreeing to sell the Romanian unit to Paval Holding for €823 million, along with privatising Brazilian subsidiary Atacadão SA and refinancing its Brazilian debt. The plan also commits to €1 billion of cost cuts a year until 2030.
The plan runs on three lines: win the customer-and-product battle through price, fresh produce, the Club loyalty programme and private labels; consolidate shop growth through targeted expansion and franchising; and accelerate performance through artificial intelligence, technology and data — including €100 million a year in AI-related projects and a strategic partnership with Vusion to deploy electronic labels, connected rails and cameras across all French hypermarkets and supermarkets.
The targets: market share of 25% in France and 20% in Brazil by 2030, confirmation as Spain's second operator, recurring operating margin of 3.2% in 2028 and 3.5% in 2030, €5 billion of cash flow between 2026 and 2028, and payouts of 50-60% of adjusted earnings per share. The backdrop is unforgiving — 2025 net profit more than halved to €319 million on the Italia disposal, and French like-for-like sales grew only 0.4% in the fourth quarter, below the 0.7% analysts expected.
Why it worked
Carrefour faces difficult conditions in the hyper-competitive French market and weak consumer spending in both France and Brazil, so a smaller perimeter concentrates capital where it already leads.
The strategic review initiated a year earlier had already produced the exits — the Italia sale agreed in July 2025, Romania announced the week before — before the plan was even presented.
The margin gap is the driver: operating profit margin has declined since the 2020 pandemic and the share price is down almost 29% over Bompard's tenure.
AI, technology and data get dedicated funding to squeeze performance out of the remaining three-country base, with capex rising to $2 billion by 2030 for shop modernisation, especially in Brazil.
What can be applied
Retreat is a strategy too: shrinking to markets you can win concentrates capital for the fight — but the bill arrives first and the payoff is promised years out.
Aftermath
The market's first verdict was negative: the stock gave up 4.4% at the Paris open to €14.71 and was down more than 5% by midday, erasing an 8.2% year-to-date gain, as the 2025 accounts disappointed. Carrefour proposed a €0.97 per-share dividend for 2025, up 5.4%, plus a €150 million extraordinary payout, and committed to growing the dividend at least 5% a year across the plan.