Carrefour Brasil sold 21 of its 26 remaining supermarkets to Grupo Pereira for R$360m
Three years of pruning Brazilian formats ended with Carrefour handing its neighbourhood supermarkets to a rival and keeping cash-and-carry as the engine.
What was changed
Grupo Carrefour Brasil is Brazil's largest food retailer — it topped the ABRAS ranking for a tenth straight year with R$123.5 billion of 2025 revenue, in a market where food retail moved R$1.14 trillion, about 9% of national output. But it spent three years shrinking towards cash-and-carry and membership clubs: 64 Nacional and BomPreco stores were put up for sale in 2024, and the Brazilian arm was delisted in May 2025. By mid-2026 its 718 outlets held 387 Atacadão stores, 105 hypermarkets, 58 Sam's Club, 142 convenience stores — and just 26 Carrefour Bairro supermarkets.
On 25 September 2026 it agreed to sell 21 of the 26 — 15 in São Paulo, six in the Federal District, plus nine pharmacies and three petrol stations — to SDB Comercio de Alimentos, the operating company inside family-owned Grupo Pereira, for about R$360 million (US$69 million). Stores keep trading until antitrust authority CADE clears the deal, then convert to Pereira's Comper banner; staff transfer with the units. Carrefour keeps the roughly five Bairro stores it considers profitable and well located, calling the sale part of the "continuing review and optimisation" of its portfolio.
The buyer is a Santa Catarina group with R$17.5 billion of 2025 revenue, about 24,000 employees and 194 outlets under the Fort Atacadista and Comper banners, ranked seventh by ABRAS. The deal gives Comper its first stores in São Paulo, Brazil's richest consumer market, and takes it from four to ten supermarkets in the Federal District. For Carrefour, first-half 2026 gross revenue reached about R$58.2 billion with operating profit up 5.8% — but same-store sales rose only 0.4% in the second quarter, so growth now rides on the large formats rather than the neighbourhood shop.
Why it worked
Supermarkets were the smallest slice of the network — 26 of 718 outlets — in a low-margin market where, as the report puts it, scale decides who survives a weak consumer year.
Household debt payments took a record 28.9% of income on central bank figures, pushing Brazilian chains toward cost cuts and private labels rather than new formats.
Atacadão is where the group has put its openings and its capital; hypermarkets and Sam's Club complete a large-format focus that left little room for Bairro.
Pereira's strongholds in the south, centre-west and Federal District made it a natural buyer hunting national scale in São Paulo.
What can be applied
When one format drags, sell it to the regional player that still wants it, and concentrate capital where the model already wins. A pending antitrust ruling decides how clean the exit is.
Aftermath
The transaction was filed with CADE in the week of the announcement, which identified overlaps between the two chains in four locations — a small number that usually points to approval with conditions rather than a block. Neither company has given a timetable; until CADE rules, the stores remain Carrefour's responsibility. Carrefour has not said which remaining supermarkets it regards as profitable or how it will use the proceeds, and no party has disclosed how the price splits between property, stock and goodwill.