By
Reuters
Published
April 22, 2026
Supermarket chain Carrefour reported weaker-than-expected first-quarter sales on Wednesday as its business in Brazil declined and France, its biggest market, grew less than expected.
A Carrefour store
Sales in France grew 1.4% in like-for-like terms, slightly less than analysts expected, while Brazil was a bigger disappointment with a 0.8% decline in comparable sales, which the retailer said was due to very high interest rates hitting consumers’ spending power.
“In Brazil, in a macroeconomic context marked by consistently negative food volumes, the group delivered a resilient performance,” said chief financial officer Matthieu Malige. First-quarter revenue for the group as a whole was 21.141 billion euros ($24.77 billion), less than the 21.83 billion expected by analysts according to a consensus compiled by Visible Alpha.
Carrefour, where profit margins narrowed to 2.6% last year from 3.1% in 2021, now faces higher costs across its markets as the Iran war has driven energy prices up sharply, a shock that could feed through into higher food prices. Malige downplayed the impact of the conflict, however, saying he expects food inflation in France to stay low this year and that the retailer saw no change in consumers’ behaviour in March, the first month of the war.
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