Big C Casino Group
By Nick Kostov in Paris and P.R. Venkat in Singapore
Since 17 March 2020, Casino Group’s 220,000 employees in France, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina and the Indian Ocean have rallied to continue supplying our 11,172 stores and serving millions of customers every day. They are doing their jobs efficiently, humbly and professionally, giving a fresh sense of nobility to the trade.
- His holding company, TCC Group, will buy Casino's 58.6% stake in Big C Thailand for 252.88 baht a share (US$7.10), a price that values Big C close to US$5.86 billion. The sale, expected to completed by 31 March, will allow Casino to reduce its debt level by €3.3 billion.
- Besides Central Group, Thailand’s biggest retailer, Singapore’s Dairy Farm International Holdings and South Korea’s Lotte Shopping have vied for Casino Group’s Big C Vietnam, which is valued between $800 million and $1 billion, according to Reuters. A separate banking source said Casino Group was keen to sell both units to the same bidder.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
An industry source said Central probably made this decision because of its ownership in Tops Supermarket and FamilyMart. Parts of their operations overlap Big C’s, he said, adding that hypermarkets are not Central’s business focus for Thailand. He also noted that the value of Big C Thailand was far higher than Big C Vietnam’s.
“Vietnam seems to be more interesting to Central, judging from the financial sums to be invested in Thailand and possible cannibalisation of Tops and FamilyMart,” the source said.
Central, the largest retail conglomerate in Thailand, accepted a tender offer from TCC Group. The deal, worth at least Bt50 billion, will help Central finance the purchase of Big C Vietnam.
Central declined to provide any details on the deal, saying its executives were travelling outside the country.
Central Group, which has interests spanning from hotels and resorts to property and restaurants, also bid when Casino Group was selling its Thai assets, eventually losing out to Charoen. He bought the French retailer’s majority 58.6-per-cent stake in Big C Thailand for 3.1 billion euros (Bt124 billion) in February.
Big C Casino Groups
Central in partnership with Nguyen Kim Group recently acquired Big C Vietnam from Casino for 920 million euros. Central Group chief executive officer Tos Chirathivat said the acquisition represented the strength of Central’s will to keep expanding its business in Asia. Operating for more than 18 years, Big C Vietnam has 43 stores nationwide, comprising 33 hypermarkets and 10 convenience stores, and 30 shopping malls. Total revenue in 2015 was about 586 million euros.
Big C Casino Group Las Vegas
Quant, an independent financial advisory, applied eight methods to calculate the value of Big C Thailand, suggesting fair prices ranging from Bt152.7 to Bt265.7 per share. The highest price came from the comparison of the company’s price-to-earnings ratio and other domestic retailers’ in the past 12 months.