PARIS, FRANCE: Carrefour aims to triple its e-commerce GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) by 2026, to reach €10 billion, a news release said on Tuesday.
Carrefour also expects that digital will contribute an additional €600 million to recurring operating income (ROI) in 2026 vs 2021.
To this end, Carrefour will increase by around 50% its investments in digital, with a €3bn dedicated plan between 2022 and 2026. As a result, the Group is raising its annual investment objective to around €1.7bn, at the higher end of the €1.5bn-1.7bn range communicated at the beginning of 2021.
Finally, in line with its social and environmental responsibility policy, the Group is announcing the goal of reaching carbon neutrality in its e-commerce activities by 2030 – 10 years ahead of the overall Group objective for 2040.
Alexandre Bompard, Chairman and CEO, declared: “As a successful first transformation plan comes to its end, we now want to transform Carrefour, a traditional retailer with e-commerce capabilities, into a Digital Retail Company, which places digital and data at the heart of all its operations and its value creation model.
This profound change, which we intend to carry out by 2026, will unleash the full potential of omnichannel, which is today the DNA of Carrefour and a unique asset in the industry. Our digital advances will allow us to develop new revenue and profit streams, as well as improve the operational performance of all our formats.
They will be supported by leading international partners, an additional investment budget and digital training for all the Group’s employees. It is my conviction that this new “digital first” course will be a powerful vector of leadership in a rapidly-changing market.”
After four years and more than €2bn committed to technology and digital, Carrefour has built many assets providing decisive competitive advantages:
– Digital assets already representing significant firepower: 33 million downloads of the Carrefour App; 800 million annual visits on digital platforms; 80 million customers in databases; and a track record of 8 billion transactions in its data lake, the biggest in Europe
– A unique logistics platform, with more than 3,700 e-commerce-ready points of sale, and 45 warehouses and fulfillment centers exclusively dedicated to e-commerce
– Upgraded information technology systems, unified and more agile, of which 30% already migrated to the Cloud
– A network of leading partners (Google, Meta (Facebook), Uber, Criteo, LiveRamp, etc.)
In the space of four years, Carrefour has thereby tripled food e-commerce activity, outperforming the market’s growth by 15 points per year on average. The Group has notably become the leader in home delivery in Continental Europe. In 2021, Carrefour anticipates e-commerce GMV of around €3.3bn. This rapid development was combined with rigorous cost optimization, resulting in an 11-point operating margin improvement since 2019 in e-commerce, now trending towards breakeven.
With digital at the heart of its strategy, Carrefour is transforming its model and stepping into the era of Digital Retail in a position of strength, with the ambition to become a global leader. This new model, driven by innovation and data, is a powerful accelerator of growth, market share and financial performance for the Group.
In support of its digital strategy, the Group is mobilizing human and financial resources to match its ambitions.
These internal resources will be underpinned by an open innovation ecosystem including collaboration with startups. Carrefour will establish:
- A dedicated Venture Capital Fund, allowing the Group to stay close to innovations and emerging technologies through the acquisition of minority stakes. This fund will be run by a leading venture capital company, in line with Carrefour’s strategic guidelines
- An innovation studio to accelerate the emergence and the development of start-ups in areas related to the Group’s business lines
Carrefour will significantly step up its digital investments, with a €3bn dedicated plan between 2022 and 2026, i.e. a +50% increase compared to investments in digital in recent years (€600m per year vs. €400m per year on average since 2018). As a result, the Group is raising its annual investment objective to around €1.7bn, at the higher end of the €1.5bn-1.7bn range communicated at the beginning of 2021.
The Group’s digital strategy is embedded within its social and environmental responsibility approach. Carrefour is announcing an objective of making its e-commerce activities carbon neutral by 2030, 10 years ahead of the overall Group objective for 2040. This implies that the impact of the complete act of purchasing, from click to delivery, will be neutral in terms of CO2 emissions.
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