Décathlon did not grow as much as we thought

The annual European retail chart that we ran in the last issue of this publication included inaccurate figures for Décathlon's sales increase in four countries. Our estimates were much too high, due to a confusion made by one of our sources between actual sales and same-store sales. In Italy, for example, the retailer's sales fell by 1.5 percent on a comparable store basis.

According to other more authoritative sources, Décathlon's sales increased by around 12 percent in Belgium and by 5.7 percent in Italy. They fell instead by 3.2 percent in Spain and by 2.8 percent in Portugal.

We are running new figures and estimates on this page for these four countries, pointing out that Décathlon's sales were partly boosted by the addition of new stores in the course of 2012: five in Spain, eight in Italy and one in Belgium. The decline in Portugal was partly due to the closing of one store because of a fire. Décathlon celebrated a few weeks ago the much-awaited opening of its 100th Spanish store in Granada, which generated the highest turnover in its first day of operation of any of the group's stores around the world.

One of our sources for this new set of data is Sport Panel, the Spanish market research company, which has also published a figure for the Spanish retail sales of Foot Locker and Sport Zone, the Portuguese sporting goods retailer, and historical data on Décathlon's sales and profits for the last year. Its data are largely based on the profit and loss accounts registered with Spanish authorities. They show that Décathlon's sales in Spain declined for the first time in many years, down by 3.3 percent to €1.34 billion before VAT as compared to 2011, resulting in a 4.9 percent drop in profits to €97.0 million.

Sport Panel published these figures in its online Tradesport newsblog. The 3.02 percent sales decline to €49.6 million published for Sport Zone, which entered the Spanish market in 2008 with six stores, can be partly explained by the fact that it opened five new stores in 2012, while shutting down four others, ending up with a total of 28 units and a loss of €22.3 million. In contrast, Foot Locker declared a 61 percent better net profit of €2 million on slightly lower sales of €69.1 million for 2012 in Spain, where the number of its stores increased by five to 60.

We hope that Décathlon and other major retailers will come out with more precise figures than our estimates in the future. Décathlon and its parent company, Oxylane, have already started to be more transparent by giving growth figures for their French operations, whose sales increased last year by 4.8 percent.