El Corte Inglès, which has a strong position in the Spanish sporting goods market, suffered an 18.32 percent decline in its consolidated net income to €171.5 million in the financial year ended last February, as its revenues fell by 7.7 percent to €14.5 billion. Noting that retail sales have been declining for five years in a row in Spain, the management blamed the recession for the poor performance of the group.
The operating results showed a drop of 11.06 percent to €734.9 million before amortization (Ebitda) and an increase of 2.5 percent to €336.4 million before interest (Ebit). The group's department stores, its Hipercor supermarkets and its travel agencies contributed 87 percent of the group's profits.
The total staff numbers dropped by 2,645 to 96,678 employees.
The majority of the investments of €570 million were used for the development of new shopping centers. The group also renovated some of its department stores. On the other hand, El Corte Inglès announced a few days ago the shutdown of a stand-alone sporting goods store at Case del Agua in Coruña and its transformation into an outlet store.
Separately, El Corte Inglès announced the appointment of the first chief executive officer in its history. He is Dimas Gimeno Álvarez, nephew of the company's 78-year-old president, Isidoro Álvarez. The 38-year-old took care of the chain's expansion into Portugal and then supervised purchasing operations for the whole group.
A few weeks ago, El Corte Inglés refinanced €3.8 billion out of the company's total debt of about €5 billion with six banks. The company said it was optimistic that it will obtain better conditions for the balance of the amount in view of its strong cash generation and assets of €7.4 billion. El Corte Inglés had announced last May that it wanted to improve the structure of its debt to help finance its ongoing expansion in Spain and abroad.
