Metro said last week it is entering exclusive talks on the sale of Real hypermarkets unit to a consortium of property investors X+Bricks and the SCP Group. It agreed the sale of a stake in its Chinese operations to local retailer Wumart in October.

Metro has been selling off non-core assets in recent years to focus on its European cash-and-carry business supplying hotels, restaurants and independent traders.

It reported earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), excluding real estate gains, fell 4.2% to 1.173 billion euros for the 2018/19 fiscal year.

It said it expects earnings for continuing operations, excluding the China and Real units it is selling, to be at roughly the same level in 2019/20 as the 1.021 billion it reported for 2018/19.

(This story changes details of consortium, fixes typo in paragraph 4.)

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson, editing by Thomas Escritt)