Oddo BHF maintains its outperform recommendation on Carrefour shares, with an unchanged target price of 20 euros, the day after the publication in bookshops of a book dedicated to the retailer.

In 'Carrefour, la grande arnaque', Jérôme Coulombel, a former employee of the group, describes the franchising system as 'a way for Carrefour to extract value on the backs of its franchisees'.

According to Oddo BHF, the main question raised by this book from an operational risk point of view is the Group's ability to continue recruiting franchisee candidates.

If the controversy were to take hold, the short-term financial risk would be that the Group would agree to redistribute a little value to disgruntled franchisees", says the broker.

The book also discusses negotiations with suppliers and certain tactics, some of which are reprehensible and condemned (such as RCD on the Carrefour side, or cartels on the supplier side).

Finally, the book describes the loss of benefits linked to the transition from integrated to franchised stores, and the decline in the number of Carrefour employees in France.

While this configuration may be reminiscent of the Orpéa case (a group of retirement homes which found itself at the center of a national controversy after the publication of an investigative book), the risks here are 'much less', according to Oddo BHF.

The analyst points to the small number of potentially dissatisfied franchisees (a few hundred, according to the book), as well as Carrefour's financial situation, which is not as indebted as Orpéa was.


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