Slovenia's Mercator swings to cons net loss in Jan-Sept

"In the first nine months of this year, revaluation of Mercator Group's real estate consistently with the International Accounting Standards on the one hand resulted in an increase of equity (fair value reserve) due to a property value increase of EUR 23.3 million, while on the other hand it had a negative effect on Mercator Group's operating profit,"  Mercator said in a statement.

The net effect of the revaluation was a real estate value decrease of 45.7 million euro, which accounts for 4.6% of total value of land, buildings, and investment property.

"After the revaluation, as at June 30, 2020, total fair value of land, buildings, and investment property amounts to EUR 1 billion, while the negative effect of revaluation on the business performance amounts to EUR 69.0 million," the company said.

Consolidated sales revenue rose 2.1% on the year to 1.6.2 billion euro in January-September, while revenue from retail sales was up 3.9% to 1.23 billion euro.

Consolidated normalised EBITDA went down by an annual 2.1% to 126 million euro in the first nine months of the year.

The group's total assets decreased by 6.6% on the year to 1.87 billion euro at the end of September.

The number of employees rose 2.8% to 20,381, with half of them employed in Slovenia and the other half in the company's units in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia.

Mercator's shares last traded on the Ljubljana bourse on November 19, closing flat at 18 euro.

($= 0.840693 euro)