Foreign retailers outperform Brazilian peers as consumer market slows

Large international retail groups are weathering the current retail slowdown better than their Brazilian counterparts, while domestic chains are growing more slowly and increasingly turning to court-supervised restructurings. This is likely to further widen the gap in market share, strengthening the position of foreign operators in the revenue generated by Brazil’s retail sector.

The conclusion is part of a Valor analysis comparing the performance of Brazilian and foreign companies operating in the same segments based on their results so far this year. The differences are emerging at a time when Brazil has increased protection for sales of low-value imported goods.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed into law on September 10 a measure that eliminates import duties on international purchases of up to $50, a tax that became known in Brazil as the “blusinha tax.” The measure is expected to reduce federal tax revenue by R$5 billion to R$6 billion in 2026, according to the Independent Fiscal Institution (IFI), a Senate-affiliated fiscal policy watchdog. Given that the previous tax rate was 20%, Valor estimates that at least R$25 billion worth of foreign goods priced at up to $50 will enter Brazil this year. That is equivalent to twice Renner’s net apparel revenue in 2025, making it the country’s largest fashion retailer.

Congressional approval of the measure was one of Lula’s priorities ahead of the October elections, and industry associations at the time described it as an electoral move.

An analysis of the major groups whose revenues can be compared shows that macroeconomic conditions and company-specific management decisions have hurt Brazilian retailers’ sales in recent years. These factors have weighed more heavily on their results than any significant positive factors benefiting foreign retail chains, widening the gap between the two groups.

Adding to the pressure, some Brazilian chains are heavily dependent on sales in the North and Northeast, regions hit harder by the broader slowdown in retail activity. Even after the federal government’s decision to increase cash-transfer program Bolsa Família payments by 15%, providing an additional boost to consumer spending in those regions, bank analysts on Friday (18) questioned whether the extra income would initially go toward reducing household debt and delinquencies.

The Monthly Survey of Trade, released by Brazil’s statistics agency IBGE on Tuesday (15), showed that retail sales increased 1.8% in volume from January through July. Consumer spending is slowing, however, as growth had reached 2.4% through March.

At the same time, the data show that foreign groups are also feeling the effects of weaker household consumption as household debt rises. So far, however, they appear to have withstood the pressure better.

According to the analysis, France’s Carrefour has been outperforming Grupo Mateus, a Maranhão-based retailer with a strong presence in the North and Northeast and a similarly diversified store portfolio, in same-store sales. Both companies operate in cash-and-carry and food retail.

Same-store sales are used as a gauge of underlying performance because they strip out the effect of new store openings, which typically boost revenue.

From January through June, Carrefour’s sales in Brazil were virtually flat in local-currency terms, declining 0.1% from a year earlier, while Mateus’ sales fell 7.7%. A year earlier, the Brazilian chain had posted 5.7% growth.

Carrefour’s operating profit in Brazil rose 0.9% from January through June, while Mateus’s fell 22.3% to R$888.5 million. “In Brazil, still a complex market, our adaptation plans and cost-reduction initiatives allowed us to further improve profitability and resume sales growth in the second quarter,” Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard wrote in his message accompanying the earnings report.

Likewise, Chile-based food retailer Cencosud, despite difficulties stabilizing some of its regional chains, posted results that were less pressured than Mateus’s. The Brazilian company has deliberately prioritized profitability over market share, abandoning an aggressive commercial strategy adopted in recent years.

Cencosud, which owns chains including Giga Atacado, Prezunic, and Perini, has seen sales affected by store remodeling and closures. Even so, its same-store sales decline was smaller than Mateus’s.

From January through March, the foreign group’s sales fell 1.4%, and the decline widened to 8% in the second quarter. Those figures were still less severe than Mateus’s, whose sales fell 7.3% and 8%, respectively. Bank analysts had projected a smaller decline of 5% to 7% for Mateus from April through June.

Ana Paula Tozzi, CEO of AGR Consultores, says large international groups give their Brazilian operations access to data, systems and management expertise, as well as funding from abroad—advantages that can make a difference in more challenging periods. “These businesses are operating in a perfect environment, but they operate with a long-term plan and a culture focused on the long term, and that is essential in more turbulent times,” she said. “It’s reassuring to know there is somewhere to turn—the parent company—when things get difficult,” she said.

While Carrefour delisted its Brazilian subsidiary in 2025 and Cencosud has no shares publicly traded in Brazil, Mateus went public on B3, Brazil’s stock exchange, in 2020.

The Brazilian group said its sales have reflected “a consumer environment that remains under pressure, marked by high household debt and changes in the composition of consumers’ shopping baskets,” according to its earnings report for April through June.

The company also said it has remained focused on profitability and that the strategy has delivered results. Gross margin was 23.2% from January through June, up 0.1 percentage point.

For João Soares, a Citi analyst, Mateus has been hurt by its heavy exposure to the North and Northeast, where it is a leading food retailer and consumer spending has weakened more sharply than in other parts of Brazil. The chain has also continued to prioritize profitability over sales, a strategy that has weighed on revenue. One-third of the nine states where the company operates are growing below the national retail average, according to IBGE data through June: Piauí, Alagoas, and Pará.

The chain has also been affected by its decision to reduce sales over the counter at its cash-and-carry stores. Mateus discontinued that activity this year for strategic reasons, affecting comparisons with the same period a year earlier.

“Management believes most of this adjustment [prioritizing profitability over sales] has been completed,” Soares said in an August report. “But management’s comments reinforced the cautious view on same-store sales in the short term,” he wrote. Grupo Mateus did not comment beyond its statements in the earnings report.

In the comparison between the companies, Cencosud’s sales across all stores fell 18% in the first half. Mateus, however, posted 12.5% growth, mainly due to the consolidation of a new business acquired in 2025—Novo Atacarejo—, the opening of 25 stores over the past 12 months, and higher sales at its wholesale and electronics businesses.

In convenience-store retail, another segment of the food market, Oxxo is growing faster than direct competitor GPA. Oxxo is owned by Mexico’s Femsa, which took full ownership of its Brazilian operations this year after previously holding a 50% stake. GPA, meanwhile, is undergoing an out-of-court restructuring and owns the Mini Extra and Minuto Pão de Açúcar chains.

In February, Brazilian company Raízen, part of Cosan Group, exited the business amid rising leverage by selling its stake in Grupo Nós, the joint venture that operated Oxxo stores in Brazil. The business has continued to post above-market growth.

In the first quarter after the partnership was dissolved, Oxxo Brazil grew 6.9%, followed by 11.6% growth in the second quarter. GPA’s convenience business grew 0.3% from January through March and fell 2.3% from April through June.

With R$4.5 billion in debt, the retail group that owns Pão de Açúcar filed for an out-of-court restructuring in March, and the plan has yet to receive court approval.

In its second-quarter earnings report, GPA said the decline in sales reflected the effects of the out-of-court restructuring, which caused supply problems at stores and ultimately affected revenue. “This effect peaked in May and has since begun to improve gradually. Sales returned to growth in June, in line with the gradual recovery in inventory availability and the normalization of operations,” the company said in its report.

The chain also cited the execution of a “strategy to prioritize more profitable channels,” which led to the end in 2026 of the “Aliados” project, aimed at transforming neighborhood stores under the CompreBem banner. It also cited moderate demand and a consumer environment under pressure. Oxxo and GPA did not comment.

In practice, weaker consumer spending affects all retailers exposed to the broader economic environment, including foreign groups. But some chains may also be more vulnerable because management decisions have failed to deliver the expected results.

“Changing management and strategy every three to four years sends a bad signal to the team and the market. GPA has frequently changed its leadership recently. Meanwhile, some chains grew too fast and opened too many stores in a short period, as was the case with Mateus, so eventually you have to pay the price,” Tozzi said.

Analysts say foreign groups still have the option of raising financing through their parent companies abroad, where interest rates are lower. Carrefour, for example, operates through a local bank that turns to its headquarters for capital.

In the home-improvement retail market, the outlook points to a challenging environment for both Brazilian and foreign chains.

“Several local chains have closed stores recently across all three states where we operate [Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná]. We often joke that the business that has grown the most in the region is real estate for rent,” said Peter Furukawa, CEO of Rio Grande do Sul-based Quero-Quero, which has about 580 stores nationwide.

Furukawa said the closures have created opportunities for the retailer to expand in some cities. At the same time, the chain has taken steps to respond to the slowdown in demand.

Among those measures, the company expanded this year its offering of cash purchases and products aimed at higher-income consumers, seeking to offset the decline in credit available to lower-income customers. The chain operates its own financial-services arm, Verdecard.

“We made a slight move toward more sophisticated assortments. The measures we have been taking in this tougher environment began in the middle of last year, when we realized that the deterioration in the economic backdrop was not going to change, and we are starting to see the results,” the CEO said. Quero-Quero’s same-store sales fell 2.5% from January through March and rose 6.7% from April through June.

French retailer Leroy Merlin reported flat same-store sales in Brazil in the first half of this year compared with 2025, according to management, putting it ahead of the market average. The sector declined 0.8% through June, according to IBGE.

Ricardo Dinelli, CEO of Leroy Merlin Brazil, said the company had to make choices and scale back some investments in a tougher market environment, selecting which projects to move forward with and being more transparent with employees about the approach. The retailer is Brazil’s largest home-improvement chain, with annual sales estimated by the market at R$9 billion to R$10 billion.

“We have had to make some course corrections recently and look inward to see whether what we were offering was really enough,” he said. “For example, we had projects involving made-to-measure products, such as curtains, that we started in some stores, but we decided not to expand them to more stores because it wasn’t the right time and we have other priorities,” he said. “We are putting more emphasis on our services offering. We have more than 160 types of services, and that business is not flat—it is growing faster [than the chain as a whole],” he said.

According to Dinelli, 2025 was also a difficult year, with sales stable compared with 2024, but he expects demand to increase as El Niño arrives and temperatures rise in the coming months. “Hot weather has a positive impact on our sales,” he said. The chain has not opened any stores this year; its latest opening was in Bauru, São Paulo state, in 2025. It has 53 stores nationwide.

*By Adriana Mattos— São Paulo

Source: Valor International

https://valorinternational.globo.com/