By Dominique Vidalon
PARIS (Reuters) - Electrical goods retailer Darty Plc (L:DRTY) said improving consumer confidence and a hot summer that boosted demand for fridges and coolers pushed up first-quarter revenue in France, its biggest market.
The company also said it was seeing strong television sales ahead of the Rugby World Cup, which starts on Sept. 18. But group sales were weighed down by a weak performance in the Netherlands where a new warehouse system hit product availability.
Darty is Europe's No. 3 electrical goods retailer and competes with bigger rivals Dixons Carphone (L:DC), from Britain, and German firm Metro AG's (DE:MEOG) Media-Saturn.
It said like-for-like sales in France, which accounts for 70 percent of group sales, rose 1.1 percent in the first-quarter, improving from a 0.7 percent drop in the previous three months.
But first-quarter group sales fell 0.3 percent, having dropped 0.5 percent in the previous three months.
Like many of its rivals, Darty is facing weak consumer spending and competition from online retailers. The company, which has about 400 stores in Europe, has responded by cutting costs, exiting loss-making operations in Italy, Spain, Turkey and the Czech Republic, and focussing on its main markets of France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Darty Chief Executive Regis Schultz told Reuters that French sales had been helped by an improving real estate market as well as "a little upturn" in consumer confidence.
He said he was confident Darty would continue to outperform an expected 2 percent decline in the overall French market in 2015.
Darty said that online company Mistergooddeal, which it bought last year to expand its web presence, was on track to break even this financial year, as previously forecast.
Dixons Carphone reported a consensus-beating 8 percent rise in first-quarter underlying sales, led by a strong showing in its home market Britain.