French retailer Casino sees shares rise on Goldman Sachs stake

Casino shares rose sharply on Wednesday, which traders attributed to Goldman Sachs declaring a stake in the French supermarket retailer and to an upbeat note on the stock from analysts at Deutsche Bank.

Casino shares were up by roughly 5 percent in late session trading, the top performer on Paris' SBF-120 index, although the stock remains down by nearly 30 percent so far in 2018, partly on concerns over Casino's debt burden.

A regulatory filing by France’s AMF stock market regulator on Wednesday said Goldman Sachs had a stake of 5.2 percent in Casino’s share capital.

The stock also got a lift from Deutsche Bank’s bullish note, with Deutsche Bank keeping a “buy” rating on the company, which will issue a second quarter trading update on July 17.

“We expect Casino to report strong Q2 like-for-like and H1 margins, driven by market share gains and efficiency plans,” wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Maxime Mallet.

Last month, Bank of America Merrill Lynch had also upgraded its rating on Casino to “buy”, arguing that Casino looked set to show further improvements in the performance of its business.

In June, Casino said it aimed to complete 1.5 billion euros (1.32 billion pounds) of asset sales by early 2019 to help cut debts.

It also kept its 2018 profit growth goals and predicted that like-for-like second quarter sales growth in the core French market would be higher than in the first quarter.