7:43 AM, our guest this morning is Enrique Martinez. Hello, you are the CEO of the Fnac Darty group. We will obviously talk about the capital changes of your consumer group. But first, do you see any impacts of the war in the Middle East on your activity? We were told this morning that the French were starting to stockpile food. Are you worried about non-food, which is your niche? We'll see what it does, how long it lasts, but for now there is no impact on consumption today. Obviously, we are looking at possible long-term effects on transport costs, under the slightly entrenched inflation, under food. But for now, when we look at the current figures in March, there is no impact.
Because on transport costs, we have road transporters who say they will pass on the costs to customers. So at some point, it arrives in the products.
Yeah. Well, we've already had oil at $100.
These are effects that we know how to manage. I think everyone trained during the Ukrainian crisis. We know very well what it means to face spikes and to work so that this has the least impact on consumers. What we do on a daily basis is try to work upstream with our manufacturers, with our teams so that the effect is minimal so that people are not impacted and can continue their normal consumption.
So in any case, consumption was not very dynamic in your figures, since revenue is stable, up 0.7%, so we see that French consumption was not very dynamic but it is holding up nonetheless.
Yes, there is a resilience that is quite strong despite all the contexts of political and economic instability and everything we hear. There is still a fairly strong underlying trend. Admittedly, for 3-4 years, consumption in France has been lower than the average of the countries around us. That is probably also explained by the savings rate which is particularly high, so a question of confidence and outlook.
So, will this year be another year? I think consumers sometimes favor another type of more responsible consumption like repair, and that's good because that's your niche, you are fully committed to repair.
Yeah, I think this is something that will be established over time, finding quality products, working on accessibility with prices, financing, etc., but above all working on products that last longer and that can be repaired are habits that we will keep throughout this period of crises that unfortunately follow one another. We've had, I'd say, 5-6 since Covid, a new crisis every 18 months, and that will probably remain.
What do you see in the figures on repair and textiles? The repair bonus isn't taking off, but we're on low value-added products. Do you see encouraging figures there?
Ah yes, we see two things. One, we sell better quality products so they break down less per product, but we have more customers who are interested in repairing them and more customers who are interested in buying refurbished products. And that is taking hold. We are preparing because we need to set up, train technicians, create tools, be able to recover products, refurbish them with good quality and sell them. And I think this is a habit that has become strongly established because of the crisis, etc., but it will remain because it is still a good opportunity to save money.
But what do you say, in 5 years for example, what share will refurbished products take at your company?
I think what is more important is that the lifespan of products in good working order will be extended. Either because products never break down, or because we repair them, or because we refurbish them, we keep them alive. So I think it will take an increasingly important share. But at some point, from an ecological and even technical point of view, a product that is too old is probably not in a good range and it is better to move to recycling to bring in a new product because today new technology optimizes water consumption in appliances, energy, quality, how we treat products.
OK. Well, I think it's not the planned obsolescence we used to hear about. It's not a product that will last forever either. It's something that will be entered but with the birth of the repairability index, products that break down too much are shunned by consumers. Planned obsolescence which according to you no longer exists.
