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Fnac-Darty is on the hunt for deals, its chief executive said, as the electronics retailer looks to increase its market share in Europe and expand customer services.
Enrique Martinez said the Paris-headquartered company was on the lookout for opportunities in consumer and business services, or industry consolidation deals, 12 months after it bought Italy’s Unieuro.
Fnac-Darty sells products such as mobile phones, laptops and household appliances — plus related support services — in several European markets, including France and Spain, plus parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Speaking ahead of the launch of a new five-year strategy for Fnac-Darty, Martinez told the Financial Times: “The group has a financial profile that would allow us to look at opportunities, that’s for sure. We are ambitious . . . and we remain very attentive to market opportunities.”
Martinez, who has been chief executive since 2017 but has worked at Fnac-Darty for almost 30 years, said he was interested in “strong brands” that are already of a certain size but have room to scale.
In terms of markets “we feel very European, very focused on this western Mediterranean axis”, he added.
Martinez is not alone in looking for deals in the retail sector. Last year activist hedge fund Elliott Management abandoned an attempt to buy UK electronics retailer Currys, a Fnac-Darty rival, saying that “multiple” efforts to engage with the company’s board had been rebuffed.
Asked if he would be interested in Currys, Martinez said “theoretically everything is possible, but that is not the subject today”.
Unveiling his third multiyear strategy for Fnac-Darty, which will take the company to 2030, Martinez plans to double the number of subscribers to its service programmes — such as repairs for electronic devices — to 4mn.
He also proposes to increase capital investment to an average of €200mn a year as the company spends on stores and technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence.
Fnac-Darty is targeting an operating profit margin of at least 3 per cent by 2030, and cumulative free cash flow of more than €1.2bn between 2025 and 2030.
The company will seek a dividend payout ratio of at least 40 per cent of net profit.
Martinez is setting the company’s goals amid a challenging economic and fiscal backdrop.
France’s parliament is expected to struggle to approve a budget for 2026 that will reduce a widening deficit, and Donald Trump’s trade war is weighing on consumer confidence.
Martinez said he believed the sophistication of Fnac-Darty’s products, plus the need for support services, meant the company will be shielded from any potential Chinese dumping on European markets if the US shuts China out of America through punitive tariffs.
However, he accepted that French consumer confidence had taken a hit.
“At the end of the year the dynamic was feeling very positive but we sensed some cooling since March, April, when the trade war became more of a concern,” he said, adding that “in France, there’s a lot of saving and poor consumer sentiment”.
With the Unieuro deal done, Martinez predicted that most of Fnac-Darty’s revenue growth in future years would come from outside its home market, including countries such as Italy and Portugal.
“It’s clear that being dependent on France, from a strategic point of view, is not the best thing,” he said. “But France is our domestic market and will remain a large market.”
