June 24 (Reuters) - Europe's No 3 electricals retailer Kesa Electricals Plc said it had seen no recovery in its markets and was not expecting one any time soon, as it swung to a full-year loss and cut its dividend.
Following are some key facts about Kesa:
* Kesa is Europe's third-largest electrical retailing group with operations in 12 countries. The group, which runs French market leader Darty and Comet in Britain, reported a pretax loss of 81.8 million pounds ($135.5 million) for the year to April 30, which compares with a pretax profit of 128.8 million pounds in the previous year.
* Its full-year sales increased 9.8 percent to 4.95 billion pounds ($8.20 billion), but were down 6.2 percent on a like-for-like basis. Shares in Kesa have lost 39 percent of their value over the last year, underperforming the DJ Stoxx European retail index by about 32 percent.
* It reported that sales were declining faster in the first four months of 2009 than at the end of last year. Darty, which has 220 stores, showed a like-for-like sales decline of 5.8 percent while Comet, which has 252 stores, reported a 7.3 percent decline. Underlying sales at its other business division which comprises BCC, Vanden Borre, Datart, Darty Italy, Darty Switzerland, Darty Turkey and Menaje Del Hogar, fell 12.4 percent.
* It acquired Electrodomesticos Menaje Del Hogar Sociedad Anonima (EMH), a Spanish specialist electrical retailer for 100 million euros ($138 million) in cash along with the assumption of net debt in 2007. On June 24 the group reported exceptional costs of 150.9 million pounds which included a goodwill and intangible asset write-off of 118.5 million pounds at this business.
* The Group reported on June 16 that it was in exclusive talks with Swiss electrical retailing chain FUST regarding the sale of its loss-making Swiss operation for about 11.4 million pounds as its new chief executive moves to clean up its portfolio of businesses.
* Thierry Falque-Pierrotin succeeded Jean-Noel Labroue as Kesa's CEO in January. Since then the group has taken measures such as asking its suppliers to pay up to 15,400 pounds to have one of their products displayed in its Comet stores in Britain. It also took restructuring measures which included consolidation of the distribution and service centres of Comet and Menaje Del Hogar and a cut in head office staff to realise annualised cost savings of about 25 million pounds. (Writing by Carl Bagh, Bangalore Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by David Cutler; Editing by Rupert Winchester)