PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in Carrefour <CARR.PA> fell by some 3% on Wednesday after Europe's largest retailer posted slower third-quarter sales, reflecting a worsening performance of its ailing hypermarket stores in France.
"The most important engine of the turnaround plan is the French hypermarket. But two years into the plan, hypers had a 3.6% like-for-like decline, the worst since Q2 2012... These sales numbers are not very encouraging," Bernstein analyst Bruno Monteyne said on Wednesday.
Carrefour said after the market close on Tuesday that third-quarter sales came to 20.2 billion euros ($22.50 billion).
Growth reached 2.3 percent on a like-for-like basis - excluding fuel and calendar effects - against 3.9% in the second quarter.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)
