Spanish discount retailer Dia said on Friday it would exit Turkey by selling its stake in supermarket chain DiaSA to Turkish food group Yildiz Holding, while local partner Sabanci Holding also sold its stake.
The deal, first reported by Reuters earlier on Friday, is worth 136.5 million euros ($178 million), Dia and Sabanci said in separate statements. Yildiz and its subsidiary, retailer SOK Marketler, will pay in cash, Dia said.
Dia had a 60 percent of DiaSA and Sabanci owned the rest.
Dia, which has flourished in its home market despite a recession, said it wanted to concentrate on other markets. "We want to strengthen the growth of our business in other countries, especially in Iberia and Brazil," a Dia spokesman said.
Dia, for which Turkey represented 4 percent of its total sales at the end of 2012, is also present in China.
Turkish conglomerate Sabanci is in the process of exiting the food retail sector in the country. It has a joint venture with Carrefour, which it is making progress on quitting, sources close to the matter said.
"Sabanci is exiting from retail, except its consumer technology unit TeknoSA," one of the sources said. "There might be a consolidation in the sector," the source said. "There's too much competition in the sector and it's not doing very well. Profitability is very low."
Sabanci holds a 38.8 percent stake in CarrefourSA, while French partner Carrefour holds 58.2 percent, the remaining 2.2 percent is publicly traded. Analysts have put an estimated value of around 300 million euros on Carrefour's stake in CarrefourSA.
"We had a higher estimated value for DiaSA, but DiaSA constitutes only 1 percent of Sabanci Holding, thus it won't have any effect on the total valuation of Sabanci," Basak Dinckoc, an analyst at Istanbul-based Is Yatirim said.
DiaSA has more than 1,200 stores in Turkey, whereas CarrefourSA operates with 215 supermarkets and 28 hypermarkets.
Sabanci declined to comment on CarrefourSA.
Shares in Dia rose 2.3 percent while shares in Sabanci were down 0.5 percent. ($1 = 0.7644 euros)
