Ad-hoc | 17 November 2004 08:00

METRO Group divests 137 Extra Food Stores

Ad-hoc-announcement transmitted by DGAP. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. ——————————————————————————– METRO Group divests 137 Extra Food Stores Düsseldorf, 17 November 2004 – The METRO Group further streamlines the network of its Extra Food Stores. In this context METRO Group sells 119 Extra locations to Rewe-Gruppe as of January 1st, 2005 effectively. The employees affected will be taken over by Rewe. Further 18 Extra stores are going to be disposed or closed. Altogether, these 137 food stores represent a sales volume of around EUR 550 m. Furthermore, 12 Extra stores are going to be integrated into Real’s hypermarket network. In this course, Extra’s store network will be focused on the regions Northern and Western Germany. Extra’s store network will comprise a total of 280 locations in the future. Resulting from these measures METRO Group will incur a low double digit million Euro amount of non recurring expenses in fiscal year 2004. The Group’s expectation of 6-10% EPS growth in 2004 does not include these expenditures. With these measures METRO Group reduces its rating relevant corporate indebtedness. In April 2003, METRO Group announced the comprehensive restructuring of its Extra Food Stores division. Since then extensive measures were implemented. Overhead functions were combined and integrated into respective departments at Real hypermarkets and Extra’s regional structures were simplified. Besides that, the optimization of Extra’s store network was accelerated. Having closed numerous stores already, Extra’s store network comprised 443 stores by the end of Q3 2004. The measures are subject to the approval of the cartel authorities. end of ad-hoc-announcement (c)DGAP 17.11.2004 ——————————————————————————– WKN: 725750; ISIN: DE0007257503; Index: DAX-30 Listed: Amtlicher Markt in Düsseldorf und Frankfurt (Prime Standard); Freiverkehr in Berlin-Bremen, Hamburg, Hannover, München und Stuttgart; EUREX; Zürich 170800 Nov 04