The awful Christmas weather affected Metro badly

The German Metro AG company announced that its fourth-quarter sales increased to 19.7 billion euros. This corresponds to an increase of 1.6 percent, compared to the same quarter of the last year, but smaller than the analysts’ expactations of 20.2 billion.

Metro said: that the expected results have not been reached, because the horrible weather conditions that were experienced over the Christmas period. Metro's sales in Germany decresed by 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter, but throughout Western Europe they achieved a 1.6 percent increase. The sales in Eastern Europe grew by 6.9 percent, in Africa, and in Asia by 29.1 percent. The company continues to consider that they reach a profit of 2.3 billion euros in 2010.