French supermarket company Casino aims to complete 1.5 billion euros ($1.77 billion) of asset sales by early 2019 to reduce its heavy debt burden.
Casino said that half of the asset sales would be completed in 2018 and the remainder by early next year. It added that the disposal of non-core assets would mainly involve real estate.
The company also said it will continue to generate free cash flow and probably get the benefits of additional disposals in 2019 as well.
Casino said its debt-reduction drive will bring down its net debt in France by about 1 billion euros before the end of this year.