Russia's Magnit hopes to return to positive same-store sales by Q2-end

MOSCOW, April 21 (Reuters) - Russia's second-biggest food retailer, Magnit, said on Friday it hoped to return to positive like-for-like sales by the end of the second quarter.

"It's hard to forecast because a lot of competitors open next to us and many of our stores are cannibalising each other... I think that probably by the end of the second quarter we could achieve positive like-for-like," Khachatur Pombukhchan, chief financial officer, told a conference call.

Magnit reported earlier on Friday a drop in first-quarter like-for-like sales for the second three-month reporting period in a row. It said same-store sales dropped 4.8 percent in January-March after falling 1.3 percent in the final quarter of 2016. (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova and Olga Sichkar; editing by Vladimir Soldatkin)