Shoprite sees 12% sales growth in SA, says food prices are cooling
South Africa's largest grocer managed another year of more than 10% growth in its local operations, helped by a rapid store expansion as well as a general pick-up in volumes.Shoprite's core South African supermarkets business delivered sales growth of 12% in the year to end June. The group also opened a total of 201 stores, bringing its total to 2 322.
This part of the business also booked sales growth of almost 18% in the prior year, when Shoprite reported its stretch of consecutive market share gains had reached 52 months.
Online sales from Checkers Sixty60 jumped 58% over the past years. Checkers and Checkers Hyper reported sales growth of 12.3%, while Shoprite and Usave stores reported sales growth of 11%.
Like-for-like sales (without the new stores) were up a more sedate 6%, which compares to an increase in prices (selling inflation) of 5.8%.
Shoprite said price increases have cooled from 7.7% in its first half, to 3% at the end of the financial year.
The group increased total sales of merchandise by 12% to approximately R240.7 billion from continuing operations, after adding a net 292 stores during the period, including 73 OK Franchise stores, to a total of 3 639 stores across all its markets.
Its supermarkets outside of South Africa grew sales by 6.1%, contributing 8.6% to group sales. This part of the business added 15 stores to a total 266. It operates in nine countries, including Nigeria, Zambia and Ghana.
Shoprite's spending on diesel declined to R754 million over the past year, from R1.3 billion in 2023 as the country battled its worst-ever load shedding and retailers had to run generators to keep stores open.
This decrease in diesel costs should be considered in light of a commensurate increase in electricity usage, it added, expecting its water and electricity expense for the year to pick up by mid to low single digits, referring to about 5% or lower.
Shares in the retailer, which are valued at about R176 billion on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), were up about 1.2% in morning trade and have risen by over 15% in the past year. At the same time, Pick n Pay was down marginally, while Spar had lifted 0.7%.
- News24