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Shoprite Holdings, a leading supermarket retail company partly owned by South African billionaire Christo Wiese, has reported a robust financial performance for the first half of its 2023 fiscal year.
The unaudited results for the 26 weeks ending Jan. 1, 2023, showed an impressive 19.9-percent increase in profit, with earnings rising from R2.72 billion ($148.3 million) in the same period in 2022 to R3.26 billion ($177.7 million).
Shoprite’s impressive financial performance can be attributed to a strong combination of increased customer traffic, volume growth, and higher average basket spend, which drove the group’s total merchandise sales up by more than 16 percent from R91.01 billion ($4.96 billion) to R106.28 billion ($5.8 billion) at the time of this report.
Pieter Engelbrecht, the CEO of Shoprite, acknowledged the challenging operating environment characterized by persistent power outages across South Africa but expressed satisfaction at the 17.5-percent sales growth in the Supermarkets RSA segment, which accounted for 80.1 percent of group sales.
He added that the company’s key brands, Shoprite and Usave, had achieved 15.1-percent growth, while Checkers and Checkers Hyper had recorded 16.9-percent growth, outperforming the market and contributing to a 1.4-percent increase in the company’s South African market share.
Christo Wiese’s stake in Shoprite is worth over $900 million
Shoprite Holdings Limited is Africa’s largest retailer and the foremost food retailer in South Africa, boasting a presence in over 2,900 locations on the continent and a workforce of more than 140,000 employees.
Wiese, who played a key role in Shoprite’s growth, owns 11.63 percent of the company, which is valued at more than $900 million.
In addition to his common stock, Christo Wiese also holds 305.6 million non-convertible, non-participating, no-par value deferred shares, which account for 32.2 percent of Shoprite’s voting rights.
The retailer’s strong performance in the first half of its 2023 fiscal year has resulted in the declaration of an interim dividend of R2.48 ($0.135) per share, payable from income reserves to shareholders on April 11, 2023.
