South African retail giant Shoprite benefited from the Black Friday sales during the festive season, announced the company on Tuesday.
The benefits were registered in the record Black Friday and festive season as Shoprite delivered double-digit first-half sales growth.
BusinessTech Africa understands that the retailer spent more than half a billion rand to keep the lights on during one of SA’s worst-ever periods of load shedding.
Dubbed the country’s largest grocery retailer, Shoprite said on Tuesday that its local supermarkets division delivered sales growth of 17.5% for the six months to January 1, adding that on a like-for-like basis, it rose by more than 11%.
According to local reports from sources such as News24, this segment, which accounts for just over 80% of group sales, was also able to raise selling prices by 9.4%.
“The growth in sales reflects a record Black Friday and festive season, underpinning 46 months of uninterrupted market share gains,” it said.
Across the Shoprite group, the total sale of merchandise rose 16.8% to about R106.3 billion.
“But this kind of growth also came at a price with the company saying it had to fork out an additional R560 million during the half on diesel to operate generators across its South African supermarkets store base in order to trade uninterrupted during load shedding stages five and six,” reported the website.
“The market cheered the update with the retailer’s shares rising more than 2% to R249.82 on Tuesday morning.
“Internal price inflation increased 9.4%, which Shoprite said reflected its product mix exposure to commodities, where selling price inflation has been notably higher.”
Shoprite’s leading brands such as Liquor Shop managed to deliver double-digit increases and the outlet also delivered a standout performance with a 35.6% increase in sales.
Checkers and Checkers Hyper reported sales growth of 16.9%, while Shoprite and USave registered a sales growth of 15.1%.
Shoprite’s rest of Africa stores also increased sales by 17.5%, contributing 9.4% to group sales. In constant currency, these stores increased sales by 6.9%.
BusinessTech Africa has also discovered that the company’s furniture division, which included OK Furniture, OK Power Express and House & Home, reported an 8.6% increase in sales, with sales increasing 5% on a like-for-like basis.
Shoprite’s “other” operating segments, including among them Transpharm, Medirite Pharmacies, and Checkers Food Services, among others, also did well as sales reached a growth of 12.5%.
